NATURE AND LIFE. 
THE CONSTITUTION OF MATTER, AND THE 
NEW DYNAMISM. 
WHATEVER empirics and utilitarians may say on the 
subject, there are certainties apart from the experimental 
method, and there is progress disconnected with brilliant 
or beneficent applications. The mind of man may put forth 
its power in laboring in harmony with reason, yet discover 
genuine truths in a sphere as far above that of laboratories 
and manufactures as their sphere is above the region of the 
coarsest arts. In a word, there is a temple of light that 
unfolds its portals to the soul neither through calculation 
nor through experiment, which the soul nevertheless enters 
with authority and ¢onfidence, so long as it holds the con- 
sciousness of its sovereign prerogatives. When will pro- 
fessed scientists, better informed of the close connection be- 
tween metaphysics and science, whence our modern knowl- 
edge of Nature has sprung, better taught in the necessary 
laws that govern the conflict of reason with the vast un- 
known, confess that there are realities beyond those they 
attain? When will science, instead of the arrogant indif- 
ference it assumes in presence of philosophy, admit the fer- 
tility beyond estimate of the latter? It may be that the 
hour of this reconciliation, so much to be longed for, is less 
remote than many suppose; at least, every day brings us 
