Nature is. What philosophers call natural theology has been one way of appeasing this craving. That poetry of nature in which our English literature is so rich has been another way. Now suppose a mind of the latter of our two classes, whose imagination is pent in consequently, and who takes its facts “hard;” suppose it, moreover, to feel strongly the craving for communion, and yet to realize how desperately difficult it is to construe the scientific order of Nature either theologically or poetically, and what result can there be but inner discord and contradiction? Now this inner discord (merely as discord) can be relieved in either of two ways. The longing to read the facts religiously may cease, and leave the bare facts by themselves. Or supplementary facts may be discovered or believed in, which permit the religious reading to go
