NATUBE AND LIFE, 



THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER, AND THE 

 NEW DYNAMISM. 



WHATEVER empirics and utilitarians may say on the 

 subject, there are certainties apart from the experimental 

 method, and there is progress disconnected with brilliant 

 or beneficent applications. The mind of man may put forth 

 its power in laboring in harmony with reason, yet discover 

 genuine truths in a sphere as far above that of laboratories 

 and manufactures as their sphere is above the region of the 

 coarsest arts. In a word, there is a temple of light that 

 unfolds its portals to the soul neither through calculation 

 nor through experiment, which the soul nevertheless enters 

 with authority and confidence, so long as it holds the con- 

 sciousness of its sovereign prerogatives. When will pro- 

 fessed scientists, better informed of the close connection be- 

 tween metaphysics and science, whence our modern knowl- 

 edge of Nature has sprung, better taught in the necessary 

 laws that govern the conflict of reason with the vast un- 

 known, confess that there are realities beyond those they 

 attain ? When will science, instead 6T the arrogant indif- 

 ference it assumes in presence of philosophy, admit the fer- 

 tility beyond estimate of the latter ? It may be that the 

 hour of this reconciliation, so much to be longed for, is less 

 remote than many suppose ; at least, every day brings us 



