Now what does the charge, as thus stated, really amount to? There is no implication that nature is hostile, as some (perhaps including Huxley) would have us think. There is simply a feeling that nature is remote from human modes of experience, indifferent to human interests. And it would be puerile to dispute the rightness of this impression so long as the standpoint of the individual human being is adopted. The individual man is a centre of self-consciousness in a peculiar sense. He has numberless and interminable particular wants, hopes, fears, pleasures, pains. Whereas, the infra-human objects in nature have not attained to his particular mode of consciousness: theirs differs from his in degree, perchance in kind. A tree, a cloud, a mountain, a wave--these cannot enter into what we call "personal" relations with each other or with human beings. But this is not to say that they may not possess a consciousness, which though different from man's consciousness, is yet akin to it and linked to it. Nay, the nature-mystic's experiences, as well as the metaphysician's speculations, declare that the linking up must be regarded as a fact. And when we examine more carefully what Jefferies says, we find that he in no way disputes this fact. How could it be, with his vivid sense of communion with forms of being still more remote from the human than the sea-monsters he names? What oppressed him was a feeling of strangeness. In other words, nature was "remote" for him because he felt he did not understand it well enough. Further discussion of the important issues thus raised will be postponed until certain forms of modern animism come under review. One or two preliminary observations, however, will be in place at this earlier stage. It is wise, for example, not to forget the limitations of our knowledge. A platitude! Yes--but one which even the greatest thinkers are apt to lose sight of, with consequent tendency to hasty generalisation and undue neglect of deep-seated instincts and intuitions. The discovery of some new cosmic law may change the whole face of nature, and set in a new light its apparent remoteness or indifference. Again, as has just been shown, natural phenomena are in definite relationship to human reason. They are comprehensible-- therefore not alien. By their aid we can organise our conduct, and even our ideals--therefore they are factors in our self-realisation. Thus, underlying their seeming indifference, it is possible even now to trace their beneficent influences in the evolutionary process. And since they embody reason, beauty, and goodness, we can afford to await in patience the solution of many problems which trouble us, and surrender ourselves trustfully to the calm, resistless forces which are weaving the web of cosmic destinies.