NATURE IN MIND.—The _Quest_ contains an article by Mr. G. R. S. Mead, in which he suggests—and, perhaps, rather more than suggests—an affinity, if not an identity, between the “laws” of nature and the “laws” of mind. Ever since I read the following sentence in Coleridge’s _Biographia Literaria_: “The highest perfection of natural philosophy would consist in the perfect spiritualisation of all the laws of nature into laws of intuition and intellect,” it has been at the back of my mind as an aim to keep before philosophy. Whether or not there is a drummer in every age with whom the active thinkers keep in step, even without being aware of the fact, I can only say that more and more evidence of this tendency of thought is coming to light. Boutroux’s _Contingency of the Laws of Nature_ may be said to have most explicitly attempted the sublimation—or, dare we say, the humanisation?—of the natural laws; but Boutroux is only one of many philosophers working in the same direction. Other areas of study than that of “pure” philosophy seem to have yielded, or to be yielding, the same result. Mr. Mead quotes, for instance, some recent studies of Animism to show that Animism, which, together with Anthropomorphism, we used to dismiss as merely a primitive mode of thought, may, after all, prove to contain a truth, the truth, namely, that Nature _is_ living and intelligent, and, on that account, not so far from human nature as we had come to imagine. “The more we penetrate Matter,” says Mr. Mead, “the more akin to Mind we find it to be.” The world is a creation of mind; and the more either of the world or of mind we understand the more we understand of both. It is a thrilling idea, the conception of the world of nature as being the externalisation of an intelligence akin to our own. At the same time, it is, like all thrilling ideas, associated with considerable danger. The “superstitions” connected with it are perhaps best left under the shadow that has been cast upon them.