thinker, nothing can be clearer than that this science, at least sometimes so called, as [p.217] a method or attitude exacting clearest possible procedure and highest logical consistency, is the very principle of veracity, upon loyalty to which the freedom of thought must always depend. Like this principle, too, mathematics--so much more truly than any other discipline--is superior to anything that is either merely individual or abstractly social. So, looking and thinking through the theory of parallelism, we see how thought is Bet free. Man is free, as was said, to think always to some practical purpose. Secondly, then, with regard to the material world, said to serve his thinking and his purpose, this in its turn is liberated also; it is liberated for a life of its own law and order. Nature, the material world in general, is no longer the victim of arbitrary changes. Such changes as spring from the occultly creative acts of the spiritual world, or more exactly the spirit-world, represented by God in the character of an extraneous being, by a personal devil or by those minor spirits or powers of light or darkness, often if not usually described as objects of superstition, no longer interfere with nature's orderly course. She is left, unmolested, to be just her natural self, consistent and persistent in the way prescribed by her own inner being. And then, while subject to no arbitrary interference, she is herself never given to interference, but is, on the contrary, in her own right, essentially at one with that other world, the world of the thinker. Poets have ever fondly sung of nature's sympathy with man, and her sympathy deep and abiding is exactly what we now observe, nor can any poem too loftily give expression to it. [p.218] And what, in more detail, of this sympathetic nature--of this ideal world, or perfect home, of thinking man? With much interest we certainly might trace all the aspects of its character corresponding to the different phases of the thinker's life, but discussion of them all would take too much of our space and might seriously tax an already tried patience. So we shall confine ourselves to one thing alone. The truly free thinker was said to be one who believes in what he knows or thinks, but only as a working view to something else. No thought of his could ever compass the fulness of truth within him. What, then, of nature?