SYNTHESIS OF THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL 



field, it treats of the forms, sequences, and orderly stream 

 of consciousness, and not of the intrinsic Knergj- which 

 gives the stream its unity and direction. But a complete 

 science, a science of the whole, cannot, and, as I have said, 

 does not re^"t there. By an intellectual necessity it raises 

 the deeper question. It asks : can we know the creative 

 Cause of the creative process ? It comes even nearer home 

 and inquires : have we immediately given in consciousness 

 anything more than mere intelligible sequences, forms and 

 processes ? Have we any knowledge of an Energy whose 

 very nature it is freely to create, in the condition within 

 which it works, higher forms, and thus to be the principle 

 which gives a rational unity to the life of the individual 

 man and of the race ? If so, it is likely the key by which 

 we are not only to interpret the rational movements of our 

 fellow men, but also the creative Cause of the intelligible 

 world. 



{b) Turning to this question, it is undoubtedly true, 

 unless we discredit our surest knowledge, that we have in 

 consciousness just such free, formative energy. Yea, such 

 energy each man is, for to be man is to be mind, and to be 

 mind is to be concrete self-conscious spirit, and therefore 

 the creative cause of progressive ideals — a progression 

 unending while man remains man, for " the margin of the 

 Ideal fades forever and forever as we move, but it fades not 

 before merely, but ifito us." It is needless to argue this. 

 To doubt it is to put in question our most intimate 

 knowledge, and therefore all knowledge. This would leave 

 us in the strange predicament of certainly knowing that 

 nothing can be certainly known. But though we need not 

 waste time in proving man's consciousness of free formative 

 spirit, let us look at it as Wordsworth saw it in a " child." 



'* Behold the child amid bis new-born blisses : 

 A six years darHng of a pigmy size. 

 See at his feet some new-made map or chart : 

 Some fragment from his dream of human life, 

 Shaped by him with newly learned art." 



