be accepted in time, whether they are wicked or not wicked. Nature,
so far as we have been able to attain to any insight into her ways,
recks little about consolation and makes for righteousness by very
round-about paths. And, at any rate, whatever may be possible for other
people, it is becoming less and less possible for the man who puts his
faith in scientific methods of ascertaining truth, and is accustomed to
have that faith justified by daily experience, to be consciously false
to his principle in any matter. But the number of such men, driven into
the use of scientific methods of inquiry and taught to trust them, by
their education, their daily professional and business needs, is
increasing and will continually increase. The phraseology of
Supernaturalism may remain on men's lips, but in practice they are
Naturalists. The magistrate who listens with devout attention to the
precept "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" on Sunday, on Monday
dismisses, as intrinsically absurd, a charge of bewitching a cow brought
against some old woman; the superintendent of a lunatic asylum who
substituted exorcism for rational modes of treatment would have but a
short tenure of office; even parish clerks doubt the utility of prayers
for rain, so long as the wind is in the east; and an outbreak of
pestilence sends men, not to the churches, but to the drains. In spite
of prayers for the success of our arms and _Te Deums_ for victory, our
real faith is in big battalions and keeping our powder dry; in knowledge
of the science of warfare; in energy, courage, and discipline. In these,
as in all other practical affairs, we act on the aphorism "_Laborare est
orare_"; we admit that intelligent work is the only acceptable worship;
and that, whether there be a Supernature or not, our business is with
Nature.

* * * * *

It is important to note that the principle of the scientific Naturalism
of the latter half of the nineteenth century, in which the intellectual
movement of the Renascence has culminated, and which was first clearly
formulated by Descartes, leads not to the denial of the existence of any
Supernature;[14] but simply to the denial of the validity of the
evidence adduced in favour of this, or of that, extant form of
Supernaturalism.

Looking at the matter from the most rigidly scientific point of view,
the assumption that, amidst the myriads of worlds scattered through
endless space, there can