thought again, as ice becomes water and gas. The world is mind
precipitated, and the volatile essence is for ever escaping again
into the state of free thought. Hence the virtue and pungency of
the influence on the mind, of natural objects, whether inorganic
or organised."

The nature-mystic is not without authoritative support, even on
the Idealist side, in his demand that individual objects shall be
allowed some grade and measure of reality. Spinoza, for
instance, allows that each individual thing is a genuine part of
the total Idea. Hegel also grants to individual things a certain
"self-reference," which constitutes them real existences. The
nature-mystic, therefore, may be of good cheer in asserting that
even the most transient phenomenon not only "participates" in
an immanent Idea, but embodies it, gives it a concrete form and
place. He thus substantiates his claim that communion with
nature is communion with the Ground of things.



CHAPTER X

ANIMISM, ANCIENT AND MODERN

After this metaphysical bath we return invigorated to the world
of concrete experience dear alike to the common-sense thinker
and the modern investigator. Do the facts of life, as ordinarily
presented, or as systematised in reflection, at all point in the
direction of the doctrine of immanent ideas? It will be seen that
this question admits of an affirmative answer. But the term