Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1879 — Mind in Nature. [ARTICLE]

Mind in Nature.

The rational look of the world is denied by no one. Eyes look .as if they were made to see with. Ears look as if they were made to hear with. Legs look as if they were made to walk with. The nutritive apparatus looks as if it were made to keep the body in repair. Thelungs look as if they were made to aerate the blood; and the blood and blood-vessels look as if they were made with an eye to-their actual function. And in general, science every-where assumes that nature is rational and that everything is adapted to everything else. We must remember that science is not merely observation; but it is chiefly the conclusions from the observations. Science aims by the aid of reasoning to pass behind the phenomena and from some conception of the supersensible realities upon which appearances are based. But it enters info this hidden world only by thought and it implicitly assumes, therefore, that the laws of are valid for all being. Science, then, is built upon the notion that the real is rational and intelligible, and it aims to grasp the rational system which is in things. If we should assume that the real is irrational, and hence unintelligible, all our science would perish. What -would become of astromony if we assumed that the flying planet is not bound by the rational principles of mathematics? The atomic theory and the ether theory are no facts of observation, but only rational inferences from phenomena; but if tiie real is not rational, of course these and .all other scientific theories fall to the ground. We conclude, then, that there is mind back of nature which realizes in nature its preconceived plans and purposes.—[Sunday Afternoon.