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and of mental back to vital, is seen to be one of the commonest acts in nature, when once observed. There is always a sufficient mental force in reserve, if the will be strong enough to bring it into action, to act upon the vital, that is, the digestive and assimilative powers, and thus to gain new force for a time from the world without."* But what is this will which brings the vital force into action? Advanced physiolo gists recognize no vital force, and, above all, no mental force. It is all mechanical force variously transformed. On this theory there is nothing which can lift itself out of the necessary and invariable sequences of mechanical action and bring one part of this decaying power into action to quicken into intenser action another part of this decaying power, and so to arrest the course of natural decay. There must be a rational free will.

8. Man by his free will is able to direct and control the forces of nature to the effecting of results which nature, left to itself, could never have effected. He tames the brutes to do his work, compels the earth to give up its savage growth and to bear his harvests, and develops the rude vegetation of nature to bear food more nutritious and luscious to the taste and flowers more beautiful to the eye; he puts his waterwheels into the streams and compels the power of gravitation to grind his grain and weave his cloth; he evokes the forces slumbering in wood and coal and water, and compels them to serve him; he lays his hand on the ocean and compels it to bow its huge shoulders to transport his merchandise. When the mind of man takes a step all nature takes a step with him. As man becomes civilized he civilizes the savage earth. The time will come when over all the earth man's selection will have superseded nature's selection. "Instead of the thorn shall come. up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree. The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose." Says Wallace: "From the moment when the first skin was used as a covering the first seed sown or root planted, a grand revolution was begun in nature, a revolution which in all the previous ages of the world had had no parallel; for a being had arisen who was no longer necessarily subject to change with the changing universe, a being who was in some degree superior to nature, inasmuch as he knew how to control and regulate her action, and could keep himself in harmony with her, not by a change of body but by an advance in mind. Here, then, we see the true grandeur and dignity of man. On this view of his special attributes we may admit that even those who claim for him a position and an order, a class or a subordinate kingdom by himself, have some rea

* Bray on Force: pp. 102, 103.

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son on their side. He is indeed a being apart, since he is not influenced by the great laws which irresistibly modify all other organic beings. Nay, this victory which he has gained for himself gives him a directing influence over other existences. Man has not only escaped natural selection himself, but he is actually able to take away some of that power which before his appearance was universally exercised. We can anticipate the time when the earth will produce only cultivated plants and domestic animals; when man's selection shall have supplanted natural selection; and when the ocean will be the only domain in which that power can be exerted which for countless cycles of ages ruled supreme over the earth."* In discussing the influence of climate on civilization, Dr. Draper meets the fact that cold climates do not produce the full effect expected. This objection he ingeniously repels by the fact that man," as endowed with reason," creates artificial heat and thus can create an artificial climate."† This not only exemplifies the special pleading already referred to, by which facts inconsistent with the theory of civilization by cosmic agencies are evaded, but also exemplifies the fact now under consideration that however man is implicated in nature and whatever the effect of cosmic agencies on him, he is able by his free will to modify the effect of these agencies and to guide them to the accomplishment of his own ends. The civilization of the earth itself goes on with the civilization of man. It is not merely the outward world which modifies man, it is also man who modifies the outward world.

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In this sense man has dominion over nature and is rightly called the lord of nature. In the heathen religions man is regarded as subject to nature; the gods which they present as objects of worship are powers of nature. But in the Hebrew scriptures from the first chapter of Genesis onwards, God is recognized as above nature and nature ever dependent on him; and man is recognized as in the image of God and thus not submerged in nature but distinguished from it; to him is given dominion over nature; he is to use it and all its resources, its plants and its animals for his own service and for the accomplishment of his own ends. The writer of the eighth Psalm, it may easily be supposed, alludes to these representations in Genesis, when he describes the greatness of man, as made "little less than divine": "Thou settest him over the work of thy hands, Thou hast put all things under his feet." The Psalmist specifies all sheep, and oxen, and the beasts of the field, perhaps as being in that day the most striking example of man's dom nion over nature, at which the world was still expressing its won

* Anthropological Journal: 1864.

† American Civil War. Vol. I., p. 104.

der as we are now at the steam-engine and telegraph. To this latter subjugation of forces a modern writer would be likely to allude as his examples. But through the Old Testament the fact that man, the worshiper of a God above nature, is himself appointed to possess and use nature's resources and energies instead of worshiping them, continually reveals the contrast between the Hebrew religion and the nature worship of the heathen. The author of the epistle to the Hebrews, alluding to this psalm, says, we do not yet see all things put under man; he has not attained the consummation of his dominion over nature; but, says this writer, we see the man Christ Jesus, who for a little time was made lower than the angels for the suffering of death, now crowned with glory and honor, and in him we see the type of man's exaltation and lordship in the image of God. And we also know, though the thought is not expressed by the writer of the epistle, that through Christ, the type at once of man's humiliation in weakness, suffering and death, and his exaltation in the likeness of God, man is attaining in the progress of Christ's kingdom and of Christian civilization the consummation of his possession and use of the resources and powers of nature, and thus of his dominion over it.

In reference to this power of man to subdue and civilize nature and thus to have dominion over it, we may accept Jacobi's designation of free-will as a miracle-working power (Wunderkraft); that is, it is not determined by nature, but is itself able to direct the forces of nature, to determine their effects, and so to cause them to effect what, left to themselves, they would never have accomplished.*

IV. Man's implication in nature itself indicates that he is above

.nature.

Nature in some aspects seems to be a limit or boundary. But in other aspects it seems to be no longer a boundary, but a sphere opened to man's knowledge and energies, and immeasurably rich in resources for his use.

By the senses the realm of nature is opened to man's perception. This is not a limitation, but a breaking away of bounds. For the universe of nature is the real universe in which man lives; and by the senses, as so many windows, this whole universe is opened to his perception and admits him to expatiate amid its grandeurs. It has been said that nature wakes to consciousness in man. It is true at least that through the senses nature is imaged in man's consciousness as in a mirror, in which nature, if it were intelligent, might see itself.

Again, the perception of nature is the occasion in experience on

* Jacobi, Werke, Vol. II., p. 45.

cosm.

which rational intuitions arise. In the impact of mind on nature the principles of reason, which regulate all intellectual and physical power, flash into sight and remain written in luminous letters on the mind, guiding all investigation. By these man passes beneath and beyond what the senses disclose, knows the hidden powers and agencies of nature and its rational principles, laws and ends, and translates it into empirical and philosophical science. Thus in a more profound significance nature is imaged in man's consciousness and he becomes a microAs from eternity the universe existed in the truths, laws, ideals and ends, archetypal in the divine reason, and is but the type of those archetypes, so man, who is the image of God, surveying the universe from the hither side, reads the archetypes in the types, and again idealizes the universe both in its sensible forms and its rational principles in his own mind, as God does in his eternal thought. Here again nature is no boundary or limit, any more than a flint is a limit to the steel which strikes fire on it. It is the occasion on which reason reveals itself in man. It is the seeming obstacle, impact on which strikes out all aglow the hitherto hidden spark of reason and kindles the divine light within the man, which at once reveals his reason to himself, reveals nature to his reason, and discloses, both in the natural and the moral systems, the "steps up to God." Byron wished for "something scraggy" to break his thought on. Nature is the "something scraggy," the seeming obstacle and limit, on which the mind breaks itself and discovers at once the vastness of its sphere and range and the grandeur of its powers.

A similar train of thought is equally applicable to man's will and causal efficiency. Here also nature seems to be a limit and boundary. And certainly the savage with his toolless hands is shut in very closely by the untilled ground bearing weeds and brambles, by the great forests and rivers and by the ocean. But man in conflict with nature gradually subdues and civilizes it and gets possession of its resources and powers. In so doing he civilizes and develops himself, and presently finds himself not the prisoner but the lord of nature. Thus, again, in the conflict with nature he gets possession of its riches and resources and of his own; he discovers at once the wide and rich sphere of his action and the grandeur of the power with which he acts. And in like manner, by struggle, conflict and suffering his distinctively spiritual powers are disciplined and developed.

And here even death itself is a liberation rather than a limit. By limiting the earthly life it compels the spirit to look beyond death to a life immortal and to become acquainted with God and the spiritual Dowers of the unseen and spiritual world.

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be added that man is, so far as this earth is concerned, the

highest end to which nature has attained and toward which it has always been striving. He seems to be endowed with all the forces of nature as well as with the powers of spirit. They are all taken up and represented in him. It is also said that the human embryo before birth passes through all the inferior zoological types. All this plainly indicates that man is at the head of all creatures on the earth, and to him all nature is and always has been tributary. Before he appeared nature was tending towards and preparing for him; since his appearing nature has been the sphere in which he has acted, the storehouse of his resources and the occasion and means of his development and progress.

His implication in nature, therefore, however it may restrict him at particular points, is in its whole effect on him a liberation and development, not a restriction and a stunting.

I add a fancy which is not inconceivable. I have already spoken of the power of the mind over the body in preventing and removing disease, and of the increased attention of physicians to the subject. It may be conjectured that if man had never sinned and the spirit had always exerted its legitimate influence on the body, the latter might have become greatly invigorated, and ultimately a "spiritual body" might have been evolved within the coarser organization and at last have taken its place; and that instead of this change being effected only by that which we call death, it might have been effected as imperceptibly as is the complete renewal of the matter of the body every few years, and the transition have been as gradual as that from infancy to manhood. Then the old theological doctrine that man's death was introduced by sin would become true. The existence of the spirit after death in a spiritual body is the culmination of the spirit's freedom from restriction in nature. It is conceivable that it may yet be realized in a way more in accordance with the course of nature from the beginning than has been commonly supposed.

70. Different Meanings of Freedom.

The word freedom has been used by writers on the will in four different meanings. These four kinds of freedom may be designated respectively as moral, physical, real and formal freedom. The failure to discriminate between these different uses of the word has been a source of much confusion of thought. The first is moral freedom. This is the freedom which is necessary to moral responsibility and moral character. It is the freedom considered in the last section, and is the freedom of the will or free agency in its proper sense. As the necessary prerequisite to moral responsibility and character, it may be called moral freedom.

In a second meaning, it is freedom from coercion, that is, from ex

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