does she do so perfectly and without mistakes? She shows wisdom,
indeed, cunning in her products, subtlety and daintiness, taste and
beauty, all these often in an overwhelming degree, yet just as often she
brings forth what is meaningless, contradictory and mutually hurtful,
traverses her own lines, and bewilders us by the brutality, the
thoughtlessness, and purposelessness, the crookedness, incompleteness, and
distortedness of her operations. And what is true of the world of external
nature is true in a far greater degree of the world of history. Nature is
not a god, but a demigod, says Aristotle. And on this, Pantheism with its
creed, "_natura sive deus_," makes shipwreck. The words of this _credo_
are either a mere tautology, and "_deus_" is misused as a new name for
nature; or they are false. It is not possible to transfer to nature and
the world all the great ideas and feelings which the religious mind
cherishes under the name of "God."

On the other hand, nature is really, as Aristotle said, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}, that is,
strange, mysterious, and marvellous, indicating God, and pointing, all
naturalism and superficial consideration notwithstanding, as we have seen,
to something outside of and beyond itself. Religion demands no more than
this. It does not insist upon finding a solution for all the riddles of
theoretical world-lore. It is not distressed because the course of nature
often seems to our eyes confused, and to our judgment contradictory and
unintelligible at a hundred places and in a hundred respects. On the
contrary, that this is the case is to religion in another aspect a strong
stimulus and corroboration. "The world is an odd fellow; may God soon make
an end of it," said Luther, and thus gave a crude but truly religious
parallel to the words of Aristotle, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH DASIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK S