24 METAPHYSICS 



Innervation is ever affirmative and progressive in its 

 operations, enervation, negative and retrograde ; in their 

 mutual relations, however, wherever fully realised through- 

 out the universe, and understood as the method by which 

 the great work of evolution in its widest and highest 

 sense is being wrought out and fulfilled, it is impossible 

 to conceive otherwise than that they constitute two indis- 

 soluble parts of a great whole. And thus they may be 

 said to justify and necessitate the contemporary existence 

 of apparently incompatible elements in the structure of 

 universal nature and revelation a conclusion which 

 becomes at once the solvent of such world-long enigmas 

 as the co-existence of organic and inorganic matter, life 

 and death, good and evil, time and eternity. 



Furthermore, they not infrequently shape the views of 

 mankind regarding the present and the future of the 

 race, in its collective but more especially in its individual 

 aspects, enervation tempting to the conclusion that death 

 terminates human as well as all existence, that resolution 

 of the complex human organism into its component 

 inorganic elements for ever closes the chapter of its life, 

 and that becoming " food for the worms " and adding 

 humus to the soil is all that is in store for it ; innervation, 

 on the other hand, demanding^ on the authority of the 

 innate longings after immortality implanted "in the human 

 breast," the final teachings of untrammelled science, in 

 the chastened spirit of truth and reverence, the whole 

 body of revealed truth as is to be found in the epoch- 

 making " Scriptures " and the works of " light and 

 leading" left by the subtlest and best intellects all along 

 the ages the conclusions that there is no end to life, and 

 that from its absolute indestructibility it must continue 

 for ever to animate an organism fitted for its evolutional 

 development and exercise throughout " the endless ages 

 of eternity." 



A conclusion thus warranted and demanded must, 

 therefore, become by the united strength of individual 

 desire, the consensus of scientific conviction, and the 

 boldly expressed belief of revealed truth, a potent instru- 

 ment and influence in the elevation of the final, temporal, 

 and eternal destiny of the human race. For such work, 



