614 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



Over that art which you say adds to Nature, . 

 Is an art that Nature makes. 



The philosophic mind can no longer conceive Nature as a machine running 

 blindly at the behest of an outside power. Nor do we look upon the laws of 

 Nature as enactments — a very common error. One has only to attempt to con- 

 ceive the nullification of one of these hypothetic enactments, called " Natural 

 Laws," to find what a hopeless chaos of thought the error leads to. Action and 

 reaction are equal and opposite. The mind is incapable of conceiving this to be 

 otherwise than it is. The creation or destruction of matter and force cannot be 

 thought. There is no gradation between something and nothing. In fine, the 

 laws of Nature are the laws of thought, and we can never transcend them. But 

 above our mental impotence, in dealing with Nature as a machine capable of 

 being otherwise constructed, we have the crowning flower of philosophy raised on 

 the fertile fields of physiology, which discovers all the phenomenal world of matter 

 and motion to be mere subjective states of our own consciousness. The natural 

 itself is thus made greater than the wildest dreams of supernaturalism. It tran- 

 scends all comprehension. We must allow external existence ; but it is now a 

 wholly "transfigured realism." This matter, which we in our ignorance have 

 contemned, is shown to be " essentially mystical and transcendental." Science 

 is pressing to the conclusion that all Nature has a subjective conscious side, and 

 is no longer "blind." She contains the "promise and potency" of life. Faith 

 may build from this a universal soul, who "lives through all life and extends 

 through all extent;" and believe that the laws of Nature are to us symbols of the 

 unwearying immutability which attaches to Infinite Perfection forever. Only im- 

 perfection reigns re-adjustment. We may further believe, that in this wonderful 

 economy " all things work together for good ;" and that the "clouds we so much 

 dread, are big with mercy and will break with blessings on our heads." With 

 less theology we may have a great deal more religion. We will never suspect 

 that our prayers, which enter into, and are products of the forces around us, 

 have to be borne to the confines of a boundless shore before they are reflected 

 back in an answer. 



Kansas City, Jan. 9th, 1882. 



HOW MATERIAL THINGS EXIST. 



BY E. R. KNOWLES. 



In the latter of two essays recently published by me in this magazine con- 

 cerning the nature of the existence of matter, I commended, as in part, sound 

 and correct, the philosophy of Bishop Berkeley. But Berkeley erred in maintain- 

 ing that the esse of things is percipi ; i. e., they can have no existence "out of 

 the minds or thinking things which perceive them." He says, (Treatise Con. 

 ,cernmg the Principles of Human Knowledge, III.,) " That neither our thoughts, 



