THE NEW HYPOTHESIS. 593: 
the all. But this has given a basis on which the mind can rest and from which 
reason can reach out toward the final cause; it has led us to the shores of 
the mysterious ocean, upon which the explorer may launch his barque, with the 
compass of ultimate facts to direct his voyage in search of the still unknown. If 
life is from the gestation of nature, here is the point from which to question her. 
If being, consciousness, and the immortal longing of humanity is from the ever 
living source of the great first cause, here is where the quickening power is first 
manifest, and from which we must reach out and find food to satisfy that infinite 
hunger which has ever been the burden of the soul. It cannot be found by 
following in by-paths, only by traveling the road as it lengthens beyond. 
The inquiry is very old: ‘‘ Who by searching can find out God?” And itis. 
as apt to-day as then. Searching by analysis can never discover Him, nor can 
it satisfy the reason or the imagination. It can dispel illusion, expose fallacy, 
confound dogma and instruct faith, because it can show what is not and what 
cannot be. But analysis is always negative; it does not create, only explains 
what is created. The higher knowledge comes from the synthetic; it takes up 
these parts from the hand of analysis and with them builds the tower of wisdom, 
whose summit basks in the sunlight of infinite truth. And by this method, ‘‘the 
immortal white flower of all reason,” we may cross this border land and explore 
that which is still hidden. 
In all that has been seen, there is not a suggestion of evidence that matter 
itself is life—it is only the medium of a force that as yet has evaded all challenge 
by our methods, of its presence. But what is it that like an open book lies before 
us, from the rudimentary rock to the inconceivable forces of matter in these ulti- 
mate forms? It is that there is a dual principle, an active and a passive; that 
the one controls, molds, quickens, and the other responds, adapts, lives. This 
fact is ever present, as constant as law—it is the law. 
If, then, there is, as all fact demonstrates, this dual force, there is one more 
refined which constitutes life, and must have a kindred force or energy by which 
it can manifest itself in the world of organized forms. And here is where it meets 
matter in the dual office; here is where, in other words, life marries matter for 
the uses of the infinite in the worlds of created substance throughout the universe. 
It cannot be otherwise. We must here find the heart of the great mystery. 
And, now, by the light of these new facts, and the suggested hypothesis, how 
beautiful do the processes of nature become, joined as it is by its own ultimate 
states to the sources and quickening forces of the infinite. Matter assumes a new 
beauty, the beauty of use. The esthetic sense is no longer repelled by the crude | 
suggestion that the flower, a rose and its perfume, is only matter, for it can under- 
stand the wondrous work of these invisible forces that from the intangible air 
distils such marvelous odors and from the rains and dews evolves the wondrou-_ 
fabric of the rose leaf and its color. It feels that matter as we see it, as we feel 
‘it, is only the garniture of the soul within, that loves it for what it expresses. It 
feels that it is but the very dross of materialism, born of this material sense, to 
