The Woman.—In our second conversation, my father, you made me know Humanity. In the three following conversations, you have taught me the worship we owe Her. I ask you now to set before me the systematic co-ordination of the whole system of Positive doctrine around such an unity.

The Priest.—You should, to that end, renounce first of all, my daughter, all aspirations after an absolute, external, in one word, an objective unity; which will be easier for you than for our professors. Such a wish, compatible with the inquiry into causes, is in contradiction with the study of laws, meaning by laws constant relations traced in the midst of immense variety. These admit only a purely relative, human, in one word, a subjective unity. In fact, laws are of necessity plural, by virtue of the impossibility that notoriously exists of ever reducing under the other either of the two general elements of all our real conceptions, the world and man. Even if we succeeded in condensing each of these two great studies around one single law of nature, as the two must remain separate, scientific unity would still be unattainable. Though the knowledge of the world presupposes man, the world could exist without man, as is perhaps the case with many stars that are not habitable. So again, man is dependent on the world, but he is not a consequence of it.