I PROLOGUE 5 



must needs end in almost exclusive attention to 

 Supernature, and in trust that its over-ruling 

 strength will be exerted in favour of those who 

 stand well with its denizens. On the other hand, 

 the lessons of the great schoolmaster, experience, 

 have hardly seemed to accord with this conclusion. 

 They have taught, with considerable emphasis, 

 that it does not answer to neglect Nature ; and 

 that, on the whole, the more attention paid to her 

 dictates the better men fare. 



Thus the theoretical antithesis brought about 

 a practical antagonism. CFrom the earliest times 

 of which we have any knowledge, Naturalism 

 and Supernatural ism have consciously, or uncon- 

 sciously,") competed and struggled with one an- 

 other ; and the varying fortunes of the contest 

 are written in the records of the course of civili- 

 sation, from those of Egypt and Babylonia, six 

 thousand years ago, down to those of our own 

 time and people. 



/These records inform us that, so far as men 

 have paid attention to Nature, they have been . 

 rewarded for their pains. They have developed 

 the Arts which have furnished the conditions of 

 civilised existence ; and the Sciences, which have 

 been a progressive revelation of reality and have 

 afforded the best discipline of the mind in the 

 methods of discovering truth. They have accumu- 

 lated a vast body of universally accepted know- 

 ledge ; and the conceptions of man and of society, 



