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The thought is never absent from the mind of our own Emerson; every one of his essays is full of it. He describes himself as watching the winter sunrise; as making his way under a cloudy sky at evening through a lonely region, plashing over wet marshes, guided only by the light of stars; as standing, musing in the woods, solitary and silent, listening to that voiceless presence that abides there, enchanted always in an unspeakable delight. This idea saturates those immortal essays on Compensation, on the Spiritual Laws, which contain the deepest studies on this theme that are to be found in literature. The poet sees it, for it is the gift of the poet to look behind the semblance, to pluck off the mask, to discover the reality, the soul of things, the creative spirit behind the painted show. The poet discerns the analogues that hold things together, traces cause and effect. But are we not all in some degree poets? Who has not felt, by the sea-side, in the woods, by the grave of a child, musing by a peaceful corpse, the mysterious sense of awe that penetrates to the very roots of his being, making him feel how little he was, how majestic, how awful, how sweet and tender, was the animating spirit of the world?

But more impressive still than the world of Nature is the world of Circumstance. We who live in cities know little of Nature; we see it through the crevices of the streets; a constellation here and there, a bit of sunrise or sunset. But there is no day when every one of us is not living and working amid human conditions, tied up in a bundle of life with more or fewer human creatures.

Stop, reflect a moment, and the closeness with which things are riveted together, are constructed all of one piece, is astonishing. Affairs seem to go by luck, hazard, chance. The careless observer believes in accident. But the instant one stops and considers, he is convinced that there are no such things as luck, chance, hazard, or accident; that a supreme necessity works through the world of Circumstance, knitting part to part, effect to cause, each effect being a cause in its turn, until the universe is resolved into a close net-work of laws. In fact, if one thinks too much on this, the impression of destiny is overpowering; he loses all sense of individual existence; he becomes in his estimation nothing, a bit of straw before the wind, the crest of a wave. His personality is drowned. It is the easiest thing in the world to become a fatalist, a pantheist, to become persuaded that there is nothing real but God. The ignorant, the superstitious, the credulous, who must have an interpretation of every event, are perpetually committing the blunder of misplacing cause and effect, confounding their own fancies with the eternal laws. The evangelical Protestant is convinced that if sickness befalls, or disease, or pestilence, it is because the people have neglected church-going, have not listened to sermons, have omitted to say their prayers or read their Bible as they should. Does a child die ? The calamity befell because its mother loved the child too much, loved it more Creator, who would have no divided loyalty. Does public distress prevail? It is because the people have ceased to believe in

than she loved its

the Trinity. Tenderden steeple is the cause of Goodwin sands.

This is hopeless; such an absolute want of logic, reason, common-sense, such resolute and complacent putting the cart before the horse, setting cause and effect at opposite ends of the planet, is stupefying. We must get away from this. It is simply the recourse of desperation to keep God within some sort of bounds. We must learn to think, to be intelligent, to reason, to put things together. Give us an understanding heart, should be the prayer of every earnest and simple person. Here is the merit of science. The scientific method compels us to look at things as they are, to put causes and effects together where they belong, to classify phenomena, to disregard feelings, sentiments, prejudices, to prejudices, to set things according to their constitution and relations. This is the immense service that science is rendering to this generation. It is compelling us to recognize the real, to leave out of sight the artificial deity. Talk of science as being irreligious, atheistic! Science is creating a new idea of God. If we do not become atheists one of these days under the maddening effect of Protestantism, it will be due to science because it is disabusing us of hideous illusions that tease and embarrass us, and putting us in the way of knowing how to reason about the things we see.

But then, if I may be allowed to make a suggestion, it seems to me that the scientific method must be supplemented by the poetic. The scientific method is adapted to the understanding.

It bids us consult visible facts, study palpable realities. The culture of the imagination, of the power to go behind facts, to discern laws, to appreciate principles, to get on the track of everlasting forces, is of equal value with knowledge; I had almost said, is of supreme value. The poetic sense, do we not need more of it? Are we not too practical, too business-like? Would it not be of service to us to read oftener than we do in the great masters of imagination, who take us out of the small, low, irksome conditions of life, and enable us to lose ourselves in the contemplation of a vast universe? The study of art in its highest relations, the study of poetry, the study of the stateliest literature, the reading intelligently of the sacred books of the soul,-something of this is needed to give us a new sense of the reality of that spirit which is real, though we know it not. We cannot anticipate a return of the old-fashioned faith in God. No new definitions are to be expected; no new forms of statement are to be looked for. But we may anticipate a time when the real God shall be felt as He is not now; shall be felt even by the thinkers, certainly by the earnest, intelligent, progressive minds of the race. When the name of God shall be identical with justice and equity, with truth and freedom and beauty, then will God become truly real once more; then He will become indwelling once more, a quickening motive, a keen inspiration to all greatness and goodness.

POSITIVISM:

ITS INTELLECTUAL CHARACTER,

BY

J. KAINES, D.Sc.

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