sis of mind, and to call a thing natural is to deny all relation to intelligence. When, then, the universality of law is affirmed it is at once identified with the universality of blind mechanical causation, and then we wail or triumph according to our disposition. But when the critic comes and searches out this mode of thinking its superficiality is quickly seen. It is really the apotheosis of sense-thinking.

But if it should turn out that the cause behind the law is essentially personal and purposive, and that the system of law represents only the general form of this free causality, there would be no difficulty in holding that events in general are, at once, natural in the mode of their occurrence and supernatural in their causation. The natural would be the mode of manifestation of the supernatural, and the supernatural would be the real ground and administrator of the natural. In that case we should not have the antithesis of two mutually exclusive realins, but rather that of ground and manifestation, or of agent and mode of working. The supernatural would not be something of a scenic and arbitrary character apart from nature, but rather a supreme will and reason in nature, realizing its purposes through nature. And to this conception of the relation of the natural to the supernatural metaphysics is surely bringing us. That conception of nature as a blind causality which does a great many unintended things on its own account is a metaphysical superstition. This superstition is the source of the difficulty so many feel over the doctrine of evolution. and, also, of the traditional polemic concerning prayer and special interpositions in general. The naturalistic interpretations of religious history have the same root. In all of these cases the assumption is commonly made that whatever can be referred to natural agency is thereby rescued from any supernatural or purposive interpretation. Here the question of naturalism or supernaturalism tacitly becomes a question of atheism or theism.

But if the supernatural be the living reality of the natural these difficulties disappear. All the believer cares to maintain is that events are intended, however realized; and what the unbeliever should show, in order to give his claim any significance, is that the event roots in no purpose anywhere. If it represents a divine purpose it is as truly purposeful when real

ized through natural processes as it would be if produced by fiat, and it would be as "special" or " particular" if thus produced as it would be if created on the spot. In any other sense than that of being intended it is unnecessary to insist upon anything special or particular in the flow of events; and in this sense it is hard to see how any theist can reserve anything from being special and particular. We may, indeed, not be able to trace the divine meaning in an event, but if there be meaning in anything there is meaning in all things. accident's

Curious oversights are apt to master us here. To begin with, the fallacy of the universal misleads us into thinking that the creative act produced only a system of things in general, which system then wrought out a set of particular effects on its own account for which no one is responsible. General laws and classes were the first and only created product; thereafter things got on by themselves. But these laws and classes, as such, contain no hint of concrete and particular things and events, and hence the latter are thought to be no part of the original plan. Through this deceit of the universal they fall out of our thought and are not supposed to have been in the creative thought. Thus, finally, they sink down into unintended by-products of the natural mechanism and admit of being thought meanly of.

The naïve superficiality of all this is evident. General laws and classes can exist apart from intelligence only in concrete and particular application. There is and can be no system of things in general. If, then, we suppose that God created a system of nature which was intended to unfold according to inherent laws we must say that the creative act implied and carried with it all that should ever arrive in the unfolding of the system. There is no way by which things or events 'could slip in which were not provided for. Each minutest event was potential in the primal arrangement, or it could not have happened. Mechanism can only unfold its own implications; it can make no new departures so as to reach anything essentially new. And if we suppose the Creator to have known what he was doing we must either suppose him to have intended the consequences or to have been unable to prevent them. But this question of intended or unintended, which is the only important one in this matter, is obscured by supposing the issue

to concern only the method of realization; as if the natural were necessarily unrelated to intelligence, and as if the supernatural must be unnatural in its methods.

The same crude conception underlies much of our philosophy of history and not a little of our biblical discussion; but into this field we forbear to enter. Concerning the miracles of the Bible we remark only that, while not intending in any way to deny them, we may yet be helped in accepting them by our general conception of a natural supernatural and a supernatural natural.

The net result of this discussion is not very great. We have gained some insight into the abysses of metaphysics which underlie the question and, especially, into the crude metaphysics which underlies the popular conception. The rest of the conclusion may be summed up as follows:

The physical world and the mental world are the two realms. of experience. In both worlds things exist and events happen in certain ways. These are the discoverable uniformities of experience which are the great field of practical science. Events occurring in accordance with this order we call natural. Neither of these worlds goes along strictly by itself, but each is modified by the other. The fancy that physical science is overthrown if we allow the continuity of physical movement to be affected by anything beyond the physical series is a piece of intelligible, but not intelligent, scientific prudery. Along with this must be placed the fancy that mental science is overthrown if we allow any freedom of will. The continuity which a sane science demands is simply a cominunity of law for all events, old and new alike. The dream of a metaphysical continuity in the finite system, whereby each antecedent stage dynamically causes its consequent stage, is only a dream. Neither member of the finite system can be understood in itself, and either, taken alone, is but a one-sided abstraction from the reality. Neither can these members be understood when taken together, apart from reference to a fundamental reality which is the source and ground of both. Here is where both the physical world and the finite spirit have their root; and any absolute science of either must involve an absolute knowledge of this basal being. The impossibility of interpreting this being materially or mechanically and the necessity of interpreting it after the

analogy of free and spiritual existence are shown by the results of all philosophy which has risen above the sense-plane. From this standpoint nature is no self-sufficient, brute existence in space and time; but all finite existence is but a product or manifestation of which God is the ever-present administrator and ground, and natural laws are at bottom only his ways of working in the production and connection of things and events. And these, in turn, are due, not to any mechanical causation behind them, but to the ceaseless causal activity of the basal reality which forever produces them according to his plan and purpose. If, then, we would find the true cause of things we must look for it, not at the unattainable beginning of a temporal series, but in the Living Will, which not only worketh hitherto, but worketh still and worketh for evermore.

Borden P. Bowne.

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ART. II.-JOHN RUSKIN: A STUDY IN LOVE AND RELIGION.

MR. COLLINGWOOD's Life and Work of John Ruskin has thrown some welcome light on the religious views of our great art critic and on those "affairs of the heart" which in his case have, as with one consent, contrived to run anything but smoothly. These personal touches form the charm of the new biography. Ruskin's name has so long been a household word among us that any glimpse into his private life which is allowed us seems to establish a closer intimacy with an old friend and lend new meaning and pathos to his prosperous, yet sadly clouded, course. Ruskin himself took the world into his confidence years ago in Præterita, that history which, as Mrs. Ritchie says, is not written with ink, "but painted down with light and color." His friend Mr. Collingwood has drawn largely on those reminiscences, but has been able to supplement them with facts gathered from private sources and carefully gleaned during twenty years of intimate association with the naster. Much light is thus thrown on Ruskin's history, from his first days in London right on to the present hour, when "the plow stands in the furrow and the laborer passes peacefully from his toil, homewards." No one has less to fear from such unveiling. Ruskin's great gifts have been nobly devoted to noble ends. Those who differ most from him in his teaching on art, on political economy, or on education do not fail to pay tribute to the high-souled sincerity that has shaped his conduct. His unselfish generosity and his manly scorn of everything base or unworthy have won for John Ruskin the loving respect of all good inen.

The early chapters of Præterita have made the story of his boyhood a kind of English classic. His grandfather, a young wine merchant in Edinburgh, ran away with Catherine Tweddale from her father's manse at Glenluce, in Wigtownshire, when she was a bright and animated brunette not yet sixteen. The young couple settled in the old town, at the head of George Wynd. A little daughter was born to them a year afterward. A few weeks later a friend, who came into the room unannounced, found the young mother, not yet seventeen, "dancing 2-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. XI.