considered as only mere cunningly devised pieces of watch-work, if
philosophy would only spare us, and our fine human souls, of which we
are so proud, though they are doing all the wrong and folly they can
from one week's end to the other. And now our self-conceit has
brought its own Nemesis; the mechanical philosophy is turning on us,
and saying, 'The bird's "nature" and your "human nature" differ only
in degree, but not in kind. If they are machines, so are you. They
have no souls, you confess. You have none either.'

But there are those who neither yield to the mechanical philosophy
nor desire to stifle it. While it is honest and industrious, as it
is now, it can do nought but good, because it can do nought but
discover facts. It will only help to divide the light from the
darkness, truth from dreams, health from disease. Let it claim for
itself all that it can prove to be of the flesh, fleshly. That which
is spiritual will stand out more clearly as of the Spirit. Let it
thrust scalpel and microscope into the most sacred penetralia of
brain and nerve. It will only find everywhere beneath brain and
beneath nerve, that substance and form which is not matter nor
phenomenon, but the Divine cause thereof; and while it helps, with
ruthless but wholesome severity, to purge our minds from idols of the
cave and idols of the fane, it will leave untouched, more clearly
defined, and therefore more sacred and important than ever -


'Those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet the master light of all our seeing;