The essential of progress is Faith, and Faith can only be established by the study of Nature." "That's the kind of thing I like to hear," exclaimed the editor, who, whilst listening, has tossed off a glass of wine.

(The pink of his cheeks was deepening to a pleasant rosiness, as luncheon drew to its end.) "_Hoc signo vinces_!" Lady Ogram, who was regarding Lashmar, said abruptly, "Go on! Talk away!" And the orator, to whose memory happily occurred a passage of his French sociologist, proceeded meditatively.
"Two great revolutions in knowledge have affected the modern world.
First came the great astronomic discoveries, which subordinated our planet, assigned it its place in the universe, made it a little rolling globe amid innumerable others, instead of the one inhabited world for whose behalf were created sun and moon and stars.

Then the great work of the biologists, which put man into his rank among animals, dethroning him from a fantastic dignity, but at the same time honouring him as the crown of nature's system, the latest product of aeons of evolution.

These conquests of science have put modern man into an entirely new position, have radically changed his conception of the world and of himself.

Religion, philosophy, morals, politics, all are revolutionised by this accession of knowledge.