the being of God. Take the case of physical astronomy. To the mathematician the mechanics of the heavens are in no way different from the mechanics of a clock. It is true that the clock must have had a maker; but the mathematician, who investigates any problem connected with its mechanism, has nothing to do with him as such. The spring, the wheels, the escapement, and the rest of the works are all in their proper places somehow, and it matters nothing to the mathematician how they came there. As a mathematician the investigator of clock-motion takes no account of the existence of clock-makers; but he does not deny their existence; he has no hostile feeling toward them; he may be on the very best terms with many of them; it may be at the request of one of them, who has invented some new movement, that he has undertaken his investigations. Precisely in the same way the man who investigates the mechanics of the heavens finds a complicated system of motion, a number of bodies mutually attracting each other and moving according to certain assumed laws. In working out the results of his assumed laws, the mathematician has no reason to consider how the bodies came to be as they are; that they are as they are not only is enough for him, but it would be utterly beyond his province to inquire how they came so to be. Therefore, so far as his investigations are concerned, there is no God; or, to use the word above suggested, his investigations

are atheous. But they are not atheistic; and he may carry on his work, not merely without fearing the Psalmist's condemnation of the fool, but with the full persuasion that the results of his labours will tend to the honour and glory of God.'1

The thought contained in this paragraph, and which may be said to be compressed in the word atheous, appears to me to be interesting intellectually, and valuable morally. It is not desirable that the reproach of atheism should be thrown about rashly. That there is such a thing as atheism, and that the atheistic condition of mind may be not only a very miserable one, but also a very immoral one, I will not venture to deny ; but that charges of atheism are not unfrequently rashly made, and the attitude taken up by scientific investigators is sometimes regarded as atheistic when it is not fairly to be described by that terrible epithet, is also true. Physical science is not more essentially atheistic than arithmetrical or geometrical all three are atheous, not one is atheistic.

Yet God and nature are very close the one to the other: the natura naturans and the natura naturata must necessarily be contiguous. We need a 'scientific frontier' between them, a line which shall on no condition be transgressed by those who occupy the territory on one side or the other.

The necessity of keeping this frontier line sacred. is perhaps not sufficiently recognised, and there is a 1 Oxford and Cambridge Sermons, p. 280 (George Bell & Sons).

great tendency to transgress it; but it is not a mere arbitrary line to be laid down by treaty, as the boundaries of adjacent States are settled, but is like one of the great watersheds of nature which no human arrangement can alter; it is like the 'great divide' in the Rocky Mountains, one side of which means for every drop of rain that falls a passage to the Pacific, and the other side means a passage to the Atlantic. On a smaller scale there are similar edges on Snowdon and Helvellyn; you may stand upon them and throw two pebbles with the right hand and with the left, which will be miles apart before they come to rest.

For in truth the difference between the two territories, separated by our supposed scientific boundary, is greater than that which is expressed by the terms natura naturans and natura naturata. The conception of a natura naturans might be merely that of a first cause, a logical beginning of nature, without any of those moral attributes which men with almost one

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1 I have used this phraseology as expressing the difference between the cause and the phenomena of the material universe. Bacon writes in the first aphorism of the Second Book of the Novum Organum : 'Datæ naturæ Formam, sive differentiam veram, sive naturam naturantem . . . invenire, opus et intentio est humanæ Scientiæ.' But upon this Mr. Ellis remarks in a note: This is the only passage in which I have met with the phrase natura naturans used as it is here. With the later schoolmen, as with Spinoza, it denotes God considered as the causa immanens of the universe, and therefore, according to the latter, not hypostatically distinct from it.' As employed by me, the phrase is not intended (I need hardly say) to have any pantheistic tendency.

E

consent associate with the name and conception of God. If the transgression of the legitimate boundaries of the field of physical science merely introduced the inquirer to metaphysical speculations, no harm would ensue, though possibly not much advantage. The condition and quality of mind which make a man a successful investigator of nature, either by the way of observation or by that of mathematical analysis, are seldom associated with those mental powers which enable a man to get beneath the surface of phenomena and speculate with any success as to the ground and underlying conditions of things. I do not say that a mind may not possess both kinds of power; but the combination is rare. Still, a man at the worst can only fail, and a brilliant observer or analyst may prove himself to be a poor philosopher, and that is the worst result that can come. But this is not in reality the result of crossing the scientific frontier; if on the one side is God and on the other nature, this means that on the one side you have a moral and religious region, and on the other a purely physical region; and the passage from one to the other is quite certain to be fraught with danger, not to say mischief.

Let me illustrate my meaning by reference to a passage in Ernst Haeckel's History of Creation.'

Creation (he writes), as the coming into existence of matter, does not concern us here at all. This process, if indeed it ever took place is completely beyond human

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comprehension, and can therefore never become the subject of scientific inquiry. Natural science teaches that matter is eternal and imperishable, for experience has never shown us that even the smallest particle of matter has come into existence or passed away. . . . Hence a naturalist can no more imagine the coming into existence of matter than he can imagine its disappearance, and he therefore looks upon the existing quantity of matter in the universe as a given fact. If any person feels the necessity of conceiving the coming into existence of this matter as the work of a supernatural creative power, of the creative force of something outside of matter, we have nothing to say against it. But we must remark that thereby not even the smallest advantage is gained for the scientific knowledge of nature. Such a conception of immaterial force, which at the first creates matter, is an article of faith which has nothing whatever to do with human science. Where faith commences science ends. Both these arts of the human mind must be strictly kept apart from each other. Faith has its origin in the poetic imagination; knowledge, on the the reasoning intelligence of man. blessed fruits from the tree of knowledge, unconcerned whether these conquests trench upon the poetical imaginings of faith or not.1

other hand, originates in Science has to pluck the

With much which is contained in the preceding quotation I entirely agree. Where faith commences, science ends; this is perfectly true; but I miss any recognition of the truth that the supernatural power which most persons 'feel the necessity of conceiving is something much beyond a 'creative force outside of matter.' It is difficult, I think, for most of us to

1 Vol. i. p. 8 (English translation).