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What is Religion ? [June, 
miest, for that, if it ever occurred, was a something in ad- 
vance), thereby utterly forsaking the grand panacea common 
sense, which itself is a product of intellect emancipated 
from the thralls of philosophies through observation and 
experiment ; it is much more reasonable to suppose that 
matter had its origin, or at the least derived its formative 
power, from intellect, than that intellect had its origin in 
matter. When we talk of material phenomena we in reality 
talk of intellectual manipulation, — i.e., intellect embodied 
in the phenomenal display. If arrangement in the arts is 
due to intelligence, by a parity of reasoning we are compelled 
to admit that natural phenomena is the product of intellect, 
and of an intellect so powerful in its grasp that it compels 
homogeneity and unity, — for we must remember the scien- 
tific axiom that “ the unknown is to be interpreted by the 
known.” Is it now possible to say that intellect originated 
from matter, which at its best is but a plastic substance 
dominated by intellect which wills and executes ? Matter 
does neither ; inert until vivified by intelligence. When the 
Materialist bases his creed upon matter he ignores himself, 
forgetting that force is an impulsion not born of itself, but 
becomes aCtive by an antecedent impulse. An effeCt em- 
bodied in its antecedent effeCt becomes a cause ; so an effeCt 
becomes the cause of a succeeding effeCt, rolling in a grand 
sequence resulting in orderly arrangement ; this is pro- 
gression in its real meaning, — the evolution of effects bound 
up in their antecedent causes ; the universe of effects re- 
sulting from the primal cause, mayhap Aristotle’s unmoving 
centre. 
All this appears to me the commonest of surface reason- 
ing; cause and effeCt as impulsed by intelligence, and so 
maintained in homogeneity. Go back as we may, it is but 
to find a ruler and a maintainer. We may talk of matter 
and force, but after all we are never rid of “ the pusher and 
the puller ” — vital intelligence. Call it what we may— 
“ protoplastic” if you please — that which embodies, fashions, 
and maintains is the Creator, and in psychological existence 
we find a grander name, a more potent existence, unfolding 
the cause of the origin of all phenomena. When the Mate- 
rialist talks of Nature, does he set bounds to Nature ? does 
he know the all of Nature ? Who shall prescribe its limits? 
The material and the psychological are unity as we know it 
— within, surrounding and without material phenomena. 
There is an occult something existing in the very womb of 
Nature — we know and feel it to be there, although we can- 
not penetrate to it — which no finite ideas can grasp, and its 
