SYNTHESIS OF TH£ NATURAL AND THE StJPERNATURAL 



In these "maps and charts" "shaped by himself with 

 newly learned art," we see not only the creative spirit of 

 the child, but we see also in its beginning the formative 

 Energy of the rational process of history. This does not 

 mean, of course, as we shall see in a moment, that man 

 creates ideals real, beautiful, progressive, out of an 

 irrational environment as Nietzsche in some of his moods 

 seems to teach ; on the contrary it suggests that he forms 

 them in an environment akin, in its nature to his own 

 spirit, and therefore that the all-incompassing and 

 immanent Energy of the developing life of the world and 

 man is spirit. 



(^) This view, as I read the signs of the times, is 

 the theory which, according to our leaders in science and 

 philosophy, best accounts for all the facts. It means this : 

 Before man appeared the creative Spirit was at work, so to 

 speak, alone, weaving the web of the world. But from the 

 hour when He carried his creative work on from nature in 

 its lower, to nature in its higher form ; that is from mere 

 nature to human nature. He had a "co-worker." Man is 

 by his creative spirit a co-worker, and even his weight of 

 body and limb, which makes him less fleet of foot to follow 

 the creative "gleam," does not extinguish "the kindly 

 light;" though, through the haze of his disregard, it 

 becomes to him not a kindly light, but a fierce glare which 

 gives him no rest till he follows it. And thus the primal 

 Spirit, in whom he has his being, so works that even the 

 laggarduess, culpable though it be, is made to minister to 

 the end toward whtch the whole creation moves. 



{d) The evidence that the Energy which gives 

 rational unity and progress to the life of the world, both in 

 its lower and higher form, is Spirit appears to have 

 triumphed, or to be triumphing, in the world of thought 

 to-day. It is cumulative. The instinctive belief of man in 

 all ages and in all stages of development is a testimony to 

 it. Man has interpreted the energy of the wind that sways 



