20 THE LIGHT OF DAT 



there is nothing true in divinity that is not true in 

 science, or at least in harmony with science, and the 

 main purpose of his book is to demonstrate this 

 fact. 



The proof here offered is nothing more than the 

 old argument from analogy, the analogy being drawn 

 from the principles of biology instead of from the 

 general course of nature, as with Butler. It is the 

 assumption that these biological processes or laws are 

 identical in the spiritual and physical spheres that 

 furnishes the starting-point of the book. " The 

 position we have been led to take up is not that the 

 spiritual laws are analogous to the natural laws, but 

 that they are the same laws. It is not a question 

 of analogy, but of identity." Still, the identity is 

 not proved ; the analogy alone is apparent. In the 

 physical sphere science often recognizes the same 

 laws appearing under widely different conditions. 

 For instance, the process by which animal life is 

 kept up is no doubt a real combustion, identical in 

 kind with that which takes place in the consumption 

 of fuel by fire. Lavoisier and Laplace long ago 

 taught us that there are not two chemistries, one for 

 dead bodies and another for living. On the con- 

 trary, one system of laws, chemical, mechanical, 

 physical, everywhere prevails. Again, there are few 

 exact terms that we apply to objective nature that 

 we do not apply upon the principle of analogy to 

 subjective nature, as high and low, interior and ex- 

 terior, flexible and inflexible, hard and soft, attrac- 

 tion and repulsion, etc. Indeed, our whole language, 



