And with man, and his aims and objects, the case is just the same.

And we must remember that to realise keenly the potency of a past ideal, is no indication that practically it will ever again be powerful.
Briefly, then, the positive school of to-day we see thus far to be in this position.

It has to make demands upon human life that were never made before; and human life is, in many ways, less able than it ever was to answer to them.
But this is not all.

There is a third matter yet left to consider--a third factor in the case, peculiar to the present crisis.

That is the intense self-consciousness that is now developed in the world, and which is something altogether new to it.