ds Reality--what lies
outside and around us--is not fixed, rigid, immobile, was not and is not
and cannot be as the ancient or mediaeval mind feigned or fabled,
something beyond the reach of time and change--static or stationary--but
is itself a process of ceaseless alteration. We have learned also to be
dissatisfied with the compromise which, while acknowledging such
alteration, all but withdraws it in effect by asserting it to be either
in gross or in detail a process of mere repetition. The system of laws
which science had taught us to consider as the truth of nature is itself
now known to be caught in the evolutionary process, and to be undergoing
a constant modification. As in the modern state, so in Nature, the
legislative power is not exhausted but incessantly embodies itself in
novel forms. Nature itself--_natura naturans_--is now conceived, and
rightly conceived, as a power not bound to laws other than those which
it makes for or imposes on itself, and as in its operations at least
analogous to a will self-determined, self-governing, creative of the
ways and means by which its purpose or purposes are achieved. What that
purpose is we have begun to apprehend, and to see its various processes
as converging or co-operating towards its fulfilment. In the
mythological language which even Science is still obliged to use, we now
speak of Nature as 'selecting' or 'devising', and we ascribe to it a
large freedom of choice wisely used. We can already at least define the
process as guided towards a greater variety and fullness and harmony of
life, or (with a larger courage) as pointed towards a heightening or
potentiation of life. So defining its goal we can sympathize with and
welcome the successful efforts made toward it, and so feel ourselves at
heart one with the power that carries on the process in its aspirations
and its efforts. But still, we cannot help feeling, it and all its ways
lie outside us, and to us it remains an alien or foreign power. I
venture to repeat my contention that this is so just because, however
much we come to learn of its ways, we do not feel that we are coming to
understand it any better, getting inside it, as we do get inside and
understand human nature. Its progress is a change, perhaps a betterment,
in our environment--in externals--and takes place very largely whether
we will and act or no. The larger our acquaintance with it, the more
does its action seem to encroach upon the domain withi