sophy of nature responds to the instincts of human consciousness, and that special faculties enable us to deal with it.

Not confounding the effervescence of soda-water with the mental activity of our brain, but discerning distinctions and differences; advanced science and metaphysical analysis showing that matter may be the concrete of a function of energy, and energy a function of mind or will; we know of an actuating cause, a maintaining intelligent influence, of which our own mind is a living miniature. We ascend from unity of power to unity of science, and from unity of science to unity of will, and find the Divine height of philosophy. Not the universe, none of the things of it, nor the changes of it, are by self-origination. Science cannot find any inherent creative physical power in them, nor any foreseeing intelligence in them. One force is by another force, and is transformed into yet another. The simple grows complex, the complex is capable of analysis, but the essence of the thing and of its changes is an imparted inner mystery; continually bursting out into new form, new power, new relations, new light. The laws of matter are a prelude to the laws of life, to the symphony of sensation and thought, to the great harmony of man's intellect. Our view of all things amounts to this-the matter of the universe is as a great nerve; space is a breathing-place; time is for manifestation of the temporal forms of the eternal; the sky, that noble canopy above, is like a grand head with brain moving by intelligence; all the philosophy of things is a thought; and all creation is a word of the Almighty.

The intelligibleness of the universe being not less the ground of our scientific interpretation, and the application of it to manifold use in our daily life, than proof of an intelligent Creator; how can we explain the apparent irrationality of the parts?

First Answer.

A wise, good, almighty, eternal God would, we assume, as being infinitely perfect, create that which is the very best of its kind. This best, if brought into being and completed without any co-operation on its own part, would, however skilfully constructed, be a mere machine: therefore, not the best conceivable thing.

The best created thing, of which we can form a conception, is a living creature in God's own image and likeness; capable of self-control, of choice, and of rising into appreciation of the Creator; having a capacity to render service in a spirit of love, of truth, of purity, of wisdom; until, at length, this which is finite, which is temporal, shall consciously become finitely partaker of all that is in God. Such a being would be man-a son of God. A world, or a universe, so constructed as to be in co-ordination and co-operation to make earthly trials heavenly discipline, is the realm of nature. We think it out in the following manner, which is our

Second Answer.

Nature, viewed at large, displays a state of things that is continually becoming; and not less continually

passing on into variety of form and force, of place and relation. Whatsoever is created never remains-no, not for the fraction of a second, in the same place, or condition. The so-called elements, are various composite arrangements of the particles of a uniform primitive matter; possibly of ether, the universal medium; but even that seems a highly complicate substance. This substance, these elements, are the material underlying all life, all sensation, all thought, all emotion. Matter is the highly artificial, plastic substance with which mind works and manifests itself. Not that there is in every particle of matter a piece of mind-stuff; but that given potency which is the promise and seed of all that it becomes. In this sense, the imagery of Milton, and the genius of Shakespeare, were latent in the fires of the sun.

Matter has no power of its own. As shown by the first law of motion, it continues in its state of rest, or of motion; except in so far as it is compelled, by some energy, to change that state. The name of the rate at which there is motion, or work, is force; the doer of the work is energy. By this energy Nature has a sort of automatism, as if all was done by herself; and there are natural processes, the basis of science and art, by which water, naturally and artificially, becomes wine; and "sugar is turned into alcohol, carbonic acid, glycerine; and gas refuse is transmuted into perfumes more delicate than musk, and into dyes richer than Tyrian purple." This vast, complex, and mysterious process may be called the first series of autonomy.

Everybody who observes the development of a seed into a tree, of an egg into an animal, may note that

relatively formless matter gradually takes definite shape and structure; which contribute toward a certain definite end. The causa materialis and formalis is manifested in the process tending to the seed or egg. The causa efficiens, within the seed or egg, tends to the growth and metamorphosis which proceed, in unbroken succession, to make up the life and form of the plant or animal. At starting, the matter of the egg, or seed, was apparently like that of all other material bodies: then came the peculiarity, in contradistinction to lower material forms, which worked towards an end by means of a living organization. This we may regard as the second grand autonomy.

The more our knowledge of the universe grows, our thoughts widen and deepen. At every successive moment of time, in logical and physical sequence of the preceding arrangement, new series, with parts of exquisite beauty and symmetry, present themselves; and not a link in the chain of natural causes and effects seems to be broken. The embryological and palæontological discoveries of modern times show that there never has been complete biological difference, or severance, between the populations of any two epochs. There is no indication that, so to speak, "the Creator improved upon His thoughts as time went on." There have been, and there may be again, " catastrophes to which the earthquake of Lisbon is a trifle;" but no disorder, no lawlessness, not even in the original chaos, is to be found. The phenomena of growth and metamorphosis, ever working towards organs and functions, also con

See "Scientific and Pseudo-Scientific Realism," Professor Huxley, in the Nineteenth Century, February, 1887, p. 203.

tribute to the production of sensation, of thought, of emotion. So closely are these related, that we know not where they begin, nor where they end. There is a life that seems no life; and there are manifestations of sensation and will in the swift turnings of creatures whose world is a drying film of water used for their microscopic exhibition; and there are displays of thought, and a kind of conscientiousness, in animals which are far off from man. They possess a will, lower than man's, which can bend the energies of the universe to its own purpose. The instincts of thought, and we say fearlessly of morality also, are universally associated, not only with intellectual conceptions, but with material objects. There are problems reaching down to the lowest depths of nature,

"Which be they what they may,

Are yet the common light of all our day." 1

We climb the hills of knowledge, and above, in the starry height, is a perceivable display of vaster and transcendental intelligence. This relation between the physical facts in nature, and mental facts in ourselves, is the third grand autonomy.

Theologians, and men of science, have never given due reality, nor half enough strength, to these facts. There is that, even in lowest things, which treats many of the energies in nature as servants. Neither mite nor man is free from law, but both subordinate other strengths than their own to work: the mite for his meat, and man for uses very various. This fact, with the issues belonging to freedom, prove that the struggle for life is carried on in many forms and by many powers.

1 The Duke of Argyll, in the Nineteenth Century, March, 1887, p. 328.