GOD AND NATURE. 29 



boundaries of adjacent states are settled, but is like one of the great 

 watersheds of nature, which no human arrangement can alter : it is 

 like the "great divide" in the Rocky Mountains, one side of which 

 means for every drop of rain that falls a passage to the Pacific, and 

 the other side means a passage to the Atlantic. On a smaller scale 

 there are similar edges on Snowdon and Helvellyn ; you may stand 

 upon them and throw two pebbles with the right hand and with the 

 left, which will be miles apart before they come to rest. 



For, in truth, the difference between the two territories, separated 

 by our supposed scientific boundary, is greater than that which is 

 expressed by the terms natura naturans and natura naturata* The 

 conception of a natura naturans might be merely that of a first cause, 

 a logical beginning of nature, without any of those moral attributes 

 which men with almost one consent associate with the name and con- 

 ception of God. If the transgression of the legitimate boundaries of 

 the field of physical science merely introduced the inquirer to meta- 

 physical speculations, no harm would ensue, though possibly not much 

 advantage. The condition and quality of mind which make a man a 

 successful investigator of nature, either by the way of observation or 

 by that of mathematical analysis, are seldom associated with those 

 mental powers which enable a man to get beneath the surface of phe- 

 nomena and speculate with any success as to the ground and underly- 

 ing conditions of things. I do not say that a mind may not possess 

 both kinds of power, but the combination is rare. Still, a man at the 

 worst can only fail, and a brilliant observer or analyst may prove him- 

 self to be a poor philosopher, and that is the worst result that can 

 come. But this is not in reality the result of crossing the scientific 

 frontier. If on the one side is God and on the other nature, this 

 means that on the one side you have a moral and religious region, and 

 on the other a purely physical region ; and the passage from one 

 to the other is quite certain to be fraught with danger, not to say 

 mischief. 



Let me illustrate my meaning by reference to a passage in Ernst 

 Haeckel's " History of Creation." 



" Creation," he writes, " as the coming into existence of matter, 

 does not concern us here at all. This process, if indeed it ever took 

 place, is completely beyond human comprehension, and can therefore 

 never become the subject of scientific inquiry. Natural science teaches 



* I have used this phraseology as expressing the difference between the cause and the 

 phenomena of the material universe. Bacon writes, in the first aphorism of the second 

 book of the "Novum Organum " : "Datae naturae Formam, sive differentiam veram, sive 

 naturam naturantem . . . invenire, opus et intentio est hunianas Scientiae." But upon 

 this Mr. Ellis remarks in a note : " This is the only passage in which I have met with the 

 phrase natura naturans used as it is here. With the later schoolmen, as with Spinoza, 

 it denotes God considered as the causa immanens of the universe, and therefore, accord- 

 ing to the latter, not hypostatically distinct from it." As employed by me, the phrase is 

 not intended (I need hardly say) to have any pantheistic tendency. 



