NATURE AND MAN. 175 



These expressions also seem to have been asso- 

 ciated in the minds of those who used them with a 

 more or less distinct belief in the universal life of 

 nature. And thus I perceived again how this 

 ancient doctrine of nature's life is restored, in 

 union with all the advances made by science, which 

 for a time has seemed to put it aside. The distinc- 

 tion we have been taught to make between nature 

 as it truly is, and our apprehension of it through its 

 phenomena, gives us this thought again, raised, as 

 we have seen, to a higher significance, as affirming 

 now not a material but a spiritual life. 



And so I was led also to a more distinct thought 

 in reference to the deadness I seemed to recognize in 

 man. It was a spiritual deadness. The very fact of 

 which the Scriptures speak seem to be proclaimed by 

 science. A want of life that is spiritual appeared 

 to me the demonstrable clue to our present expe- 

 rience, and thus a fact essentially religious, and of 

 the highest religious worth, seemed to find an unex- 

 pected proof. 



And thus, too, a new apprehension arose in me 

 concerning the nature of the spiritual life itself and 



