30 Synoptic View beyond Science 



they did this and do this ; and one is not restricted to 

 the abstract scientific outlook. 



But again the critic may say: "Yours is a very 

 pious opinion, but are you not repeating the mistake 

 of the naive old lady who saw providential design in 

 the way so many fine rivers flowed through so many 

 large towns ? Was it not simply that chemico-phy sical 

 Nature gave rise to living creatures, which are 

 naturally enough such that they find their environ- 

 ment friendly?" This seems good sense. The chemical 

 elements that are constituents of living matter are 

 the common elements of earth and air; and if the 

 living creatures that evolved had not had abundant 

 supplies at hand, and had not been viable in the 

 given conditions, why, they would not have been 

 there, that's all. But we are not sure that this does 

 justice to the big fact that the chemical and physical 

 conditions of Nature have been conspicuously favor- 

 able to the order and progress of organisms. It is 

 easy to assert that with other elements, with other 

 properties, there might have been other living crea- 

 tures, very different from those we know, yet just as 

 well adapted to their environment, just as marvellous 

 and beautiful. But no one has substantiated this 

 assertion. 



§14. A Possible Picture. 



Venturing frankly beyond science, we hold to the 

 idea of a Creation, an institution of the Order of Na- 

 ture — consisting of the irreducibles such as electrons 

 and protons and of their psychical correlates. At 

 first it was but an implicit Order of Nature — a 



