SYNTHESIS OF THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATUkAL 



which we, in alliance with her, can carry on our national 

 undertakings for the benefit of our people, and through 

 them for the good of the world. By her marvelous con- 

 tributions of water, descending valley and gravity, she has 

 given us the noble river St. Lawrence. By an age-long 

 and patient process of growing and decaying prairie grass, 

 she has made it possible to feed the world with the finest of 

 the wheat. By her cataracts, which blow their trumpets 

 from the steeps, she has put into our hands immeasurable 

 physical energy, and into our ears the awe-inspiring voice 

 of her waters. She has likewise, by her noble mountains, 

 sighing pines, her spacious lakes and her vast stretches of 

 lone lands, made a background of glory and mystery, and 

 enriched our imaginations with treasures which are already 

 putting into our literature the soul of poetry, (c) But not 

 only has science, with its searchlight, turned backward, 

 given us an outline of the unbroken movement of the 

 development of the world and man, from the simple forms 

 of its beginning to the infinitely varied forms of the 

 present. She has also turned her flashlight on the future, 

 and we are beginning to see reflected from the past, in 

 vague outline, the course and end toward which existence 

 is travelling. 



V 



In the progress of nature there is, therefore, one 

 immanent and all encompassing Energy at work giving 

 unity and continuity to the whole, and the striking thing 

 is that as the diversity increases the informing unity 

 becomes more marked, for it is in human nature that nature 

 reaches its climax of individualism and separateness, and 

 yet, as we have seen, while in advancing civilization the 

 interests become more particularized, the common bond 

 between man and man and between man and lower nature, 

 comes into more distinct relief. If it be said that we are 

 reading into the book of nature a unity which does not exist, 



