Nature and Freedom. 63 



tive, but passive beings in their presence. It is the realm of 

 ejffects which we are regarding, effects transferred, transmuted, 

 but, so far as we can discover, unalterable. We see how, condi- 

 tions varying, the consequent varies, and therefore can conceive of 

 unlimited change. But because nothing is self-moved, we must 

 regard this phenomenal world as passive. (If we apply to it the 

 term activity, we merely mean the transfer of an impulse received, 

 not self-produced, and measure the result by the antecedent.) Its 

 characteristic note is individuality; generality, law, is the mind's 

 discovery, and what the mind reads on that printed page of na- 

 ture. If we seem to find intelligent will any where, there we know 

 or assume a second ego like ourself. 



Our method is inductive from these phenomena. Analysis, if 

 employed, is for reducing the complex to the simple, nothing more ; 

 we group and classify, and, by induction, construct our chain of 

 antecedents and consequents. Further than this wo cannot go, 

 and even the very validity of our inductive process itself car- 

 ries us out of this phenomenal sphere into the other on which it 

 rest?. 



Here then are these two spheres so unlike to be received. What 

 is their unity? How shall the man who is exclusively devoted to 

 one of them " s' orienter," by getting a fairer and fuller view of 

 the truth. Can the scientist reconcile himself with the philoso- 

 pher; the believer in human freedom, morality, divine law of 

 conscience, intelligence, obligation, the student of metaphysics, 

 the "science of the sciences," with the strictly scientific observer 

 whose mind looks outward at phenomena reflected in impressions 

 on himself ? The problem opened is a wide one. I desire to offer 

 only a few matters of thought. 



But, as preliminary to the discussion, it may be well to notice 

 the wide difference in the very nature and habits of men them- 

 selves, in the tendency of different eras. One man ; and such will 

 be a leading representative of our own age, is a most acute ob- 

 server of natural phenomena ; from earliest childhood he has 

 been observing, collecting, comparing, trying experiments; and 

 his whole end is given to his noble work. Bring before him a 

 new fact, a trifling variation in a familiar species, the prospect of 



