INTRODUCTION.

17

man to nature. “It is by such knowledge that man
becomes the minister and interpreter of Nature, and
learns te control Nature by obeying her.” In respect to
his merely animal nature and in his relation to nature as a
variety of organized matter, man is under the laws of na-‘ure
 which he has to obey. A man’s body, for instance,
is subject to the law of gravitation; a man’s physical
actions are subject to the laws of mechanics. This
necessary obedience of matter to the Jaws of the material
world, cannot be avoided in any degree by the simple
axercise of man’s volition. But to man as an intellectual
 being has been given by the express declaration of
God, control, within certain limitations and subject to
certain restraints, over the forces of the natural world.
Therefore, man, by learning to understand and interpret
‘he laws of nature, and by learning to understand and
bring himself into more perfect harmony with the laws
of the intellectual world, learns to obtain a more perfect
sontrol over the forces of nature as God’s minister.
In the same connection some observations of Prof.
Huxley are quoted with approval, showing that Prof.
Cairnes is not alone in his misconception of the relation
of Man, as an intellectual being, to Nature:
“In a striking passage of an admirable address, Professor
Huxley has pointed out how all true education, so far as
sducation is an art, is but 2 mode of acquiring knowledge
which nature herself, where we omit this means of acquir-‘ng
 it, is pretty sure to bring home to us after her own rude
“aghion. ‘The teaching of Nature,’ says Professor Huxley,
‘is harsh and wasteful in its operation.’ Ignorance is
visited as sharply as wilful disobedience, incapacity meets