WILLIAM G. STEVENSON. 27 
seen in nature—to some thinkable antecedent, even if 
this lies within the realms of that ‘‘unseen universe’’ 
which, although unobserved by the senses, is so real to 
the conscious soul. 
This thinkable antecedent can only be an intelligent 
power, and to believe that from its action, the physical 
and biological order of nature proceeds, is, as it seems 
to me, an intellectual necessity. 
This belief brings no ‘‘ permanent intellectual con- 
fusion,”’ for, in confirming the law of biogenisis that 
life springs from life, it gives to nature a higher unity 
and energizes it with a vital principle, a universal intel- 
ligence which is the efficient cause of all things. 
And so we come to recognize the transcendence and 
immanence of a supreme mind in nature, upon which, 
as an eternal foundation, rests the visible universe. 
This is the unfathomable mystery of being, concern- 
ing whose nature science can formulate no theory and 
philosophy can give no definition, but of whose truth 
and reality there can be no reasonable doubt. 
For the evidence which thus convinces the intellect 
we are indebted to modern science and philosophy. . 
This fact alone should be a sufficient refutation of the 
charge so often and so ignorantly made, that the ten- 
dency of modern science is ‘‘ materialistic’? —implying 
‘that mind, in all its manifestations, is simply a product 
of brain matter, which lives and decays with the physi- 
cal organization which gives it birth, and, therefore, has 
no existence after bodily death. 
Such a statement contains a measure of exactitude, 
but it represents only one side of a dual truth. 
The statement embraces two distinct propositions— 
one pertains to a verifiable fact and, therefore, comes 
within the purview of science ; the other relates to a de- 
duction, which cannot be proved in an affirmative man- 
ner and falls within the scope of metaphysical philoso- 
