THE rise and development within the past century of the "scientific spirit," so-called, represent a tendency the importance of which it would be difficult to overestimate. While the immediate results of this intellectual impetus have been in many respects unsatisfactory, inasmuch as they have appeared, to a majority of students, to warrant, and frequently compel, conclusions which in the light of a more thorough resume of the situation are found to be deduced from unsound premises, nevertheless the pursuit of methods calculated to insure careful, conscientious observation, and accurate tabulation and systematization of the data thereby obtained, has been in the highest degree conducive to a dispelling of the shadows of ignorance and superstition and a preparation of the soil of human consciousness for the reception of clearer views of the truth.
To mortal sense the plant appears to grow, putting forth at first leaves, then buds, and finally blossoms; so do human concepts exhibit successive stages of progression as improved interpretations of things take the place of inferior ones. Any serious attempt to arrive at the fundamental facts of being through adherence to the methods of modern scientific investigation, tends to corroborate the general intuitive recognition of a first cause or origin of things, operative in the cosmic process through the medium of established laws. To the unquickened mortal sense this process seems to be physical. The natural order, so-called, represents the crudest, most rudimentary human concept of existence, in which the ultimate reality or essence of things is judged to be an "infinite and eternal energy," manifesting itself ac cording to various modes of a material description, which are defined as "laws of nature." To material sense matter and mind appear as the concomitants of being, the correlated facts of existence.
While such a view of things may seem, to a certain class of observers, to offer a sufficient and satisfactory solution of the problem of existence, students of a different type, imbued with profounder instincts and entertaining more elevated ideals, are prompted to seek in other directions for an adequate explanation of the situation. As the channels of research broaden and deepen, the origin and ultimate of the cosmic process seem to assume an ethical aspect. A moral quality and purpose appear. to underlie and actuate the whole rationale of existence. A beneficent, all-intelligent Supreme Being, governing all the operations of nature in furtherance of the demands of justice and righteousness, is seen to be the great need of existence. The elements of good and evil, however, appear to mortal sense in perpetual conflict, presumably intermingling and playing each its part in the working out of a universal ideal. Evil is regarded as a factor essential to the ultimate perfection of the cosmic process, and, therefore, it is falsely believed to be real in the sense that Deity recognizes and sanctions its existence as a means of promoting righteous ends. According to this widely accepted concept, the laws by which the universe is maintained are moral in their quality and intent.
