SYNTHESIS OF THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL 



thus : " If we explain it by our experience of resistance, — 

 i. e. by our knowledge that whenever we exercise effort 

 there is something without that resists us, presses against 

 us, overcomes our effort, or is overcome by it, — what does 

 this theor}' as as to the origin of the idea mean? Does it 

 not mean that in order to the knowledge of Energy without 

 we must posit free power within? We derive the notion 

 of energy, therefore, from our own conscious freedom — the 

 idea of causation in Nature is an inevitable deduction from 

 Will. In other words, a world of necessitated beings could 

 not form or conceive the notion of energy, for the 

 experiences which make the notion possible would be 

 absent. If, therefore, we speak of Energy and attempt to 

 interpret nature through it, what are we doing but con- 

 stituting nature in terms of personality, using the free 

 formitive spirit within us as the key to open the mysteries 

 or realities which exist without? We conclude, therefore, 

 that energy in nature is the correlate of freedom in man, 

 and were he not free personal spirit lie could neither think 

 nor speak of energy." But not only do instinctive 

 faith, religion, poetry, and recent philosophy bear 

 testimony that finite .spirits meet answering Spirit in the 

 object world ; modern science also, it is coming to be seen, 

 points to the same conclusion. The presupposition and 

 inspiration of science is that the development of the life of 

 the world and man is intelligible. The "flower in the 

 crannied walls," in the whole context of its correlations, 

 could, it is believed, be explained if we had insight and 

 comprehension enough. If, in tracing its life, through its 

 conditioning environment, to its ultimate creative cause, 

 we come to a point beyond our depth we do not despair, 

 because science assures us of the universal rationality of 

 things. This means that we have found nature, so far as 

 we have scrutinized it, intelligible, and are satisfied that it 

 is intelligile all through. Now see what is implied in 

 nature's intelligibility. We speak of intelligible words, 



