different
forms of words suitable to the spirit of the time; and so, clothing this
idea in the attire of the present day, I will sum up the opposite of
Spirit in the word "Mechanism." Before all things this is a mechanical
age, and it is astonishing how great a part of what we call our social
advance has its root in the mechanical arts. Reduce the mechanical arts
to what they were in the days of the Plantagenets and the greater part
of our boasted civilisation would recede through the centuries along
with them. We may not be conscious of all this, but the mechanical
tendency of the age has a firm grip upon society at large. We habitually
look at the mechanical side of things by preference to any other.
Everything is done mechanically, from the carving on a piece of
furniture to the arrangement of the social system. It is the mechanism
that must be considered first, and the spirit has to be fitted to the
mechanical exigencies. We enter into the mechanism of it instead of into
the Spirit of it, and so limit the Spirit and refuse to let it have its
own way; and then, as a consequence, we get entirely mechanical action,
and complete our circle of ignorance by supposing that this is the only
sort of action there is.

Yet this is not a necessary state of things even in regard to "physical
science," for the men who have made the greatest advances in that
direction are those who have most clearly seen the subordination of the
mechanical to the spiritual. The man who can recognise a natural law
only as it operates through certain forms of mechanism with which he is
familiar will never rise to the construction of the higher forms of
mechanism which might be built up upon that law, for he fails to see
that it is the law which determines the mechanism and not vice versa.
This man will make no advance in science, either theoretical or applied,
and the world will never owe any debt of gratitude to him. But the man
who recognises that the mechanism for the application of any principle
grows out of the true apprehension of the principle studies the
principle first, knowing that when _that_ is properly grasped it will
necessarily suggest all that is wanted for bringing it into practical
use.

And if this is true in regard to so-called physical science, it is _a
fortiori_ true as regards the Science of Spirit. There is a mechanical
attitude of mind which judges everything by the limitations of past
experiences, allowing nothing for the