are not forms of energy, nor need
they be themselves phantom modes of force: their superposition upon the
scheme of Physics need perturb physical and mechanical _laws_ no whit,
and yet it may profoundly affect the consequences resulting from those
same laws. The whole effort of civilisation would be futile if we could
not guide the powers of nature. The powers are there, else we should be
helpless; but life and mind are outside those powers, and, by
pre-arranging their field of action, can direct them along an organised
course.

* * * * *

And this same life or mind, as we know it, is accessible to petition,
to affection, to pity, to a multitude of non-physical influences; and
hence, indirectly, the little plot of physical universe which is now
our temporary home has become amenable to truly spiritual control.

I lay stress upon a study of the nature and mode of human action of the
interfering or guiding kind, because by that study we must be led if we
are to form any intelligent conception of divine action. True, it might
be feasible to admit divine agency and yet to deny the possibility of
any human power of the same kind,--though that would be a nebulous and
at least inconclusive procedure; but if once we are constrained to
admit the existence and reality of human guidance and control,
superposed upon the physical scheme, we cannot deny the possibility of
such power and action to any higher being, nor even to any totality of
Mind of which ours is a part.

I do not see how the function claimed can be resented, except by those
who deny "life" to be anything at all. If it exists, if it is not mere
illusion, it appears to me to be something whose full significance lies
in another scheme of things, but which touches and interacts with this
material universe in a certain way, building its particles into notable
configurations for a time--without confounding any physical laws,--and
then evaporating whence it came. This language is vague and figurative
undoubtedly, but, I contend, appropriately so, for we have not yet a
theory of life--we have not even a theory of the essential nature of
gravitation; discoveries are waiting to be made in this region, and it
is absurd to suppose that we are already in possession of all the data.
We can wait; but meanwhile we need not pretend that because we do not
understand them, therefore life and will can accomplish nothing; we
need not imagine