Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/591

Rh closed, the rubber is drawn out, or stretched across the back, and, if allowed to regain its elasticity, the lids are pulled apart. This experiment illustrates the way in which the ligament acts in those shells which have the ligament external.



UTTING aside, then, for the present, supernaturalism and all those views of God which are distinctively Christian, we find a theology in which all men, whether they consider it or not, do actually agree—that which is concerned with God in Nature. I do not here raise the question of causes or laws; let it be allowed that Nature is merely the collective name of a number of coexistences and sequences, and that God has no meaning different from Nature. Let all this be allowed, or let the contrary of this be allowed. Such controversies may be raised about the human as well as about the Divine Being. Some may consider the human body as the habitation of a soul distinct and separable from it; others may refuse to recognize any such distinction; some may maintain that man is merely the collective name for a number of processes; some may consider the human being as possessing a free-will and as being independent of circumstances; others may regard him as the necessary result of a long series of physical influences. All these differences may be almost as important as they seem to the disputants who are occupied about them, but after all they do not affect the fact that the human being is there, and they do not prevent us from regarding him with strong feelings. The same is true of the Divine Being. Whatever may be questioned, it is certain that we are in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal Being; except through some of those exceptional perversions of the mind which I described in the last chapter, we cannot help the awe and admiration with which we contemplate him; we cannot help recognizing that our well-being depends on taking a right view of his nature.

There are two ways in which the mind apprehends any object, two sorts of knowledge which combine to make complete and satisfactory knowledge. The one may be called theoretic or scientific knowledge; the other practical, familiar, or imaginative knowledge. The greatest trial of human nature lies in the difficulty of reconciling these two kinds of knowledge, of preventing them from interfering with one another, of arranging satisfactory relations between them. In order of time the second kind of knowledge has the precedence, and avails itself of this advantage to delay and impede the arrival of 