ure's hands. But man breaks the laws of nature and makes them
subservient to his uses. For instance, man is an animate earthly being in
common with the animals. The exigency of nature demands that he should be
restricted to the earth; but he, by breaking the laws of nature, soars in
the atmosphere high above it. By the application of his intellect he
overcomes natural law and dives beneath the seas in submarines or sails
across them in ships. He arrests a mighty force of nature such as
electricity and imprisons it in an incandescent lamp. According to the law
of nature he should be able to communicate at a distance of, say, one
thousand feet; but through his inventions and discoveries he communicates
with the East and with the West in a few moments. This is breaking the
laws of nature. Man arrests the human voice and reproduces it in a
phonograph. At most his voice should be heard only a few hundred feet
away, but he invents an instrument which transmits it one thousand miles.
In brief, all the present arts and sciences, inventions and discoveries
man has brought forth were once mysteries which nature had decreed should
remain hidden and latent, but man has taken them out of the plane of the
invisible and brought them into the plane of the visible. This is contrary
to nature's laws. Electricity should be a latent mystery, but man
discovers it and makes it his servant. He wrests the sword from nature's
hand and uses it against nature, proving that there is a power in him
which is beyond nature, for it is capable of breaking and subduing the
laws of nature. If this power were not supernatural and extraordinary,
man's accomplishments would not have been possible.

Furthermore, it is evident that in the world of nature conscious knowledge
is absent. Nature is without knowing, whereas man is conscious. Nature is
devoid of memory; man possesses memory. Nature is without perception and
volition; man possesses both. It is evident that virtues are inherent in
man which are not present in the world of nature. This is provable from
every standpoint.

If it be claimed that the intellectual reality of man belongs to the world
of nature--that it is a part of the whole--we ask is it possible for the
part to contain virtues which the whole does not possess? For instance, is
it possible for the drop to contain virtues of which the aggregate body of
the sea is deprived? Is it possible for a leaf to be imbued with virtues
which are lackin