yers 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;[12] 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 be no intelligence, as much greater than
man's as his is greater than a blackbeetle's; no being endowed with
powers of influencing the course of nature as much greater than his,
as his is greater than a snail's seems to me not merely baseless, but
impertinent. Without stepping beyond the analogy of that which is
known, it is easy to people the cosmos with entities, in ascending
scale, until we reach something practically indistinguishable from
omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. If our intelligence can,
in some matters, surely reproduce the past of thousands of years ago
and anticipate the future, thousands of years hence, it is clearly
within the limits of possibility that some greater intellect, even of
the same order, may be able to mirror the whole past and the whole
future; if the universe is penetrated by a medium of such a nature
that a magnetic needle on the earth answers to a commotion in the sun,
an omnipresent agent is also conceivable; if our insignificant
knowledge gives us some influence over events, practical omniscience
may confer indefinably greater power. Finally, if evidence that a
thing may be, were equivalent to proof that it is, analogy might
justify the construction of a naturalistic theology and demonology not
less wonderful than the current supernatural; just as it might justify
the peopling of Mars, or of Jupiter, with living for