38 THE WORLD-ENERGY 



in nature. So that, nature is ' object ' not in 

 the sense of being external to thought, but rather in 

 the sense that it is the externalization of thought. It 

 is, in short, as a mode of thought, and only as a mode 

 of thought, that nature is accessible to intelligence in 

 any degree whatever. 



"Thus, it appears that the separation between nature 

 as object, and mind as subject, is valid only in so far 

 as concerns the experience of this or that individual 

 mind. To the untrained mind nature, and still more, 

 all the more complex modes of thought, are quite 

 foreign or external. On the other hand, as the untrained 

 mind ' goes to nature ' and expands its own powers into 

 fuller realization, it approaches more and more nearly 

 to the apprehension of that great truth that, in the final 

 outcome, subject and object are but the necessary com- 

 plementary phases, not merely of each individual human 

 mind's experience, but also that they are the necessary 

 complementary phases of the one only world or universe. 



' ' On this view it is perfectly ' natural ' (i. c. rational) 

 that on the one hand the. individual mind in its investi- 

 gations of nature should discover .everywhere in nature 

 the most beautiful manifestations of the law of consist- 

 ency, harmony, continuity, rational system; and that 

 on the other hand the testing and verifying this dis- 

 covery should lead at length to the recognition of the fact 

 that this law is, in truth, one and the same with the law 

 of consistency, harmony, continuity, rational method 

 underlying the very nature of thought itself. 



(( Thus the laws of thought and the laws of the only 

 things that can ever be known by thought prove to be 

 identical. And the truth is to be attained, not by an 



