MAN THE INTERPRETER OF NATURE. 209 



tions. Towards this point all scientific inquiry now tends. The 

 convertibility of the physical forces, the correlation of these with 

 the vital, and the intimacy of that nexus between mental and 

 bodily activity, which, explain it as we may, cannot be denied, 

 all lead upward towards one and the same conclusion ; and the 

 pyramid of which that philosophical conclusion is the apex, has its 

 foundation in the primitive instincts of humanity. 



By our own remote progenitors, as by the untutored savage 

 of the present day, every change in which human agency is not 

 apparent was referred to a particular animating intelligence. 

 And thus they attributed not only the movements of the heavenly 

 bodies, but all phenomena of Nature, each to its own deity. 

 These deities were invested with more than human power ; but 

 they were also supposed capable of human passions, and subject 

 to human capriciousness. As the uniformities of Nature came to 

 be more distinctly recognized, some of these deities were invested 

 with a dominant control, while others were supposed to be their 

 subordinate ministers. A serene majesty was attributed to the 

 greater gods who sit above the clouds ; while their inferiors 

 migrht " come down to earth in the likeness of men." With the 

 growth of the scientific study of Nature, the conception of its 

 harmony and unity gained ever-increasing strength. And so 

 among the most enlightened of the Greek and Roman philo- 

 sophers, we find a distinct recognition of the idea of the unity of 

 the directing mind from which the order of Nature proceeds ; for 

 they obviously believed that, as our modern poet has expressed 



it^ 



"All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 

 " Whose body Nature is, and God the soul." 



The science of modern times, however, has taken a more 

 special direction. Fixing its attention exclusively on the order 

 of Nature, it has separated itself wholly from theology, whose 

 function it is to seek after its cause. In this, science is fully justi- 

 fied, alike by the entire independence of its objects, and by the 

 historical fact that it has been continually hampered and impeded 

 in its search for the truth as it is in Nature, by the restraints 

 which theologians have attempted to impose upon its inquiries. 

 But when science, passing beyond its own limits, assumes to take 



