much in itself as in the higher spiritual powers brought to its apprehension. But if the spiritual is put last and highest in evolution, is it not because it was first and foremost in the constructive purpose? This growth toward the spiritual, and the ultimate passage of evolution into it, are the supreme facts to be felt and expounded.

§ 7. We have shown matter to be permeated by ideas of reason, as those of resemblance, causation and number. This proof might go much further. Resemblances, for instance, are constant terms of thought, and the world is so full of them, that all its material, in every aspect of it, takes on the classifications of science. Still farther, however, matter is not merely constructed, it is constructive. We first regard matter as something inert, something which offers resistance, and is not easily gotten rid of. A better understanding presents it to us as distinct centres of distinct forces, and its properties as permanent powers. Matter is not passive but active, and is accompanied with wonderful changes of activity, as it takes upon itself new forms, or enters into new combinations. The energies of nature, which as mechanical, chemical, thermal, electric forces are expressed in cohesion, attraction, pressure, motion, and which play upon matter in masses and in molecules, are permanent, often in some very obscure but real form of action. The material world thus ceases to be to our thought indifferent and inert, and becomes positive and active, a present expenditure of energies for immediate ends, an omnipresent power.