THE METAPHYSICS OF SCIENCE. 383 



tern of Nature is merely the theater of its activity in 

 human times and before human eyes. If the words " super- 

 natural" and " creative " possess any significance, they mean 

 only an extraordinary, or hitherto unnoticed, mode of action 

 of supreme efficiency, and not an intervention in a scheme 

 of events sustained by some diverse and independent causa- 

 tion. The contemplations of science are suited, therefore, 

 to awaken not alone the imagination, and sentiments of the 

 beautiful and sublime, but feelings, also, of awe and rever- 

 ence. The world, as the elder Agassiz so eloquently taught, 

 is the theater of a divine activity, and an intelligent and 

 perpetual revelation of the divine Being and attributes. 



Thus all the distinctive doctrinal enunciations of modern 

 science carry implications which reach beyond the peculiar 

 domain of science. This, as I have shown, is true of the 

 assumption that, in any case, observations have been act- 

 ually made; that phenomena have been actually cognized; 

 that there is any objective reality concerned in the cogni- 

 tion of phenomena; that principles of classification underlie 

 phenomena ; that the search for the unification of phe- 

 nomena is not vain; that the progress of natural events 

 may be safely traced into the future and the past; that 

 like effects may be expected to proceed under similar 

 conditions, from like causes; that natural law possesses 

 validity, and secures order and persistence in the flow of 

 events. These universally accepted doctrines of science 

 can be admitted only on the admission that all the testi- 

 mony of consciousness is valid; that the truths intuitively 

 apprehended in reason are absolute and eternal; that the 

 government of the world rests on a rational basis, and 

 that events are to be interpreted in terms of intelligence; 

 that law and order are the expressions of intelligence; 



