It is unfortunate that these words connote things purely human, and to that extent are likely to lead us astray. But are not all our terms human, even the word “astray” itself? Can we have any other? Emerson says that anything may be affirmed or denied of the Infinite, and that God can be hinted only in signs and symbols. In trying to describe time, we need a new language that differs as much from our ordinary speech as algebra differs from arithmetic. The circle and sphere are the only complete types of Infinity. In Professor Loeb’s mechanistic conception of life there is no hint of mind or soul; all is matter and force. All the mechanists and energists and materialists unconsciously endow their matter and force with creative power, thus elevating them to the rank of a _Deus_. Science knows no mysteries; it knows only insoluble problems and comparatively few of them. But may not one see mysteries in nature without being a mystic? Physical facts may be inexplicable, but we do not call them mysteries. The birth and development of the cell is wonderful, but can we say that it is mysterious? Does not mystery imply something occult and unknowable? Is a biologist or evolutionist to be charged with mysticism because he refuses to admit that the development of species is all a matter of chance? If he believes, for instance, that the horse as we know him was inevitable in that small beast of Eocene times, the eohippus, is he to be charged with a teleological taint? Or if we speak of the predestined course of evolution are we unfaithful to the true scientific spirit? Is not the acorn predestined to become an oak? Does growth imply a mysterious guiding force or principle? The little brown house wren that fusses and chatters here around its box on my porch has come all the way from Central America. Did something guide it? Life is full of this kind of guidance. Not much of nature can be explained by addition and subtraction; not much of it can be explained by mere mechanics, or physics; not much of it can be explained by the doctrine of chance. There are reasons behind reasons. You may give good physiological reasons why the heart beats, why the liver secretes bile, why the digestive processes go on and our food nourishes us, but can you find the mind by dissecting the brain or connect mind with matter? Mysticism belongs to the sphere of our religious emotions, and when we read natural phenomena through these emotions we are mystical. We cannot say that the course of evolution has been directed, and we cannot say it goes by chance. The changes of the seasons are not directed; the circuit of the waters from the earth, through the sea to the clouds and back to the earth, is not directed; the orbs in their courses are not directed; the sap in the trees, the blood in our veins, are not directed; neither are these things by chance. “An inward perfecting principle” is the divinity that shapes the ends of all organisms.