SYNTHESIS OF THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL 



• 

 intelligible acts, intelligible movements of troops on a field 



of battle ; we speak also of intelligible movements in the 

 life of a man or a nation, and in the processes of nature. 

 Novt^ in speaking of words, process or acts, etc., as 

 intelligible, we mean that they are the expressions of 

 intelligence. Consequently, when we call the vast volume 

 of nature intelligible, our meaning is that it is the expres- 

 sion of Intelligence or Spirit. Thus science too testifies, 

 through its fundamental presupposition, that the conscious, 

 spiritual energy, which gives progress and unity to human 

 nature, is the same as that which gives unity to physical 

 nature. And so, unless I misread the trend of thought in 

 the last three or four decades, science, philosophy and 

 religion meet together, or are meeting together in the view 

 that the One creative Knerg3% which constitutes and 

 develops nature both in its lower and higher forms, is, to 

 use the warmer word, the Eternal God " in whom we live 

 and move and have our being." 



VI. 



And this leads me to the heart of our problem of 

 supernatural action, {a) The order of nature — using the 

 term in its largest sense as inclusive of man — is a dual- 

 hierarchy ; that in the form of physical nature, and that 

 in the form of human nature. In the former stage the 

 immanent Spirit works through unconscious instruments, 

 in the latter through the vehicle of conscious spirits. This 

 theory certainly satisfies the unity of life ; but it seems, at 

 first sight at least, to leave no room for man's liberty, 

 and thus it appears to cut the nerve of enterprise, to dull 

 the edge of conscience, and to make us feel that we are 

 chips adrift on the ocean of existence and not sailors loving 

 it, and using it as the element in which we are to steer our 

 barks to the shores where lie the richest treasures of life. 

 But this is only iij seeming ; for a careful scrutiny of 



