But, however the polemical coincomitants of these discussions may be
regarded--or better, disregarded--there is no doubt either about the
importance of the topics of which they treat, or as to the public
interest in the "Controverted Questions" with which they deal. Or
rather, the Controverted Question; for disconnected as these pieces
may, perhaps, appear to be, they are, in fact, concerned only with
different aspects of a single problem, with which thinking men have
been occupied, ever since they began seriously to consider the
wonderful frame of things in which their lives are set, and to seek
for trustworthy guidance among its intricacies.
Experience speedily taught them that the shifting scenes of the
world's stage have a permanent background; that there is order amidst
the seeming confusion, and that many events take place according to
unchanging rules. To this region of familiar steadiness and customary
regularity they gave the name of Nature. But, at the same time, their
infantile and untutored reason, little more, as yet, than the
playfellow of the imagination, led them to believe that this tangible,
commonplace, orderly world of Nature was surrounded and
interpenetrated by another intangible and mysterious world, no more
bound by fixed rules than, as they fancied, were the thoughts and
passions which coursed through their minds and seemed to exercise an
intermittent and capricious rule over their bodies.
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