334 THE NATURAL THEOLOGY OF THE FUTURE, [xin. 



facts. Then, in despair, men turned to the facts which 

 they had neglected, and said : We are weary of philo- 

 sophy ; we will study you, and you alone. As for God, 

 who can find Him? And they have worked at the 

 facts like gallant and honest men ; and their work, 

 like all good work, has produced, in the last fifty years, 

 results more enormous than they even dreamed. But 

 what are they finding, more and more, below their 

 facts, below all phenomena which the scalpel and the 

 microscope can show ? A something nameless, in- 

 visible, imponderable, yet seemingly omnipresent and 

 omnipotent, retreating before them deeper and deeper, 

 the deeper they delve : namely, the life which shapes 

 and makes that which the old school-men called 

 " forma formativa," which they call vital force and 

 what not metaphors all, or rather counters to mark 

 an unknown quantity, as if they should call it x or y. 

 One says : It is all vibrations ; but his reason, unsatis- 

 fied, asks : And what makes the vibrations vibrate ? 

 Another : It is all physiological units ; but his reason 

 asks : What is the " physis/' the nature and " innate 

 tendency " of the units ? A third : It may be all 

 caused by infinitely numerous " gemmules ; " but his 

 reason asks him : What puts infinite order into these 

 gemmules, instead of infinite anarchy ? I mention 

 these theories not to laugh at them. No man has a 

 deeper respect for those who have put them forth. 

 Nor would it interfere with my theological creed, if 

 any or all of them were proven to be true to-morrow. 

 I mention them only to show that beneath all these 

 theories true or false still lies the unknown x. 

 Scientific men are becoming more and more aware of 

 it ; I had almost said ready to worship it. More and 



