Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 44.djvu/342

330 But the advent of a being who has such faculties as man has, and whose career really conflicts with, and reverses the great process of cosmic evolution, may well have had an origin different in kind from that of every other animal—at least, so far as regards his intellectual principle. For he is a being with two natures in one person, and thus it is that when we speak of "the whole of Nature," or "the natural world," a definition of our meaning is needed in order to avoid ambiguity. The term "Nature" may be used in a broad or in a narrow sense.

In the broad sense of the word, it includes man with all his powers and their effects, while in the narrow sense of the word Nature he is excluded from it.

Much may be said for the latter use of the term, since man, by his intelligence and will, is able to change the whole course of physical causation. Thus his power, when contrasted with all the other powers of Nature known to us, may, in a sense, be termed "supernatural," and he may be truly said to "perform miracles." So great, indeed, is the contrast and distance between man and the world of irrational nature, that it suggests now, as it suggested of old, a contrast and difference on the other side—I mean, it suggested the existence of a "real supernatural"—of a mode of being which is raised above all human nature, as man himself is raised above all infra-human nature.

And so I come to one of the corollaries which I think results from such a change of view with respect to man as the words above quoted from Prof. Huxley would seem to indicate—namely, the recognition of a Divine All-perfect Creator of the world and man.

This corollary Prof. Huxley seems as yet indisposed to admit, although he has elsewhere spoken of man as "here and there reflecting a ray from the infinite source of truth!" He is, as yet, plainly indisposed to admit it, because he declares that the