{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_78230/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_78230","id":"gutenberg_78230","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78230","summary":null,"tags":["Natural history","Natural history -- Philosophy","Philosophy","Science"],"text":"TRANSCRIBER\u2019S NOTE\n\n  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.\n\n  A subscript is denoted by _{x}, for example H_{2}O.\n\n  Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.\n\n\n\n\n                        ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE\n\n              [Illustration: (Frontispiece; the author)]\n\n\n\n\n                               ACCEPTING\n                             THE UNIVERSE\n\n                        _ESSAYS IN NATURALISM_\n\n                                  BY\n\n                            JOHN BURROUGHS\n\n\n                      [Illustration: (colophon)]\n\n\n                          BOSTON AND NEW YORK\n                       HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY\n                     The Riverside Press Cambridge\n\n\n\n\n                  COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY JOHN BURROUGHS\n\n                          ALL RIGHTS RESERVED\n\n\n\n\n                  ..._And heard great argument\n      About it and about: but evermore\n      Came out by the same door wherein I went._\n                                           THE RUB\u00c1IY\u00c1T\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nA wheel may have many spokes, but can have but one hub. So I\nmay say of this volume of mine that there are many themes and\nchapter-headings, but there is but one central thought into which\nthey all converge, and that is that the universe is good, and that\nit is our rare good fortune to form a part of it. As this collection\nof essays does not aim to be a systematic treatise on any one theme,\nbut rather a series of sallies, excursions, into the world of\nsemi-philosophical speculation, there is inevitably much repetition;\nthere may even be some contradiction. But I have concluded to let\nthem stand, as I find myself an interested spectator of the workings\nof my own mind when, in following different roads, it arrives at\nthe same truth. As all roads lead to Rome, so in the realm in which\nmy mind works in this volume, all roads lead to the conclusion that\nthis is the best possible world, and these people in it are the best\npossible people.\n\nThe heart of Nature is sound. I feel toward the great Mother somewhat\nas a man does who takes out a policy in an insurance company: he\nbelieves the company is solvent and will meet its obligations. I\nlook upon the universe as solvent and worthy of trust. In other\nwords this is a book of radical optimism. It might be described as an\nattempt to justify the ways of God to man on natural grounds.\n\nMy reader need hardly be told that theological grounds do not count\nwith me. I want nothing less than a faith founded upon a rock,\nfaith in the constitution of things. The various man-made creeds\nare fictitious, like the constellations--Orion, Cassiopeia\u2019s Chair,\nthe Big Dipper; the only thing real in them is the stars, and the\nonly thing real in the creeds is the soul\u2019s aspiration toward the\nInfinite. This abides, though creeds and dogmas change or vanish.\n\nEmpedocles says:\n\n      \u201cO, wretched he whose care\n      Is shadowy speculation on the gods.\u201d\n\nBut is not speculation better than indifference? Curiosity about the\ngods may lead to a better acquaintance with them. I feel that each of\nthese chapters might be called an altar to the Unknown God.\n\n                                                      JOHN BURROUGHS\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n     I. SHALL WE ACCEPT THE UNIVERSE?                        3\n\n    II. MANIFOLD NATURE                                     19\n\n   III. EACH FOR ITS OWN SAKE                               30\n\n    IV. THE UNIVERSAL BENEFICENCE                           54\n\n     V. THE GOOD DEVILS                                     73\n\n    VI. THE NATURAL PROVIDENCE                              90\n\n   VII. THE FAITH OF A NATURALIST                          112\n\n  VIII. A FALLACY MADE IN GERMANY                          134\n\n    IX. THE PRICE OF DEVELOPMENT                           138\n\n     X. TOOTH AND CLAW                                     158\n\n    XI. MEN AND TREES                                      173\n\n   XII. THE PROBLEM OF EVIL                                193\n\n  XIII. HORIZON LINES:\n\n         I. THE ORIGIN OF LIFE                             203\n\n        II. THE LIVING AND NON-LIVING WORLDS               205\n\n       III. THE ORGANIZING TENDENCY                        207\n\n        IV. SCIENCE AND MYSTICISM                          211\n\n         V. IS THERE DESIGN IN NATURE?                     219\n\n        VI. OUR IMPARTIAL MOTHER                           225\n\n       VII. BAFFLING TRUTHS                                226\n\n      VIII. SENSE CONTRADICTIONS                           230\n\n        IX. MAN A PART OF NATURE                           233\n\n         X. THE FITTEST TO SURVIVE                         237\n\n        XI. THE POWER OF CHOICE                            238\n\n       XII. ILLUSIONS                                      239\n\n      XIII. IS NATURE SUICIDAL?                            242\n\n       XIV. THE PERSISTENCE OF ENERGY                      245\n\n   XIV. SOUNDINGS:\n\n         I. THE GREAT MYSTERY                              253\n\n        II. THE NATURAL ORDER                              257\n\n       III. LOGIC AND RELIGIOUS BELIEFS                    261\n\n        IV. A CHIP FROM THE OLD BLOCK                      265\n\n         V. A PERSONAL GOD                                 266\n\n        VI. THE ETERNAL                                    270\n\n       VII. AN IMPARTIAL DEITY                             275\n\n      VIII. FINITE AND INFINITE                            278\n\n        IX. THE INSOLUBLE                                  280\n\n         X. PAYING THE DEBT                                282\n\n        XI. DEATH                                          288\n\n       XII. HEAVEN AND EARTH                               293\n\n      XIII. THINKING AND ACTING                            296\n\n       XIV. THE TIDE OF LIFE                               304\n\n        XV. FAITH FOUNDED UPON A ROCK                      309\n\n  XV. THE POET OF THE COSMOS                               316\n\n    _The frontispiece, showing Mr. Burroughs at his woodpile at\n    Riverby, is from a photograph taken in 1920 by_ Mr. HERBERT\n    S. ARDELL\n\n\n\n\nACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nSHALL WE ACCEPT THE UNIVERSE?\n\n\nI\n\nIt is reported of Margaret Fuller that she said she accepted the\nuniverse. \u201cGad, she\u2019d better!\u201d retorted Carlyle. Carlyle himself\ndid not accept the universe in a very whole-hearted manner. Looking\nup at the midnight stars, he exclaimed: \u201cA sad spectacle! If they\nbe inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly; if they be na\ninhabited, what a waste of space!\u201d\n\nIt ought not to be a hard thing to accept the universe, since it\nappears to be a fixture, and we have no choice in the matter; but\nI have found it worth while to look the gift in the mouth, and\nconvince myself that it is really worth accepting. It were a pity to\ngo through life with a suspicion in one\u2019s mind that it might have\nbeen a better universe, and that some wrong has been done us because\nwe have no freedom of choice in the matter. The thought would add a\ntinge of bitterness to all our days. And so, after living more than\nfour score years in the world, and pondering long and intently upon\nthe many problems which life and nature present, I have come, like\nMargaret Fuller, to accept the universe, have come frankly to accept\nthat first verdict pronounced upon creation, namely, that it is very\ngood--good in its sum total up to this astronomic date, whatever\nphases it may at times present that lead us to a contrary conclusion.\n\nNot that cold and hunger, war and pestilence, tornadoes and\nearthquakes, are good in a positive sense, but that these and kindred\nthings are vastly overbalanced by the forces and agencies that make\nfor our well-being,--that \u201cwork together for good,\u201d--the sunshine,\nthe cooling breezes, the fertile soil, the stability of land and sea,\nthe gentle currents, the equipoise of the forces of the earth, air,\nand water, the order and security of our solar system, and, in the\nhuman realm, the good-will and fellowship that are finally bound to\nprevail among men and nations.\n\nIn remote geologic ages, before the advent of man, when the earth\u2019s\ncrust was less stable, when the air was yet loaded with poisonous\ngases, when terrible and monstrous animal forms held high carnival in\nthe sea and upon the land, it was not in the same sense good--good\nfor beings constructed as we are now. In future astronomic time, when\nthe earth\u2019s air and water and warmth shall have disappeared--a time\nwhich science predicts--and all life upon the globe fails, again\nit will not be good. But in our geologic, biologic, and astronomic\nage, notwithstanding the fact that cold and suffering, war and\npestilence, cyclones and earthquakes, still occur upon the relatively\ntiny ball that carries us through the vast sidereal spaces, good is\ngreatly in the ascendancy. The voyage is not all calm and sunshine,\nbut it is safe, and the dangers from collision and shipwreck are very\nremote. It is a vast and lonely sea over which we are journeying,\nno other ships hail us and bid us Godspeed, no messages, wireless\nor other, may reach us from other shores, or other seas; forces and\ninfluences do play upon us from all parts of the empyrean, but, so\nfar as we are aware, no living thing on other spheres takes note of\nour going or our coming.\n\nIn our practical lives we are compelled to separate good from\nevil--the one being that which favors our well-being, and the other\nthat which antagonizes it; but, viewed as a whole, the universe is\nall good; it is an infinite complex of compensations out of which\nworlds and systems of worlds, and all which they hold, have emerged,\nand are emerging, and will emerge. This is not the language of the\nheart or of the emotions--our anthropomorphism cries out against\nit--but it is the language of serene, impartial reason. It is good\nfor us occasionally to get outside the sphere of our personal life\nand view things as they are in and of themselves. A great demand\nis made upon our faith--faith in the absolute trustworthiness of\nhuman reason, and in the final beneficence of the forces that rule\nthis universe. Not to solve the mysteries, but to see that they are\ninsoluble, and to rest content in that conclusion, is the task we set\nourselves here.\n\nEvidently the tide of life is still at the flood on this planet; its\nchecks and counter-currents arise inevitably in a universe whose\nforces are always, and always must be, in unstable equilibrium.\n\nThe love of the Eternal for mankind, and for all other forms of\nlife, is not a parental love--not the love of the mother for her\nchild, or of the father for his son; it is more like the love which a\ngeneral has for his army; he is to lead that army through hardships,\nthrough struggles, through sufferings, and through death, but he is\nleading it to victory. Many will perish that others may live; the\nbattle is being won daily. Evolution has triumphed. It has been a\nlong and desperate battle, but here we are and we find life sweet.\nThe antagonistic forces which have been overcome have become sources\nof power. The vast army of living forms moving down the geologic\nages has been made strong through the trials and obstacles it has\nsurmounted, till now we behold it in the fullness of its power with\nman at its head.\n\n\nII\n\nThere is a paragraph in Emerson\u2019s Journal on Providence, written when\nhe was twenty-one, which is as broad and as wise and as heterodox as\nanything he ever wrote. The Providence he depicts is the Providence\nI see in Nature:\n\n\u201cProvidence supports, but does not spoil its children. We are\ncalled sons, not darlings, of the Deity. There is ever good in\nstore for those who love it; knowledge for those who seek it; and\nif we do evil, we suffer the consequences of evil. Throughout the\nadministration of the world there is the same aspect of stern\nkindness; of good against your will; good against your good; ten\nthousand channels of active beneficence, but all flowing with the\nsame regard to general, not particular profit.... And to such an\nextent is this great statute policy of God carried, that many, nay,\nmost, of the great blessings of humanity require cycles of a thousand\nyears to bring them to their height.\u201d\n\nA remarkable statement to be made in 1824, in New England, and by\na fledgling preacher of the orthodox faith and the descendant of a\nlong line of orthodox clergymen. It is as broad and as impartial\nas science, and yet makes a strong imaginative appeal. Good at the\nheart of Nature is the purport of it, not the patent-right good of\nthe creeds, but good, free to all who love it, a \u201cstern kindness,\u201d\nand no partial, personal, vacillating Providence whose ear is open\nonly to the password of some sect or cult, or organization--\u201cgood\nagainst your good,\u201d your copyrighted good, your personal, selfish\ngood (unless it is in line with equal good to others), the broad,\nuniversal beneficence of Nature which brought us here and keeps\nus here, and showers its good upon us as long as we keep in right\nrelations with it; but which goes its appointed way regardless of the\nsore needs of warring nations or the desperate straits of struggling\nmen. That is the Providence that lasts, that does not change its\nmind, that is not indulgent, that does not take sides, that is\nwithout variableness or shadow of turning. Suppose the law of gravity\nwere changeable, or the law of chemical reactions, or the nature of\nfire, or air, or water, or cohesion? Gravity never sleeps nor varies,\nyet see bodies rise, see others fall, see the strong master of the\nweak, see the waters flow and the ground stay. The laws of fluids are\nfixed, but see the variety of their behavior, the forms in which they\ncrystallize, their solvent power, their stability or instability,\ntheir capacity to absorb or conduct heat--flux and change everywhere\namid fixity and law. Nature is infinitely variable, which opens the\ndoor to all forms of life; her goings and comings are on such a large\nscale, like the rains, the dews, the sunlight, that all creatures\nget an equal benefit. She sows her seed with such a generous hand\nthat enough of them are bound to fall upon fertile places. Such as\nare very limited in range, like those of the swamp plants, are yet\ncast forth upon the wind so liberally that sooner or later some of\nthem fall upon conditions suitable to them. Nature will cover a whole\ntownship with her wind-sown seeds in order to be sure that she hits\nthe small swamp in one corner of it.\n\nA stream of energy, not described by the adjective \u201cinexhaustible,\u201d\nbears the universe along, and all forms of life, man with the rest,\ntake their chances amid its currents and its maelstroms. The good\nProvidence shows itself in the power of adaptation which all forms\nof life possess. Some forms of sea-weed or sea-grass grow where the\nwaves pound the shore incessantly. How many frail marine creatures\nare wrecked upon the shore, but how many more are not wrecked! How\nmany ships go down in the sea, but how many more are wafted safely\nover it!\n\nThe Providence in Nature seems intent only on playing the game,\nirrespective of the stakes, which to us seem so important. Whatever\nthe issue, Nature is the winner. She cannot lose. Her beneficence is\nwholesale. Her myriad forms of life are constantly passing through\n\u201cthe curtain of fire\u201d of her inorganic forces, and the casualties are\ngreat, but the majority get through. The assault goes on and will\never go on. It is like a stream of water that is whole and individual\nat every point, but fixed and stable at no point. To play the game,\nto keep the currents going--from the depths of sidereal space to the\nshallow pool by the roadside; from the rise and fall of nations, to\nthe brief hour of the minute summer insects, the one overarching\npurpose seems to be to give free rein to life, to play one form\nagainst another, to build up and tear down, to gather together and to\nscatter--no rest, no end, nothing final--rocks decaying to build more\nrocks, worlds destroyed to build more worlds, nations disintegrating\nto build more nations, organisms perishing to feed more organisms,\nlife playing into the hands of death everywhere, and death playing\ninto the hands of life, sea and land interchanging, tropic and arctic\nmeeting and mingling, day and night, winter and summer chasing each\nother over the earth--what a spectacle of change, what a drama never\ncompleted! Vast worlds and systems in fiery flux; one little corner\nof the cosmos teeming with life, vast areas of it, like Saturn and\nJupiter, dead and barren through untold millions of years; collisions\nand disruptions in the heavens, tornadoes and earthquakes and wars\nand pestilence upon the earth--surely it all sounds worse than it is,\nfor we are all here to see and contemplate the great spectacle; it\nsounds worse than it is to us because we are a part of the outcome\nof all these raging and conflicting forces. Whatever has failed, we\nhave succeeded, and the beneficent forces are still coming our way.\nAs I write these lines I see my neighbor and his boys gathering the\nhay from the meadows and building it into a great stack beside their\nglutted barns. I see a chipmunk carrying stores to his den, I see\nbutterflies dancing by on painted wings, I see and hear the happy\nbirds, and the August sun beams his best upon all the land.\n\nThe greatest of human achievements and the most precious is that\nof the great creative artist. In words, in color, in sounds, in\nforms, man comes nearest to emulating the Creative Energy itself.\nIt seems as if the pleasure and the purpose of the Creative Energy\nwere endless invention--to strike out new forms, to vary perpetually\nthe pattern. She presents myriads of forms, myriads of types,\ninexhaustible variety in air, earth, water, ten thousand ways to\nachieve the same end, a prodigality of means that bewilders the mind;\nher aim to produce something new and different, an endless variety\nof forms that fly, that swim, that creep, in the sea, in the air,\non the earth, in the fields, in the woods, on the shore. How many\nways Nature has of scattering her seeds, how many types of wings, of\nhooks, of springs! In some she offers a wage to bird or quadruped in\nthe shape of fruit, others she forcibly attaches to the passer-by. In\nall times and places there is a riot of invention.\n\n\nIII\n\nAre we not men enough to face things as they are? Must we be cosseted\na little? Can we not be weaned from the old theological pap? Can we\nnot rest content in the general beneficence of Nature\u2019s Providence?\nMust you and I have a special hold upon the great Mother\u2019s apron\nstrings?\n\nI see the Nature Providence going its impartial way. I see drought\nand flood, heat and cold, war and pestilence, defeat and death,\nbesetting man at all times, in all lands. I see hostile germs in\nthe air he breathes, in the water he drinks, in the soil he tills.\nI see the elemental forces as indifferent toward him as toward\nants and fleas. I see pain and disease and defeat and failure\ndogging his footsteps. I see the righteous defeated and the ungodly\ntriumphant--this and much more I see; and yet I behold through the\nimmense biological vista behind us the race of man slowly--oh, so\nslowly!--emerging from its brute or semi-human ancestry into the\nfull estate of man, from blind instinct and savage passion into\nthe light of reason and moral consciousness. I behold the great\nscheme of evolution unfolding despite all the delays and waste and\nfailures, and the higher forms appearing upon the scene. I see\non an immense scale, and as clearly as in a demonstration in a\nlaboratory, that good comes out of evil; that the impartiality of\nthe Nature Providence is best; that we are made strong by what we\novercome; that man is man because he is as free to do evil as to do\ngood; that life is as free to develop hostile forms as to develop\nfriendly; that power waits upon him who earns it; that disease,\nwars, the unloosened, devastating elemental forces, have each and\nall played their part in developing and hardening man and giving\nhim the heroic fiber. The good would have no tang, no edge, no\ncutting quality without evil to oppose it. Life would be tasteless\nor insipid, without pain and struggle and disappointment. Behold\nwhat the fiery furnace does for the metals--welding or blending or\nseparating or purifying them, and behold the hell of contending and\ndestructive forces out of which the earth came, and again behold\nthe grinding and eroding forces, the storms and earthquakes and\neruptions and disintegrations that have made it the green inhabitable\nworld that now sustains us! No, the universal processes do not need\ndisinfecting; the laws of the winds, the rains, the sunlight do not\nneed rectifying. \u201cI do not want the constellations any nearer,\u201d says\nWhitman. I do not want the natural Providence any more attentive. The\ncelestial laws are here underfoot and our treading upon them does\nnot obliterate or vulgarize them. Chemistry is incorruptible and\nimmortal, it is the handmaid of God; the yeast works in the elements\nof our bread of life while we sleep; the stars send their influences,\nthe earth renews itself, the brooding heaven gathers us under its\nwings, and all is well with us if we have the heroic hearts to see it.\n\nIn the curve of the moon\u2019s or of the planets\u2019 disks, all broken or\nirregular lines of the surface are lost to the eye--the wholeness of\nthe sphere form subordinates and obliterates them all: so all the\nfailures and cross-purposes and disharmonies in nature and life do\nnot suffice to break or mar the vast general beneficence; the flowing\nuniversal good is obvious above all.\n\nSo long as we think of the Eternal in terms of our experience--of\nthe knowledge of concrete things and beings which life discloses to\nus--we are involved in contradictions. The ancients visualized their\ngods and goddesses--Jove, Apollo, Minerva, Juno, and all the others.\nShall we do this for the Eternal and endow it with personality? Into\nwhat absurdities this leads us! The unspeakable, the unseeable, the\nunthinkable, the inscrutable, and yet the most obvious fact that life\nyields to us! Nearer and more vital than our own bodies, than our own\nparents, and yet eluding our grasp; vehemently denied, passionately\naccepted, scoffed, praised, feared, worshiped, giving rise to deism,\natheism, pantheism, to idolatry, to persecution, to martyrdom, the\ngreat Reality in which we live and move and have our being, and yet\nfor that very reason, because it is a part of us, or rather we are\na part of it, are we unable to define it or seize it as a reality\napart from ourselves. Our denial proves it; just as we use gravity\nto overcome gravity, so we use God to deny God. Just as pure light\nis of no color, but split up makes all the colors that we see, so\nGod divided and reflected makes all the half-gods we worship in\nlife. Green and blue and red and orange are not in the objects that\nreflect them, but are an experience of the eye. We might with our\ntongues deny the air, but our spoken words prove it. We cannot lift\nourselves over the fence by our own waistbands; no more can we by\nsearching find God, because He is not an object that has place and\nform and limitations. He is the fact of the fact, the life of the\nlife, the soul of the soul, the incomprehensible, the sum of all\ncontradictions, the unit of all diversity; he who knows Him, knows\nHim not; he who is without Him, is full of Him; turn your back upon\nHim, then turn your back upon gravity, upon air, upon light. He\ncannot be seen, but by Him all seeing comes. He cannot be heard, yet\nby Him all hearing comes. He is not a being, yet apart from Him there\nis no being--there is no apart from Him. We contradict ourselves when\nwe deny Him; it is ourselves we deny, and equally do we contradict\nourselves when we accept Him; it is something apart from ourselves\nwhich we accept.\n\nWhen half-gods go, says Emerson, the gods arrive. But half-gods\nnever go; we can house and entertain no other. What can we do with\nthe Infinite, the Eternal? We can only deal with things in time\nand space--things that can be numbered and measured. What can we\ndo with the infinitely little, the infinitely great? All our gods\nare half-gods made in our own image. No surer does the wax take the\nimprint of the seal than does the Infinite take the imprint of our\nfinite minds. We create a Creator, we rule a Ruler, we invent a\nheaven and hell; they are laws of our own being, seen externally.\n\nHow, then, shall we adjust our lives to the conception of a\nuniversal, non-human, non-finite, algebraic God? They adjust\nthemselves. Do your work, deal justly, love rightness, make the most\nof yourself, cherish the good, the beautiful, the true, practice the\nChristian and the heathen virtues of soberness, meekness, reverence,\ncharity, unselfishness, justice, mercy, singleness of purpose; obey\nthe commandments, the Golden Rule, imbue your spirit with the wisdom\nof all ages, for thus is the moral order of the world upheld.\n\nThe moral order and the intellectual order go hand in hand. Upon one\nrests our relation to our fellows, upon the other rests our relation\nto the cosmos.\n\nWe must know, and we must love; we must do, and we must enjoy; we\nmust warm judgment with feeling, and illume conscience with reason.\n\nAdmit, if we must, that we are in the grip of a merciless power,\nthat outside of our own kind there is nothing that shows us mercy\nor consideration, that the Nature of which we form a part goes her\nown way regardless of us; yet let us keep in mind that the very fact\nthat we are here and find life good is proof that the mercilessness\nof Nature has not been inconsistent with our permanent well-being.\nThe fact that flowers bloom and fruit and grains ripen, that the\nsun shines, that the rain falls, that food nourishes us, that love\nwarms us, that evolution has brought us thus far on our way, that\nour line of descent has survived all the hazards of the geologic\nages, all point to the fact that we are on the winning side, that\nour well-being is secured in the constitution of things. For all\nthe cataclysms and disruptions, the globe has ripened on the great\nsidereal tree, and has become the fit abode of its myriad forms of\nlife. Though we may be run down and crushed by the great terrestrial\nforces about us, just as we may be run down and crushed in the\nstreet, yet these forces play a part in the activities that sustain\nus; without them we should not be here to suffer at their hands.\n\nOur life depends from moment to moment upon the air we breathe, yet\nits winds and tempests may destroy us; it depends from day to day\nupon the water we drink, yet its floods may sweep us away. We walk\nand climb and work and move mountains by gravity, and yet gravity may\nbreak every bone in our bodies. We spread our sails to the winds and\nthey become our faithful servitors, yet the winds may drive us into\nthe jaws of the breakers. How are our lives bound up and identified\nwith the merciless forces that surround us! Out of the heart of fate\ncomes our freedom; out of the reign of death comes our life; out of\nthe sea of impersonal energy come our personalities; out of the rocks\ncomes the soil that sustains us; out of the fiery nebul\u00e6 came the\nearth with its apple-blossoms and its murmuring streams; out of the\nearth came man. If the cosmic forces were not merciless, if they did\nnot go their own way, if they made exceptions for you and me, if in\nthem there _were_ variableness and even a shadow of turning, the vast\ninevitable beneficence of Nature would vanish, and the caprice and\nuncertainty of man take its place. If the sun were to stand still for\nJoshua to conquer his enemies, there would be no further need for it\nto resume its journey. What I am trying to get rid of is the pitying\nand meddling Providence which our feeble faith and half-knowledge\nhave enthroned above us. We need stronger meat than the old theology\naffords us. We need to contemplate the ways of a Providence that has\nnot been subsidized; we need encouragement in our attitude of heroic\ncourage and faith toward an impersonal universe; we need to have\nour petty anthropomorphic views of things shaken up and hung out in\nthe wind to air. The universe is not a schoolroom on the Montessori\nlines, nor a benevolent institution run on the most modern improved\nplan. It is a work-a-day field where we learn from hard knocks, and\nwhere the harvest, not too sure, waits upon our own right arm.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nMANIFOLD NATURE\n\n\nFew persons, I fancy, ever spend much time in thinking seriously of\nthis vast, ever-present reality which we call Nature; what our true\nrelations to it are, what its relations are to what we call God, or\nwhat God\u2019s relations are to it; whether God and Nature are two or\none--God and Nature, or only Nature, or only God.\n\nWhen we identify Nature with God we are at once in sore straits\nbecause Nature has a terrible side to her, but the moment we separate\nGod from Nature we are still more embarrassed. We create a hiatus\nwhich we must find something to fill. We must invent a Devil upon\nwhom to saddle the evil that everywhere dogs the footsteps of the\ngood. So we have both a God and a Devil, or two gods, on our hands\ncontending with each other. Even our good friends in the churches\ntalk glibly of the God of Nature, or Nature\u2019s God, little heeding the\nterrible black depths that lie under their words.\n\nThe Nature that the poets sing and that nature-writers exploit is\nfar from being the whole story. When we think of Nature as meaning\nonly birds and flowers and summer breezes and murmuring streams, we\nhave only touched the hem of her garment--a garment that clothes\nthe whole world with the terrific and the destructive, as well as\nwith the beautiful and the beneficent. Yet her fairer forms and\ngentler influences are undoubtedly the expression of those forces and\nconditions that go hand in hand with the things that make for our\ndevelopment and well-being.\n\nProbably not till flowers bloomed and birds sang was the earth ripe\nfor man. Not till the bow appeared on the retreating storm-cloud\nwas anything like human life possible. Of savage, elemental Nature,\nblack in tempest and earthquake, hideous in war and pestilence, our\npoets and nature-students make little, while devout souls seem to\nexperience a cosmic chill when they think of these things.\n\nThe majority of persons, I fancy, when they consider seriously the\nproblem, look upon Nature as a sort of connecting link between man\nand some higher power, neither wholly good nor wholly bad; divine\nin some aspects, diabolical in others; ministering to our bodies,\nbut hampering and obstructing our souls. They see her a goddess one\nhour, and a fury the next; destroying life as freely as she gives it;\narming one form to devour another; crushing or destroying the fairest\nas soon as the ugliest; limited in her scope and powers, and not\ncomplete in herself, but demanding the existence of something above\nand beyond herself.\n\nUnder the influence of Christianity man has taken himself out of the\ncategory of natural things, both in his origin and in his destiny.\nSuch a gulf separates him from all other creatures, and his mastery\nover them is so complete that he looks upon himself as exceptional,\nand as belonging to another order. Nature is only his stepmother,\nand treats him with the harshness and indifference that often\ncharacterize that relation.\n\nWhen Wordsworth declared himself a worshiper of Nature, was he\nthinking of Nature as a whole, or only of an abridged and expurgated\nNature--Nature in her milder and more beneficent aspects? Was it not\nthe Westmoreland Nature of which he was a worshiper?--a sweet rural\nNature, with grassy fells and murmuring streams and bird-haunted\nsolitudes? What would have been his emotion in the desert, in the\narctic snows, or in the pestilential forests and jungles of the\ntropics? Very likely, just what the emotion of most of us would be--a\nfeeling that here are the savage and forbidding and hostile aspects\nof Nature against which we need to be on our guard. That creative eye\nand ear to which Wordsworth refers is what mainly distinguishes the\nattitude of the modern poet toward Nature from the ancient. Sympathy\nis always creative--\u201cthanks to the human heart by which we live.\u201d\n\nThe Wordsworthian Nature was of the subjective order; he found it\nin his own heart, in his dreams by his own fireside, in moments of\nsoul dilation on his Westmoreland hills, when the meanest flowers\nthat blow could bring to him \u201cthoughts that do often lie too deep for\ntears.\u201d\n\nThe Nature that to Wordsworth never betrays us, and to Milton was\n\u201cwise and frugal,\u201d is a humanized, man-made Nature. The Nature we\nknow and wrest our living from, and try to drive sharp bargains\nwith, is of quite a different order. It is no more constant than\ninconstant, no more wise and frugal than foolish and dissipated; it\nis not human at all, but unhuman.\n\nWhen we infuse into it our own idealism, or recreate it in our\nown image, then we have the Nature of the poets, the Nature that\nconsciously ministers to us and makes the world beautiful for our\nsake.\n\nWhen in his first book, \u201cNature,\u201d Emerson says that the aspect of\nNature is devout, like the figure of Jesus when he stands with bended\nhead and hands folded upon the breast, we see what a subjective and\nhumanized Nature, a Nature of his own creation, he is considering.\nHis book is not an interpretation of Nature, but an interpretation\nof his own soul. It is not Nature which stands in an attitude of\ndevotion with bowed head, but Emerson\u2019s own spirit in the presence\nof Nature, or of what he reads into Nature. Yet the Emerson soul\nis a part of Nature--a peculiar manifestation of its qualities and\npossibilities, developed through centuries of the interaction of man\nupon man, through culture, books, religion, meditation.\n\n\u201cThe ruin or the blank that we see when we look at Nature,\u201d he says,\n\u201cis in our own eye.\u201d Is it not equally true that the harmony and\nperfection that we see are in our own eye also? In fact, are not\nall the qualities and attributes which we ascribe to Nature equally\nthe creation of our own minds? The beauty, the sublimity, the power\nof Nature are experiences of the beholder. The drudge in the fields\ndoes not experience them, but the poet, the thinker, the seer,\ndoes. Nature becomes very real to us when we come to deal with her\npractically, when we seek her for specific ends, when we go to her to\nget our living. But when we go to her in the spirit of disinterested\nscience, the desert, the volcano, the path of the cyclone, are full\nof the same old meanings, the playground of the same old elements\nand forces. Nature is what we make her. In his Journal Emerson for a\nmoment sees Nature as she is: \u201cNature is a swamp, on whose purlieus\nwe see prismatic dew-drops, but her interiors are terrific.\u201d\n\nMan is the only creature that turns upon Nature and judges her; he\nturns upon his own body and mind and judges them; he judges the work\nof his own hands; he is critical toward all things that surround him;\nhe brings this faculty of judgment into the world.\n\nEmerson refers to \u201cthe great Nature in which we rest as the earth\nlies in the soft arms of the atmosphere.\u201d The earth lies in the soft\narms of the atmosphere in the same sense that it lies in the soft\narms of its own grasses and flowers; the atmosphere is an appendage\nof the earth. If the earth literally lies in anything, it is in the\nsoft arms of the all-pervasive ether. Emerson\u2019s statement is the\ninevitable poetizing of Nature in which we all indulge. We make soft\narms for our thoughts to lie in, and peaceful paths for our feet to\nwalk in, whatever the literal truth may be. This is the way of art,\nof poetry, of religion. The way of science and of practical life is\na different way. The soft arms become hard with purpose, and rest\nand contemplation give place to intense activity. I would not have\nthe poet change his way; Nature as reflected in his mind soothes and\ncharms us; it takes on hues from that light which never was on sea\nor land. But we cannot dispense with the way of science, which makes\npaths and highways for us through the wilderness of impersonal laws\nand forces that surge and roar around us. One gives us beauty and one\ngives us power; one brings a weapon to the hand, the other brings\nsolace to the spirit.\n\nWhen Bryant identifies God with tempests and thunderbolts, with\n\u201cwhirlwinds that uproot the woods and drown the villages,\u201d or with\nthe tidal wave that overwhelms the cities, \u201cwith the wrath of the\nmad, unchained elements\u201d--\u201ctremendous tokens of thy power\u201d--does\nhe make God more lovable or desirable? Well may he say, \u201cFrom\nthese sterner aspects of thy face, spare me and mine.\u201d By way of\ncontrast let me recall that when an earthquake shook California,\nJohn Muir cheered himself and friends by saying it was only Mother\nEarth trotting her children fondly upon her knee! If we identify\nGod with all of Nature, this wrathful Hebrew Jehovah of Bryant is a\nlegitimate conception. There are times when the aerial forces behave\nlike a raving maniac bent upon the destruction of the world--the\ninsensate powers run amuck upon all living things. This is not the\nGod we habitually love and worship, but it is a God from whom there\nis no escape. As the result of the inevitable action of the natural\nirrational or unrational forces, tempests and earthquakes and tidal\nwaves do not disturb us; but as the will and purpose of an Almighty\nBeing, Creator of heaven and earth, they give all pious souls a\nfearful shake-up. We take refuge in such phrases as \u201cthe inscrutable\nways of God,\u201d or \u201cthe mysteries of Providence,\u201d a Providence whose\nways are assuredly \u201cpast finding out.\u201d\n\nOur State Commissioner of Education, Dr. Finley, in an agricultural\naddress on \u201cPotatoes and Boys,\u201d showed God co\u00f6perating with the\nfarmer in a way that amused me. \u201cThe Almighty,\u201d the Commissioner\nsaid, \u201ccan make, unaided of man, potatoes, but only small potatoes,\nand of acrid taste. He had to make a primitive man and even teach\nhim to use a hoe, before He, the Omnipotent One, could grow a patch\nof potatoes.\u201d The wild potato, he implied, like the wild grape, the\nwild apple, the wild melon, was the work of God before he had man to\nhelp him; now, with man\u2019s help, we have all the improved varieties of\npotatoes and fruits. We have heard a good deal about the co\u00f6peration\nof man with God, and as a concrete example this potato-growing\npartnership is very interesting. How far from our habitual attitude\nof mind is the thought that the Higher Powers concern themselves\nabout our potatoes or our turnips or our pumpkin crop, or have any\npart or lot in it! Emerson in his Journal expresses another view:\n\u201cOne would think that God made fig-trees and dates, grapes and\nolives, but the Devil made Baldwin apples and pound pears, cherries\nand whortle berries, Indian corn and Irish potatoes.\u201d\n\nSir Thomas Browne called Nature the art of God. Viewed in this light\nwe get a new conception of Nature, the artistic conception. We do not\nask: Is it good or bad, for us or against us? we are intent on its\nsymbolical or ideal character. Through it God expresses himself as\nthe artist does, be he painter, poet, or musician, through his work,\nblending the various elements--the light and shade, the good and the\nbad, the positive and the negative--into a vital, harmonious whole.\nCreation becomes a picture, or a drama, or a symphony, in which\nall life plays its part, in which all scenes and conditions, all\nelemental processes and displays, play their part and unite to make\na vast artistic whole. The contradictions in life, the high lights,\nthe deep shadows, the imperfections, the neutral spaces, are but the\ndevices of the artist to enhance the total effect of his work. In\nethics and religion we ask of a thing: \u201cIs it good?\u201d In philosophy:\n\u201cIs it true?\u201d In science: \u201cIs it a fact, and verifiable?\u201d But in art\nwe ask: \u201cIs it beautiful?\u201d or \u201cIs it a real creation?\u201d \u201cIs it one\nwith the vital and flowing currents of the world?\u201d\n\nThe artist alone is the creator among men; he is disinterested; he\nhas no purpose but to rival Nature; he subordinates the parts to\nthe whole; he illustrates the divine law of indirections. The bald,\nliteral truth is not for him, but the illusive, the suggestive, the\nideal truth. He does not ask what life or Nature are for, or are they\ngood or bad, but he interprets them in terms of the relation of their\nparts, he reads them in the light of his own soul. He knows there\nis no picture without shadows, no music without discords, no growth\nwithout decay. The artist has \u201cno axe to grind\u201d; to him all is right\nwith the world, however out of joint it may be in our self-seeking\nlives. Art is synthetic, and puts a soul under the ribs of Death.\nScience is a straight line, but Art is symbolized by the curve.\n\nTo regard Nature, therefore, as the art of God, is to see it complete\nin itself; all the disharmonies vanish, all our perplexing problems\nare solved. The earth and the heavens are not for our private good\nalone, but for all other things. Opposites are blended. Good and\nbad are relative; heaven and hell are light and shade in the same\npicture. Our happiness or our misery are secondary; they are the\npigments on the painter\u2019s palette. The beauty of Nature is its\nharmony with our constitution; its terror emphasizes our weakness.\n\nWhere does the great artist get his laws of art but from his insight\ninto the spirit and method of Nature? They are reflected in his own\nheart; the act of creation repeats itself in his own handiwork. The\ntrue artist has no secondary aims--not to teach or to preach, nor\nto praise nor condemn; but to portray, and to show us, through the\nparticular, the road to the universal.\n\nEckermann reports Goethe as saying to him that \u201cNature\u2019s intentions\nare always good\u201d; but if questioned, Goethe would hardly have\nmaintained that the clouds, the winds, the streams, the tides,\ngravity, cohesion, and so on, have intentions of any sort, much less\nintentions directed to us or away from us. Even the wisest among\nus thus make man the aim and object of Nature. We impose our own\npsychology upon the very rock and trees.\n\nGoethe always read into Nature his own human traits; always when he\nspeaks of her he speaks as an artist and poet. He says to Eckermann\nthat Nature \u201cis always true, always serious, always severe; she is\nalways right, and the errors and faults are always those of man. The\nman who is incapable of appreciating her, she despises; and only to\nthe apt, the pure, the true, does she resign herself and reveal her\nsecrets. The understanding will not reach her; man must be capable\nof elevating himself to the highest Reason to come into that contact\nwith the Divinity which manifests in the primitive phenomena which\ndwell behind them and from which they proceed. The divinity works\nin the living, not in the dead; in the becoming and changing, not\nin the become and the fixed. Therefore, reason, with its tendency\ntoward the divine, has only to do with the becoming, the living; but\nunderstanding has to do with the become, the already fixed, that\nit may make use of it.\u201d In this last we see the germ of Bergson\u2019s\nphilosophy. The divinity that dwells behind phenomena, and from which\nthey proceed, is the attempt of the human mind to find the end of\nthat which has no end, the law of causation.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nEACH FOR ITS OWN SAKE\n\n      \u201cProud man exclaims, \u2018See all things for my use!\u2019\n      \u2018See all for mine,\u2019 replies the pampered goose.\u201d\n\n\nAnd the pampered goose was right: all things are just as much for her\nuse as for man\u2019s, while there are reasonable doubts whether things\nwere created for the especial use of either.\n\nMan, like the goose, appropriates what suits him, but is slow to\nrealize the fact that what suits him, or is fitted to his use,\ndepends upon his own powers of adaptation. We can say that he suits\nit, rather than that it suits him. He has lungs because there is air,\nand eyes because there are certain vibrations in the ether. In short,\nnature is the primary fact, and the forms and organs of life the\nsecondary fact.\n\nGoethe said to Eckermann that he followed Kant in looking upon each\ncreature as existing for its own sake. He could not believe, he said,\nthat the cork-trees grow merely that we might stop our bottles, and,\nhe might have added, that rubber-trees grow that we might have rubber\novershoes. The lady in a public audience who once asked me what flies\nare for, evidently thought that God had made a mistake in creating\nthat which annoyed her. I was pleased with a remark of John Muir\u2019s\nin his Sierra book about the poison-ivy: \u201cLike most other things\nnot apparently useful to man,\u201d he says, \u201cit has few friends, and the\nblind question, \u2018Why was it made?\u2019 goes on and on with never a guess\nthat first of all it might have been made for itself.\u201d Coming from\nthe mouth of a Scotch Presbyterian, this is heretical doctrine. Muir\nhad evidently forgotten his early training.\n\nIt is possible for man to make use of poison-ivy; in fact it is used\nin medicine; but who shall dare to say that it was made for that?\nFlies and poison ivy and all other noxious and harmful things are\neach and all for their own sakes. They were not made in the sense\nthat we make things. They have come to be what we now find them\nthrough the action and interaction of a thousand complex influences.\nEach has found its place in the scheme of living things, and each\nacts directly or indirectly upon other forms--is of use to them,\nor the reverse. Ten thousand things are of use to man, and as many\nmore of no use to him, but to measure all things by his standard of\nutility is childish, or to ask what mosquitoes and rattlesnakes are\nfor, with an implied impeachment of Nature if they are not of service\nto man, is an idle question. The water and the air are indispensable\nto life, but these things are older than life. Life is adapted to\nthem, and not they to it.\n\nThe body is full of fluids because earth and air are full of water.\nFrom our standpoint man is at the head of animate nature, but the\nrest of creation is no more exclusively for him than for the least\nof living things. The good of the world is for whatever or whoever\ncan use it. Houseflies are undoubtedly the enemy of the human race;\nso are mosquitoes, so are venomous snakes, so are many forms of\nbacteria, and a thousand other things. Our egotism prompts us to ask,\n\u201cWhy is evil in the world, anyhow?\u201d But our evil may be the good of\nsome other creature. Our defeat means the triumph of our enemy. It\nis through this conflict of good and evil, or of things that are for\nus with things that are against us, that species are developed and\nperpetuated.\n\nWhat kind of a world would it be without what we call evil, without\nhindrances? To the farmer drought, flood, tornadoes, untimely frosts\nare evils which he thinks he could well dispense with, but so far\nas they make a greater struggle necessary, so far as they lead to\nmore self-denial, greater forethought, and so on, they are good in\ndisguise. Hardy, virile characters, like tough timber, in oaks, are\ndeveloped by unfriendly and opposing forces. Intemperance, greed,\ncheating, lying, war, are evils in the social and business world;\nbut they teach us the value of their opposites. We react from them.\nIt is a child\u2019s question to ask, for example, \u201cWould the world not\nhave been better had there never been any war?\u201d because, since\nmankind is what it is, wars are inevitable. The absence of wars, as\nof intemperance, greed, cheating, implies a different mankind, and a\ndifferent mankind implies a different system of things.\n\nThe problem of evil is the problem of life; no evil, no life. The\nworld is thus made. Nature is not half good and half bad; she is\nwholly good, or wholly bad, according to our relation to her. Fire\nand flood are bad when they master us, and good when we master and\ncontrol them. Great good has come out of war, and great evil. The\nevil always tends to drop out or be obliterated, as the path of\ncyclones and earthquakes tend to be overgrown and forgotten. Burned\ncities often rise from their ashes to new life. The effects of evil\nare finally obliterated; malignant forces have their day, benignant\nforces go on forever. The world of life, let me repeat, would not be\nhere were not the balance of the account of good and evil on the side\nof the good, or if good did not come out of evil.\n\nLife is recuperative; if it falls down, it picks itself up again.\nIf a state is devastated by war, in time the cities and towns are\nrebuilt, and the ranks of peace and industry refilled, though the\ngrowth and civilization of that country may have had a terrible\nset-back, and the whole progress of the race be retarded. Evil\nperishes. The terrible World War, set going by Germany, has depleted\nthe wealth, the life, the well-being of the whole European world, but\nas the scars it made upon the landscape will in time be effaced,\nso its effect upon the life of the states and communities will fade\nand be a memory only. Still the evils it entailed are none the less\ndeplorable. Its heritage of hate, of devastated homes, of depleted\ntreasures, will long continue.\n\nLife, then, in all its forms is for its own sake. It is an end in\nitself. Many things are inimical to us, and we are equally inimical\nto many things. We lay the whole of Nature under contribution so far\nas we can, and we curb and defeat her hostile forces so far as we\ncan, but the world was no more made for man than it was made for mice\nand midges. When we see how irrespective of us the natural forces go\ntheir way, that we can ride them and guide them only as we do wild\nhorses--by being quicker and more masterful than they are--when we\nknow that they will tread us down with the same indifference that\nwe tread down the grass and the weeds, the facts should temper and\nmodify our egotism. When we look into the depths of merely our own\nsolar system, and see vast globes like Jupiter and Saturn, so much\nolder and greater than our little earth, and not yet the abode of any\nform of life, and probably not within millions of years of such a\nstate, how casual and insignificant man seems! How far from being the\nend and object of creation!\n\nDoubtless there are numberless worlds and whole systems of worlds in\nthe depths of sidereal space upon which life has never appeared, and\nnumberless other worlds and systems upon which it has had its day\nand gone out forever. Life is but an incident in the total scheme of\nthings.\n\nTo ask what this or that is for, with reference to ourselves, and\nto conclude that some one or something has blundered if it is not\nof positive use to us, is, let me repeat, to see and to think as\na child. We know what the hooks on the burdock and the stick-seed\nare for, and what the wings on the maple and the ash-seed are for,\nbut do we know what the stings on the nettle, or the spines on\nthe blackberry or on the thorn-apple tree are for? The cattle eat\nthe nettle, the birds eat the berries, and the wild creatures eat\nthe thorn-apple. How could their seeds get sown if the prickles\nand thorns defended them against wild life? Spines and thorns\nseem expressive of moods or conditions in Nature, and to be quite\nindependent of use, as we understand the term.\n\nNature\u2019s ways are so unlike our ways! Her system of economics would\nsoon bring us to bankruptcy. She has no rival, no competitor, no\nsingle end in view, no more need to store up wealth than to scatter\nit. One form gains what another form loses. Humanly speaking, she is\nalways trying to defeat herself. The potato-bug, if left alone, would\nexterminate the potato and so exterminate itself; the currant-worm\nwould exterminate the currant; the forest worms would exterminate\nthe forests, did not parasites appear and check these ravages.\nNature trumps her own trick; she scuttles her own ship; she mines\nher own defenses; she poisons her own fountains; she sows tares in\nher own wheat; and yet she wins, because she is the All. The tares\nare hers, the parasites are hers, the devastating storms and floods\nare hers, the earthquakes and volcanoes are hers, disease and death\nare hers, as well as youth and health. The cancer that eats into a\nman\u2019s vitals--what keeps it going but Nature\u2019s forces and fluids?\nThe bacteria that flourish in our bodies and bring the scourges of\ntyphoid fever, diphtheria, tuberculosis, are all hers, and a part\nof her system of things. A malignant tumor is as much an expression\nof Providence as is a baby or a flower. Nature cuts the ground from\nunder her own feet; she saws off the limb upon which she is perched,\nbut if she falls, she alights in her own lap.\n\nIn walking through a blighted potato-field this morning, I said,\n\u201cHere is one form of vegetable life destroying another form and\nbringing loss and discontent to the farmer\u2019s heart.\u201d What purpose in\nthe economy of Nature is served by this blight? Who or what is the\ngainer? After the minute organisms that prey upon the potato-vines\nhave done their work, they too perish, so that two forms of life are\nblotted out. What was it all for? Why is this tragedy of one form of\nlife bringing to naught other forms, which we witness on every hand,\nin vegetable and animal life, and in human history, being constantly\nenacted? The question, put in this way, is a purely human one; it\nis applying to the vast scheme of creation purely human standards.\nWe instinctively ask the why and the wherefore of things, and in\nour practical lives try to avoid letting one hand defeat the other\nas Nature does in the above incident. We guard one form of life\nagainst another hostile form. Our aim is to make things pull together\nfor our own advantage. We seek to check the ravages of the tent\ncaterpillar, the forest worms, the gypsy moth, the potato-beetle,\nand the invisible enemies that rot our grapes and mar our apples, as\nwell as the germs that sow fatal diseases in our midst. But not so\nNature. She does not take sides. As I have said, she has no special\nand limited aims. The stakes are hers, whoever wins. One condition of\nthe season favors the growth of the potato-vines; another condition\nfavors the development of the fungus that destroys them. Nature is\njust as much on the side of the rat as on the side of the cat; she\narms each to defeat the other, and the fittest survives. She has not\ngiven the rabbit strength or ferocity, but she has given her speed\nand a sleepless eye and great fecundity, and her enemies do not cut\nher off.\n\nThe struggle and competition of life go on everywhere. But life is\nnot all a struggle; it is unity and co\u00f6peration as well. The trees of\nthe forest protect one another; one form of life profits by another\nform.\n\nIn the whole drama of organic nature we find waste and prodigality.\nOur economics are set at naught by the power that works to no\nspecial ends, but to all ends, and finds its account in the tumor\nthat eats up the man, as much as in the man himself, in the fungi\nthat destroy the potato crop, or the chestnut-trees, as truly as in\nthese things themselves. Yet behold what specialization and what\ndevelopment has taken place in spite of these cross-purposes, this\nchaos of conflicting interests! Out of discord has come harmony; out\nof conflict has come peace; out of death has come life; out of the\nreptile has come the bird; out of the beast has come man; out of\nthe savage has come the moral conscience; out of the tribe has come\nthe nation; out of tyranny has come democracy. It is the waste, the\ndelays, the pain, the price to be paid, that appall us.\n\nWe must regard creation as a whole, as the evolution of worlds and\nsystems, and not concentrate our attention upon man and his ways, or\nupon the earth--so small a part of our solar system.\n\nOur benevolent institutions are not types of the universe; our idea\nof fatherhood does not fit the Eternal.\n\nOur fathers had a complete and consistent explanation of the\nproblem of evil that so perplexes us. They invented or postulated\ntwo opposing and contending principles in the world--one divine,\nthe other diabolical. One they named God, the other, Satan. Their\nconception of God would not allow them to saddle all the evil and\nmisery of the world upon him; they had to look for a scapegoat, and\nthey found him in the Devil. One is just as necessary to a consistent\ncosmogony as the other. If we must have an all-wise, all-merciful,\nall-powerful, all-loving God--the author of all good and the\ncontemner of all evil--we must also have a god of the opposite type,\nthe great mischief-maker and enemy of human happiness--the author of\nwar, pestilence, famine, disease, and of all that hinders and defeats\nthe reign of the perfect good. Without the conception of the Devil,\nwe are forced to the conclusion, either that God is not omnipotent,\nor that he is responsible for all the sin and suffering in the world.\nIf you make man this Devil, then who made man?\n\nWrestle with the problem as we may, we are impaled on one or the\nother horn of the dilemma. Our traditional God is more cruel and more\nindifferent to human suffering than any tyrant that ever gloated over\nhuman blood and agony, or else he is fearfully limited in his power\nfor good.\n\nWith a Devil at our disposal to whom we can impute the evils of life,\nthe situation clears up, and God emerges, shorn of his omnipotence,\nit is true, but still the symbol of goodness and love.\n\nIn our day the Devil has lost his prestige and is much discredited.\nAs a power in men\u2019s minds his reign is over, and hell, his\nheadquarters, no longer casts its lurid light upon human life.\n\nIn an equal measure the old Hebraic conception of God as a\nmuch-magnified man, the king and ruler of heaven and earth, with\nheaven as his throne, has gone out. God is now little more than a\nname for that tendency or power in the universe which makes for\nrighteousness, and which has brought evolution thus far on its course.\n\nTo account for the world as we find it, we are compelled to look\nupon it as the inevitable result of the clashing and interaction of\npurely natural forces resulting in both so-called good and evil; that\nis, in what is favorable to life, and in what is against life. But\nas life is adaptive and assimilative, it slowly turns the evil into\ngood, of course at the expense of delays and waste and suffering, and\nthus development becomes possible, and man, after untold millions of\nyears, appears.\n\nWhen we look forth upon the universe, what do we see? When we look\nupon the non-living world, we see a mere welter and chaos of material\nforces--a conflict of chemical and physical principles seeking a\nstable equilibrium--water running, winds blowing, mountains decaying,\nstars and systems whirling, suns waning or waxing, nebul\u00e6 condensing,\nvast orbs colliding, and all issuing in a certain order and system\nunder the rule of purely mechanical and mathematical laws. The\nstellar universe is a vast machine, amenable to the measurements and\ncalculations of the astronomers. The eclipses all occur exactly on\ntime, and the planets revolve in their orbits without the untruth, as\nWhitman says, of a single second. The disorder and disruptions which\noccur are inside of vast fundamental laws. Our mountains and seas are\nshaken by earthquakes, and the earth\u2019s surface is swept by cyclones\nand the seashores are devastated by tidal waves, yet these things are\nonly phases of the effort toward a fixed equilibrium. The earth\u2019s\nsurface as we now behold it, the distribution of land and water,\nof mountain and plain, the procession of the seasons, our whole\nweather system, the friendly and the unfriendly forces, are all the\noutcome of this clash and stress of the physical forces, which make a\nparadise of some places and the opposite of others.\n\nWhen we look upon the living world as revealed in the geologic\nrecord, we still see a kind of welter and chaos, but we also see\nthe advent of new principles not entirely subject to mechanical\nand mathematical laws. Life goes its way and takes liberties with\nits physical environment. Living bodies change and develop as the\nnon-living do not. The various organic forms \u201crise on stepping-stones\nof their dead selves,\u201d and incalculably slow transformations of lower\nforms into higher take place, but not without appalling delays and\nwaste and suffering. Chemical and mechanical laws are still in full\nforce, but they appear to be in the service of a new principle; an\norganizing tendency of a new kind is at work in the world; chance and\nnecessity seem to play a less conspicuous part. Yet there is nothing\nthat meets our idea of justice, or mercy, or economy of effort.\n\nFor millions upon millions of years the earth swarmed with low, all\nbut brainless creatures. The monsters of sea and land that appeared\nin the middle period were huge and terrible in body and limb, but\nvery small in capacity of brain. Huge ganglions, or knots of nervous\ntissue, in different parts of their bodies seem to have served as\na substitute for a centralized brain and a complex nervous system.\nThe brontosaurus, seventy feet long, with a body weighing many\ntons, had a brain not much larger than a man\u2019s double fists. Brains\nas yet played a very subordinate part in the world. Reptiles and\nhalf-reptiles possessed the earth. The age of mammals was as yet only\nhinted at. But after long geologic ages, mammals came to the front,\nholding the precious possibility of man, and reptiles were relegated\nto the rear. The animal brain increased, wit began to get the better\nof brute force, and the small and feeble ancestors of man appeared in\nthe biological drama. They were like small and timid supernumeraries\nskulking or hiding on the wings of the stage. Lemurs and monkeys\nappeared long before there were any signs of the anthropoid apes, and\nthe anthropoid apes were in evidence long before the first rude man\nappeared.\n\nIn all the vast stretch of geologic and biologic time, do we see any\nevidence of the active existence of the God and the Devil of our\nfathers? Not unless we identify them with the material forces that\nthen ruled and shaped the world, and these forces, by any other name,\nare of the same impersonal, impartial, unforgiving character as is\ndisclosed in our dealings with them to-day.\n\nWhen we turn to the higher forms of organic life, especially to\nman and his history, what do we see? We still behold the same\ntrial-and-error method, the same cruelty, waste, delays, and\nsuffering that we behold in the lower forms. We see progress, we see\nthe growth of ethical principles, we see man\u2019s increasing mastery\nover the forces of nature and over himself, but in the competition\nof races and nations, the race is still to the swift and the battle\nto the strong. We see a high standard of individual morality\ncontending with a low standard of international morality. We still\nsee civilized nations looking upon treaties as \u201cscraps of paper\u201d;\nwe see them regarding their neighbors as rivals and enemies; we see\nmillions of men that have not the shadow of a grievance against one\nanother, fiercely trying to slay one another, and praying to the\nsame God for victory. We see the nefarious doctrine that physical\nmight makes moral right written in lines of blood and fire across\nthe face of whole kingdoms; we see the legitimate competitions of\npeace and industry turned into the strife of armed conquest; we see\na small and peaceful nation trampled underfoot by a big nation bent\nupon plunder and conquest; we see hatred toward a kindred nation\nglorified, and the murder of innocent women and children and other\nnon-combatants adopted as a fixed policy; in fact, we see all the\nvast resources of science and of modern civilization wedded to the\nspirit of the Hun, and turned loose in a war for world-dominion.\nThe results of eighteen centuries of Christian culture come off the\nGerman nation like a whitewash in this craze and fury of the military\nspirit; the German people stand revealed as at heart unmitigated\nbarbarians, wonderfully efficient, but wonderfully inhuman. If we\nappeal to the supernatural to account for things, we certainly\nneed a Devil, if not several of them, to account for the temper of\nthe German mind during the late war. No wonder the good people are\nlosing faith, and are shocked and dismayed at the thought that their\nall-loving, omnipotent God permits these things.\n\nDown the whole course of history we see no other powers at work than\nthose that are about us. Good is in the ascendancy everywhere, or\nsoon will be; evil dies out; the wicked cease from troubling; the\namelioration of mankind goes on; and no God or Devil hinders or\nfavors.\n\nNature is both God and Devil, and natural law is supreme in\nthe world. The moral consciousness of man,--all our dreams of\nperfection, of immortality, of the good, the beautiful, the true, all\nour veneration and our religious aspirations,--this is Nature, too.\n\nMan is a part of the universe; all that we call good in him, and all\nthat we call bad, are a part of the universe. The God he worships is\nhis own shadow cast upon the heavens, and the Devil he fears is his\nown shadow likewise. The divine is the human, magnified and exalted;\nthe Satanic is the human, magnified and debased.\n\nWe find God in Nature by projecting ourselves there; we find him in\nthe course of history by reading our own ideals into human events;\nwe find him in our daily lives by listening to the whisperings of\nour own inherited and acquired consciences, and by dwelling upon the\nfatality that rules our lives.\n\nWe had nothing to do with our appearance here in this world, or\nwith the form our bodies take, or with our temperaments, and, only\nin a degree, with our dispositions. Some power other than ourselves\nbrought us here and maintains us here for a period, as it brought\nhere and maintains all other forms of life; but, I repeat, that\npower is inseparable from the physical and chemical forces, and goes\nits way whether we prosper or perish. Yet it is more positive than\nnegative, more for us than against us, else we should not be here.\n\nWhere does man get his ethical standards? Where does he get his\neyes, his ears, his heart? He gets them where he got his life--from\nnatural sources. He gets them whence he got his sense of art, of\nbeauty, of harmony. There are no moral standards in Nature apart from\nman, but as man is a part of Nature, so are these, and all other\nstandards. So are all religions, arts, literatures, philosophies,\nheroisms, self-denials, as well as all idolatries, superstitions,\nsorceries, cruelties, wrongs, failures, a part of Nature.\n\nIs the big-brained man of to-day any less a part of Nature than the\nlow-browed, long-jawed man of Pliocene times?\n\nThe humanization of God leads us into many difficulties. If He is a\npersonal being with attributes and emotions like our own, then we\nare forced to the conclusion that He is no better than we are--that\nHe has our faults as well as our virtues, our cruelty as well as\nour love. He is a party to all the wrongs and crimes and suffering\nthat darken the earth; He permits wars and pestilence and famine\nand earthquakes and tornadoes, and all the consuming and agonizing\ndiseases that flesh is heir to. He is an infinite man with infinite\npowers for good and evil.\n\nIn the long drama of animal evolution there has evidently been as\nmuch suffering as pleasure, and of the drama of human history the\nsame may be said: pain, failure, delay, injustice, to all of which\nour humanized God has been a party. No wonder our fathers struggled\nover the problem of the ways of God to man. As soon as they put\nthemselves in his place, they felt the need of some grounds upon\nwhich to justify his dealings with the beings He had created. But\nthey searched, and their descendants still search, in vain. If we see\nGod as a man, no matter how mighty, He is still guilty of what few\nfinite men would be guilty. What men would be guilty of permitting\nthe sin and misery that fill the world at this, or any other, time?\n\nThe Nature God neither sends calamities nor wills them--they are an\ninevitable part of the growth and development of things; they are\neddies in the stream of forces. What we call evil is evil only from\nour point of view; evil is a human word and not the word of the\nInfinite. If the world were something made by a Maker external to\nit, then it were pertinent to ask, Why not make it a better world?\nWhy not leave out pain and sin and all other phases of evil? But\nthe world is not something made, and it did not have a Maker, as\nwe use those words. The universe _is_, and always has been, \u201cfrom\neverlasting to everlasting,\u201d and man is a part of it, and his life\nis subject to the same vicissitudes as the rest of creation. Man has\ncome into this sense of right and wrong, of justice and mercy, of\ntruth and falsehood, of good and evil, as necessary conditions of\nhis development, but those things are not absolute; they pertain to\nhim alone. The physical forces break out of their natural bounds\nand run riot for a season; the human forces do the same thing and\ngive rise to various excesses. The crimes and misdemeanors of man\nare exceptional as the outbreaks in nature are exceptional. They\nrelate man to nature and show how the same plan runs through both. A\nworld with storm and the warring and violence of the elements left\nout would be a radically different world--an impossible world. And a\nworld of man, a Quaker world, is equally impossible.\n\nIf some being of infinite wisdom and love had made the world and made\nman to live in it, we could ask him some embarrassing questions;\nbut, let me repeat, the world was not made, it is only a link in a\nchain of cosmic events, and it is not for man any more than for any\nother creature. Each must \u201cwork out his own salvation, with fear and\ntrembling.\u201d\n\nIntroduce design into nature and you humanize it and get into\ndifficulties at once. It is above design. We have no language in\nwhich to speak the ultimate truth, no language in which to describe\nthe character and the doings of the Infinite. The ways of the\nInfinite are not only past finding out, they are unspeakable by\nreason of our finite relations to them. We cannot arraign the Nature\nGod. It does not design, nor make, nor govern, nor employ means to\nends, as do the man-made gods. It _is_. All things are a part of\nits infinite complexity. Nature rests forever in itself. It neither\nfails nor succeeds. In itself it is neither good nor evil, neither\ndivine nor devilish; it is all things to all men, because they are\nall things to it. It is neither one nor many; it is the Infinite. In\nthese vain attempts to define or describe the indefinable I have no\nlanguage but that of the finite, no language but that of our limited\nor circumscribed relation to the world of concrete and fragmentary\nthings. Hence I am constantly like the plains ranger caught by his\nown lasso, or the angler caught by his own hook.\n\nEmerson said that in trying to define the Eternal we need a language\nthat differs from our everyday speech as much as algebra differs\nfrom arithmetic. Outside of the physical organism there is neither\npleasure nor pain, good nor bad, light nor dark, sound nor silence,\nheat nor cold, big nor little, hard nor soft; all these things are\nbut words in which we describe our sensations. When there is no ear,\nthere is no sound, but only motion in the air; when there is no eye,\nthere is no light or color, but only motion in the ether; when there\nare no nerves, there is no heat or cold, but only motion, more or\nless, in the molecules of matter. Degrees and differences belong to\nthe region of our finite minds. In trying to define or state the\nInfinite, we are off the sphere, outside the realm of experience, and\nour words have no meaning.\n\nIt is the circular or orbicular character of creation that baffles\nus. We cannot fit the sphere into the triangles and parallelograms\nof the terms of our experience. We cannot square the circle of\nInfinity. The terms \u201clove,\u201d \u201canger,\u201d \u201cmercy,\u201d \u201cfatherhood,\u201d do not\napply to God any more than \u201cover\u201d or \u201cunder,\u201d or \u201cbeginning\u201d or\n\u201cend,\u201d apply to the sphere. In regard to God, the language of science\nand mathematics is one with the language of worship and ecstasy.\n\nI find I have never been burdened by a sense of my duty to God.\nMy duty to my fellow-men and to myself is plain enough, but the\nword is not adequate to express any relation I may hold to the\nEternal. Do I owe any duty to gravity without which I could not\nmove or lift my hand, or any duty to the sunshine or to the rains\nand the winds? Instinctively, unconsciously, for the most part we\nobey the law of gravity, and instinctively we adjust ourselves to\nall the natural forces, not from a sense of duty, but from a sense\nof self-preservation. These things are a part of our lives and not\nsomething to which we hold only a casual and precarious or external\nrelation. My relation to the Eternal is not that of an inferior to\na superior, or of a beneficiary to his benefactor, or of a subject\nto his king. It is that of the leaf to the branch, of the fruit to\nthe tree, of the babe in the womb to its mother. It is a vital and\nan inevitable relation. It cannot be broken. It is not a matter of\nwill or choice. We are embosomed in the Eternal Beneficence, whether\nwe desire it or not. Those good persons who go through life looking\nupon the Eternal as a power external to themselves, saluting him as\nthe soldier salutes his officer, are not as truly religious as they\nthink they are. The old conception of an external God, the supreme\nruler of the universe, with whom Moses talked and walked and even\nsaw the hinder parts of, is out of date in our time. Still the\noverarching thought of the Infinite and the Eternal, in whom we live\nand move and have our being, must at times awaken in the minds of all\nof us, and lend dignity and sobriety to our lives.\n\nBut the other world fades as this world brightens. Science has made\nthis world so interesting and wonderful, and our minds find such\nscope in it for the exercise of all their powers, that thoughts of\nanother world are becoming foreign to us. We shall never exhaust the\nbeauties and the wonders and the possibilities of this. To feel at\nhome on this planet, and that it is, with all its drawbacks, the best\npossible world, I look upon as the supreme felicity of life.\n\nWhen we look at it in its mere physical and chemical aspects, its\nplay of forces, tangible and intangible, its reservoir of energy,\nits \u201cjourneying of atoms,\u201d its radiating electrons, its magnetic\ncurrents, its transmutations and cycles of change, its hidden but\npotent activities, its streaming auroras, its changing seasons, its\nmyriad forms of life, and a thousand other things--all make it a\nunique and most desirable habitation.\n\nWhen we consider it in its astronomical aspects as a celestial body\nfloating in the luminiferous ether as in a sea, held in leash by the\nsun, and as sensitive to its changes as the poplar leaf to the wind,\nvast beyond our power to visualize, yet only a grain of sand on the\nshores of the Infinite, an evening or a morning star to the beings on\nother planets, if there are such, mottled with shining seas or green\nand white continents and canopied with many-hued cloud draperies, and\nexisting in closest intimacies with the wonders and the potencies of\nthe sidereal heavens--a veritable fruit on the vast sidereal tree of\nlife--when we realize all this, and more, can we conceive of a more\ndesirable or a better-founded and better-furnished world? The voyage\nwe make upon it may be a long one; if we claim the century of life\nwhich Nature seems to have allotted us on conditions, we shall travel\nabout thirty-six billions of miles in our annual voyages around the\nsun, and how many more millions with the sun around his sun, we know\nnot. A world made of the common stuff of the universe, a handful of\nthe dust of the cosmos, yet thrilling with life, producing the race\nof man, evolving the brain of Plato, of Aristotle, of Bacon, the soul\nof Emerson, of Whitman, the heart of Christ--a heavenly abode surely.\nLet us try to make amends for depreciating it, for spurning it, for\nsurrendering it to the Devil, and for turning from it in search of a\nbetter.\n\nOur religion is at fault, our saints have betrayed us, our\ntheologians have blackened and defaced our earthly temple, and\nswapped it off for cloud mansions in the Land of Nowhere. The heavens\nembrace us always; the far-off is here, close at hand; the ground\nunder your door-stone is a part of the morning star. If we could only\npull ourselves up out of our absorption in trivial affairs, out of\nthe petty turmoil of our practical lives, and see ourselves and our\nworld in perspective and as a part of the celestial order, we could\ncease to weep and wail over our prosaic existence.\n\nThe astronomic view of our world, and the Darwinian view of our lives\nmust go together. As one came out of the whirling, fiery nebul\u00e6, so\nthe other came out of the struggling, slowly evolving, biological\nworld of the unicellular life of the old seas.\n\nBiologic time sets its seal upon one, and cosmic time upon the other.\nDignity and beauty and meaning are given to our lives when we see far\nenough and wide enough, when we see the forces that minister to us,\nand the natural order of which we form a part.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nTHE UNIVERSAL BENEFICENCE\n\n\nThat bodies rise in the air does not disprove gravity; on the\ncontrary, it proves it. The pull of gravity never lets go of the\nbullet from the gun; no matter how high or how far it goes, down it\ncomes, sometime, somewhere.\n\nThere is no force when there is nothing to resist force. The force\nof the chemical reaction in the gun on the explosion of the powder\nis hurled back by the mass and resistance of the gun, and sends the\nbullet high or far, but does not for a second break its hold upon\nit. Smoke rises because the air falls; clouds float because of the\ngreater weight of something beneath them. The river flows because its\nbanks do not.\n\nThe goodness of nature is the universal fact, like gravity, and its\nevils and enmities and hindrances only prove the law.\n\nThe waters of the globe seek their level, seek to reach a haven\nof everlasting repose; but behold how that purpose is forever\nfrustrated, and the currents never cease. It is as if the creeks and\nrivers never reached the sea; they are traveling that way forever;\nit is as if the great ocean currents and submarine Amazons and\nMississippis were seeking an escape which they never find; their\nquest is ever renewed. Nature is Nature because her work is never\ncomplete; her journey is never ended; the fixity and equilibrium\nwhich her elements appear to seek, is ever deferred; life can\nappear and go on only in a changing, unstable world, and it is\nthis flux and mutability of things that bring all our woe, and all\nour joy as well. If winds did not blow, and bodies fall, and fire\nconsume, and floods overpower, if the equilibrium of things were not\nperpetually broken,--which opens the door to all our troubles and\ndisasters,--where should we find the conditions of our life?\n\nLife has appeared in an unstable world, and is conditioned upon this\ninstability. Fixity means death. It is in the line of organic effort\nthat living forms appear; it is in an imperfect world that we strive\nfor the perfection that we never reach. Blessed be the fact that our\ncapacity for life, for happiness, is always greater than the day\nyields. Satiety checks effort.\n\nThe Nature Providence is stern and even cruel in some of its dealings\nwith us, but not in all, else we should run away from home. It is\ngenial and friendly in the genial season--in a June meadow, in a\nfield of ripening grain, in an orchard bending with fruit, in the\ncattle on a thousand hills, in the shade of the friendly trees, in\nthe bubbling springs, in the paths by the green fields and by still\nwaters, and in ten thousand other aspects of its manifold works.\nIt is not friendly in the tropical jungles, nor amid the snows and\nblizzards of the polar regions, but upon four fifths of the surface\nof the globe it may be said to be friendly or neutral. Man is armed\nto face its hostile aspects and to turn its very wrath to account.\nIf God maketh the wrath of man to praise Him, so man maketh the\nwrath of God to serve him, as when he subdues and controls Nature\u2019s\ndestructive forces, tames the lightning and harnesses Niagara. He has\nnot bound the cyclone yet, nor warmed himself by the volcano, nor\nmoved mountains from his path with the earthquake, but he may do it\nyet. He is fast drawing the fangs of contagious diseases, thus adding\nto his length of days.\n\nThe Nature Providence working in man and through him has made the\nworld more fit for man\u2019s abode.\n\nAction and reaction are the steps by which life ascends. Nature acts\nupon man and man reacts upon nature. The labor the farmer puts into\nthe soil comes back to him with interest, and enables him to labor\nmore. The capital of life grows in that way; action and reaction; up\nwe go.\n\n\u201cAre God and Nature then at strife?\u201d asks Tennyson, baffled and\nunsettled by what he sees about him. There is strife in the living\nworld, the struggle of existence. In the non-living, there is\ncollision, disruption, overthrow. The apparent strife between the two\nworlds is an effort toward adjustment on the part of the living--to\nmaster and utilize the non-living. The inorganic goes its way under\nthe leash of physical laws, heedless of the organic. Myriads of\nliving things are crushed and destroyed by the ruthless onward\nflow of the non-living. There is life in the world because life is\nplastic and persistent and adaptive, and perpetually escapes from\nthe blind forces that would destroy it--the winds, the floods, the\nfrost, the heat, gravity, earthquakes, chemical reactions, and so on.\nEvery living thing runs the gantlet of the insensate mechanical and\nchemical forces. But this is not strife in our human sense; it is the\ndiscipline of nature. No living thing could begin or continue without\nthese forces which at times are so hostile. Like faithful gardeners\npreparing the seed-beds, they prepared the earth for the abode of man\nand all other living forms. They made the soil, they bring the rains,\nthey begat the winds, they prearranged all the conditions of life;\nbut life itself is a mystery, the great mystery, super-mechanical,\nsuper-chemical, dependent upon these forces, but not begotten by\nthem. They are its servants.\n\nThe struggle in the world of living forms is a condition of\ndevelopment, growing things are made strong by the force of the\nobstacles they overcome.\n\nFrom our limited human point of view there are phases of creation\nthat make it look like a game between intelligent contending forces,\nor as if one god tried to undo the work of another god, or at\nleast to mar and hinder his work--some mischievous and malignant\nspirit that sows tares amid the wheat, that retards development,\nthat invents parasites, that produces the malformed, that scatters\nthe germs of disease. How much at heart Nature seems to have the\nproduction and well-being of offspring, yet what failures there are!\nin the human realm the deformed, the monstrous, the idiotic. It seems\nas if all things in heaven and earth had a stake in a perfect baby\nand in its growth and development. A land swarming with beautiful and\nhappy children should make the very stars rejoice. Motherhood itself\nis a beautiful and divine symbol, yet what perils attend it! In many\ncases mother and child sink into the same grave. Then along comes\nsome malignant spirit and sows the germs of infantile paralysis,\nand great numbers of children perish, and still greater numbers are\ncrippled and deformed for life. What a miscarriage of nature is that!\nWhat a calamity, and unmitigated evil!\n\nWhen an insect stings a leaf or plant-stalk and the plant forthwith\nbuilds a cradle and nursery for the young of the insect, that is one\nform of life using another form; or when a parasitical bird, such as\nthe European cuckoo, or our cowbird, lays its egg in the nest of\nanother bird, that is the same thing--life is still triumphant. But\nwhen the germs of a contagious disease--tuberculosis, diphtheria,\nscarlet fever--invade the human system and finally result in its\ndestruction, then dissolution is triumphant; all this delicately\nand elaborately organized matter comes to naught. In this we see\nthe failure of the tendency or impulsion in matter which results\nin organization--the mystery and the miracle of vitality, as\nTyndall called it, and the triumph of the contrary impulse or\ndisorganization, unless we regard the destructive and death-dealing\ngerms themselves as a triumph of organization, which, from the\nscientific point of view, they surely are. Then we have Nature\nplaying one hand against the other. From our point of view it is like\npulling down a temple and reducing the bricks and stones to dust for\nthe use of ants. But who shall say that Nature is not just as careful\nof the ant as of the man?--which is, of course, a distasteful bit of\nnews to the man.\n\nWhen one thinks of the myriads of minute living organisms that\npervade and make up his own body, of their struggles and activities,\ntheir antagonisms and co\u00f6perations, their victories and defeats,--the\ncells co\u00f6perating and building up the organs, the organs co\u00f6perating\nand building up the body, the phagocytes policing the blood and\ndestroying the invading germs, the intestinal flora contending\nwith one another for the possession of the soil, the ferments,\nthe enzymes,--when one thinks of all this and more, and how little\naware the man is of all this strife and effort and activity within\nhim,--how he himself, body and mind, is the result of it all,--one\nhas a dim vision of all our strife and effort in this world as a part\nof the vital movements of a vast system of things, or of a Being that\nis no more cognizant of our wars and struggles and triumphs than we\nare of the histories of the little people that keep up the functional\nintegrity of our own systems.\n\nMan can himself make short work of the ants unless he encounters\ntheir devouring hosts in a tropical jungle, in which case they may\nmake short work of him. He can often slay with his antiseptics the\ndisease-germs that are destroying him, but not always; the balance\nof nature is often on their side. Whichever triumphs, Nature wins,\nbecause all are parts of her system. The capital invested is hers\nalone. Man thinks a part of it is his, because he forgets that he too\nis a part of Nature, and that whatever is his, is hers.\n\nHow are we to reconcile the obvious facts of evolution, namely, that\nthroughout the biological ages there has been an impulse in Nature\nsteadily working toward the development of man, with the still more\nobvious fact that Nature cares no more for the individual man than\nshe does for the individual of any other species? She will drown\nhim, starve him, freeze him, crush him, as quickly as she will any\nother form of life. Is the account balanced by the fact that she\nhas given him the wit and the power to avoid these calamities in a\nlarger measure than she has given them to any other creature? That\nis the way the great mystery works. Every creature is exposed to the\nhazards of its kind, but within its reach are always the benefits\nand advantages of its kind, and these latter have steadily kept in\nthe lead. The evolutionary impulse toward the horse, toward the\ndog, toward the bird, has apparently been as jealously guarded and\npromoted as the impulse toward man. Man in his own conceit is at the\nhead of the animal kingdom, and the whole creation is for him, though\nthere are other animals that surpass him in strength, speed, and\nendurance. But he alone masters and makes servants of the inorganic\nforces, and thus rules the world below him.\n\nI set out to say that the beneficent force or Providence that brought\nus here has had to struggle with the non-beneficent in inert matter,\nand, at times, with what looks like the deliberately malignant in\nliving matter; micro-organisms everywhere lying in wait for tangible\nbodies and reducing them back to the original dust out of which they\ncame--the work of one god being held up or wrecked by another god. In\nthe vegetable kingdom are blights and scabs and many forms of fungous\ndiseases; in the animal are hostile bacteria and parasites working\nwithout and within. Little wonder our fathers had to invent a Devil,\nor a hierarchy of good and evil spirits contending with one another,\nto explain the enigmas of life! But that the good spirits have\nprevailed over their enemies, that the Natural Providence has been on\nour side, is, as I have pointed out, proved by the fact that we are\nactually here, and that life is good to us.\n\nThe evil of the world is seen to be ingrained in the nature of\nthings, and it has been a spur to development. All the great human\nevils have been disciplinary. There is always a surplusage, rarely\njust enough and no more. The gods of life rarely make a clean, neat\njob of it; there are needless pains, needless wastes, needless\nfailures, needless delays. The good of war--the fortitude, the\nself-denial, the heroism--we cannot separate from the evil; the good\nof avarice or greed--industry, thrift, foresight--we cannot separate\nfrom the evil. The wealth-gatherers keep the currents going, they\nsubdue the wilderness, they reclaim the deserts, they develop the\nearth\u2019s resources, they extend the boundaries of civilization, but\nthe evils that follow in their train are many and great. Yet how are\nwe to have the one without the other? Disease is also a kind of trial\nby battle; it weeds out the weak, the physically unfit, and hardens\nand toughens the race.\n\nThe Natural Providence does not study economy, it is not in business\nwith rivals and competitors; bankruptcy is not one of its dangers,\nit can always meet its obligations; all the goods and all the gold\nand silver in the universe belong to it. Its methods are too vast\nand complex for our ideas of prudence and economy. We cannot deal\nwith the whole, but only with its parts. There are no lines and\nboundaries to the sphere, and no well-defined cleavage between the\ngood and the evil in nature and in life. The broad margin of needless\nmisery and waste in the life of a man as of a nation is a part of\nthe inexactitude and indifference that pervades the whole of nature.\nFrom the point of view of the Natural Providence it does not matter,\nthe result is sure; but from our point of view--victims of cyclones,\nearthquakes, wars, famines, pestilence as we are--it matters a great\ndeal. The streams and rivers throughout the land are bearers of many\nblessings; the evils they bring are minor and are soon forgotten.\n\nThe whole living world is so interrelated and interdependent, and\nhinges so completely upon the non-living, that our analysis and\ninterpretation of it must of necessity be very imperfect. But the\ncreative energy works to no specific ends, or rather it works to all\nends. As every point on the surface of the globe is equally on the\ntop at all times, so the whole system of living nature balances on\nany given object. I saw a book of poems recently, called \u201cThe Road\nto Everywhere\u201d--vague as Nature herself. All her roads are roads to\neverywhere. They may lead you to your own garden, or to the North\nPole, or to the fixed stars, or may end where they began.\n\nNature is a great traveler, but she never gets away from home;\nshe takes all her possessions along with her, and her course is\nwithout direction, and without beginning or end. The most startling\ncontradiction you can make expresses her best. She is the sum of all\nopposites, the success of all failures, the good of all evil.\n\nWhen we think we have cut out Nature, we have only substituted\nanother phase; when our balloon mounts in spite of gravity, it is\nstill gravity that makes it mount; when we clear the soil of its\nnatural growth and plant our own crop, Nature is still our gardener;\nwe have only placed other seeds of her own in her hands. When we\nhave improved upon her, we have only prevailed upon her to second\nour efforts; we get ahead of her by following out the hints she\ngives us; when we trump her trick, it is with her own cards. When we\nfancy we assist Nature, as we say that we do with our drugs, it is\nshe who gives the efficiency to the drugs. We may fancy that the sun\nis in the heavens solely to give light and warmth to the planets,\nwhich it surely does, but behold, what a mere fraction of the light\nand heat of the sun is intercepted by the slender girdle of worlds\nthat surround it! The rays go out equally in all directions, they\npenetrate all space. The sun, with reference to its light and heat,\nis at the center of an infinite hollow sphere, and not one millionth\npart of its rays falls upon the worlds that circle around it. This\nis typical of Nature\u2019s bounty. The thought and solicitude of the\ncreative energy is directed to me and you personally in the same\nwholesale way. The planets of our system are lighted and warmed\nas effectually as if the sun shone for them alone, and man is the\nbeneficiary of the heavens as completely as if indeed the whole\ncreation were directed especially to him. Here is another point: the\nnight and darkness in nature are local and limited; the universe is\nflooded with light; the black shadows themselves are born of the\nlight. Though astronomers tell us that sidereal space is strewn with\ndead worlds and extinct suns, give time enough and they will all be\nquickened and rekindled. Light and life are the positive facts in\nnature, darkness and death the negative.\n\nWhen we single out man and fix our attention upon him as the sole end\nof creation, and judge the whole by his partial standards, man--\n\n      \u201cWho trusted God was love indeed\n        And love Creation\u2019s final law--\n        Though Nature, red in tooth and claw\n      With ravine, shrieked against his creed\u201d--\n\nwhen we do this, all is confusion and contradiction. Love _is_\n\u201ccreation\u2019s final law,\u201d but not the love of the mother for her\nchild, or even of the bird for its young, but the love of the eye for\nthe light, of the flower for the sun, the love of the plants for the\nrain and the dew, the love of man for his kind, and of the dog for\nhis kind. Attraction, affiliation, assimilation--like unto like is\nthe rule of life.\n\nThe organism fits itself to its environment; the Providence in Nature\nenables it to do so. The light is not fitted to the eye; the light\ncreates the eye; the vibrations in the air create the ear. God, or\nthe Eternal, is love because He brooded man into being, and all other\nforms of life that support man. He made the heavens and the earth for\nman\u2019s good, by making man a part of them and able to avail himself of\ntheir bounty. But when we look forth into the universe, and expect to\nsee something like human care and affection in the operation of the\ngreat elemental laws and forces, we are bound to be shocked. It is\nnot there, and well that it is not. A universe run on the principles\nof human economy, human charity, and partiality would be a failure.\nIt is our human weakness that yearns for this. It is our earthly\nfather that has begotten in us our conception of a heavenly father.\nBut then this very conception and desire is a part of nature--springs\nfrom the Eternal, and is in that sense authentic. We cannot separate\nourselves from nature, or from the Eternal, any more than we can jump\noff the planet. It is only the conception of a human or man-made God\nthat men rebel against. Thus comes in the discord that Tennyson sees\nand feels. He is looking for a human providence in nature. Wisdom,\nlove, mercy, justice, are human attributes. We call them divine, and\nit is well, but they do not exist outside of man. Man is himself the\nonly God, and he was evolved from nature. The divine and the godlike\nare therefore in nature; yes, in conjunction with what we call the\ndemoniacal--love twined with enmity, the good a partner with the bad.\n\n      \u201cI bring to life, I bring to death;\n      The spirit does but mean the breath.\u201d\n\nPlagues and famines and wars are fortuitous and not a part of the\nregular order like health, or growth, or development. They are\naccidents of nature. The cloud-burst that sends the creek out of\nits banks is an accident in the same sense; it is an exceptional\noccurrence. If the fountains of nature were not full enough and\npermanent enough to stand such drains, or if the tendency in nature\nto a certain order and moderation were less marked, life would\ndisappear from the globe. Nature\u2019s capital of life is invested in ten\nthousand enterprises and the risks are many, but if the gains did not\nexceed the losses, if more seeds did not fall upon fertile places\nthan upon barren, if more babies did not survive than perish, what\nwould become of us? In our human schemes we aim to cut out losses,\nwaste, delays and failure, and arraign the Eternal when it does\nnot follow the same methods. But so far as I can see all that the\nEternal aims at in the vast business of the universe is to keep the\ncapital unimpaired and live on the income. The inroads which storms,\npestilence, earthquakes make upon it are soon made good and some\ninterest does accrue. Life does advance.\n\nIn the course of the biologic ages there has been a great loss in\nspecies, apparently without any loss in the development impulse. New\nspecies appear as the old disappear. Nature\u2019s investment in mere size\nand brute strength was doubtless a good one under the conditions, but\nshe gradually changed it and began to lay the emphasis upon size of\nbrain and complexity of nervous system, just as man in his material\ncivilization has passed from the simple to the complex, from the\ngo-cart to the automobile, from the signal fires to telegraph and\ntelephone. The failures and shortcomings of the Eternal, as well as\nthe progress of its work, are analogous to those of man. Indeed, God\nis no more a god than man is. He evinces the same methods, the same\nmixture of good and evil, the same progress from the simple to the\ncomplex, the same survival of the fittest. We exalt and magnify our\nlittle human attributes and name it God; we magnify and intensify our\nbad traits and call it the Devil. One is as real as the other. Both\nare real to the imagination of man, but Nature knows them not, except\nso far as she knows them in and through man.\n\nOn a midsummer day, calm, clear, warm, the leaves shining, the grain\nand grass ripening, the waters sparkling, the birds singing, we see\nand feel the beneficence of Nature. How good it all is! What a joy\nto be alive! If the day were to end in a fury of wind and storm,\nbreaking the trees, unroofing the houses, and destroying the crops,\nwe should be seeing the opposite side of Nature, what we call the\nmalevolent side. Fair days now and then have such endings, but they\nare the exception; living nature survives them and soon forgets\nthem. Their scars may long remain, but they finally disappear. Total\nnature is overpoweringly on the side of life. But for all this, when\nwe talk about the fatherhood of God, his loving solicitude, we talk\nin parables. There is not even the shadow of analogy between the\nwholesale bounty of Nature and the care and providence of a human\nfather. Striding through the universe goes the Eternal, crushed\nworlds on one hand and worlds being created on the other: no special\nact of love or mercy or guidance, but a providence like the rains,\nthe sunshine, the seasons.\n\nWhen we say hard things about Nature--accuse her of cruelty, of\nsavagery, of indifference--we fall short of our proper filial respect\ntoward her. She is the mother of us all; neither an indulgent mother,\nnor a cruel stepmother. In many respects the gifts she has lavished\nupon us only make her own poverty the more conspicuous. Where she\ngot the gift of reason which she has bestowed upon man, together\nwith the sense of justice and of mercy, the moral consciousness,\nthe \u00e6sthetic perceptions, the capacity for learning her secrets and\nmastering her forces, are puzzling questions. We may say that man\nachieved these things himself; but who or what made him capable of\nachieving them, what made him man, and out of the same elements that\nhis dog or his horse is made?\n\nNature does not reason; she has no moral consciousness; she does not\neconomize her resources; she is not efficient, she is wasteful and\ndilatory, and spends with one hand what she saves with the other.\nShe is blind; her method is the hit-and-miss method of a man who\nfights in the dark. She hits her mark, not because she aims at it,\nbut because she shoots in all directions. She fills the air with her\nbullets. She wants to plant in yonder marsh her cat-tail flag, or\nher purple loosestrife, and she trusts her seeds to every wind that\nblows, and to the foot of every bird that visits her marshes, no\nmatter which way they are going. And in time her marsh gets planted.\nThe pollen from her trees and plants drifts in clouds in order that\none minute grain of it may find the pistil that is waiting for it\nsomewhere in the next wood or field. She trusts her nuts to every\nvagabond jay or crow or squirrel that comes along, in hopes that\nsome of them will be dropped or hidden and thus get planted. She\ntrims her trees, and thins her forests, or reforests her lands,\nin the most roundabout, dilatory, and inefficient manner. No plan,\nno system, no economy of effort or of material; and yet she \u201cgets\nthere,\u201d because she is not limited as to time or resources. She is in\nbusiness with unlimited capital and unlimited opportunities; she has\nno competitors; her stockholders are all of one mind, and all roads\nlead to her markets. The winds, the streams, the rains, the snows,\nfire, flood, tornado, earthquake, are all her servitors. She does not\nstick for the best end of the bargain, the gain is hers whoever wins.\n\nBut behold how she has endowed man to improve upon all her slack\nand roundabout methods! She enables him to cheat, and mislead, and\ncircumvent her. He steals her secrets, he tames her very lightnings,\nhe forces her hand on a hundred occasions; he turns her rivers, he\nlevels her hills, he obliterates her marshes, he makes her deserts\nbloom as the rose; he measures her atoms and surveys and weighs her\norbs; he reads her history in the rocks, he finds out her ways in\nthe heavens. He discovers the most completely hidden thing in the\nuniverse, the ether, and he has learned how to use it for his own\npurposes; his wireless telegraphy turns it into a news highway; above\nthe seas, over the mountains, and across continents, it carries his\nmessages.\n\nIn man Nature has evolved the human from the unhuman; she has evolved\njustice and mercy from rapine and cruelty; she has evolved the civic\nfrom the domestic, the state from the tribe. She has evolved the\nBriton and the Frenchman from rude prehistoric man. She has not yet\ngot rid of the Hun in the German, but she is fast getting rid of the\nGerman in her overseas Germanic stock. The bleaching process goes on\napace.\n\nMan sees where Nature is blind; he takes a straight cut where\nshe goes far around. In him she has added reason to her impulse,\nconscience to her blind forces, self-denial to her self-indulgence,\nthe power of choice to her iron necessity. How well she has done by\nman, man alone knows. How much he is dependent upon her, he alone\nknows; how completely he is a part of her, he alone knows. We may\ncall man an insurgent in her world, as an English scientist does, but\nhe is her insurgent; she inspires him to insurrection, and she puts\nhis weapons in his hands. His cause is her cause, and his victories\nare her victories.\n\nOnly by personifying Nature in this way, and standing apart from her\nand regarding her objectively, can we contrast her methods and her\nspirit with our own. The mother she has been to us becomes apparent.\nIn spite of all her shortcomings and delays and roundabout methods,\nhere we are, and here we wish to remain.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nTHE GOOD DEVILS\n\n\nI\n\nThis is not an essay on the optimism of a moralist, but on the\noptimism of a naturalist.\n\nOn the whole and in the long run, as I am never tired of asserting,\nNature is good. The universe has not miscarried. The celestial laws,\nas Whitman says, do not need to be worked over and rectified. It is\ngood to be here, and it must be equally good to go hence. With all\nthe terrible things in Nature, and all the cruel and wicked things in\nhistory, the world is good; life is good, and the Devil himself plays\na good part.\n\nWhen Emerson in his Journal says, \u201cIt is very odd that Nature should\nbe so unscrupulous. She is no saint,\u201d one wonders just what he means.\nDoes he expect gravity, or fire, or flood, or wind, or tide to have\nscruples? Should the cat have scruples about dining off the mouse\nor the bird, or the wolf about making a meal of the lamb? or the\nplants and trees have scruples about running their roots into one\nanother\u2019s preserves, or cutting off one another\u2019s rain or sunshine?\nIf our cowbird had the human conscience, we should expect her to have\nscruples about laying her egg in the nest of another bird and thus\nshirking the labors and cares of parenthood, and we should expect\nthe jays and crows to have scruples about eating up the eggs and\nyoung of their feathered neighbors, if they, too, were endowed with\nconscience. But none of them are troubled in this way, for the simple\nreason that they are not human beings. They live below the plane of\nman\u2019s moral conscience. Chemistry and the elementary forces have no\nscruples. Powder or dynamite will blow up its maker as soon as it\nwill any one else. The rain does not scruple to spoil the farmer\u2019s\nhay, or the floods to wash away his house and destroy its inmates.\n\nWe are childish when we marvel at the unscrupulousness of Nature.\nEmerson often appealed to the nature of things. It is in the nature\nof things that they should be what we name unscrupulous; certainly\nNature \u201cis no saint,\u201d and it is well for us that she is not. If we\nidentify Nature with what we call God, as many do, then I am saying\nthat it is well for us that the Eternal is \u201cno saint.\u201d I suspect\nthat if the drama of life which has been enacted upon the globe,\nand is still being enacted, had been modeled upon the principle of\nsainthood, you and I would not now be here. More\u2019s the pity, you may\nsay, but there is no pity in Nature.\n\n\nII\n\nIs Nature then of the Devil? If we choose to name it so,--if we\nchoose to revert to the conception of an earlier age,--yes, Nature,\nas we see her from our limited human point of view, is more or less\nof the Devil--half god and half demon, we may say; divine in some of\nher manifestations and diabolical in others, divine when she favors\nus and diabolical when she is against us. But what we do not so\nreadily see is that in the long run the Devil is on our side also,\nthat he is the divine wearing a mask. The Devil is the absence of\nsomething; he is a negative quantity that stimulates the positive and\nsets and keeps the currents going. Our breathing is the result of a\nperpetual tendency to a vacuum in our lungs; the growth of our bodies\nis the result of a co\u00f6peration and agreement between the integrating\nand disintegrating forces.\n\nWe control the Devil and make him our friend when we control most of\nthe forces of nature--the fire, the wind, the waters, electricity,\nmagnetism, gravity, chemical affinity, and so on. If our hold\nupon them slips, they destroy us. If we are not watchful in our\nlaboratories, the same chemistry that builds up our bodies will blow\nour bodies to atoms. The tornado, the earthquake, the volcano, the\nthunderbolt, have all helped to make the earth what we behold it. The\nfloods have helped, the avalanches have helped, frost and wind and\nsnow, tropic heat and arctic cold, have helped. These devils are the\nhod-carriers that serve the divine mason--the mixers and builders,\nthe plowers and the planters, the levelers and the engineer. Hence, I\nsay: \u201cGood Devil, be thou my friend; you give me power, you sharpen\nmy wits, you make a man of me.\u201d\n\nThis is the tangible, physical Devil; the intangible, moral Devil is\nnot so easily dealt with. It is not so easy to turn the spirit of\ncrime, intemperance, cruelty, war, superstition, greed, and so on to\nour advantage. Yet there also is power going to waste or misdirected.\nThere is a light under the feet of these things also. Trade, out of\nwhich has come greed, has opened up and humanized the world; war has\noften grafted a superior stock upon an inferior.\n\n\u201cIt was for Beauty that the world was made.\u201d Emerson quotes this\nverse from Ben Jonson and says that it is better than any single line\nof Tennyson\u2019s \u201cIn Memoriam.\u201d Only the poet is allowed to make such\nextravagant statements. We cannot in soberness and truth say that\nthe world was made for any particular end. It is out of a certain\nharmony of the elements that we arose and our sense of beauty was\ndeveloped, but the world exists for as many ends as we have power to\nconceive. Order, harmony, rhythm, compensation, equilibrium, circles,\nspheres, are fundamental in nature. Music, which is beauty to the\near, hath power over inert matter. In the Mammoth Cave the very rocks\nwill sing if you speak to them in the right key. How steel filings\non a metal surface will dance and arrange themselves in symmetrical\ngroups under the influence of musical chords! Harmony is at the heart\nof nature, but, in the music of creation, disharmony plays a part\nalso. The world is not all beautiful unless seen as a whole; all its\ndiscords are harmonized in the curve of the sphere. Emerson\u2019s own\nline, \u201cBeauty is its own excuse for being,\u201d is better and truer than\nthe one he quotes from Ben Jonson.\n\nWhen saying that in the music of creation disharmony plays a part\nalso, I do not mean to imply that this is not also true in human\nmusic. The dissonances are just as much a part of great music as\nare the harmonies. What would the operas of Wagner be without the\ntremendous dissonances? That is what makes Wagner one of the greatest\nin music; he sees things whole, just as Whitman does in his art--sees\nthat \u201call are but parts of one stupendous whole,\u201d and that the merely\npretty in music, in poetry, in any art, as in nature, is only one\nlittle phase of it, only an arc of the great circle.\n\n\nIII\n\nWhat trouble we get into when we identify God with Nature! and what\ntrouble we get into when we refuse to identify the two! In the first\ncase we reach the unity that the mind craves, but it is a unity made\nup of those antagonisms which revolt us. In the second case it is a\nduality that leaves half of the world to the Devil.\n\nWe select what we call the divine and stand confused and abashed\nbefore the residue. We must either change our notion about the power\nwe call God and make it all-inclusive, embracing evil as well as\ngood, or else we must change our notion about Nature and see no evil\nin her. God and Nature are one. If they are two, who or what is the\nsecond?\n\nHow can we fail to see that all the shaded part of the picture is\nnecessary to the picture--that all high lights would not make a\npicture, but only a daub; and that all that we call good would not\nmake a world in which men could live and develop? Life goes on under\nconditions more or less antagonistic. The antagonism gives the power;\nthe friction develops electricity. The vices and crimes and follies\nand excesses of society are the riot and overflow of the virtues. The\npride of the rich, the tyranny of power, the lust of gain, the riot\nof sensuality, are all a little too much of a good thing--a little\ntoo much heat or light or rain or frost or snow or food or drink.\nThere can be no perversions till there is something good to pervert,\nno counterfeits till there is first the genuine article.\n\nThe currents of wild life get out of their banks and we have, for\nexample, a plague of locusts or moths or forest worms, but the\nnatural check surely comes. The military spirit of Germany, which\nsprings from a laudable devotion to the state and to the good of\nall, got out of its banks and brought on the World War, but the flood\nhas subsided and will probably be so dyked that it can never get out\nagain. It will find its outlet in the arts of peace.\n\n\nIV\n\nThe so-called laws of Nature were not designed and decreed as our\nhuman laws are. There is no great lawgiver. Her laws are a sequence\nof events and activities; this sequence has worked itself out through\ncountless ages. Nothing in the universe was designed in the human\nsense: it was not first a thought in some one\u2019s mind, then to become\nan act or a contrivance. This concept does not express the mystery of\ncreation. There is a constant becoming; there was no beginning, there\ncan be no ending. There is perpetual change and revolution, perpetual\ntransfer and promotion, but nothing that can be explained in terms\nof our human experience and achievement. The world and all it holds\nwere created as the flower is created in the spring, as the snowflake\nis created in the winter, as the cloud is created in the summer sky.\nMan was created as the chick is created in the egg. Man has had a\nlong day of creation; he has been becoming man since the first dawn\nof life in the old Pal\u00e6ozoic seas. His horse and his dog have been\nbecoming what we behold them through all the geologic ages. This\nview does not leave the Eternal out of the universe; it puts Him in\nit so that He cannot be got out. It makes Him immanent in it at all\npoints; it makes Nature transcend human reason and human speech. As\nlong as we think of God as a kind of superman external to nature, we\ncan deny Him and cut Him out, but when we identify ourselves and all\nthings else with Him, there is no escaping Him. We ourselves are a\nphase or a fraction of Him. When we select or screen out what we name\nthe good, the fair, the divine, and call that God, what are we to do\nwith the residue? Call it the Devil? The Devil, too, then is a part\nof the Eternal Good. I want no emasculated universe. I want the fiber\nand virility and pungency and power and heat and drive which all that\nwe call bad gives it.\n\nOur mission is to tame and elevate and direct the elements and forces\nwithout weakening them. Thence comes our power. A perfect world would\nnot be one without sin or suffering or struggle or failure. There\ncan be no perfect world. But there can be one more and more livable,\nmore and more in harmony with those laws that promote our well-being.\nApproximations, approximations--that is our success, and never\ncomplete fulfillment! When we say that God is the All, we must have\nthe courage of our convictions and not flinch at the consequences.\nHe is all that we call bad as well as all that we call good. What we\ncall good is _our_ good, and not absolute good. There is no absolute\ngood any more than there is absolute heat or cold or height or depth.\n\nWe work our way through the mazes and contradictions of\nthings--contradictions from our point of view--as best we can,\neliminating the bad and cleaving unto the good, but the total scheme\nof things, the reconciliations and compensations and final results,\nwe can never grasp. We cannot abate our war upon evil, because we\nhave our well-being on these terms, but evil is indirectly the father\nof good.\n\n\nV\n\nAll religious and ethical systems grow out of our egoism. We plant\nourselves in the middle of the universe and say it is all for us.\nWe make gods in our own image, we invent a heaven for the good and\na hell for the wicked, and seek to keep down the brute within us\nby a system of rewards and punishments. We improve our minds and\nsouls as we improve the fields; we make them more fair and fertile,\nbut we do not eliminate Nature; with her own weapons we improve our\nrelations to her--we promote _our_ good, but we are still Nature\u2019s;\nthe harvest we reap is still Nature\u2019s. Our improvements upon her are\nmere removal of obstructions from the rill that gushes perennially\nfrom her prolific earth. We improve her fruits, her flowers, her\nanimals--that is, make them more serviceable to us--by means of the\nhold we have upon her methods. We add nothing; we utilize what she\nhas placed within our reach. All of which means that we are Nature\u2019s,\nand that our knowing it and thinking of it cannot make the slightest\ndifference. Our fate is inevitable. There is no escape. Whose else\ncould we be? We cannot get off the sphere; if we could, we should\nstill be a part of the All. Our elaborate schemes to appropriate or\npropitiate the Eternal, to stand well with Him, to gain heaven and\navoid hell, are devices of cunning Nature to spur us on the road\nof development. (How easily one falls into the language of extreme\nanthropomorphism!) The beautiful myth of the Garden of Eden and the\nfall of man is full of meaning. Surely it was a good devil that put\nman in the way of knowing good from evil, and led to his expulsion\nfrom a state of innocent impotence.\n\nNature\u2019s dealings with man and with the other forms of life are on\nthe same plan as her dealings with the earth as a whole. The drainage\nsystem of the globe is by no means perfect; there are marshes and\nstagnant waters in every country, but how small comparatively the\narea they cover! The rains and snows give birth to pure springs in\nall lands, which unite to form the creeks, which, again, unite to\nform the rivers, which flow into the lakes and seas, giving back to\nthe great bodies of water what the sun and the winds took from them,\nand thus keeping the vital currents of the globe in ceaseless motion.\nThe same may be said of the weather system of the globe; it is not\nperfect everywhere--too much rain here, too much sun there, too hot\nin some parts, too cold in others, but on the whole favoring life and\ndevelopment.\n\nWe think we could improve the weather. So we might for our special\npurposes at times--when it rains and we have hay down, or a crop to\nput in, or a picnic in view; but it is better on the whole that we\nadapt ourselves to the weather than that the weather be adapted to\nthe special needs of each of us. The Lord would be pretty sure to get\nmixed up if He tried the latter plan.\n\nA general and not a special Providence is our salvation. Good and\nevil mixed make life, as cloud and sun in due proportions make the\nbest climate.\n\n\nVI\n\nWar is a scourge like fire, the whirlwind, the earthquake, when\nviewed in the light of a particular time and people, but good may\ncome from it after the lapse of ages. It strengthens and consolidates\nand develops the heroic virtues. Yet what a legacy of suffering and\ndeath go with it! But to invoke war is like invoking the pestilence,\nthe tornado, the earthquake. The guilt of the German military staff\nin bringing on the World War is of the blackest dye. It may be a\ngood to man, but it is a terrible evil to men. We cannot afford to\nplay Providence; we must not play with Jove\u2019s thunderbolts. War\ncannot come to any people unless somebody (or some body of men) wills\nit, and to will an aggressive war is a crime. No matter if the recent\nwar puts a final end to war, the gods will not credit us with the\ngood that flows from our act over and above our purpose and will.\n\nAll the good that comes from war comes from struggle, self-denial,\nheroism; and all courses of action that develop these traits are\nsubstitutes for war. The farm, the mining-camp, engineering,\nexploration, are substitutes. The best war material is recruited\nfrom these fields. The man who can guide the plowshare can wield\nthe sword; the man who can face the grizzly and the lion can face\nthe cannon and the torpedo. War develops no new virtues; it helps\nrejuvenate the old; obedience, team-work, system, organization and\nso on are achievements of an industrial age. In history most wrongs\nare finally righted and the balance is fairly kept, but this is not\nby the will and purpose of the actors, but by the remedial forces of\nnature and life.\n\nThe guilt falls the same upon the greed and lust of power, even if\nthe gods finally reap a harvest that man\u2019s iniquities have sown. He\nmaketh the wicked to praise Him, but the wicked are to get no credit.\nHere is where our moral standards diverge from those of the natural\nuniversal. Our moral standards apply to us alone; they are special\nand limited. The gods know them not. The rain falls alike upon the\njust and upon the unjust. The poet says, \u201cI judge not as the judge\njudges, but as the sunlight falling around a helpless thing.\u201d This\nis the voice of the natural universal. When we judge as the judge\njudges, we condemn strife and war and all such uncharity, we execute\nor imprison criminals, we found asylums and hospitals and other\ncharitable organizations; when we judge as Nature or the poet judges,\nwe say to the fallen one:\n\n      \u201cNot till the sun excludes you do I exclude you,\n      Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves\n            to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and\n            rustle for you.\u201d\n\nThe All brings mercy out of cruelty, love out of hatred, life out of\ndeath, but man\u2019s orbit is so small that he cannot harmonize these\ncontradictions. The curve of the universal laws does not bring him\nround till generations have passed. To keep on traveling east till\nyou approach your point of departure from the west, you must have the\nround globe to travel on. An empire would not avail.\n\n\nVII\n\nGood and evil are strangely mixed in this world, and probably in all\nother worlds. What is evil to one creature is often good to another.\nIt is an evil to the vireo or to the warbler when the cowbird lays\nits egg in the nest of one of these birds, but it is a good to the\ncowbird. It relieves her of all maternal cares, and provides her\nyoung with a devoted nurse and stepmother, but the young warblers or\nvireos are likely to perish. All parasites live at the expense of\nsome other form of life, and are to that extent evils to these forms;\nbut Nature is just as much interested in one form as in the other; an\nill wind to one blows good to another, and thus the balance is kept.\n\nA world without evil would be an impossible world--as impossible as\nmechanical motion without friction or as sunlight without shadow. The\ntwo worlds, the organic and the inorganic, constantly interact. The\nformer draws all its elements and its power from the latter, which is\npassive to it, and goes its way in the inexorable round of physical\nlaws, irrespective of it. Viewed as a whole, the evils of life\ninhere in its elements and conditions. Air, water, fire, soil, give\nus our strength and our growth; they also destroy us if we fail to\nkeep right relations to them. We cannot walk or lift a hand without\ngravity; and yet, give gravity a chance, and it crushes us, the\nfloods drown us, fire consumes us! Could we have life on any other\nterms; could God himself annul these conditions?\n\nHunger is or may become an evil destroying life, but does it not\nimply the opposite condition of good--food, an appetite, power of\nassimilation in the organism? Disease is an evil to the living body\nit attacks, but it does not attack a dead body and it often educates\nthe body to resist disease. It is a war which may leave the victor\nmore capable than he was before.\n\nRobert Ingersoll conceived of an improvement in creation--\u201cmake\nhealth contagious instead of disease.\u201d But this is to trifle with\nwords. In a certain sense health is contagious. But physical\nhealth, like peace of mind, is a condition, and must come from\nharmony within, while a contagious disease is conveyed by a living\nmicro-organism, and is truly catching, and to change or reverse all\nthis would be to destroy the conditions of life itself. To postulate\na world in which two and two would make five, or in which a straight\nline is not the shortest distance between two points, is to take the\nroad to the insane asylum. Evil is positive only in the sense that\nshadow or darkness is positive, or that cold is positive. It is a\ngreater or lesser degree of negation.\n\nIn society and in the state we seek to curb or to correct or to\neliminate Nature\u2019s errors, and in doing so often fall into other\nerrors and cross-purposes. Yet to fight what we call evil, and\npromote what we call good, is the supreme duty of all men. Physical\nevil the doctors and natural philosophers warn us against; moral\nevil, which is a much more intangible thing, our ethical teachers\npoint out to us; mental evil, ignorance, superstition, false\njudgment, and so on, the schools and colleges help us to avoid;\nreligious evil, economic evil, political evil, all have their\nsafeguards and guides.\n\nWhy could not a world have been made in which there was no evil? In\nasking such a question we misapprehend the nature of the world; we\nare thinking of something made and a maker external to it; we are\ntrying the universe by the standards of our human experience. The\nworld was not made, man was not created in any sense paralleled by\nour human experience with tangible bodies. The world and all there is\nin it is the result of evolution, or an endless process of creation,\nan everlasting becoming, in which the nature of things beyond which\nwe can take no step plays the principal part. A world on any other\nterms would not be the world to which we are adjusted, and out of\nwhose conflicting forces our lives came.\n\nThere will be times when the light will blind the eye; other times\nwhen the darkness will heal and restore it; when the heat will burn\nthe hand, when the food will poison the stomach, when the friend\nwill weary you, when home is a prison, when books are a bore.\nOur relations to things make them good or bad: our momentary and\naccidental relations may make the good things bad, but our permanent\nnatural relations make the good good, the bad bad.\n\nIn a world without the gravity which so often crushes us, we could\nnot walk or lift the hand; without the friction which so often\nimpedes us, our train and vehicles would not move; without the water\nthat could so easily drown us, the currents of our bodies would dry\nup; without the germs that so often make war upon us, we should soon\ncease to be. Both friendly and hostile are the powers that surround\nus,--or, rather, is the power that surrounds us, for it is one and\nnot two,--friendly when we are in the relation to it demanded and\nprovided for by our constitution, and unfriendly when we are in false\nrelation to it. To know this true relation from the false is a part\nof the discipline of life.\n\nI know this is not the end of the story; there are more questions to\nbe asked. We want a solution of the last solution, but this can never\ncome. Final questions return forever to themselves; they baffle us,\nconstituted as our minds are; they are circles and not lines.\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\nTHE NATURAL PROVIDENCE\n\n\nI\n\nWhat unthinking people call design in nature is simply the reflection\nof our inevitable anthropomorphism. Whatever they can use, they\nthink was designed for that purpose--the air to breathe, the water\nto drink, the soil to plant. It is as if they thought the notch in\nthe mountains was made for the road to pass over, or the bays and\nharbor for the use of cities and shipping. But in inorganic nature\nthe foot is made to fit the shoe and not the reverse. We are cast in\nthe mould of the environment. If the black cap of the nuthatch which\ncomes to the maple-tree in front of my window and feeds on the suet\nI place there were a human thinking-cap, the bird would see design\nin the regular renewal of that bit of suet; he would say, \u201cSome one\nor something puts that there for me\u201d; but he helps himself and asks\nno questions. The mystery does not trouble him. Why should not I,\npoor mortal, feel the same about these blessings and conveniences\naround me of which I hourly partake, and which seem so providential?\nWhy do not I, with my thinking-cap, infer that some one or something\nis thinking about me and my well-being? The mass of mankind does\ndraw this inference, and it is well for them to do so. But the case\nof the bird is different. The bit of suet that I feed on is not so\nconspicuously something extra, something added to the tree; it is\na part of the tree; it is inseparable from it. I am compelled, as\nit were, to distil it out of the tree, so that instead of being the\nact of a special providence, it is the inevitable benefaction of the\ngeneral providence of nature. What the old maple holds for me is\nmaple-sugar, but it was not put there for me; it is there just the\nsame, whether I want it or not; it is a part of the economy of the\ntree; it is a factor in its own growth; the tree is not thinking of\nme (pardon the term), but of itself. Of course this does not make my\ndebt to it, and my grounds for thankfulness, any the less real, but\nit takes it out of the category of events such as that which brings\nthe suet to the nuthatch. The Natural Providence is not intermittent,\nit is perennial; but it takes no thought of me or you. It is life\nthat is flexible and adaptive, and not matter and force. \u201cWe do\nnot,\u201d says Renan, \u201cremark in the universe any sign of deliberate and\nthoughtful action. We may affirm that no action of this sort has\nexisted for millions of centuries.\u201d I think we may affirm more than\nthat--we may affirm that it never existed. Some vestige of the old\ntheology still clung to Renan\u2019s mind--there was a day of creation in\nwhich God set the universe going, and then left it to run itself;\nthe same vestige clung to Darwin\u2019s mind and led him to say that in\nthe beginning God must have created a few species of animals and\nvegetables and then left them to develop and populate the world.\n\nSays Renan, \u201cWhen a chemist arranges an experiment that is to last\nfor years, everything which takes place in his retort is regulated by\nthe laws of absolute unconsciousness; which does not mean that a will\nhas not intervened at the beginning of the experiment, and that it\nwill not intervene at the end.\u201d There was no beginning nor will there\nbe any ending to the experiment of creation; the will is as truly\nthere in the behavior of the molecules at one time as at another. The\neffect of Renan\u2019s priestly training and associations clings to him\nlike a birthmark.\n\nIn discussing these questions our plumb-line does not touch bottom,\nbecause there is no bottom. \u201cIn the infinite,\u201d says Renan with deeper\ninsight, \u201cnegations vanish, contradictions are merged\u201d; in other\nwords, opposites are true. Where I stand on the surface of the sphere\nis the center of that surface, but that does not prevent the point\nwhere you stand being the center also. Every point is a center, and\nthe sky is overhead at one place as at another; opposites are true.\n\nThe moral and intellectual worlds present the same contradictions or\nlimitations--the same relatively of what we call truth.\n\nNature\u2019s ways--which with me is the same as saying God\u2019s ways--are\nso different from ours; \u201cno deliberate and thoughtful action,\u201d\nas Renan puts it, no economy of time or material, no short cuts,\nno cutting-out of non-essentials, no definite plan, no specific\nends, few straight lines or right angles; her streams loiter and\ncurve, her forces are unbridled; no loss or gain; her accounts\nalways balance; the loss at one point, or with one form, is a gain\nwith some other--all of which is the same as saying that there is\nnothing artificial in Nature. All is Natural, all is subject to\nthe hit-and-miss method. The way Nature trims her trees, plants\nher forests, sows her gardens, is typical of the whole process of\nthe cosmos. God is no better than man because man is a part of\nGod. From our human point of view he is guilty of our excesses and\nshortcomings. Time does not count, pain does not count, waste does\nnot count. The wonder is that the forests all get planted by this\nmethod, the pines in their places, the spruces in theirs, the oaks\nand maples in theirs; and the trees get trimmed in due time, now and\nthen, it is true, by a very wasteful method. A tree doctor could\nsave and prolong the lives of many of them. The small fountains and\nstreams all find their way to larger streams, and these to still\nlarger, and these to lakes or to the sea, and the drainage system\nof the continents works itself out with engineering exactitude.\nThe decay of the rocks and the formation of the soil come about in\ndue time, but not in man\u2019s time. In all the grand processes and\ntransformations of nature the element of time enters on such a scale\nas to dwarf all human efforts.\n\n\nII\n\nWhen we say of a thing or an event that it was a chance happening,\nwe do not mean that it was not determined by the laws of matter\nand force, but we mean it was not the result of the human will, or\nof anything like it; it was not planned or designed by conscious\nintelligence. Chance in this sense plays a very large part in\nnature and in life. Though the result of irrefragable laws, the\nwhole non-living world about us shows no purpose or forethought\nin our human sense. For instance, we are compelled to regard the\nmain features of the earth as matters of chance, the distribution\nof land and water, of islands and continents, of rivers, lakes,\nseas, mountains and plains, valleys and hills, the shapes of the\ncontinents; that there is more land in the northern hemisphere than\nin the southern, more land at the South Pole than at the North,\nis a matter of chance. The serpentine course of a stream through\nan alluvial plain, a stream two yards wide, winding and ox-bowing\nprecisely as does the Mississippi, is a matter of chance. The whole\ngeography of a country, in fact, is purely a matter of chance, and\nnot the result of anything like human forethought. The planets\nthemselves--that Jupiter is large and Mercury small; that Saturn\nhas rings; that Jupiter has seven moons; that the Earth has one;\nthat other planets have none; that some of the planets are in a\ncondition to sustain life as we know it, for example, Venus, Earth,\nand probably Mars; that some revolve in more elliptical orbits than\nothers; that Mercury and Venus apparently always keep the same side\ntoward the sun--all these things are matters of chance. It is easy to\nsay, as did our fathers, that God designed it thus and so, but how\nare we to think of an omnipotent and omniscient Being as planning\nsuch wholesale destruction of his own works as occurs in the cosmic\ncatastrophes which the astronomers now and then witness in the\nsidereal universe, or even as occur on the earth, when earthquakes\nand volcanoes devastate fair lands or engulf the islands of the sea?\nWhy should such a Being design a desert, or invent a tornado, or\nordain that some portion of the earth\u2019s surface should have almost\nperpetual rain and another portion almost perpetual drought? In\nHawaii I saw islands that were green and fertile on one end from\ndaily showers, while the other end, ten miles away, was a rough\nbarren rock, from the entire absence of showers. Were the trade winds\ndesigned to bring the vapors of the sea to the tropic lands?\n\nIn following this line of thought we, of course, soon get where no\nstep can be taken. Is the universe itself a chance happening? Such\na proposition is unthinkable, because something out of nothing is\nunthinkable. Our experience in this world develops our conceptions of\ntime and space, and to set bounds to either is an impossible task. We\nsay the cosmos must always have existed, and there we stop. We have\nno faculties to deal with the great ultimate problems.\n\nWe are no better off when we turn to the world of living things. Here\nwe see design, particular means adapted to specific ends. Shall we\nsay that a bird or a bee or a flower is a chance happening, as is the\nrainbow or the sunset cloud or a pearl or a precious stone? Is man\nhimself a chance happening? Here we are stuck and cannot lift our\nfeet. The mystery and the miracle of vitality, as Tyndall called it,\nis before us. Here is the long, hard road of evolution, the push and\nthe unfolding of life through countless ages, something more than\nthe mechanical and the accidental, though these have played a part;\nsomething less than specific plan and purpose, though we seem to\ncatch dim outlines of these.\n\nSpontaneous variations, original adaptations, a never-failing primal\npush toward higher and more complex forms--how can we, how shall we,\nread the riddle of it all? How shall we account for man on purely\nnaturalistic grounds?\n\nThe consistent exponent of variation cannot go into partnership with\nsupernaturalism. Grant that the organic split off from the inorganic\nby insensible degrees, yet we are bound to ask what made it split\noff at all?--and how it was that the first unicellular life contained\nthe promise and the potency of all the life of to-day? Such questions\ntake us into deep waters where our plummet-line finds no bottom. It\nsuits my reason better to say there is no solution than to accept a\nsolution which itself needs solution, and still leaves us where we\nbegan.\n\nThe adjustment of non-living bodies to each other seems a simple\nmatter, but in considering the adaptations of living bodies to one\nanother, and to their environment, we are confronted with a much\nharder problem. Life is an active principle, not in the sense that\ngravity and chemical reactions are active principles, but in a\nquite different sense. Gravity and chemical reactions are always\nthe same, inflexible and uncompromising; but life is ever variable\nand adaptive; it will take half a loaf if it cannot get a whole\none. Gravity answers yea and nay. Life says, \u201cProbably; we will see\nabout it; we will try again to-morrow.\u201d The oak-leaf will become an\noak-ball to accommodate an insect that wants a cradle and a nursery\nfor its young; it will develop one kind of a nursery for one insect\nand another kind for a different insect.\n\n\nIII\n\nAs far as I have got, or ever hope to get, toward solving the problem\nof the universe is to see clearly that it is insoluble. One can\narrive only at negative conclusions; he comes to see that the problem\ncannot be dealt with in terms of our human experience and knowledge.\nBut what other terms have we? Our knowledge does not qualify us in\nany degree to deal with the Infinite. The sphere has no handle to\ntake hold of, and the Infinite baffles the mind in the same way.\nMeasured by our human standards, it is a series of contradictions.\nThe method of Nature is a haphazard method, yet behold the final\norder and completeness! How many of her seeds she trusts to the winds\nand the waters, and her fertilizing pollens and germs also! And the\nwinds and the waters do her errands, with many failures, of course,\nbut they hit the mark often enough to serve her purpose. She provides\nlavishly enough to afford her failures.\n\nWhen we venture upon the winds and the waters with our crafts, we aim\nto control them, and we reach our havens only when we do control them.\n\nWhat is there in the method of Nature that answers to the human\nwill in such matters? Nothing that I can see; yet her boats and her\nballoons reach their havens--not all of them, but enough of them\nfor her purpose. Yet when we apply the word \u201cpurpose\u201d or \u201cdesign\u201d\nto Nature, to the Infinite, we are describing her in terms of the\nfinite, and thus fall into contradictions. Still, the wings and\nballoons and hooks and springs in the vegetable world are for a\nspecific purpose--to scatter the seed far from the parent plant.\nEvery part and organ and movement of a living body serves a purpose\nto that organism. The mountain lily looks straight up to the sky; the\nmeadow lily looks down to the earth; undoubtedly each flower finds\nits advantage in its own attitude, but what that advantage is, I know\nnot. If Nature planned and invented as man does, she would attain\nto mere unity and simplicity. It is her blind, prodigal, haphazard\nmethods that result in her endless diversity. When she got a good\nwing for the seed of a tree, such as that of the maple, she would,\nif merely efficient, give this to the seeds of other similar trees;\nbut she gives a different wing to the ash, to the linden, to the elm,\nthe pine, and the hemlock, while to some she gives no wings at all.\nThe nut-bearing trees, such as the oaks, the beeches, the walnuts,\nand the hickories, have no wings, except such as are afforded them\nby the birds and beasts that feed upon them and carry them away.\nAnd here again Nature has a purpose in the edible nut which tempts\nsome creatures to carry it away. If all the nuts were devoured, the\nwhole tribe of nut-bearing trees would in time be exterminated, and\nNature\u2019s end defeated. But in a world of conflicting forces like\nours, chance plays an important part; many of the nuts get scattered,\nand not all devoured. The hoarding-up propensities of certain birds\nand squirrels result in the planting of many oaks and chestnuts and\nbeeches.\n\nThe inherent tendency to variation in organic life, together with\nNature\u2019s hit-and-miss method, account for her endless variety on the\nsame plane, as it were, as that of her many devices for disseminating\nher seeds. One plan of hook or barb serves as well as another,--that\nof bidens as well as that of hound\u2019s-tongue,--yet each has a pattern\nof its own. The same may be said of the leaves of the trees: their\nfunction is to expose the juices of the tree to the chemical action\nof light and air; yet behold what an endless variety in their shape,\nsize, and structure! This is the way of the Infinite--to multiply\nendlessly, to give a free rein to the physical forces and let them\nstruggle with one another for the stable equilibrium to which they\nnever, as a whole, attain; to give the same free rein to the organic\nforces and let their various forms struggle with one another for the\nunstable equilibrium which is the secret of their life.\n\nThe many contingencies that wait upon the circuit of the physical\nforces and determine the various forms of organic matter--rocks,\nsand, soil, gravel, mountain, plain--all shifting and changing\nendlessly--wait upon the circuit of the organic forces and turn the\nlife-impulse into myriad channels, and people the earth with myriads\nof living forms, each accidental from our limited point of view,\nwhile all are determined by irrefragable laws. The contradictions in\nsuch statements are obvious and are inevitable when the finite tries\nto measure or describe the ways of the Infinite.\n\nThe waters of the globe are forever seeking the repose of a dead\nlevel, but when they attain it, if they ever do, the world will be\ndead. Behold what a career they have in their circuit from the sea\nto the clouds and back to the earth in the ministering rains, and\nthen to the sea again through the streams and rivers! The mantling\nsnow with its exquisite crystals, the grinding and transporting\nglaciers, the placid or plowing and turbulent rivers, the sparkling\nand refreshing streams, the cooling and renewing dews, the softening\nand protecting vapors, wait upon this circuit of the waters through\nthe agency of the sun, from the sea, through the sky and land, back\nto the sea again. Yes, and all the myriad forms of life also. This\ncircuit of the waters drives and sustains all the vital machinery of\nthe globe.\n\nWhy and how the sun and the rain bring the rose and the violet, the\npeach and the plum, the wheat and the rye, and the boys and the\ngirls, out of the same elements and conditions that they bring the\nthistles and the tares, the thorn and the scrub, the fang and the\nsting, the monkey and the reptile, is the insoluble mystery.\n\nIf Nature aspires toward what we call the good in man, does she not\nequally aspire toward what we call the bad in thorns and weeds and\nreptiles? May we not say that good is our good, and bad is our bad,\nand that there is, and can be, no absolute good and no absolute bad,\nany more than there can be an absolute up or an absolute down?\n\nHow haphazard, how fortuitous and uncalculated is all this business\nof the multiplication of the human race! What freaks, what failures,\nwhat monstrosities, what empty vessels, what deformed limbs,\nwhat defective brains, what perverted instincts! It is as if in\nthe counsels of the Eternal it had been decided to set going an\nevolutionary impulse that should inevitably result in man, and then\nleave him to fail or flourish just as the ten thousand contingencies\nof the maelstrom of conflicting earth forces should decide, so\nthat whether a man become a cripple or an athlete, a fool or a\nphilosopher, a satyr or a god, is largely a matter of chance. Yet the\nhuman brain has steadily grown in size, human mastery over nature has\nsteadily increased, and chance has, upon the whole, brought more good\nto man than evil. Optimism is a final trait of the Eternal.\n\nAnd the taking-off of man, how haphazard, how fortuitous it all is!\nHis years shall be threescore and ten; but how few, comparatively,\nreach that age, how few live out half their days! Disease, accident,\nstupidity, superstition, cut him off at all ages--in infancy, in\nchildhood, in youth, in manhood; his whole life is a part of the\nflux and uncertainty of things. No god watches over him aside from\nhimself and his kind, no atom or molecule is partial to him, gravity\ncrushes him, fire burns him, the floods drown him as readily as\nthey do vipers and vermin. He takes his chances, he gains, and he\nloses, but Nature treats him with the same impartiality that she\ntreats the rest of her creatures. He runs the same gantlet of the\nhostile physical forces, he pays the same price for his development;\nbut his greater capacity for development--to whom or what does he\nowe that? If we follow Darwin we shall say natural selection, and\nnatural selection is just as good a god as any other. No matter what\nwe call it, if it brought man to the head of creation and put all\nthings (nearly all) under his feet, it is god enough for anybody.\nAt the heart of it there is still a mystery we cannot grasp. The\nways of Nature about us are no less divine because they are near and\nfamiliar. The illusion of the rare and the remote, science dispels.\nOf course we are still trying to describe the Infinite in terms of\nthe finite.\n\n\nIV\n\nWe are so attached to our kind, and so dependent upon them, that\nmost persons feel homeless and orphaned in a universe where no\nsuggestion of sympathy and interest akin to our own comes to us from\nthe great void. A providence of impersonal forces, the broadcast,\nindiscriminate benefits of nature, kind deeds where no thought of\nkindness is, well-being as the result of immutable law--all such\nideas chill and disquiet us, until we have inured ourselves to them.\nWe love to fancy that we see friendly hands and hear friendly voices\nin nature. It is easy to make ourselves believe that the rains, the\nwarmth, the fruitful seasons, are sent by some Being for our especial\nbenefit. The thought that we are adapted to nature and not nature\nmade or modified to suit us, is distasteful to us. It rubs us the\nwrong way. We have long been taught to believe that there is air\nbecause we have lungs, and water because we need it to drink, and\nlight because we need it to see. Science takes this conceit out of\nus. The light begat the eye, and the air begat the lungs.\n\nIn the universe, as science reveals it to us, sensitive souls\nexperience the cosmic chill; in the universe as our inevitable\nanthropomorphism shapes it for us, we experience the human glow. The\nsame anthropomorphism has in the past peopled the woods and fields\nand streams and winds with good and evil spirits, and filled the\nworld with cruel and debasing superstitions; but in our day we have\ngot rid of all of this; we have abolished all gods but one. This one\nwe still fear, and bow down before, and seek to propitiate--not with\nofferings and sacrifices, but with good Sunday clothes and creeds\nand pew-rents and praise and incense and surplices and ceremonies.\nWhat Brocken shadows our intense personalism casts upon nature!\nWe see the gigantic outlines of our own forms, and mistake them\nfor a veritable god. But as we ourselves are a part of nature, so\nthis humanizing tendency of ours is also a part of nature, a part\nof human nature--not valid and independent, like the chemical and\nphysical forces, but as valid and real as our dreams, our ideas,\nour aspirations. All the gods and divinities and spirits with which\nman has peopled the heavens and the earth are a part of Nature as\nshe manifests herself in our subjective selves. So there we are, on\na trail that ends where it began. We condemn one phase of nature\nthrough another phase of nature that is active in our own minds. How\nshall we escape this self-contradiction? As we check or control the\ngravity without us by the power of the gravity in our own bodies, so\nour intelligence must sit in judgment on phases of the same Universal\nIntelligence manifested in outward nature.\n\nIt is this recognition of an intelligence in nature akin to our own\nthat gives rise to our anthropomorphism. We recognize in the living\nworld about us the use of specific means to specific ends, and this\nwe call intelligence. It differs from our own in that it is not\nselective and intensive in the same way. It does not take short cuts;\nit does not aim at human efficiency; it does not cut out waste and\ndelay and pain. It is the method of trial and error. It hits its\nmark because it hits all marks. Species succeed because the tide\nthat bears them on is a universal tide. It is not a river, but an\nocean current. Nature progresses, but not as man does by discarding\none form and adapting a higher. She discards nothing; she keeps all\nher old forms and ways and out of them evolves the higher; she keeps\nthe fish\u2019s fin, while she perfects the bird\u2019s wing; she preserves the\ninvertebrate, while she fashions the vertebrate; she achieves man,\nwhile she preserves the monkey. She gropes her way like a blind man,\nbut she arrives because all goals are hers. Perceptive intelligence\nshe has given in varying degrees to all creatures, but reasoning\nintelligence she has given to man alone. I say \u201cgiven,\u201d after our\nhuman manner of speaking, when I mean \u201cachieve.\u201d There is no giving\nin Nature--there is effort and development. There is interchange and\ninteraction, but no free gifts. Things are bought with a price. The\nprice of the mind of man--who can estimate what it has been through\nthe biological and geological ages?--a price which his long line\nof antecedent forms has paid in struggle and suffering and death.\nThe little that has been added to the size of his brain since the\nPiltdown man and the Neanderthal man--what effort and pain has not\nthat cost? We pay for what we get, or our forbears paid for it. They\npaid for the size of our brains, and we pay for our progress in\nknowledge.\n\n\nV\n\nThe term \u201creligion\u201d is an equivocal and much-abused word, but I am\nconvinced that no man\u2019s life is complete without some kind of an\nemotional experience that may be called religious. Not necessarily\nso much a definite creed or belief as an attraction and aspiration\ntoward the Infinite, or a feeling of awe and reverence inspired\nby the contemplation of this wonderful and mysterious universe,\nsomething to lift a man above purely selfish and material ends, and\nopen his soul to influences from the highest heavens of thought.\n\nReligion in some form is as natural to man as are eating and\nsleeping. The mysteries of life and the wonder and terror of the\nworld in which he finds himself, arouse emotions of awe and fear\nand worship in him as soon as his powers of reflection are born. In\nman\u2019s early history religion, philosophy, and literature are one.\nHe worships before he investigates; he builds temples before he\nbuilds schoolhouses or civic halls. He is, of course, superstitious\nlong before he is scientific; he trembles before the supernatural\nlong before he has mastered the natural. The mind of early man was\nsynthetic as our emotions always are; it lumped things, it did not\ndifferentiate and classify. The material progress of the race has\nkept pace with man\u2019s power of analysis--the power to separate one\nthing from another, to resolve things into their component parts\nand recombine them to serve his own purposes. He gets water power,\nsteam power, electric power, by separating a part from the whole and\nplacing his machinery where they tend to unite again.\n\nScience tends more and more to reveal to us the unity that underlies\nthe diversity of nature. We must have diversity in our practical\nlives; we must seize Nature by many handles. But our intellectual\nlives demand unity, demand simplicity amid all this complexity. Our\nreligious lives demand the same. Amid all the diversity of creeds\nand sects we are coming more and more to see that religion is one,\nthat verbal differences and ceremonies are unimportant, and that\nthe fundamental agreements are alone significant. Religion as a key\nor passport to some other world has had its day; as a mere set of\nstatements or dogmas about the Infinite mystery it has had its day.\nScience makes us more and more at home in this world, and is coming\nmore and more, to the intuitional mind, to have a religious value.\nScience kills credulity and superstition, but to the well-balanced\nmind it enhances the feeling of wonder, of veneration, and of kinship\nwhich we feel in the presence of the marvelous universe. It quiets\nour fears and apprehensions, it pours oil upon the troubled waters\nof our lives, and reconciles us to the world as it is. The old\nfickle and jealous gods begotten by our fears and morbid consciences\nfall away, and the new gods of law and order, who deal justly if\nmercilessly, take their places.\n\n\u201cThe mind of the universe which we share,\u201d is a phrase of\nThoreau\u2019s--a large and sane idea which shines like a star amid his\nmany firefly conceits and paradoxes. The physical life of each of us\nis a part or rill of the universal life about us, as surely as every\nounce of our strength is a part of gravity. With equal certainty,\nand under the same law, our mental lives flow from the fountain of\nuniversal mind, the cosmic intelligence which guides the rootlets of\nthe smallest plant as it searches the soil for the elements it needs,\nand the most minute insect in availing itself of the things it needs.\nIt is this primal current of life, the two different phases of which\nwe see in our bodies and in our minds, that continues after our own\nspecial embodiments of it have ceased; in it is the real immortality.\nThe universal mind does not die, the universal life does not go out.\nThe jewel that trembles in the dewdrop, the rain that lends itself\nto the painting of the prismatic colors of the bow in the clouds,\npass away, but their fountainhead in the sea does not pass away. The\nwaters may make the wonderful circuit through the clouds, the air,\nthe earth, and the cells and veins of living things, any number of\ntimes--now a globule of vapor in the sky, now a starlike crystal\nin the snow, now the painted mist of a waterfall, then the limpid\ncurrent of a mountain brook--and still the sea remains unchanged.\nAnd though the life and mentality of the globe passes daily and is\ndaily renewed, the primal source of those things is as abounding as\never. It is not you and I that are immortal; it is Creative Energy,\nof which we are a part. Our immortality is swallowed up in this.\n\nThe poets, the prophets, the martyrs, the heroes, the saints--where\nare they? Each was but a jewel in the dew, the rain, the\nsnowflake--throbbing, burning, flashing with color for a brief time\nand then vanishing, adorning the world for a moment and then caught\naway into the great abyss. \u201cO spendthrift Nature!\u201d our hearts cry\nout; but Nature\u2019s spending is only the ceaseless merging of one\nform into another without diminution of her material or blurring\nof her types. Flowers bloom and flowers fade, the seasons come and\nthe seasons go, men are born and men die, the world mourns for its\nsaints and heroes, its poets and saviors, but Nature remains and is\nas young and spontaneous and inexhaustible as ever. Where is the\ncomfort in all this to you and to me? There is none, save the comfort\nor satisfaction of knowing things as they are. We shall feel more at\nease in Zion when we learn to distinguish substance from shadow, and\nto grasp the true significance of the world of which we form a part.\nIn the end each of us will have had his day, and can say as Whitman\ndoes,\n\n      \u201cI have positively appeared. That is enough.\u201d\n\nIn us or through us the Primal Mind will have contemplated and\nenjoyed its own works and will continue to do so as long as human\nlife endures on this planet. It will have achieved the miracle of the\nIncarnation, and have tasted the sweet and the bitter, the victories\nand the defeats of evolution. The legend of the birth and life of\nJesus is but this ever-present naturalism written large with parable\nand miracle on the pages of our religious history. In the lives of\neach of us the supreme reality comes down to earth and takes on the\nhuman form and suffers all the struggles and pains and humiliations\nof mortal, finite life. Even the Christian theory of the vicarious\natonement is not without its basis of naturalism. Men, through\ndisease and ignorance and half knowledge, store up an experience that\nsaves future generations from suffering and failure. We win victories\nfor our descendants, and bring the kingdom nearer for them by the\ndevils and evil spirits we overcome.\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\nTHE FAITH OF A NATURALIST\n\n\nI\n\nTo say that man is as good as God would to most persons seem like\nblasphemy; but to say that man is as good as Nature would disturb\nno one. Man is a part of Nature, or a phase of Nature, and shares\nin what we call her imperfections. But what is Nature a part of,\nor a phase of?--and what or who is its author? Is it not true that\nthis earth which is so familiar to us is as good as yonder morning\nor evening star and made of the same stuff?--just as much in the\nheavens, just as truly a celestial abode as it is? Venus seems to us\nlike a great jewel in the crown of night or morning. From Venus the\nearth would seem like a still larger jewel. The heavens seem afar off\nand free from all stains and impurities of earth; we lift our eyes\nand our hearts to them as to the face of the Eternal, but our science\nreveals no body or place there so suitable for human abode and human\nhappiness as this earth. In fact, this planet is the only desirable\nheaven of which we have any clue. Innumerable other worlds exist in\nthe abysses of space which may be the abodes of beings superior, and\nof beings inferior, to ourselves. We place our gods afar off so as\nto dehumanize them, never suspecting that when we do so we discount\ntheir divinity. The more human we are,--remembering that to err is\nhuman,--the nearer God we are. Of course good and bad are human\nconcepts and are a verdict upon created things as they stand related\nto us, promoting or hindering our well-being. In the councils of the\nEternal there is apparently no such distinction.\n\nMan is not only as good as God; some men are a good deal better,\nthat is, from our point of view; they attain a degree of excellence\nof which there is no hint in nature--moral excellence. It is\nnot until we treat man as a part of nature--as a product of the\nearth as literally as are the trees--that we can reconcile these\ncontradictions. If we could build up a composite man out of all\nthe peoples of the earth, including even the Prussians, he would\nrepresent fairly well the God in nature.\n\nCommuning with God is communing with our own hearts, our own best\nselves, not with something foreign and accidental. Saints and\ndevotees have gone into the wilderness to find God; of course they\ntook God with them, and the silence and detachment enabled them to\nhear the still, small voice of their own souls, as one hears the\nticking of his own watch in the stillness of the night. We are not\ncut off, we are not isolated points; the great currents flow through\nus and over us and around us, and unite us to the whole of nature.\nMoses saw God in the burning bush, saw him with the eyes of early\nman whose divinities were clothed in the extraordinary, the fearful,\nor the terrible; we see him in the meanest weed that grows, and hear\nhim in the gentle murmur of our own heart\u2019s blood. The language of\ndevotion and religious conviction is only the language of soberness\nand truth written large and aflame with emotion.\n\nMan goes away from home searching for the gods he carries with him\nalways. Man can know and feel and love only man. There is a deal of\nsound psychology in the new religion called Christian Science--in\nthat part which emphasizes the power of the mind over the body,\nand the fact that the world is largely what we make it, that evil\nis only the shadow of good--old truths reburnished. This helps us\nto understand the hold it has taken upon such a large number of\nadmirable persons. Good and evil are relative terms, but evil is only\nthe shadow of good. Disease is a reality, but not in the same sense\nthat health is a reality. Positive and negative electricity are both\nfacts, but positive and negative good belong to a different order.\nChristian Science will not keep the distemper out of the house if\nthe sewer-gas gets in; inoculation will do more to prevent typhoid\nand diphtheria than \u201cdeclaring the truth\u201d or saying your prayers or\ncounting your beads. In its therapeutical value experimental science\nis the only safe guide in dealing with human corporal ailments.\n\nWe need not fear alienation from God. I feed Him when I feed a\nbeggar. I serve Him when I serve my neighbor. I love Him when I love\nmy friend. I praise Him when I praise the wise and good of any race\nor time. I shun Him when I shun the leper. I forgive Him when I\nforgive my enemies. I wound Him when I wound a human being. I forget\nHim when I forget my duty to others. If I am cruel or unjust or\nresentful or envious or inhospitable toward any man, woman, or child,\nI am guilty of all these things toward God: \u201cInasmuch as ye have done\nit unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto\nme.\u201d\n\n\nII\n\nI am persuaded that a man without religion falls short of the proper\nhuman ideal. Religion, as I use the term, is a spiritual flowering,\nand the man who has it not is like a plant that never blooms. The\nmind that does not open and unfold its religious sensibilities in the\nsunshine of this infinite and spiritual universe, is to be pitied.\nMen of science do well enough with no other religion than the love\nof truth, for this is indirectly a love of God. The astronomer, the\ngeologist, the biologist, tracing the footsteps of the Creative\nEnergy throughout the universe--what need has he of any formal,\npatent-right religion? Were not Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, and Lyell,\nand all other seekers and verifiers of natural truth among the most\ntruly religious of men? Any of these men would have gone to hell for\nthe truth--not the truth of creeds and rituals, but the truth as it\nexists in the councils of the Eternal and as it is written in the\nlaws of matter and of life.\n\nFor my part I had a thousand times rather have Huxley\u2019s religion than\nthat of the bishops who sought to discredit him, or Bruno\u2019s than that\nof the church that burnt him. The religion of a man that has no other\naim than his own personal safety from some real or imaginary future\ncalamity, is of the selfish, ignoble kind.\n\nAmid the decay of creeds, love of nature has high religious\nvalue. This has saved many persons in this world--saved them from\nmammon-worship, and from the frivolity and insincerity of the crowd.\nIt has made their lives placid and sweet. It has given them an\ninexhaustible field for inquiry, for enjoyment, for the exercise\nof all their powers, and in the end has not left them soured and\ndissatisfied. It has made them contented and at home wherever they\nare in nature--in the house not made with hands. This house is\ntheir church, and the rocks and the hills are the altars, and the\ncreed is written in the leaves of the trees and in the flowers of\nthe field and in the sands of the shore. A new creed every day and\nnew preachers, and holy days all the week through. Every walk to\nthe woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving\nordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine\nare from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth. There are no heretics\nin Nature\u2019s church; all are believers, all are communicants. The\nbeauty of natural religion is that you have it all the time; you do\nnot have to seek it afar off in myths and legends, in catacombs, in\ngarbled texts, in miracles of dead saints or wine-bibbing friars.\nIt is of to-day; it is now and here; it is everywhere. The crickets\nchirp it, the birds sing it, the breezes chant it, the thunder\nproclaims it, the streams murmur it, the unaffected man lives it.\nIts incense rises from the plowed fields, it is on the morning\nbreeze, it is in the forest breath and in the spray of the wave. The\nfrosts write it in exquisite characters, the dews impearl it, and\nthe rainbow paints it on the cloud. It is not an insurance policy\nunderwritten by a bishop or a priest; it is not even a faith; it is a\nlove, an enthusiasm, a consecration to natural truth.\n\nThe God of sunshine and of storms speaks a less equivocal language\nthan the God of revelation.\n\nOur fathers had their religion and their fathers had theirs, but\nthey were not ours, and could not be in those days and under those\nconditions. But their religions lifted them above themselves; they\nhealed their wounds; they consoled them for many of the failures\nand disappointments of this world; they developed character; they\ntempered the steel in their nature. How childish to us seems the plan\nof salvation, as our fathers found it in the fervid and, I freely\nsay, inspired utterances of Saint Paul! But it saved them, it built\ncharacter, it made life serious, it was an heroic creed which has\nlost credence in our more knowing and more frivolous age. We see how\nimpossible it is, but we do not see the great natural truths upon\nwhich it rests.\n\nA man is not saved by the truth of the things he believes, but by the\ntruth of his belief--its sincerity, its harmony with his character.\nThe absurdities of the popular religions do not matter; what matters\nis the lukewarm belief, the empty forms, the shallow conceptions of\nlife and duty. We are prone to think that if the creed is false, the\nreligion is false. Religion is an emotion, an inspiration, a feeling\nof the Infinite, and may have its root in any creed or in no creed.\nWhat can be more unphilosophical than the doctrines of the Christian\nScientists? Yet Christian Science is a good practical religion.\nIt makes people cheerful, happy, and helpful--yes, and helps make\nthem healthy too. Its keynote is love, and love holds the universe\ntogether. Any creed that ennobles character and opens a door or a\nwindow upon the deeper meanings of this marvelous universe is good\nenough to live by, and good enough to die by. The Japanese-Chinese\nreligion of ancestor worship, sincerely and devoutly held, is better\nthan the veneer of much of our fashionable well-dressed religion.\n\nGuided by appearances alone, how surely we should come to look upon\nthe sun as a mere appendage of the earth!--as much so as is the moon.\nHow near it seems at sunrise and sunset, and as if these phenomena\ndirectly involved the sun, extending to it and modifying its light\nand heat! We do not realize that these are merely terrestrial\nphenomena, and that the sun, so to speak, knows them not.\n\nViewed from the sun the earth is a mere speck in the sky, and the\namount of the total light and heat from the sun that is received on\nthe earth is so small that the mind can hardly grasp it. Yet for all\npractical purposes the sun shines for us alone. Our relation to it\ncould not be any more direct and sustaining if it were created for\nthat purpose. It is immanent in the life of the globe. It is the\nsource of all our energy and therefore of our life. Its bounties are\nuniversal. The other planets find it is their sun also. It is as\nspecial and private to them as to us. We think the sun paints the bow\non the cloud, but the bow follows from the laws of optics. The sun\nknows it not.\n\nIt is the same with what we call God. His bounty is of the same\nuniversal, impersonal kind, and yet for all practical purposes it\nexists especially for us, it is immanent every moment in our lives.\nThere is no special Providence. Nature sends the rain upon the just\nand the unjust, upon the sea as upon the land. We are here and\nfind life good because Providence is general and not special. The\nconditions are not too easy, the struggle has made men of us. The\nbitter has tempered the sweet. Evil has put us on our guard and keeps\nus so. We pay for what we get.\n\n\nIII\n\nThat wise old Roman, Marcus Aurelius, says, \u201cNothing is evil which\nis according to nature.\u201d At that moment he is thinking especially of\ndeath which, when it comes in the course of nature, is not an evil,\nunless life itself is also an evil. After the lamp of life is burned\nout, death is not an evil, rather is it a good. But premature death,\ndeath by accident or disease, before a man has done his work or used\nup his capital of vitality, is an evil. Disease itself is an evil,\nbut if we lived according to nature there would be no disease; we\nshould die the natural, painless death of old age. Of course there\nis no such thing as absolute evil or absolute good. Evil is that\nwhich is against our well-being, and good is that which promotes\nit. We always postulate the existence of life when we speak of good\nand evil. Excesses in nature are evil to us because they bring\ndestruction and death in their train. They are disharmonies in the\nscheme of things, because they frustrate and bring to naught. The war\nwhich Marcus Aurelius was waging when he wrote those passages was an\nevil in itself, though good might come out of it.\n\nEverything in organic nature--trees, grasses, flowers, insects,\nfishes, mammals--is beset by evil of some kind. The natural order\nis good because it brought us here and keeps us here, but evil has\nalways dogged our footsteps. Leaf-blight is an evil to the tree,\nsmallpox is an evil to man, frost is an evil to the insects, flood an\nevil to the fishes.\n\nMoral evil--hatred, envy, greed, lying, cruelty, cheating--is of\nanother order. These vices have no existence below the human sphere.\nWe call them evils because they are disharmonies; they are inimical\nto the highest standard of human happiness and well-being. They make\na man less a man, they work discord and develop needless friction.\nSand in the engine of your car and water in the gasoline are evils,\nand malice and jealousy and selfishness in your heart are analogous\nevils.\n\nIn our day we read the problem of Nature and God in a new light, the\nlight of science, or of emancipated human reason, and the old myths\nmean little to us. We accept Nature as we find it, and do not crave\nthe intervention of a God that sits behind and is superior to it. The\nself-activity of the cosmos suffices. We accept the tornadoes and\nearthquakes and world wars, and do not lose faith. We arm ourselves\nagainst them as best we can. We accept the bounty of the rain, the\nsunshine, the soil, the changing seasons, and the vast armory of\nnon-living forces, and from them equip or teach ourselves to escape,\nendure, modify, or ward off the destructive and non-human forces that\nbeset our way. We draw our strength from the Nature that seems and\nis so regardless of us; our health and wholeness are its gifts. The\nbiologic ages, with all their carnival of huge and monstrous forms,\nhad our well-being at heart. The evils and dangers that beset our\nway have been outmatched by the good and the helpful. The deep-sea\nfish would burst and die if brought to the surface; the surface life\nwould be crushed and killed in the deep sea. Life adapts itself\nto its environment; hard conditions make it hard. Winds, floods,\ninclement seasons, have driven it around the earth; the severer the\ncold, the thicker the fur; compensations always abound. If Nature\nis not all-wise and all-merciful from our human point of view, she\nhas placed us in a world where our own wisdom and mercy can be\ndeveloped; she has sent us to a school in which we learn to see her\nown shortcomings and imperfections, and to profit by them.\n\nThe unreasoning, unforeseeing animals suffer more from the accidents\nof nature--drought, flood, lightning--than man does; but man suffers\nmore from evils of his own making--war, greed, intemperance,\npestilence--so that the development in both lines goes on, and life\nis still at the flood.\n\nGood and evil are inseparable. We cannot have light without shade,\nor warmth without cold, or life without death, or development without\nstruggle. The struggle for life, of which Darwinism makes so much,\nis only the struggle of the chick to get out of the shell, or of\nthe flower to burst its bud, or of the root to penetrate the soil.\nIt is not the struggle of battle and hate--the justification of war\nand usurpation--it is for the most part a beneficent struggle with\nthe environment, in which the fittest of the individual units of a\nspecies survive, but in which the strong and the feeble, the great\nand the small of species alike survive. The lamb survives with the\nlion, the wren with the eagle, the Esquimo with the European--all\nmanner of small and delicate forms survive with the great and robust.\nOne species of carnivora, or of rodents, or herbivora, does not, as\na rule, exterminate another species. It is true that species prey\nupon species, that cats eat mice, that hawks eat smaller birds, and\nthat man slays and eats the domestic animals. Probably man alone\nhas exterminated species. But outside of man\u2019s doings all the rest\nbelongs to Nature\u2019s system of checks and balances, and bears no\nanalogy to human or inhuman wars and conquests.\n\nLife struggles with matter, the tree struggles with the wind and with\nother trees. Man struggles with gravity, cold, wet, heat, and all the\nforces that hinder him. The tiniest plant that grows has to force its\nroot down into the soil; earlier than that it has to burst its shell\nor case. The corn struggles to lift itself up after the storm has\nbeaten it down; effort, effort, everywhere in the organic world. Says\nWhitman:\n\n      \u201cUrge and urge and urge,\n      Always the procreant urge of the world.\u201d\n\n\nIV\n\nEvery few years we have an ice-storm or a snowstorm that breaks down\nand disfigures the trees. Some trees suffer much more than others.\nThe storm goes its way; the laws of physical force prevail; the great\nworld of mechanical forces is let loose upon the small world of vital\nforces; occasionally a tree is so crushed that it never entirely\nrecovers; but after many years the woods and groves have repaired\nthe damages and taken on their wonted thrifty appearance. The evil\nwas only temporary; the world of trees has suffered no permanent\nset-back. But had the trees been conscious beings, what a deal of\nsuffering they would have experienced! An analogous visitation to\nhuman communities entails a heritage of misery, but in time it too\nis forgotten and its scars healed. Fire, blood, war, epidemics,\nearthquakes, are such visitations, but the race survives them and\nreaps good from them.\n\nWe say that Nature cares nothing for the individual, but only for\nthe race or the species. The whole organic world is at war with the\ninorganic, and as in human wars the individuals are sacrificed that\nthe army, the whole, may live; so in the strife and competition of\nnature, the separate units fall that the mass may prosper.\n\nIt is probably true that in the course of the biological history of\nthe earth, whole species have been rendered extinct by parasites,\nor by changing outward conditions. But this has been the exception,\nand not the rule. The chestnut blight now seems to threaten the very\nexistence of this species of tree in this country, but I think the\nchances are that this fungus will meet with some natural check.\n\nIn early summer comes the June drop of apples. The trees start with\nmore fruit than they can carry, and if they are in vigorous health,\nthey will drop the surplus. It is a striking illustration of Nature\u2019s\nmethods. The tree does its own thinning. But if not at the top of its\ncondition, it fails to do this. It takes health and strength simply\nto let go; only a living tree drops its fruit or its leaves; only a\ngrowing man drops his outgrown opinions.\n\nIf we put ourselves in the place of the dropped apples, we must look\nupon our fate as unmixed evil. If we put ourselves in the place of\nthe tree and of the apples that remain on it, the June drop would\nappear an unmixed good--finer fruit, and a healthier, longer-lived\ntree results. Nature does not work so much to specific as to\nuniversal ends. The individual may go, but the type must remain. The\nranks may be decimated, but the army and its cause must triumph.\nLife in all its forms is a warfare only in the sense that it is a\nstruggle with its outward conditions, in which, other things being\nequal, the strongest force prevails. Small and weak forms prevail\nalso, because the competing forms are small and weak, or because\nat the feast of life there is a place for the small and weak also.\nBut lion against lion, man against man, mouse against mouse, the\nstrongest will, in the end, be the victor.\n\nMan\u2019s effort is to save waste, to reduce friction, to take short\ncuts, to make smooth the way, to seize the advantage, to economize\ntime, but the physical forces know none of these things.\n\nGo into the woods and behold the evil the trees have to contend\nwith--all typical of the evil we have to contend with--too crowded\nin places, one tree crushing another by its fall, specimens on every\nhand whose term of life might be lengthened by a little wise surgery;\nborers, blight, disease, insect pests, storm, wreckage, thunderbolt\nscars, or destruction--evil in a hundred forms besetting every tree,\nand sooner or later leaving its mark. A few escape--oaks, maples,\npines, elms--and reach a greater age than the others, but they fail\nat last, and when they have rounded out their green century, or ten\ncenturies, and go down in a gale, or in the stillness of a summer\nnight, how often younger trees are marred or crushed by their fall!\nBut come back after many long years, and their places are filled, and\nall the scars are healed. The new generation of trees is feeding\nupon the accumulations of the old. Evil is turned to good. The\ndestruction of the cyclone, the ravages of fire, the wreckage of the\nice-storm, are all obliterated and the forest-spirit is rank and full\nagain.\n\nThere is no wholesale exemption from this rule of waste and struggle\nin this world, nor probably in any other. We have life on these\nterms. The organic world develops under pressure from within and from\nwithout. Rain brings the perils of rain, fire brings the perils of\nfire, power brings the perils of power. The great laws go our way,\nbut they will break us or rend us if we fail to keep step with them.\nUnmixed good is a dream; unmixed happiness is a dream; perfection is\na dream; heaven and hell are both dreams of our mixed and struggling\nlives, the one the outcome of our aspirations for the good, the other\nthe outcome of our fear of evil.\n\nThe trees in the woods, the plants in the fields encounter hostile\nforces the year through; storms crash or overthrow them; visible\nand invisible enemies prey upon them; yet are the fields clothed\nin verdure and the hills and plains mantled with superb forests.\nNature\u2019s haphazard planting and sowing and her wasteful weeding\nand trimming do not result in failure as these methods do with us.\nA failure of hers with one form or species results in the success\nof some other form. All successes are hers. Allow time enough and\nthe forest returns in the path of the tornado, but maybe with other\nspecies of trees. The birds and squirrels plant oaks and chestnuts\namid the pines and the winds plant pines amid the oaks and chestnuts.\nThe robins and the cedar-birds sow the red cedar broadcast over the\nlandscape, and plant the Virginia creeper and the poison-ivy by\nevery stub and fence-post. The poison-ivy is a triumph of Nature\nas truly as is the grapevine or the morning-glory. All are hers.\nMan specializes; he selects this or that, selects the wheat and\nrejects the tares; but Nature generalizes; she has the artist\u2019s\ndisinterestedness; all is good; all are parts of her scheme. She\nnourishes the foul-smelling cat-brier as carefully as she does the\nrose. Each creature, with man at the head, says, \u201cThe world is mine;\nit was created for me.\u201d Evidently it was created for all, at least\nall forms are at home here. Nature\u2019s system of checks and balances\npreserves her working equilibrium. If a species of forest worm\nunder some exceptionally favoring conditions gets such a start that\nit threatens to destroy our beech and maple forests, presently a\nparasite, stimulated by this turn in its favor, appears and restores\nthe balance. For two or three seasons the beech-woods in my native\ntown were ravaged by some kind of worm or beetle; in midsummer the\nsunlight came into them as if the roof had been taken off; later\nthey swarmed with white millers. But the scourge was suddenly\nchecked--some parasite, probably a species of ichneumon-fly, was on\nhand to curtail the dangerous excess.\n\nI am only trying to say that after we have painted Nature as black\nas the case will allow, after we have depicted her as a savage\nbeast, a devastating storm, a scorching desert, a consuming fire, an\nall-engulfing earthquake, or as war, pestilence, famine, we have only\ndepicted her from our limited human point of view. But even from that\npoint of view the favoring conditions of life are so many, living\nbodies are so adaptive, the lift of the evolutionary impulse is so\nunconquerable, the elemental laws and forces are so overwhelmingly on\nour side, that our position in the universe is still an enviable one.\n\u201cThough he slay me, yet will I trust in him.\u201d Slain, I shall nourish\nsome other form of life, and the books will still balance--not my\nbooks, but the vast ledgers of the Eternal.\n\nIn the old times we accounted for creation in the simple terms of the\nHebrew Scriptures--\u201cIn the beginning God created the heaven and the\nearth.\u201d We even saw no discrepancy in the tradition that creation\ntook place in the spring. But when we attempt to account for creation\nin the terms of science or naturalism, the problem is far from being\nso simple. We have not so tangible a point from which to start. It is\nas if we were trying to find the end or the beginning of the circle.\nRound and round we go, caught in the endless and beginningless\ncurrents of the Creative Energy; no fixity or finality anywhere;\nrest and motion, great and small, up and down, heat and cold, good\nand evil, near and far, only relative; cause and effect merging and\nlosing themselves in each other; life and death perpetually playing\ninto each other\u2019s hands; interior within interior; depth beneath\ndepth; height above height; the tangible thrilled and vibrating with\nthe intangible; the material in bonds to the non-material; invisible,\nimpalpable forces streaming around us and through us; perpetual\nchange and transformation on every hand; every day a day of creation,\nevery night a revelation of unspeakable grandeur; suns and systems\nforming in the cyclones of stardust; the whole starry host of heaven\nflowing like a meadow brook, but where, or whence, who can tell? The\ncenter everywhere, the circumference nowhere; pain and pleasure,\ngood and evil, inextricably mixed; the fall of man a daily and\nhourly occurrence; the redemption of man, the same! Heaven or hell\nwaiting by every doorstep, boundless, beginningless, unspeakable,\nimmeasurable--what wonder that we seek a short cut through this\nwilderness and appeal to the supernatural?\n\nWhen I look forth upon the world and see how, regardless of man and\nhis well-being, the operations of Nature go on--how the winds and\nthe storms wreck him or destroy him, how the drought or the floods\nbring to naught his industries, how not the least force in heaven or\nearth turns aside for him, or makes any exception to him; in short,\nhow all forms of life are perpetually ground between the upper and\nthe nether millstones of the contending and clashing natural material\nforces, I ask myself: \u201cIs there nothing, then, under the sun, or\nbeyond the sun, that has a stake in our well-being? Is life purely\na game of chance, and is it all luck that we are here in a world so\nrichly endowed to meet all our requirements?\u201d Serene Reason answers:\n\u201cNo, it is not luck as in a lottery. It is the good fortune of the\nwhole. It was inherent in the constitution of the whole, and it\ncontinues because of its adaptability; life is here because it fits\nitself into the scheme of things; it is flexible and compromising.\u201d\nWe find the world good to be in because we are adapted to it, and\nnot it to us. The vegetable growth upon the rocks where the sea is\nforever pounding is a type of life; the waves favor its development.\nLife takes advantage of turbulence as well as of quietude, of drought\nas well as of floods, of deserts as well as of marshes, of the\nsea-bottom as well as of the mountain-tops. Both animal and vegetable\nlife trim their sails to the forces that beat upon them. The image\nof the sail is a good one. Life avails itself of the half-contrary\nwinds; it captures and imprisons their push in its sails; by yielding\na little, it makes headway in the teeth of the gale; it gives and\ntakes; without struggle, without opposition, life would not be life.\nThe sands of the shore do not struggle with the waves, nor the waves\nwith the sands; the buffeting ends where it began. But trees struggle\nwith the wind, fish struggle with the flood, man struggles with his\nenvironment; all draw energy from the forces that oppose them. Life\ngains as it spends; its waste is an investment. Not so with purely\nmaterial bodies. They are like the clock, they must be perpetually\nwound from without. A living body is a clock, perpetually self-wound\nfrom within.\n\nThe faith and composure of the naturalist or naturist are proof\nagainst the worst that Nature can do. He sees the cosmic forces only;\nhe sees nothing directly mindful of man, but man himself; he sees the\nintelligence and beneficence of the universe flowering in man; he\nsees life as a mysterious issue of the warring element; he sees human\nconsciousness and our sense of right and wrong, of truth and justice,\nas arising in the evolutionary sequence, and turning and sitting in\njudgment upon all things; he sees that there can be no life without\npain and death; that there can be no harmony without discord; that\nopposites go hand in hand; that good and evil are inextricably\nmingled; that the sun and blue sky are still there behind the clouds,\nunmindful of them; that all is right with the world if we extend our\nvision deep enough; that the ways of Nature are the ways of God if we\ndo not make God in our own image, and make our comfort and well-being\nthe prime object of Nature. Our comfort and well-being are provided\nfor in the constitution of the world, but we may say that they are\nnot guaranteed; they are contingent upon many things, but the chances\nare upon our side. He that would save his life shall lose it--lose\nit in forgetting that the universe is not a close corporation, or a\npatented article, and that it exists for other ends than our own. But\nhe who can lose his life in the larger life of the whole shall save\nit in a deeper, truer sense.\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\nA FALLACY MADE IN GERMANY\n\n\nDuring the Great War the question was asked, \u201cDo the inexorable laws\nof evolution apply to human beings as they apply to the lower animals\nand to plants?\u201d Most assuredly they do, but with a difference. Man\nis as certainly one of the results of the evolutionary process as is\nthe horse or the dog, the tree or the plant. We are as certain of\nhis animal origin as we can well be of anything in the biological\nhistory of the globe. But the inference which has so often been\ndrawn from this fact--namely, that man\u2019s development involves the\nsame factors, and is along parallel lines--is a fallacy. That the\nsupremacy of might, which has ruled, and still rules in nature below\nman, justifies the rule of might in human communities in our day, is\nan invention of perverted human ambition.\n\nAs Nature rules by the law of might, and as man is a part of Nature,\nwhy is he not under the same rule? The answer is that man is an\nexceptional creature; that while he is a part of the animal kingdom,\nhe is a new kind of animal; and while he is the outcome of evolution,\nlike the rest, new factors which are not operative in the orders\nbelow him have played a leading part in his later development.\nThese factors are his reason, which gives him a sense of the true\nand the false, and his conscience, which gives him a sense of right\nand wrong. These faculties subordinate the rule of might to the\nrule of right. They have resulted in the establishment of standards\nof conduct for individuals, for communities, and for organized\ngovernments that do not exist among the lower animal orders, and only\nin a very limited sense in the lower human orders.\n\nThere is no question of right and wrong among the plants of the\nfield, or the trees of the forest, or the birds of the air, or the\nbeasts of the earth--only the question of power to survive; might in\nthe sense of power of adaptation settles the question.\n\nSince the dawn of history man\u2019s moral and intellectual faculties have\ncome more and more to the fore, the moral standards always lagging\na little behind the intellectual and the \u00e6sthetic standards. Among\nnearly all the more advanced ancient races the concepts of justice,\nof mercy, and of fair dealing were dull and sluggish in comparison\nwith their intellectual acumen and their artistic achievements. The\nGreeks would lie and steal and set on foot piratical expeditions\nagainst their neighbors, while yet they produced such men as\nAristotle and Plato, and such artists as Phidias and Praxiteles.\n\nIn our day the whole civilized world was shocked and alarmed by\nthe moral lapse of a great people ranking among the highest in\nintelligence and material efficiency, suddenly preaching and\npracticing the doctrine of might over right which prevails in the\norders below man. The German philosophers brazenly justified their\nnation\u2019s course in their aggressive war, with all its attendant\nhorrors, by an appeal to the Darwinian doctrines of the struggle for\nexistence, and the consequent survival of the fittest, doctrines\nwhich play such a prominent part in biological evolution. The nation\nsuddenly slumped into a barbarism worse than that of their ancestral\nHuns. The Hun was again triumphant, gloating over the prospect of the\nrich plunder and the orgies of wine and lust that awaited him in new\nfields of conquest. It was a spectacle to make the Genius of Humanity\nveil her face and weep tears of blood.\n\nAll that was noble and precious in international relations; standards\nof conduct that it had taken long generations to achieve; the peace\nand good-will of the world; co\u00f6peration in scientific fields, and in\nendeavors toward human betterment--all went by the board before the\nTeutonic debauch of greed and lust for blood and conquest.\n\nSeriously to discuss in our day the question of the rule of might\nover right--that force is the arbiter of justice in human relations,\nexcept when it is invoked to chastise the offender--seems a waste\nof time. On how low a plane must a people live whose leaders appeal\nto the way of the tiger with his prey, or of the boa constrictor\nwith his victim, in establishing relations with other peoples! This\nferocious appeal of kaiserism to predatory nature--to \u201cNature red in\ntooth and claw\u201d--in order to set itself right before the conscience\nof mankind, is as fatuous as it is fallacious. If we could reckon\nwithout the sense of right and wrong, which has a survival value as\nreal as any form of physical might or power of adaptation, especially\nwith the later civilized nations (except Germany), a different face\nwould be put upon the question. But we cannot. The floodtide of world\ndemocracy and humanity is setting too strongly in that direction,\nand we can only hope and pray that misguided Germany may in the new\ngeneration be caught up and borne forward to new greatness and world\nusefulness, on the bosom of the same tide.\n\n\n\n\nIX\n\nTHE PRICE OF DEVELOPMENT\n\n\nI\n\nThe biological law of the supremacy of the strong over the weak, of\nthe fit over the less fit, which prevails throughout the world of\nliving things, gives us pause when it is applied to human history\nand to the relations of man with man. Yet it is true that the price\nof development is the struggle for life. The road of evolution is an\nuphill road. When struggle ceases, progress ceases, and evolution\nbecomes devolution. Our strength is the strength of the obstacles we\novercome. The living machine, contrary to the non-living, gains power\nfrom the friction it begets.\n\nWhen we open the book of the biological history of the globe, we\nfind, to begin with, no force but that which we call brute force,\nno justice but power, no crime but weakness, no law but the law of\nbattle. The victory is to the strong and the race to the swift. And\nit is well. It is on this plan, as I have so often said, that the\nlife of the globe has come to what we behold it. Man has come to his\npresent estate, the trees in the forest, the grasses and flowers of\nthe field, the birds in the air, the fishes in the sea, have each\nand all attained their present stage of development through the\noperation of this law of natural competition, and the survival of\nthe fittest. Though marked by what we call cruelty and injustice,\nin the totality of its operations it is a beneficent law. If it\nwere not so, how could the world of living things have attained its\npresent development? If it were a malevolent law, would not life\nhave suffered shipwreck long ago? The world of living things and of\nnon-living still merits the primal approval--\u201cBehold, it is very\ngood!\u201d Not your good, nor my good, but a general good, the good of\nall. Nature\u2019s scheme, if we may say she has a scheme, embraces the\ntotality of things, and that the totality of things is good who but\na born pessimist, a radically negative nature, can deny? Mixed good\nundoubtedly it is, but is there, or can there be, any other good in\nthe universe? Good forever freeing itself from the non-good, or from\nthe fetters of evil--good to eat, to drink, to behold, to live by, to\ndie by--good for the body, good for the mind, good for the soul, good\nin time, and good in eternity?\n\nFrom solar systems to atoms and molecules, the greater bodies, the\ngreater forces, prevail over the lesser, and yet flowers bloom, and\nlife is sweet, sweet for the minor forms as well as for the major.\n\nInert matter knows only the laws of force. In the world of living\nmatter, up to a certain point, the same rule prevails. In the fields\nand woods the more vigorous plants and trees run out the less\nvigorous. In the dryer meadows in my section of the Catskills the\norange hawkweed completely crowds out the meadow grasses; it plants\nitself on every square inch of the surface, and every four or five\nyears the farmer has to intervene with his plow to turn the battle in\nfavor of the grass again. In the gardens, unless the gardener take a\nhand in the game, the weeds choke down or smother all his vegetables.\nThe weeds are rank with original sin and they easily supplant our\npampered and cultivated cereals and legumes.\n\nIn the animal world there are few exceptions to the rule of the\nsupremacy of power. There is no question of right or wrong, of mercy\nor cruelty. It is not cruel or unjust for the bird to catch the\ninsect, or for the cat to catch the bird, or for the lion to devour\nthe lamb, or for the big fishes to eat up the little fishes. It is\nthe rule of nature, and never a question of right or wrong.\n\nBiological laws are as remorseless as physical laws. The course of\nanimal evolution through the geologic ages is everywhere marked by\nthe triumph of new and superior forms over the old and inferior\nforms. Among the lower races of man, our remote savage ancestors,\nmight ruled. The strong and prolific tribes supplanted those that\nwere less so, and, among the nations, up to our own day, the rule of\nnatural competition, or survival of the fittest, has held full sway.\nThose nations which are dominant are so by virtue of their superior\nqualities, physical, moral, or intellectual. It is not a question of\nmight except in so far as this question is linked with the question\nof moral and intellectual superiority.\n\nIs there, then, no such thing as equity, justice, fair play in the\nworld? Shall I seize my neighbor\u2019s farm and despoil him of his goods\nand chattels because I am stronger than he? Shall one state invade\nand despoil another, or seize its territory, because it is stronger\nand considers itself more fit to survive?\n\nThe rule of might, as I have said, prevails throughout the world\nof matter and of life below man, and long prevailed in pre-human\nand human history. But the old law of nature has been limited and\nqualified by a new law which has come into the world and which is\njust as truly a biological law in its application to man as was the\nold law of might. I refer to the law of man\u2019s moral nature, the\nsource of right, justice, mercy. The progress of the race and of\nthe nations is coming more and more to depend upon the observance\nof this law. Without it there is no organization, no co\u00f6peration,\nno commerce, no government. Without it anarchy would rule, and our\ncivilization would crumble and society disintegrate.\n\nThe moral sense of mankind is now the dominant fact in human history;\nthe rule of might has been superseded by the rule of right. It is\nthis sense in the civilized world that has revolted so overwhelmingly\nagainst the Prussian military power in precipitating the World War;\nand this conscience will probably be so developed and intensified by\nthe useless waste and cruelty of the war that such a calamity will\nnever again befall the world. Those nations will become the most\npowerful that are the most just, the most humane, that develop in the\nhighest degree a world conscience, and realize the most intensely\nthat the nations all belong to one family, in which the good and\nevil of one are the good and evil of all. What can the progress of\ncivilization mean but the progress of international comity, sympathy,\nco\u00f6peration, fair-dealing; in fact, the fullest recognition of\nthe validity of the ethical laws to which we hold individuals and\ncommunities amenable?\n\nHistory is full of violence, cruelty, injustice, and the triumph\nof the strong over the weak, wherein the end seemed to justify the\nmeans; yet never since the world began did physical might alone make\nmoral right. The sheriff and the hangman have made the doctrine\nunpopular among individuals--the ethical sense of mankind will in\ntime make it equally unpopular among nations.\n\nNature is not moral; primitive biological laws are not moral;\nthey are unmoral. There is no moral law until it is born of human\nintercourse; then it becomes more and more a biological law, more\nand more prominent in social and national progress. The law of the\njungle begins and ends in the jungle; when we translate it into human\naffairs, we must take the cruelty of the jungle out of it, and read\nit in terms of beneficent competition. Man is the jungle humanized;\nthe fangs and claws are drawn, and the stealthy spring gives place to\nopen and fair competition.\n\n\nII\n\nIn the Darwinian struggle for existence there is first the struggle\nwith environment, or with the non-living forces--heat, cold, storm,\nwind, flood; the organic always at war with the inorganic out of\nwhich its power comes. The fateful physical and mechanical forces go\ntheir way regardless of the life that surrounds them and which draws\nits energy from them. Gravity would pull down every tree and shrub\nand every animal that walks or flies. The wind and the storm would\nflatten down the flowers and grasses and grains like a steam roller,\nand often succeeds in doing so. See the timothy and wheat and corn\nstruggle to lift themselves again. Behold how the trees grip the\nrocks and soil, and brace themselves against the wind! This struggle\nis, of course, not a conscious one. Apart from the original push of\nlife, it can all be explained in terms of physics and chemistry. The\nbio-chemist will tell you why the plant leans toward the light,\nand why it rights itself when pressed down; but why or how matter\norganizes itself into the various living forms is a question before\nwhich natural philosophy is dumb. Neither chemistry nor physics\ncan give us the secret of life. The ingenious devices to secure\ncross-fertilization among certain plants, devices for scattering the\nseed among others,--the hooks, the wings, the springs,--to me all\nseem to imply intelligence, not apart from, but inherent in, the\nthings themselves. Power of adaptation--to take advantage of wind\nand flood, of solid and fluid--is one of the mysterious attributes\nof life. And yet we know that vegetable life takes advantage of\nthese things not, as we do, by forethought and invention, but by a\nmysterious inherent impulse.\n\nHow the bee and the bird battle with the wind, the fish with the\nwaves and the rapids, the fur-bearers with the cold and the snow!\nhow all living creatures struggle to escape or resist the dissolving\npower of the natural forces!\n\nThe ever-present instinct of fear in all wild creatures and in\nchildren, and the quickness with which it can be aroused in all\npersons, throw light upon the crueler aspects of this struggle for\nexistence which is common to all forms of animal life. Had life never\nbeen beset with perils, we should have been strangers to the emotion\nof fear, as would all other creatures. Even the fly that alights on\nmy paper as I write fears my hand. It is ever on guard against its\nnatural enemies. This is the proof of the universal struggle. Among\nthe lower forms the struggle or competition of the fleet with the\nslow, the cunning with the stupid, the sharp-eyed, the sharp-eared,\nand the keen of scent with those less so; of the miscellaneous\nfeeders with the more specialized feeders; and, among mankind,\nthe competition of men of purpose, of foresight, of judgment, of\nexperience, of probity, and of other personal resources, with men\nwho are deficient in these things; and, among nations and peoples,\nthe inevitable competition of those who cherish the highest national\nideals, the best-organized governments, the best race inheritance,\nthe most natural resources, and so on, with the less fortunate\nin these respects--all this struggle and competition, I say, is\nbeneficent and on the road to progress.\n\nMyriads of different types of animal and vegetable life fit into the\nscheme of organic nature without conflict or hindrance, but when\nthere is conflict, the strong prevail. The small and the gigantic,\nthe feeble and the mighty, the timid and the bold, the frail and the\nrobust--birds, insects, mice, squirrels, cattle--exist in the same\nlandscape and all prosper. Only when there is rivalry do the feeble\ngo to the wall, which means only that their numbers are kept down.\nThe cats do not exterminate the mice and rats, nor do the hawks and\nowls exterminate the other birds; they are a natural check on their\nundue increase. Nature\u2019s checks and balances are all important. When\nspecies subsist upon species, as weasels upon rodents and hawks upon\nother birds, there seems to be some law that keeps the bloodthirsty\nin check. Why should there be so few weasels, since they appear as\nprolific as their victims? Why so few pigeon hawks, since the hawks\nhave no natural enemies, while the trees swarm with finches and\nrobins?\n\nThe conflicting interests in Nature sooner or later adjust\nthemselves; her checks and balances bring about her equilibrium. In\nvegetation rivalries and antagonisms bring about adaptations. The\nmosses and the ferns and the tender wood plants grow beneath the oaks\nand the pines and are favored by the shade and protection which the\nlatter afford them. The farmer\u2019s seeding of grass and clover takes\nbetter under the shade of the oats than it would upon the naked\nground. In Africa some species of flesh-eaters live upon the leavings\nof larger and stronger species, and in the tropics certain birds\nbecome benefactors of the cattle by preying upon the insects that\npester them. Fabre tells of certain insect hosts that blindly favor\nthe parasites that destroy them. The scheme has worked itself out\nthat way and Nature is satisfied. Victim or victor, host or parasite,\nit is all one to her. Life goes on, and all forms of it are hers.\n\nIt is easy to see why the wild plants run out the cultivated\nones--the latter are the result of artificial selection. No favor\nhas been shown the wild ones, and hence only the most vigorous have\nsurvived. The cultivated plants always have a greater burden to bear\nthan the wild ones, and man helps them to bear it, or, rather, he\nsaddles it upon them. The cultivated races of man have burdens to\nbear also, much greater than the savage tribes, but this is more than\nmade up to them by their superior brain power, which brain power\nagain has come about in the struggle for existence. Wild tribes have\nalso been under the discipline of natural selection, but by reason of\nsome obscure factors of race or climate or geography they have not\nprofited as have the European and Asiatic races. Their moral natures\nare more rudimentary.\n\nDoubtless some obscure or unknown factors in the original germ-cells,\nfar back in biological times, caused the divergence and splitting-up\nof animal forms, and gave to one an impulse that carried it higher\nin the scale of development than its fellows, just as the same thing\nhappens in human families in our own times. Why some creatures are\nhigher and some are lower, why some eventuated in the bird and some\nin toad and frog and snake and lizard, is one of the mysteries. In\nseeking the explanation of these things on natural grounds we are\ncompelled to resort to the fertile expedient of conjecture, and\npack the germ with many possibilities, each one depending for its\ndevelopment upon chance occurrence or conditions.\n\nBesides this struggle with the environment there is the struggle\nof individuals and of species with one another--of oak with oak,\nof beech with beech, of plant with its kind, for the moisture and\nnutriment in the soil; of robin with robin for insects and fruit, of\nfox with fox for mice and rabbits, and of lion with lion for antelope\nand zebra. I say \u201cstruggle,\u201d but it is rarely struggle in the sense\nof strife or battle, but in the sense of natural competition--the\nvictory is to the most lucky and the most vigorous--the sharpest eye,\nthe quickest ear, the most nimble foot; and those most favored by\nfortune win.\n\nUnder the law of variation some individuals have a fuller endowment\nof vital energy than others; under a severe strain and trial of\nwhatever kind the favored ones will survive, while the others perish.\nSome men, some animals, can endure more hardships than others; under\nthe same conditions all will not starve or freeze or fall exhausted\nby the wayside at the same time. In the vegetable world the same\ninequality in the gift of life exists, though not in the same degree.\nSome seeds will lie dormant in the soil longer than others of the\nsame kind, and some kinds longer than others. Some seeds will not\nsprout after the second year, but a few may sprout after the third\nor even the fourth year. The stream of life is not of uniform depth\nand fullness; it is shallow in some places, and deep in others, as\nregards both species and individuals. In the natural competition\nwhich goes on all around us, the strongest, the fittest, win in the\ngame, not necessarily by violence, but because, apart from the r\u00f4le\nplayed by chance, they carry more pounds of vital pressure. Not all\nacorns become oaks, probably not one in thousands; not all bird\u2019s\neggs become birds; occasionally one egg in the nest does not hatch,\nprobably because of some defect in fertilization. Some nests are\ntorn out of the trees by storms, or are robbed by crows or jays or\nsquirrels; they were not well hidden. A large percentage of nests on\nthe ground is destroyed by night prowlers or by day prowlers; chance\nagain plays a great part here. Only a small fraction of the spawn\nof fishes hatches, and a still smaller percentage of the hatched\never reaches maturity. Fortune, good or bad, plays a great part\nwith all forms of life. The acorn that becomes an oak owes much to\nchance--chance of position and soil, and chance of the vicissitudes\nof the woods and fields. Falling trees or branches, or the foot of a\npassing animal, may crush or deform it, or a squirrel or a raccoon\ndevour it. Barring these accidents, it owes, or may owe, not a little\nto its inherent vitality--to its real oakhood.\n\nThe natural competition, or the struggle for existence among\nmankind, is of similar character, though on the whole less\nfortuitous. Co\u00f6peration, knowledge, altruism, have done much to\neliminate the element of chance. An acorn becomes an oak where ten\nthousand other acorns fail, mainly by luck, while the child becomes\nthe man mainly through the care and nurture of his parents and of the\ncommunity in which he lives, but he reaches a position of power and\nprominence largely through his inherent capabilities. Fortune plays a\npart here also, as it did with Lincoln and Lee and Grant, but these\nmen all had the native endowment upon which Fortune could build.\n\nIn the natural competition that goes on in every town and city, the\nsuccess of one man over another is not, as a rule, the result of\nviolence or wrong; men of high purpose and character in business and\nprofessional life add to the positive wealth and well-being of all;\nthey often lift the whole community to a higher and better standard\nof living; the unfit profit by the achievements of the fit. The men\nwho have added to the wealth and well-being of this country could\nbe counted by the thousands. It is also true that the men who have\naccumulated their millions at the expense of others, by fraud and\nchicanery, or have diverted the earnings of others into their own\ncoffers, could be counted by the thousands. It is this class of men\nwho make the poor poorer. But did the achievements of such men as\nthe late James J. Hill make the poor poorer? Such men add enormously\nto the wealth of the nation.\n\nWith all its discounts and set-backs, the natural struggle for\nexistence has carried the whole race forward. Even business\ncompetition may be entirely beneficent. Two men open shops or houses\nin similar lines in the same town and one outstrips the other.\nMaybe his location is the better; one side of a street may be more\nfavorable to success than the other side. Maybe he is more affable\nin manner, more thorough in his methods, more accommodating, more\nfair-minded, of sounder judgment--in fact, the better man in a\nbeneficent sense.\n\nOn a broad view, throughout any country, this will be found to be\ntrue: success in business, in the professions, on the farm, in the\nmanufactory, comes to those who deserve it. It cannot be otherwise.\nThe world is thus made. Among the nations the same rule holds.\nEngland has earned all the power she has got. She is endowed with\nthe gift of empire. Solid merit alone tells in the long run, as well\namong nations as among individual men. The worth of France rests upon\nsolid qualities. The worth of Germany is inherent in the character\nof her people. That she has run to Krupp guns and Kaiserism during\nthese later generations, and has coveted the land and the gold of her\nneighbors, is one of those human calamities analogous to tornadoes\nand earthquakes.\n\nIn the course of modern history, race supplants race, not so much by\nforce of arms as by force of brain. The Europeans know how to utilize\nthe natural forces and make the stars fight on their side. So far as\nthey have done it by wars of conquest, they have violated the great\nmoral law and the law of natural competition. All wars of conquest by\ncivilized nations are wicked wars. They are becoming more and more\nodious to mankind, and are bound to become still more so, till they\ncease entirely. A century ago the conduct of Germany in the recent\nwar would have shocked mankind far less than it has to-day. A century\nhence such an exhibition of the rule of the jungle among civilized\npeoples will be impossible. If Germany could ever come to be the\ndominant power in Europe, it would be through the law of natural\ncompetition. Her superior efficiency in the arts of peace, could\nalone give her the victory. It would have given her the victory in\nher own age had she been contented with its slow but sure operation.\n\n\nIII\n\nThe question of right and wrong must have emerged, so as to become a\nfactor in the evolution of human society, very slowly--how slowly,\nwe can never know. But it did emerge, and is still emerging more and\nmore; first probably in the dealing of man with man, then in the\ndealing of families with other families. In the dealing of tribes\nwith tribes in prehistoric times, the question of right and wrong\nplayed probably little or no part; might alone settled matters. In\nwhat we call the pagan world, among the early Egyptians, Hebrews,\nGreeks, and Romans, the law of might in the dealings of one nation\nwith another prevailed, and up to our own time the standard of\ninternational morality has been, and still is, far below the standard\namong individuals and neighborhood communities. Even in the United\nStates there is a crying want of public conscience. The people are\npreyed upon by men they elect to serve them. The men or corporations\nthat take pleasure and satisfaction in serving the public well and\nreasonably, or in giving a _quid pro quo_, are rare. Men who are\nblameless in their personal dealings with one another will, when\nformed into a board of directors or trustees, rob railroads, and\nsquander money not their own. Capitalists will band together to rob\nthe state through the construction of sham highways or flimsy public\nbuildings. A public conscience is among all peoples of slow growth,\nand an international conscience is still slower. What part has it\nplayed in the history of Europe? Surely a very minor part. The Golden\nRule has been turned into an iron rule of might over right times\nwithout number, by all the nations recently engaged in war.\n\nAs man\u2019s moral consciousness has developed, the question of right\nand wrong has, of course, come more and more to the front; his\nrelations to his fellows, his sense of justice, of truth, of fair\ndealing, have occupied him more and more. His savage instincts have\nbeen held more and more in check. The co\u00f6peration and sympathy and\ngood-will which have brought about his present civilization would\nhave been possible on no other terms. Without a sense of justice, of\nlove of truth, of ideal right, where should we have been to-day? The\nfittest to survive among mankind were those races that had the moral\nconsciousness most fully developed. This gave a might which led to a\npermanent supremacy--a beneficent might. A malevolent might is one\nthat is founded upon superior brute or material strength alone. The\nlaw of the jungle or of the tornado or of the avalanche, introduced\ninto human affairs and unchecked by the law of man\u2019s moral nature,\nleads to wars of conquest, as it did to the World War.\n\n\nIV\n\nThe expounders of the benefits of war write and speak about it as\nif it were some system of hygiene or medicine or gymnastic training\nthat a people could practice in and of themselves; whereas wars of\nconquest do not begin and end at home. There are two parties to such\na war. If it is a benefit to the victors, what is it to the defeated?\nI am speaking, of course, of material benefits. The benefits that\ncome from heroism and self-denial are of another order. If the lamb\ninside the lion is a benefit to the lion, what is it to the lamb?\nIf Germany reaped advantage by her invasion of Belgium, what did\nBelgium reap? But the fate of the other party is the last question\nthat would ever occur to the Prussian military mind. If the doctrine\nof frightfulness began and ended at home, the world could not object.\nBecause burned cities in modern times rise from their ashes in new\nbeauty and power, shall we therefore seek to rejuvenate our cities\nby applying a match to them? Cities rise from their ashes because of\ntheir stored-up wealth and because of the arteries of commerce and\nindustry that flow through them. Fire does not rejuvenate a dead tree\nnor a dead city, nor does war rejuvenate a people who are in a state\nof mortal ripening. It did not rejuvenate Rome in ancient times, nor\nSpain in modern times, and it does not appear to be rejuvenating\nMexico very fast, nor any of the South American republics. All\ndepends upon the stock you are trying to rejuvenate.\n\nLord Roberts is quoted as saying, just before his death, that war is\nnecessary and salutary, and that it is the only national tonic that\ncan be prescribed when peace begets degeneracy in an over-civilized\npeople. He looked upon Germany as the greatest friend of the Allies\nwhen she declared war against them. But could there be any better\nproof that peace had not begotten degeneracy in England or France or\nRussia than the promptness with which these countries took up the\nchallenge of Prussian militarism, and the fortitude and self-denial\nwith which they gave it blow for blow?\n\nUnder the smiling face of peace, when the demand is made, the\nheroic element is always found to be slumbering. Every day, in the\nindustrial and scientific fields, men prove themselves the same\nheroes that they do on the field of battle, and they prove it without\nthe excitement and stimulus that war gives; and women prove it in\ntimes of peace and times of war.\n\nThe gospel of war as a national tonic in our time is a delusion and\na snare. Are we to get up a war offhand because we think the nations\nneed that kind of medicine? Blood-letting is a strange remedy for\nthe depleted condition to which Lord Roberts refers. War sets up the\nvictorious nation, but how about the defeated one? Have the defeats\nof Spain in the past two or three hundred years set her up? Have the\ndefeats of Turkey redounded to her glory and power? Little doubt that\nthis World War will bear fruit, but it will be a kind of fruit the\ncombatant did not seek or expect.\n\nThe conclusion, then, that I arrive at is that a new rule of conduct\nfor nations as for individuals, a new biological law, has come into\nbeing through man\u2019s moral nature, his sense of right and wrong.\nThere is no question of right or of wrong in the world of living\nthings below man, and we can persuade ourselves that there is only by\nputting ourselves in the place of the struggling animal forces. And\nthere is no question of right and of wrong in the human world till\nman\u2019s consciousness of this difference has begun to dawn. In our day\nthis consciousness is sufficiently developed to become the ruling\nfactor in the conduct of national and international affairs, and must\nvery soon put an end to all armed human conflicts. In saying this\nI am not exploiting a theory; I am trying to state an indisputable\nscientific fact.\n\n\n\n\nX\n\nTOOTH AND CLAW\n\n\nI\n\nTo deny that Nature is cruel, in the strict sense of the term, were,\nto the majority of persons, like denying that blood is red, or that\nfire will burn. We use the term \u201ccruel\u201d loosely, and interpret the\nways of Nature in terms of our own psychology.\n\nIf we are torn by thorns or stung by nettles or bitten by snakes or\nsuffer from frost-bites or sun-stroke, we accuse Nature of cruelty,\nalways assuming, in our conceit, that we are the lords of creation,\nand that things were made especially for us. We have no venomous\nsnake that will bite us except in self-defense, nor any bee that will\nsting us except on the same grounds.\n\nEven Darwin, in a letter to his friend Hooker, refers to the \u201cclumsy,\nwasteful, blundering, slow, and horribly cruel works of Nature,\u201d thus\ntreating the All-Mother with scant respect.\n\nAmiel cannot say, as he does say, that \u201cNature is unjust and\nshameless, without probity and without faith,\u201d unless he makes her\nover into man or invests her with the human consciousness. Even the\ngood Emerson accuses Nature of being unscrupulous. Did the Concord\nphilosopher expect storms and frost and blight and thunderbolts\nto have scruples? Did he expect thorns and nettles and fleas and\npotato-bugs and grasshoppers and disease-germs to consider their ways?\n\nA well-known philosopher and writer, Professor Jacks, of Manchester\nCollege, Oxford, in writing upon \u201cOur Common Foe,\u201d takes it for\ngranted at the outset that Nature is cruel, and, moreover, that she\nis as cruel as the Germans showed themselves to be in the cruelest\nof all wars. \u201cThere is a cruelty in Nature,\u201d he says, \u201cand it has\nbeen reserved for our age to realize how immense is its range and\nhow appalling its effects\u201d; we realize it, he says, when we read\nthe story of Germany\u2019s treatment of her prisoners, the story of\nher submarines, and her conduct toward unoffending non-combatants\ngenerally.\n\nWhat worse thing could be said about Nature than that she is as bad\nas the Germans? It almost makes us suspect treachery and death in\nher summer breezes and her sunshine. Dr. Jacks seeks to justify his\ncharge by averring that man is a part of Nature and that in him are\nsummarized her good and her evil qualities. Of course, in a certain\nsense this is true. But in seeking to solve the problems of his life,\nman separates himself from the rest of Nature and holds himself\namenable to standards of conduct that he does not apply to the orders\nbelow him. He regards himself as a superior being. He is a part of\nNature, but of an emancipated and regenerated Nature. He is one\nwith the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air only in his\npurely animal aspects. As a moral and spiritual being with a sense of\ntruth and justice, of mercy and forgiveness, he stands on a higher\nplane. He cannot justify his conduct by an appeal to brute nature or\nto biological laws. His sins are more scarlet and his virtues more\ndivine than those of his unmoral and unreasoning brute neighbors. His\nconsciousness of right and wrong is the touchstone by which all his\ndeeds are to be tried.\n\nTennyson\u2019s agonizing line \u201cNature red in tooth and claw\u201d tends,\nespecially in the days of world-wide human carnage, to make one see\nthe whole animal kingdom with blood-dripping claws and jaws. But it\nis not so. At its worst this \u201ctooth and claw\u201d business applies only\nto a fraction of wild life. The vast army of the seed-eaters, the\nplant-eaters, the fruit-eaters, upon which the flesh-eaters subsist,\nand which they help keep in check, is greatly in the ascendancy.\n\nThe whole truth of this matter of the cruelty of Nature may be put\nin a nutshell: Nature as seen in animal life is _sanguinary_, but\nonly man is _cruel_. Only man deliberately and intentionally inflicts\npain; only man tortures his victims, and takes pleasure in their\nagony. No other creature goes out of its way to inflict suffering; no\nother creature acts from the motive of cruelty or the will to give\npain.\n\nNature kills, but does not torture. The biological laws are neither\nhuman nor inhuman; they are _un_human. If in following the rule that\nmight makes right, the Germans sought justification by an appeal to\nbiological laws, they fell below the beasts of the fields, because\nthey are moral beings, and know good from evil.\n\nBiological laws are not concerned about the moral law. Not till\nwe reach man\u2019s moral nature does this law have any validity; then\nit becomes a biological law, because it has survival value. Could\nthe race of man ever have developed as we now see it without\nthe conceptions of right and justice and the spirit of mutual\nhelpfulness? As time passes, other things being equal, the most\nrighteous and humanitarian nation will be the most powerful and the\nmost progressive. The great strength of the Allied cause in the World\nWar was that it was founded upon an ideal conception of international\njustice and comity. President Wilson set this forth in such wonderful\ncompleteness that it will shine in our political firmament for all\ntime like a star of the first magnitude. And the weakness of the\nGerman cause was that it was based upon the spirit and the aims of\nthe pirate and the highwayman.\n\nWhen we speak of Nature\u2019s cruelty we are obsessed with the idea that\nblood and death necessarily mean cruelty, whereas cruelty, as I have\nsaid, means an intentional infliction of pain or suffering. Is the\nsurgeon cruel when he performs an operation? Do our own carnivorous\nhabits imply cruelty? The slaughter-house is not a pleasant object\nto contemplate; the sight of blood disturbs most of us; its sight\nand smell excite even the unreasoning brutes. But it is the wanton\nshedding of blood that reacts unfavorably upon ourselves, and makes\nus indifferent to the suffering which blood so often implies. Life is\na wonderful and precious gift, and we do not like to see it wantonly\ndestroyed.\n\nProfessor Jacks speaks of \u201cthe hot, foul breath of Nature\u2019s cruelty,\u201d\na sentence mild enough when applied to the Germans, but not justified\nwhen applied to universal Nature. We can hardly accuse the laws of\nmatter and force of being cruel when they destroy us; if they were\nnot true to themselves, what permanence would there be to life or\nto anything else? Fire and flood, the earthquake and the tornado,\ncause pain and death, gravity will crush us as soon as sustain us,\nbut these forces are not cruel, because there is no will to inflict\nsuffering; they are a part of the system of things upon which our\nlife and well-being depend.\n\nNature, in the action of her mechanical and chemical forces as they\ngo their way about us, is, as I have so often said, apparently as\nindifferent to man as to all other forms of life, but, to speak in\nthe same terms of our human experience, something must have been\nsolicitous about man or he would not be here in a world so well\nsuited to his development and well-being. In the conflict of forces\nhe has had to take his chances with other forms of life, but his\npowers of adaptation and invention far surpass those of all other\ncreatures. Not an atom, not a pebble, will turn aside to save him\nfrom destruction. Unrelenting and unpitying Nature is the school in\nwhich his powers have been developed, and for him to call Nature\n\u201ccruel\u201d in her treatment of him is for a child to upbraid the parent\nwhose guidance and discipline foster and safeguard the coming man.\nCould man have become man on any other terms?\n\nLove is creation\u2019s final law, though Tennyson seems to doubt\nit when he sees Nature \u201cred in tooth and claw.\u201d But tooth and\nclaw do not necessarily imply cruelty, since the cruelest of all\nanimals--man--has them not; they imply the dependence of one form\nof life upon another form, and are associated in our minds with\nthat most heinous of all crimes, murder. It is Nature\u2019s seeming\nindifference to life which causes us to charge her with cruelty. Our\nminds can take in but a fraction of the total scheme of things, and\nwhat we do take in we make a personal application of to ourselves. We\nhumanize when we should generalize.\n\nThe Germans willfully turned their backs upon the natural biological\nlaw of righteousness or rightness, and their punishment has been\nswift and adequate. They made a religion of cruelty, as man alone\nhas exhibited it, and cultivated the will to destroy and defame till\nmankind, with one accord, bestowed upon them their ancestral name,\nthe Huns. They went forth to burn and pillage and murder, and, so\nfar as lay in their power, to destroy the very earth of the peoples\nthey sought to conquer. They summoned to their aid all the diabolical\nforces of which chemistry is capable, and if they could have\ncontrolled the seismic and meteorological forces as well, who doubts\nthat they would have made a desert, blackened with fire and torn by\nearthquakes, where dwell the nations that opposed them?\n\nThe spirit they showed in the World War, and the nefarious crimes of\nwhich they were guilty, make it a serious question whether or not\nthey should not be forever cast out from the family of civilized\nnations; whether, indeed, they should not be completely wiped off the\nmap as a nation, and their power for further evil forever destroyed.\n\n\u201cThere is no place in the world of the future,\u201d says Dr. Jacks, \u201cfor\na people whose policy is tainted by the instinct for cruelty.\u201d\n\nIf Nature were as cruel as the Germans are, if the same lust for\nblood and suffering had run in her veins, if she had, in the same\nspirit of riot and wantonness, destroyed her own creatures and laid\nwaste her own provinces, would you or I, or any one else, have been\nhere to pass judgment upon her doings?\n\nThere is blood and death in the jungle, but no lust of pain; but\nin the German prisons, and in the path of Germany\u2019s armies, there\nwas the deliberate infliction of suffering and agony for their own\nsakes, so that for generations to come the name of Germany will stand\nfor all that is selfish, cruel, unchivalrous, ignoble, insulting,\nand bestial in human history. The Prussian officer spat in the face\nof his prisoners of a like rank, and followed this with insulting\nepithets and blows, seeking in every way to bring them down to his\nown bestial level. The Prussian nurse brought to a wounded British\nsoldier the glass of water he begged for, held it close to his face\nthen poured it on the ground, handing him the empty glass.\n\n\nII\n\nNature has an an\u00e6sthetic of her own which she uses in taking life.\nThe carnivorous animals inflict far less pain than appearances would\nseem to indicate. Tooth and claw usually overwhelm by a sudden blow,\nand sudden blows benumb and paralyze. Violence in this light is the\nhandmaiden of Mercy. If the surgeon could perform his operations in\nthe same sudden and violent manner, an an\u00e6sthetic would rarely be\nneeded. Livingstone was conscious of but little pain when in the jaws\nof a lion, and its prey no doubt feels as little. The human criminal,\nelectrocuted or hung or beheaded, probably experiences but little\nphysical suffering. Any one whose life has been suddenly imperiled by\na railway or a runaway accident knows how blessed is the blankness\nwhich comes over his mind at the most critical moment; the suddenness\nand intensity of his alarm blots out consciousness, and he retains no\nmemory of just what happened. The soldier in battle may be seriously\nor fatally wounded and not be aware of it till some time afterward.\nA crushing or tearing blow disrupts the machinery of sensation. It\nis only when we put ourselves in the place of the mouse with which\nthe cat is playing that we pity it; it does not experience the agony\nwe should feel under like conditions; it is usually unwounded; it\ndoes not know what awaits it and its comparative freedom of movement\nsoothes its alarm.\n\nDr. Jacks speaks of the bloody work of the struggle for existence,\nbut the struggle for existence is largely a bloodless struggle of\nadaptation. Through it, every creature sooner or later finds its\nplace, finds where it fits into the scheme of things. Through it\nthe mouse finds its place, and the lion its, and man has found his.\nLiving bodies are not ready-made, so to speak, like the parts of\nmachinery; they are constantly in the making, and their making is a\nprocess of transformation. The horse, as we know him, was millions of\nyears in the making; so was the elephant; so was man; so was every\nother form of life. The struggle for existence as a whole is cruel\nonly so far as all discipline and all insensible modifications\nand adaptations under the pressure of environment are cruel; it is\ngood in the guise of evil; it is the stern beneficence of impartial\nlaw. The greater the power of adaptation, the more fit is the\nanimal or plant to survive, and this power of adaptation is mainly\nwhat distinguishes living bodies from non-living. Inanimate bodies\ntend to adjust themselves to one another through mechanical laws;\nanimate bodies tend to adapt themselves to one another and to their\nenvironment through vital law.\n\nThe struggle for existence is for the most part a struggle with\ninanimate nature--with climate, soil, wind, flood. A peaceful\nstruggle is going on all around us at all times, among men as among\nanimals and plants: a struggle to live, to compel Nature to yield\nus the things needed for our lives. It is not often competition--an\neffort to win what another must lose; it is an effort to seize and\nappropriate the elements that all may have on equal terms, by the\nexercise of strength, industry, wit, prudence. Life is predaceous\nonly to a limited extent. In the wilds, in the jungle, one form\ndevours another form, but nature compensates. A fuller measure of\nlife is given to those forms that are the prey of other forms;\nthey are more prolific. The rats and mice are vastly more prolific\nthan the weasels or the owls that feed upon them; the rabbits have\nten young to one of their enemy, the fox; the lesser birds greatly\noutnumber the hawks; the little fishes that are the food of the big\nfishes swarm in the sea.\n\nProbably no species is ever exterminated by its natural enemies.\nThese enemies only keep it in check. The birds keep the insects\nfrom ruining vegetation, which is the source of all food. Slay all\nthe lions in Africa, and probably the struggle for existence of the\nantelope tribe would soon be harder than it is now. Hence the animals\nof prey are a good gift even to the animals they prey upon. The\nplus of the breeding instinct of the latter would in time result in\noverpopulation and in famine.\n\nThe things that are preyed upon are more joyous and contented than\ntheir enemies. The carnivorous animals are solitary and morose; the\nbirds of prey are the same. The chipmunk seems to have a much better\ntime than the weasel, the bluebird than the owl that lines its nest\nwith blue feathers. One might envy the song sparrow, or the vesper\nsparrow, or the robin, but never the shrike nor the sharp-skinned\nhawk that pursues them. The eagle is a grand bird, but evidently the\nlark is much the happier. The jay devours the eggs and the young of\nthe smaller birds, but these birds greatly outstrip him in the race\nof life. The murderers evidently have less joy in their lives than\nthe murdered. The crow rarely sheds blood, and, compared with the\nhawk, he is a happy-all-the-year-round vagabond.\n\nNature has made the wild creatures fearful of their natural enemies,\nand has endowed them with means to escape them; then she has equipped\nthese enemies with weapons and instincts to defeat this (her own)\npurpose. She plays one hand against another. Wild life is divided\ninto two warring camps, and, as in our own wars, new devices for\ndefense on the one hand are met with new devices of attack on the\nother. The little night rodents have big and sharp eyes, but the owl\nthat preys upon them has big and sharp eyes also, and his flight is\nas silent as a shadow. You see, Nature is impartial; she has the\ngood of all creatures at heart. If it is good for the hawk to eat\nthe bird, it is good for the bird to be equipped with swift wings\nand sharp eyes to evade the hawk. A little more advantage on either\nside and the game would be blocked--the birds would fail or the hawks\nwould starve. As it is, \u201cthe race is to the swift and the battle to\nthe strong.\u201d Nature keeps the balance. Action and reaction are equal.\nThe skunk and the porcupine have little or no fear; neither have they\nmuch wit. Their weapons of defense are nearly always ready, and that\nof the porcupine acts automatically; that of the skunk is a little\nmore deliberate and inflicts less pain, but gives great discomfort\nand discomfiture.\n\nNature keeps one form in check with another form, and thus, like\na wise capitalist, distributes her investments so that the income\nis constant. If she put her funds all in mice and birds, the cats\nand owls would soon starve; if she put them all in woodchucks, the\npastures and meadows would soon fail the herds. And this reminds me\nhow man often disturbs the balance of nature; the clearing-up and\nthe cultivation of the land have held in check the natural enemies\nof the woodchucks--foxes and owls--at the same time that they have\ngreatly increased the woodchuck\u2019s sources of food-supply, so that in\nsome sections these rodents have become a real pest to the farmer.\nThe same changed conditions appreciably favor the meadow mice, and\nthey, too, seem to be on the increase. But this increase again may\nstimulate the increase of the mice-hunting hawks, and thus the\nbalance be maintained. Herein lies the danger of introducing new\nforms of wild life in a country--their natural enemies are not always\non hand to check them. The mongoose has overrun Jamaica and has not\nyet found an adequate natural enemy. Introduced into this country, it\nwould be an incalculable calamity, though in time it would doubtless\nmeet with a natural check. Our weasels, related to the mongoose, are\nprolific, and seem to have few natural enemies, and yet they do not\nunduly increase; it seems as if some unknown hand must stay them.\nThey prey upon all the smaller rodents and find them easy victims,\nyet these rodents are vastly more numerous than the blood-suckers. I\noften see marks upon the snow where the muskrat and the rabbit have\nfallen before them, and yet one sees scores of these animals to one\nweasel or mink.\n\nHow our domestic animals would suffer if they had the gift of\nideation and knew what awaited them! Pope anticipated me when he\nwrote:\n\n      \u201cThe lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,\n      Had he thy reason could he skip and play?\n\n      \u201cPleased to the last he crops the flowery food,\n      And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.\u201d\n\nIf the horse only knew his own strength, and knew that he had\n\u201crights,\u201d would there not soon be a horse rebellion? Would the swine\nand the cattle fatten in their pens and stalls if they knew what is\nbefore them? Animals suffer no mental anguish either over the past\nor concerning the future; they live in the present moment; no future\nlooms before them, no past haunts their memories. Their pain is\nbrief, their joy is unconscious; they live to feed and breed; they\nslay without penalties, and they are slain without remorse; they find\ntheir place and live their day, and Mother Nature reaps the harvest.\n\nWould we have a world without struggle or pain or friction of any\nkind? Good means ease, leisure, security; but it means something\nmore: it means achievement, victory, the overcoming of evil, the\ndevelopment of power, the making of the world a better place to live\nin, and much more. Is Nature a tyrant because we have to earn our\nliving? Because we have to plow and plant and hoe? Because flood and\nfire will destroy us, and the winds rack us, if we loose our grip?\nWe have life on these terms; they are the conditions that beget and\nsustain life. A world void of evil, as we use the word, would be a\nworld void of good also, a negative world. Without death there can be\nno life; without struggle there can be no power.\n\n\n\n\nXI\n\nMEN AND TREES\n\n\nI do not see that Nature is any more solicitous about the well-being\nof man than she is, say, about the well-being of trees. She is\nsolicitous about the well-being of all life, so far as the conditions\nof life favor its development and continuance--men and trees alike.\nBut all have to run the gantlet of some form of hostile forces--the\ntrees one kind, man another. What I mean is that evil in some form\nwaits upon all--hindrances, accidents, defeat, failure, death.\n\nThe trees and the forests have their enemies and accidents and\nset-backs, and men and communities of men have analogous evils.\nTrees are attacked by worms, blight, tornadoes, lightning, and\nmen are attacked by pestilence, famine, wars, and all manner of\ndiseases. Every tree struggles to stand upright; it is the easiest\nand only normal position. Men aspire to uprightness of thought and\nconduct, but a thousand accidental conditions prevent most of them\nfrom attaining it. One tree in falling is likely to bring down,\nor to mutilate, other trees, as the moral or business downfall of\na strong man in a community is quite sure to bring evil to many\nothers around him. Trees struggle with one another for moisture\nand sustenance from the soil, and for a place in the sun, as men\ndo in the community, and the most lucky, or the most fit, survive.\nNature plans for a perfect tree as she plans for a perfect man, but\nboth tree and man have to take their chances with hostile forces\nand conditions amid which their lot falls, so that an absolutely\nperfect oak or elm or pine is about as rare as a perfect man. Of\ncourse Nature has endowed man with mental and spiritual powers which\nshe has not bestowed upon trees. These powers give man an advantage\nover trees, but not the same advantage over men--his own kind of\ntree--because his fellows are similarly endowed. His struggle with\nhis own kind is as inevitable as the struggle of trees with their\nkind, with this advantage in favor of the trees: theirs is always a\npeaceful competition, it never takes the form of destructive wars.\nTrees of opposite kinds will draw away from one another; a pine will\ndraw away from a maple or an oak, not, I suppose, because of any\nnatural antagonism, but because it is less mobile and its tender but\nmore rigid branches cannot stand the buffetings of the more mobile\nand flexible deciduous trees. Pine loves to associate with pine,\nand spruce with spruce. The spirit, the atmosphere of a pine or a\nhemlock forest, how different from that of a beech or a maple! Most\ntrees tend to associate themselves together in large bodies, as did\nprimitive man, and civilized man, too, for that matter. The conifers\nare more clannish than the deciduous trees.\n\nAre not a generation of leaves and a generation of men subject to\nabout the same laws of chance? The baby leaves have their enemies\nin insects that devour them, in blight that withers them, in frost\nthat cuts them short, and when they are matured, how the winds buffet\nthem (Nature doesn\u2019t temper the wind to the tender leaf), how the\ngales lash them, how the hail riddles them! If they had powers of\nthought, what a struggling, agitated, unstable world they would think\nthemselves born into! When a summer tempest strikes a maple- or an\noak-tree, the strain and stress of the foliage is almost painful to\nwitness. Yet when the tempest subsides, hardly a leaf is torn or\ndetached, and when autumn comes, the ranks of the vast army of the\nleaves are but little thinned, and the great majority of leaves ripen\nand fall to the ground unscathed. They have come through the campaign\nof life and have experienced many ups and downs, and yet, on the\nwhole, they have each had an active and useful life. The leaf-rollers\nhave made their nests in a few of certain kinds of them, the\nleaf-cutters have made holes in certain other kinds, the gall insects\nhave made their nurseries at the expense of still other kinds; but\nall these things amount to a small fraction of the whole. When a\nplague of forest worms comes and strips the maples or the beeches,\nor a plague of elm-beetles strips the elms, and the invasion of\na foreign deadly fungus kills all the chestnuts, these calamities\nare paralleled by the plagues that in past times have swept away\nlarge numbers of human beings and depopulated whole countries, or by\nepidemic diseases, such as infantile paralysis, that now and then\nrage over widespread areas.\n\nGo and sit down in our mixed beech, maple, birch, and oak woods and\nwitness the varying fortunes of the trees. How many of them have had\nmisfortunes of one kind or another! How few, if any, have reached\ntheir ideal! How many are diseased or dying at the top or decaying\nat the root! Some have been mutilated by the fall of other trees.\nYouth and age meet and mingle. Some trees in their teens, as it\nwere, are very thrifty; others are old and decrepit. In fact, the\nfortunes of the individual trees are much like those of men and women\nin a human community--struggle, competition, defeat, decay, and\ndeath on all sides. All, or nearly all, the evils that afflict men\nhave their counterpart in the evils that afflict the trees of the\nforest. When some species of forest worm threatens the destruction\nof our beech or maple forests some other form of insect-life steps\nin and puts an end to their increase, and the plague vanishes. The\ngypsy and the brown-tailed moths which have so ravished the groves\nand forests of the Eastern States will doubtless in time be held in\ncheck by their natural enemies. The plague of tent caterpillars that\ngot such headway in New York State that it threatened to become a\npublic calamity was effectually checked by the cold and rain of the\nMay of 1917. Not one tent caterpillar have I seen during the past\nthree years. The plague of currant-worms was checked in the same\nway. Sooner or later any excess is sure to be corrected. But so far\nas we can see, such things as the chestnut blight and hickory blight\nmust rage like a fire till they have spent themselves and there\nare no more chestnut- or hickory-trees to be destroyed. Throughout\nthe course of the biological history of the globe, both plants\nand animals have dropped out in some such way, and new forms come\nin--come in through the slow action of the evolutionary impulse.\n\nThe Providence I see at work in the case of the trees does not differ\nat all from the Providence I see at work in the case of men. It is\none and the same, and that one is as I have so often said, wholesale,\nindiscriminating, regardless of individuals, regardless of waste,\ndelays, pain, suffering, failure, yet insuring success on a universal\nscale, the scale of centuries and geologic periods. Our standards of\ntime compared with Nature\u2019s standards are like our interplanetary\nspaces compared with the inconceivable abysses of the sidereal\nheavens--minutes compared to centuries. Our little family of planets\nmoves round the fireside of our little sun--a small chimney-corner in\nthe vast out-of-doors of astronomic space, where suns and systems\nand whole universes of worlds drift like bubbles on the sea. Give\nNature time enough, and the world of to-day, or of any day, becomes\nan entire stranger to you. Orion will no longer stalk across the\nwinter skies, the pole-star will no longer guide your ships, if,\nindeed, there remains any ocean for your ships to sail upon.\n\nThe Natural Providence is not concerned about you and me. In\ncomparison it is concerned only about our race, and not lastingly\nconcerned about that, since races, too, shall go.\n\n      \u201cRaces rise and fall,\n      Nations come and go;\n      Time doth gently cover all\n      With violets and with snow.\u201d\n\nAs I sit here under an old heavy-topped apple-tree on a hot midsummer\nday, a yellow leaf lets go its hold upon the branch over my head and\ncomes softly down upon the open book I am reading. It is a perfect\nleaf, but it has had its day. The huge family of leaves of which it\nwas a member are still rank and green and active in sustaining the\nlife of the tree, but this one has dropped out of the leafy ranks.\nThere are a few small dark spots upon it, which, I see with my pocket\nglass, are fungus growths, or else some germ disease of apple-tree\nleaves, perhaps, like pneumonia, or diphtheria, or tuberculosis among\nmen. One leaf out of ten thousand has fallen. Was Fate cruel to it?\nFrom the point of view of the leaf, yes--could a leaf have a point\nof view; from the point of view of Nature, no. The tree has leaves\nenough left to manufacture the needed chlorophyl, and that satisfies\nthe law. If all the leaves were blighted, or were swept off by insect\nenemies, or stripped by hail and storm, that were a calamity to the\ntree. But one leaf, though all the myriad forces of Nature went to\nits production, though it is a marvel of delicate structure and\nfunction, though the sun\u2019s rays have beaten upon it and used it, and\nbeen kind to it, though evolution worked for untold ages to bring its\nkind to perfection--what matters it? It will go back into the soil\nand the air from which it came, and contribute its mite to another\ncrop of leaves, and maybe it has rendered the molecules of carbon and\nhydrogen and oxygen of which it is composed more ready and willing to\nenter into other living combinations. And the fungus germs that have\npreyed upon it, they, too, have had their period of activity, and\nhave justified themselves. Nature thus pits one form against another,\nand her great drama of life and death goes on. Are her stakes more in\nthe one than in the other, since she favors both? Yes, she has more\nat stake in health than in disease. If disease always triumphed, all\nlife would go out. Of course, in the sum total of things, the life\nof this old tree counts for but little, but if it failed to bear\napples, its chief end would be defeated. Evil is limited; it is a\nminor counter-current, but it is just as real as the good; it is a\nphase of the good; we have evil because we first have good. Both are\nrelative terms. We are prone to speak of good and evil as if they\nwere something absolute, like gravity or chemical affinity. But are\nthey any more absolute than heat and cold, or than big and little?\nWhat pleases us, and is conducive to our well-being, we call good,\nand its opposite we call evil. We are not to make our wants and\ndislikes, our pleasures and our pain, the measure of the universe, as\nwe do mathematics and physics. We can think of things in terms of art\nand literature, of beauty or ugliness, or in terms of morality and\nreligion, or we may think of them in terms of science and of exact\nknowledge. When we say they are good or bad, we are thinking of them\nin terms of morals or of religion; when we say they are beautiful or\nugly, we are describing them in terms of \u00e6sthetics; when we say they\nare true or false, real or delusive, we are talking of them in terms\nof science.\n\nThis sere and prematurely ripened leaf appeals to my literary and\nimaginative faculties through its beauty and its symbolic character;\nit appeals to my understanding, my love of accurate knowledge, by\nreason of the blight that caused its fall.\n\nOur going out of the world seems equally fortuitous and haphazard in\ninfancy, youth, middle life, old age; before we have fairly lived, or\nafter life has lost its value, or in the height of our powers, or in\nthe decrepitude of old age: which shall it be?\n\nThe naturist sees all life as a whole. Man is not an exception,\nbut part of the total scheme. The life principle is the same in\nhim as in all else below him--the principle that organizes matter\ninto countless new forms; that crosses and uses the mechanical and\nchemical forces, and begets numberless new compounds; that develops\norgans and functions, and separates the living world so sharply from\nthe non-living. In the weed, the tree, and in man, the principle is\nthe same. What has set up this organizing power and so impressed it\nthat it goes on from lower to higher forms, and unfolds the whole\ndrama of evolution through the geologic ages, is the mystery of\nmysteries. To solve this mystery, mankind invented God and acts\nof creation. But a God apart from Nature is to me unthinkable,\nand science finds no beginning of anything. It finds change,\ntransformation, only. When or where did man begin? Where does the\ncircle begin? Self-beginning--who can think of that? Can we think\nof a stick with only one end? We can think of a motion as beginning\nand ending, but not of substance as beginning and ending. When the\nmetabolism of the body ceases, death comes. Do we think of life,\nor the organizing principle, as then leaving the body? It ceases,\nbut does it leave the body in any other sense than that the flame\nleaves the candle when it is blown out? And is this any different\nin the case of man than it is in the case of a tree or a dog? We\npostulate what we call a soul in man, which we deny to all other\nforms of life--an independent entity which separates from the body\nand lives after it. But we run into difficulties the moment we do so.\nIn the biologic history of man, when and where did the soul appear?\nDid the men of the old Stone Age, of whom Professor Osborn writes\nso graphically and convincingly, have it? Did the Piltdown man, the\nNeanderthal man, the Java man of Dubois, have it? Did our ancestral\nforms still lower down have it? Do babies have it? Do idiots and\nhalf-witted persons have it?\n\nAll we can claim for man above the lower orders is higher\nintelligence, greater brain power, the power of reflection, and\nthe logical process. His dog has perceptive intelligence, but not\nreflective; animals act from inherited impulse; man from impulse,\nthought, ideation. Man\u2019s instinctive impulses are guided or\nrestrained by thought; his emotions--anger, love--wait upon thought;\nhis migratory instinct waits as that of the lower animals does not.\nBut when this extra power began, who can say? It had no beginning,\nit dawned by insensible degrees, as do all things in Nature. We have\nonly to heighten our conception of Nature and matter to see the\ndifficulties vanish--and the stigma of materialism loses its terrors.\n\nIn these later centuries mankind has steadily grown bolder and\nbolder in dealing with its deities and its devils. A few heroic\nspirits have always questioned the truth of the popular creeds, but\nin our day a very large majority question or even deny them. Fear of\nthe wrath above or the wrath below has fled. Men are fast coming to\nsee that devotion to the truth is the essence of true religion, and\nthat the worst form of irreligion is the acceptance of creeds and\nforms without examining them, or upon the sole authority of some book\nor sect. The truth-loving man is the God-loving man. We no longer\ntalk of God-fearing men--this negative attitude has given place to\nthe positive attitude of love and enjoyment. The wrath of God no\nlonger makes us tremble. The swift and sure vengeance of violated\nlaw, both in the physical world without us and the physiological\nworld within us, we understand and appreciate, but the fury and\nrevenge of the offended gods no longer disturb our dreams. Nature\nhas no mercy, is no respecter of persons, is one to the just and\nthe unjust. Only the moral nature of man knows right from wrong;\nonly the reason of man knows truth from falsehood. When or how man\ngot this moral and intellectual nature is a question upon which\nmen themselves will never agree. Did it come from without or from\nwithin--through evolution or revelation? The naturalist or naturist\nis bound to believe that it came from within through the long\nprocess of evolution. Whatever favored man\u2019s development became a\nbiological law and had survival value. Without some degree of right\nconduct and fair dealing--some degree of perception of the true and\nthe false--the race of man could never have attained its present\nhigh position in the scale of animate nature. Through some inherent\nimpulse or tendency in matter, man arose out of the earth, climbing\nthrough the many lowly forms to his full estate of a rational being.\nIt has been a long and toilsome and painful journey. But here we are,\nand when we look back through the geologic vistas we are incredulous\nthat we came that road. We incline to the short cut through the\nGarden. But the study of the ways of Nature as we see them in all\nliving things opens our eyes to the truth of evolution. Of course the\ngreat puzzle and mystery is, Who or what stamped upon matter this\norganizing and developing impulse and caused the first unicellular\nlife in the old Azoic or Pal\u00e6ozoic seas to branch and grow and\nincrease in complexity till it gave birth to all the myriad living\nforms, high and low, that now fill the earth? But here again I am\nusing the language of half-truth--the language of our experience,\nwhich makes us think of some external agent as stamping an impulse\nupon matter. If we say the impulse was always there, that it is\ninseparable from matter and the laws of matter, just as creation is\nwithout beginning and end, center or circumference, we come no nearer\nspeaking the unspeakable. But it seems to me we do, in a measure,\nsatisfy the reason; we make it see or realize its own limitations;\nreason guides reason.\n\nThe infinite knows neither time nor space, neither extension nor\nduration; it knows only the here and the now. It does not wait for\ntime to pass or for eternity to begin. Eternity is now. Man, and all\nthat has arisen out of him, is a part of universal nature. Are we not\nheld to the sphere? Can we disturb it in its orbit? Can we banish\none atom from it or add one atom to it? We are a fragment of it, its\nlaws pervade our minds, and we cannot get away from the necessity of\nputting our thoughts and emotions in the terms of our experience as\ndwellers upon this astronomic globe. We may fancy that we get away\nfrom it in moments of abstract thought, but we do not; we do not get\naway from ourselves any more than we can outrun our shadow. We can\nlet our imaginations course with the spheres that circle through\nthe abysmal depths of space, but we can put our emotions only in\nthe words that we have invented to describe our experiences in this\nlittle three-dimensional corner of creation. If our terms were formed\nfrom our experiences amid the spheres, we might be able to give some\nhint of the Infinite. We might learn how to describe our sensations\nwhen emancipated from the standards and limitations of the world in\nwhich we live.\n\nConventionally religious persons shrink from having their spiritual\nlife discussed in terms of psychology, because psychology smacks of\nscience and science acts like a blight upon religion. It dispels\nmystery and lets the light of day--the garish, irreligious day--into\nthe twilight or the darkness of religious emotion. We do not want\nour relation to the spiritual world explained in terms of our common\nknowledge--such is our hankering after the unknown, the mysterious,\nthe transcendent.\n\nOne side of our nature fears the Infinite, and we experience a\nchill when the methods of this world obtrude themselves there. We\nhave convinced ourselves that the part of our inner life which we\ncall the soul is something more sacred and mysterious and nearer\nto the Infinite than our ordinary faculties. What victims we are\nof words! What is the value of this feeling, and how did it arise?\nOur appreciation of the beautiful, in art and nature, is equally\nextra and transcends our practical faculties. Man\u2019s belief in\nanother world--an ideal world of the absolute good--is, of course,\nthe result of his strong reaction from the pain, the struggle, the\nincompleteness of this world. Evolution is a hard road to travel.\nBeing born is evidently not a pleasant experience for the baby, and\nin this world man is constantly struggling through new experiences\ninto a higher and larger life. His measure of happiness is never\nfull and he looks for compensation in another and better world.\nHe does not see that there can be no better world--that pain and\nstruggle and disappointment are necessary for his development, and\nthat to long for a state in which these things do not exist is like\nthe stream longing for a dead equilibrium. All power and all growth\ncome from a break in the repose of the physical forces. There is\nno power in a uniform temperature, nor in water at a dead level.\nMechanical power comes down an incline, vital power is a lift on\nan up-grade--all growing things struggle upward; the vegetable and\nanimal world lift the earth elements up against gravity into an\nunstable equilibrium. Mechanical things run down the scale toward a\nstable equilibrium.\n\nOur life goes on by virtue of some principle or force in matter that\ntends constantly to break up the stable into the unstable, to force\nthe elements into new chemical combinations. Our machines dissipate\nenergy in doing work; the living body conserves energy in the same\nprocess. It grows strong by the obstacles it overcomes, up to the\nlimits of its powers. The clock runs down, the energy we put into it\nin winding it up is dissipated; but the growth of a living body is\na winding-up process, a drawing-in and a storing-up process. In the\nwood and coal we burn is stored up the heat of the sun. In burning\nthem and driving machinery by means of the heat developed, the energy\nis dissipated. In manual labor the human body dissipates energy\nalso, and it is the same solar energy that the engine dissipates,\nand it does it in the same mechanical way; and it is constantly\nreplenished from without through the food consumed. But the human\nor living engine stokes itself. It is a clock that winds itself up,\na gun that loads and points itself. Because the living body in its\nfinal analysis turns out to be a machine as absolutely dependent upon\nmechanical and chemical principles as any other machine, there are\nthose who see no radical difference between the mechanical and the\nvital.\n\nI conclude that it is equally up-grade from the vital or\nphysiological to the psychical. How the two connect we can never\nknow, but that the thinking man dissipates energy there is no doubt.\nThe body and the soul are one in a way past our finding out. When\nwe discuss these things in terms of metaphysics, we launch upon a\nboundless sea and reach no real port.\n\nWhen we project ourselves into Nature out of which we came, or when\nwe see ourselves there objectively,--our virtues, our aspirations,\nour vices, and our wickedness,--we sow the seeds of our religion. We\ngrow a crop of gods and of devils, and heaven and hell become fixed\nrealities to us. So do we make the world in which we live, and it in\nturn makes us. So does the divine in us keep pace with the divine we\nsee in Nature. So does the beauty of our own characters grow as we\nsee beauty in the character of others. So do our love, faith, hope,\ncharity, develop and augment as we see these things in the world\nabout us. The universe is thus constituted, and that is all we can\nsay about it.\n\nThat right, human right, in the end and on a large scale, prevails, I\nbelieve to be true; the right that in long periods of time means, or\nrather secures, the well-being of the race--the greatest good to the\ngreatest number.\n\nIn discussing the final problems of the universe, we are attempting\nto describe the Infinite in terms of the finite--an impossible\ntask. We think and speak of God as a person, because our experience\ngives us no other terms in which to conceive Him except in terms\nof personality. He sees, hears, plans, governs, creates, loves,\nsuffers, is angry, we say,--in fact, has all human attributes and\ncharacteristics vastly magnified. He is an omnipotent and omnipresent\nman. He is the creator and organizer and director of the universe,\nand hence is responsible for everything in it, the evil as well\nas the good. Our attitude toward Him is that of a subject toward\nhis sovereign, or toward a supreme judge. We must praise, exalt,\nsupplicate, propitiate Him. There is lying upon my table a recent\nvolume of sermons by an English divine called \u201cThe Justification of\nGod\u201d--his justification in the face of the terrible World War which\nhe might have prevented. Thus, just as soon as we conceive of God in\nterms of our human nature, these baffling problems thrust themselves\nupon us. We must seek some grounds upon which we can excuse or\nvindicate or justify this supreme man for permitting the terrible\nhappenings which darken the world. As this is not an easy task, men\nsay in their hearts, and often with their lips: \u201cThere is no God.\u201d\nBetter no God than a being who would permit the sin and suffering we\nsee daily all about us, and that history reveals to us.\n\nThe only alternative I see is to conceive of God in terms of\nuniversal Nature--a nature God in whom we really live and move and\nhave our being, with whom our relation is as intimate and constant\nas that of the babe in its mother\u2019s womb, or the apple upon the\nbough. This is the God that science and reason reveal to us--the God\nwe touch with our hands, see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and\nfrom whom there is no escape--a God whom we serve and please by works\nand not by words, whose worship is deeds, and whose justification\nis in adjusting ourselves to his laws and availing ourselves of his\nbounty, a God who is indeed from everlasting to everlasting. Of\ncourse in the light of the old theology this is no God at all. It was\nto emancipate us from the rule of this God that the old conceptions\nof a being above and far removed from Nature were formulated. Nature\nis carnal and unholy. Our theory compels us to say to matter and\nthe laws of matter, \u201cGet thee behind me, Satan.\u201d We struggle and\nsuffer in this debasing world for a season, and then escape from\nit to a higher and better one. In all the dark, prescientific ages\nduring our own era--dark in regard to man\u2019s real relation to the\nuniverse in which he finds himself, but often luminous with flashes\nof insight into the nature of man himself--these conceptions ruled\nman\u2019s religious aspirations. In our own times they still largely\nrule in various modified forms. The old theological dogmas are more\nor less discredited, but a religion founded upon science makes\nlittle headway with the average man. We are shaping our practical\nlives--our business, our social, our economical relations, more and\nmore according to scientific deductions. We seek more and more a\nscientific or naturalistic basis for our rules of conduct, for our\naltruism, for our charitable organizations, for our whole ethical\nsystem. Any principle that squares with natural law is indeed founded\nupon a rock. The stars in their courses fight for the cause that is\nfounded upon natural right, which in human relations does not mean\nthe right of the strong to trample upon the weak, but the right of\nall to their full measure of free development.\n\nRight and wrong are, of course, finite terms, and apply only in the\nhuman sphere. Universal Nature, as it appears among non-living bodies\nand forces, knows neither right nor wrong; it knows only might.\nAs it appears among the orders below man, it knows neither right\nnor wrong. Physics and chemistry have no consciousness; neither\nhave beasts or bacteria; but man has, and this fact will in time\ndetermine the whole course of human history. Naturalism makes for\nrighteousness, or right-mindedness, as surely as it makes for health\nand longevity.\n\n\n\n\nXII\n\nTHE PROBLEM OF EVIL\n\n\nI\n\nHow has the problem of evil tried men\u2019s souls! How have their\ngods failed to live up to the character they have given them! How\nhave they confused our moral standards! The trouble lies in a\nmisconception of the nature of evil, and in a false idea of the\nuniverse itself.\n\nThere is no problem of evil until we have made or imagined an\nunnatural and impossible world. When we have enthroned in the\nuniverse a powerful man-made God who is the embodiment of all we\ncall good and the contemner of all we call evil, then we have our\ninsoluble problem. To help ourselves out we invent another being who\nis the embodiment of all we call evil and enthrone him in regions\nbelow. Upon him we saddle the evil, and thus we try to run the\nuniverse with these two antagonistic principles yoked together, and\nno end of confusion in our religious ideas results.\n\nThe moment we postulate an all-loving, all-merciful, all-wise, and\njust being to rule the affairs of this world, and place him in such\nintimate relations with it that not a sparrow falls to the ground\nwithout his will and cognizance, then, indeed, are we in troubled\nwaters and have lost our reckoning. We cannot excuse such being on\nthe ground that his ways are inscrutable and past finding out. A\ncreator who sends into the world the malformed, the half-witted, the\nbestial, the naturally depraved, and then holds them to high ethical\nstandards, is condemned by the ideals which he has implanted within\nus.\n\nNow the naturalist has no such trouble. He sees that good and evil\nare only relative terms; that they both grow on the same tree; that\nwe should not know good were there no evil; that there would be no\ndevelopment were there not what we call evil. Pain and suffering\nare inseparable from the human lot. They are a part of the price\nwe pay for our place in the world. All struggle we look upon as\nevil. Disease, failure, death are looked upon as evil, but they\nare conditions of our lives. Through sickness we learn the laws\nof health. The lower animals have no such troubles--no sickness,\nintemperance, or war or avarice. They know without reason how to\nlive, but man has reason, and the joy of its exercise and the peril\nof its failure. Are we not all willing to pay the price?--to take it\non these terms rather than to change places with the brutes?\n\nWhat a troublesome time the good orthodox brethren have with their\nGod! He does, or permits such terrible things. Only yesterday He sent\na cyclone through the State of Illinois that killed hundreds of\ninnocent persons, and destroyed hundreds of peaceful homes, wiping\nout at one blow the results of long years of human labor. A few years\nago He sent or permitted the scourge of infantile paralysis that\ndesolated tens of thousands of homes and left a trail of thousands\nof crippled and enfeebled children. Again He sent or permitted the\ninfluenza to sweep over the land, claiming more victims than did\nthe Great War; and so on. How our fathers, rocked in the cradle of\nthe old creeds, wrestled with this problem! How could a paternal\nand all-loving God do these things? The naturalist reads nature\ndifferently. His god is no better than Nature. In fact, his god and\nNature are one and inseparable. Nature goes her way and her ways are\nnot our ways. We take our chances in the clash and war of physical\nforces. They have developed us and made us what we are.\n\nIt was only a few years ago that the President of the United States\nasked all good people to assemble in their respective places of\nworship and pray to God to stop the tornado of war and crime that\nwas then devastating Europe. Is it possible to conceive of a being\nanywhere in the universe, with power to stop such a world calamity,\nwho would complacently look on and wait till the sufferers could\nunite in a petition to him? What a false man-made god such a\nconception holds up to us! No wonder the World War shattered this\nconception in thousands of minds, and left them without any faith at\nall!\n\nRogers said in regard to evil that Sir John Mackintosh and Malthus\nand another philosopher whose name has escaped me, all agreed that\nthe attributes of the deity must be in some respects limited, else\nthere would be no sin and misery in the world.\n\nWe use the words \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cevil\u201d in a narrow, personal sense. To\nthe farmer the frost that blights his crops is an evil, but not to\nthe squirrels who are waiting for the nuts to fall, or to the man who\nsuffers from hay fever. Rain is a blessing, but how easily it becomes\na curse! A cold wet spring cuts off the insect pests, but delays the\nplowing and planting. It is hard on the insectivorous birds, but the\nplants and trees profit. The grasshoppers that eat up the farmer\u2019s\npasturage make good provender for his flock of turkeys.\n\nBlight and struggle, frost and drought, weed out the weaklings and\nbeget a hardier race.\n\nMoral evil--intemperance, avarice, war, lying, cheating--are on\nanother plane. They are peculiar to man. Nature below him knows them\nnot. But as they are against nature, they perpetually tend to correct\nthemselves. The business world has learned that honesty is the best\npolicy. Cheating is unpopular because, in the long run, it does not\npay.\n\nThe most aggressive and warlike nation upon the globe has at last\ngot its eyes open to the evils of militarism, and has bought its\nemancipation at a heavy price. Tyranny and oppression are finally\ndoomed by the nature of man. Nature\u2019s ways are roundabout, and often\nregardless of cost. The chaos and waste and suffering in Europe\nto-day are in keeping with her spendthrift methods. She knows that\nthe most turbulent and muddy stream will clear itself and quiet down.\nThe track of the cyclone through the forest will in time entirely\ndisappear. Evil perishes, the good increases more and more. God is\nnot so bad as we paint him, and we have no need of a devil. All is\ngood. Gravity would glue our feet to the ground and we have to defeat\nit every time we lift a foot, and yet how could we walk or work\nwithout gravity? The bad, or the evil, dogs one\u2019s footsteps, but it\nteaches us circumspection, and to beware of dangerous paths.\n\nHow easy to put one\u2019s finger on this or that and say, \u201cHere are\npositive evils!\u201d--all diseases, smallpox, infantile paralysis,\ninfluenza, and so on--but they are only remote contingencies, and,\non the whole, most of us find life good. There are good germs and\nthere are bad germs, but the good vastly predominate. And the bad\ngerms are only bad from our point of view. Our doors and windows let\nin the cold or the heat, as the case may be. We have them on these\nconditions. Fruits and grains nourish us, but they may injure us also.\n\nIn 1916 my naturalist\u2019s faith prompted me to write thus of the World\nWar: Two world forces are at death grips in this war. In terms of\ngovernment it is autocracy against democracy; in terms of biology it\nis the unfit against the fit; in terms of man\u2019s moral nature it is\nmight against right. Whatever triumph Prussian aggressiveness and\nruthlessness may meet with, they must in time meet with defeat, else\nEvolution has miscarried, and its latest and highest product, man\u2019s\nmoral nature, is, in its survival value, but dust and ashes.\n\n\nII\n\nThere is positive good and there is negative good. We may say of\nhealth that it is a positive good, and of sickness that it is a\nnegative good, because it reveals to us the conditions of health.\nIn disease the body is struggling to regain its health--to recover\nand retain its normal condition. Its well-being is the result of a\ncertain balance between contending forces. What we call the hostile\nforces appear only as the result of wrong living. The lower animals\nhave none of our distempers because they live according to nature.\nCattle do not get rheumatism by lying upon the wet, cold ground, nor\npneumonia from exposure to cold and storm. In the freedom of the\nfields and woods it is quite certain that they would never become\ninfected with tuberculosis. I doubt if the wild dog or the wolf ever\nhave dog distemper, or if wild horses ever have crib-bite. Disease,\nas we know it, is a product of civilization.\n\nDeath, of course, is not an evil when it comes in the regular\ncourse of nature; it is an evil when it comes prematurely. The\nvarious social evils tend to correct themselves. Moral evils--lying,\ncheating, selfishness, uncharitableness--also tend to correct\nthemselves. Righteousness exalteth a nation because righteousness\nhas great survival value. The unrighteousness of Germany caused her\nfinal downfall. In an earlier age, when ethical standards were lower,\nshe might have succeeded in dominating Europe. Our susceptibility to\npain is not an evil inasmuch as it safeguards us against a thousand\ndangers. What I would say in a score of ways is that there is no evil\nin the human world not of our own making. Plagues and famines are\nalways the result of human folly or short-sightedness. Filth breeds\ndisease. Typhoid fever is a filth disease and is preventable. There\nis no god to blame for our distempers. Nature\u2019s hands are clean. The\nwind is never tempered to the shorn lamb, in spite of the proverb,\nbut the shorn lamb has not been fleeced by Nature. A heavy snowfall\nis an evil in towns and cities, but a good thing for the country.\nIt enables the meadow mice to girdle the apple-trees, but it is a\ncoverlid that greatly profits the meadows themselves. It is therefore\ngood to both mice and meadows.\n\nOur greatest philosopher, William James, had a wide grasp of\nfundamental questions, but it seems to me that he did not fully grasp\nthe problem of evil; he saw the universe as a dual universe, two\nprinciples, good and evil, struggling with each other. He seemed to\nlook upon good and evil as positive entities in themselves, whereas\nnaturalism sees in them only names which we give to our experiences\nwith objects and conditions in this world. What favors us, as I have\nso often said, we call good, and what antagonizes we call evil;\nbut absolute good and absolute evil do not exist, any more than do\nabsolute up and down; or absolute near and far. The absolute admits\nof no degrees, but there are all degrees of good and bad. Some\nhostile germs are worse than others, and some friendly germs are\nbetter than others. Again I say, we live in a world of relativity.\n\nNaturalism does not see two immeasurable realities, God and Nature,\nit sees only one, that all is Nature or all is God, just as you\nprefer.\n\nJames was fond of quoting Walt Whitman, but he does not see, as\nWhitman did, that there is no evil, or, if there is, that it is\njust as necessary as the so-called good. From James\u2019s point of view\nNature is a harlot to whom we owe no allegiance, and another world is\ndemanded to correct and compensate the failures and disappointments\nof this.\n\nOur sacred books and traditions tell us of one God who made the\nheaven and the earth, and who on looking upon them said that they\nwere very good. Here is where the trouble begins--a Creator apart\nfrom the universe who looks upon and approves the work of his hands.\nThis is the early, childish view of mankind. As Bergson says, when we\napply to the universe our idea of a maker and a thing made, trouble\nbegins. The universe was not made; it is, and always has been. God is\nNature, and Nature is God. If this is pantheism, then we are in good\ncompany, for Goethe said that as a philosopher he was a pantheist.\nEven the atheist has a god of his own. He knows that there is\nsomething back of him greater than he is.\n\nMost persons are pantheists without knowing it. Ask any of the\ngood orthodox folk what God is, and they will say that He is a\nspirit. Ask them where He is, and they will answer, He is here,\nthere, everywhere, in you and in me. And this is pantheism--all\ngod--cosmotheism.\n\n\u201cTruly all that we know of good and duty proceeds from Nature; but,\nnone the less so, all that we know of evil.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf there be a divine spirit of the universe, Nature, such as we\nknow her, cannot possibly be its ultimate word to man,\u201d says James.\nBut does he not see that this term \u201cdivine spirit\u201d is born of man\u2019s\nnarrowness and partiality; that Nature is all of one stuff, divine\nor diabolical, just as we elect? He says that the naturalistic\nsuperstition, the worship of God in nature, has begun to lose its\nhold upon the educated mind; that the first step toward getting into\nhealthy relations with the universe is the act of rebellion against\nthe God of nature.\n\nPoor James Thomson, the British poet whose pessimism, perhaps, caused\nhim to commit suicide, whom our James loves to quote, hurled his\nscorn at a fiction of his own brain when he wrote:\n\n      \u201cNot for all thy power, furled or unfurled,\n        For all thy temples to thy glory built,\n        Would I assume the ignominious guilt\n      Of having made such men in such a world.\u201d\n\nThe whole value of philosophy is to help us to a rational view of the\nuniverse, and when it fails to do this, it falls short of fulfilling\nits proper function. The contradictions of which James speaks do not\ndisturb the naturalist at all. Nature would not be Nature without\nthese contradictions; they do not disturb the unity of Nature.\n\nEmpedocles taught that \u201cthere is no real creation or annihilation\nin the universal round of things, but an eternal mixing--due to the\ntwo eternal powers, Love and Hate--of one world-stuff in its sum\nunalterable and eternal.\u201d And Whitman\u2019s large lines mean the same\nthing:\n\n      \u201cThere was never any more inception than there is now,\n      Nor any more youth or age than there is now,\n      And will never be any more perfection than there is now,\n      Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nXIII\n\nHORIZON LINES\n\n\nI. THE ORIGIN OF LIFE\n\nIn dealing with fundamental questions like the origin of life, how\nprone our natural philosophers are to assume the existence of that\nwhich they set out to prove. Thus Pfl\u00fcgler assumes _living_ protein\nin the shape of a cyanogen radical, and assumes that this radical\npossesses a large amount of internal energy, and thus \u201cintroduces\ninto the _living_ matter energetic internal motion.\u201d As cyanogen and\nits compounds arise only in incandescent heat, he concludes that life\nis derived from fire, that its germ was in the earth when it was\nstill an incandescent ball.\n\n\u201cAs soon as oxides can be there,\u201d says Moore, \u201coxides appear.\u201d\n\u201cWhen temperature admits of carbonates, then carbonates are\nforthwith formed.\u201d But are oxides and carbonates mere fortuitous\ncompounds--just chance hits? Moore helps himself out by formulating\nwhat he calls the \u201cLaw of Complexity,\u201d a law that holds throughout\nall space. But is the law, again, fortuitous? Is it not rather\norganized intelligence? \u201cAtoms, molecules, colloids, and living\norganisms arise as a result of the operation of this law.\u201d Allen\nsays, \u201cLife arose at the period when the physical conditions of the\nearth came to be nearly what they are at present.\u201d Of course. But is\nnot this begging the question? We do not know life apart from these\nconditions; hence we assume that the conditions beget the life.\n\nWhat is life anyhow? May we not say that it is a new motion in\nmatter? It does not introduce a new chemistry, or a new physics, but\nit uses these to new ends. New and unstable compounds arise. Solar\nenergy, says Allen, acting on various carbon and nitrogen compounds,\nwould set up various anabolic and catabolic reactions which resulted\nin life--life of a very humble and rudimentary form, but life.\n\nTroland gets life from the enzymes, but how does he get his enzymes?\nHe assumes that at some moment in the earth\u2019s history a small amount\nof a certain autocatalytic enzyme--a self-created enzyme--suddenly\nappeared at a definite time and place within the yet warm ocean\nwaters which contained in solution various substances reacting very\nslowly to produce an oily liquid immiscible with water. Troland\npostulates the auto- or self-catalytic character of the initial\nenzyme, which is virtually postulating the life-impulse itself.\n\nOsborn, in his work on the \u201cOrigin and Evolution of Life,\u201d also\nvirtually starts by assuming that which he sets out to prove.\nHe suggests that the initial step in the origin of life was the\nco\u00f6rdinating and bringing together of the then primordial elements\nof water, nitrates, and carbon dioxide, \u201cwhich so far as we know had\nnever been in combined action before.\u201d Was their coming together\na blind, fortuitous affair? Osborn assumes that these elements\nwere gradually bound by a _new_ form of mutual attraction \u201cout of\nwhich arose a new form of unity in the cosmos, an organic unity or\norganism. It was an application of energy new to the cosmos. In fact\nit was life.\u201d \u201cWhen the earth had in the course of its physical\nevolution become adapted as the abode of life, living substances came\ninto being.\u201d By their own independent action, or by what?\n\nIn trying to account for happenings on the earth\u2019s surface, we follow\nthe chain of cause and effect. But when we try to explain origins, we\nare dealing with a chain which has only one end.\n\nPicted, a Swiss scientist, concluded that because all chemical action\nof the kind which goes on in living things is annihilated at one\nhundred degrees below zero Centigrade, therefore chemical action and\nlife are one. But chemical action is as old as the earth. Is life as\nold?\n\n\nII. THE LIVING AND NON-LIVING WORLDS\n\nI fancy I am not alone in having difficulty in uniting the two\nworlds--the living and the non-living--and in seeing them under\nthe same law. In the one I see something like mind and purpose;\nevery living thing shows something for which we have no name but\nintelligence. Organization demands an organizing principle. There is\npurpose in the wings of a bird, the legs of an animal, the fins of a\nfish, but where is there purpose in the orbs, in the comets, in the\nmeteors? Or, to come down to the earth, where is there purpose in\nthe mountains, in the stratified rocks, in the ocean, or in the air\ncurrents?\n\nIn a living body there are organs which function; in a non-living,\nthere are parts which act and are acted upon. To see mind in all is\nthe task--to see in gravity, in cohesion, in chemical affinity, in\ndissolution, anything at work akin to ourselves. We see irrefragable\nlaw; we see the sequence of cause and effect; we see the weather\nsystem work itself out--evaporation, condensation, precipitation,\nresulting in clouds, rainfall, springs, streams, lakes, and seas; we\nsee the never-failing succession of the seasons; we see the law of\nthe conservation of force; but do all these things imply the same\nintelligence, though unconscious, which we see in the sitting bird,\nor in the growing plant or tree? Is the cosmic order akin to the\nvital order? Of course mechanics and chemistry are one the universe\nover; atoms and molecules are atoms and molecules; but where does\nmind end, and law begin? Or, is it all law, or all mind, according\nto our point of view? The moral order, which is man\u2019s order, we\nknow has its limits, but I am trying to see if the rational order\nis coexistent with nature. The unity we seek we may find in the old\nconception of God, but this saddles all the turmoil and disorder and\nevil of the world upon an all-wise, all-good Being.\n\nShall we adopt the idea of a primal mind as distinct from the human\nmind, as the poets do? I grasp at anything that will help me see that\nI am akin to the farthest star, in my mind as in my body. I cannot\nthink of a dual or a divided universe. I want to see myself as strung\nupon the same thread as all the rest of nature.\n\nIn organic evolution I see the workings of the creative impulse--or\ngrowth, as opposed to mere accretion or accumulation. In the light\nof the same law does one not see worlds and suns potential in the\nspiral nebul\u00e6? Science helps us to see the evolution of the chemical\nelements, or to follow up this defining and differentiating process.\nCould we fly to the uttermost parts of the heavens, we should find\nthe Cosmic Mind there before us.\n\n\nIII. THE ORGANIZING TENDENCY\n\nIs it possible to think of any ingenious contrivance in nature as\nthe result of chance, or of the fortuitous clashing and jostling of\nthe elements? Living things are full of these ingenious contrivances\nwhich serve a definite end and keep life going. In the inorganic\nworld there are no such contrivances; there is not the simplest bit\nof machinery--parts adjusted to parts, and the whole adjusted to\nsome specific end. In all the clashing and jostling of bodies and\nforces through all the astronomic and geologic ages, not so much as\nthe simplest mechanical device--a coiled spring or a carpenter\u2019s\nhammer--has been struck out, and never can be. It is true that there\nare certain static conditions of matter that suggest design--natural\nbridges, natural obelisks, rude architectural and monumental\nstructures, and human profiles on the rocks; but these are not the\nresult of a constructive process, of a building-up, but the result\nof degradation: the erosive forces carve them out in obedience to\nthe laws of matter and energy. We easily see how it all came about;\nand we can guide these forces so that they will repeat the process.\nBut we do not see how the living body, with all its marvelous\nadjustments and co\u00f6rdinations, came about, and we cannot manipulate\nmatter so as to produce the simplest living thing. Darwinians\nprofess to see in natural selection--which is simply a name for an\neliminating or sifting process--the explanation of even man himself.\nBut the elimination of the weaker forms, which has gone on for whole\ngeologic ages--for example, in the Grand Ca\u00f1on of the Colorado--has\nnot resulted in so much as one perfect, four-square foundation, or\none perfect flying arch. Natural selection is not a creative, but a\npurely mechanical, process. We involuntarily personify it, and think\nof it as involving will and power of choice; think of it as selecting\nthis and that, as a man does when he weeds his garden or selects his\nseeds, or breeds his animals. But it is not positive at all. It is\nnegative--a dropping-out process.\n\nChance, or chance selection, works alike in the organic and the\ninorganic realms, but it develops no new forms in the inorganic,\nbecause there is no principle of development, no organizing push.\nBut in organized matter there is, in and behind all this organizing,\na developing principle or tendency; the living force is striving\ntoward other forms; in other words, development occurs because there\nis something to develop. An acorn develops, but a quartz pebble only\nchanges.\n\nThe living body is placed in a world of non-living bodies and forces,\nand it takes its chances; it develops only by their aid; if warmth\nand moisture are withheld, it ceases to develop; or, if warmth and\nmoisture are in excess, it ceases to develop; its well-being is\ninsured when it rides the inorganic forces, and is not ridden by\nthem. It is subject to the law of chance of the world in which it is\nplaced, but that law of chance does not explain its origin or its\ndevelopment as it does that of the non-living forms.\n\nThat it is all the result of design or purpose of an all-wise Being,\nworking his will upon matter, is equally unthinkable. Yet if it\nis the result of chance, then the world of mind and soul is only\na phase of mechanics and chemistry. In that case the head of a\nPaul or a Homer is no greater wonder than a volcanic bomb, having\nessentially the same origin. If we regard it as the work of design,\nwe are compelled to saddle all the sin and misery, all the delays and\nfailures and wastes of the geologic ages, upon Infinite Wisdom and\nGoodness, together with all the famine and pestilence and carnage and\nmiscarriages of history.\n\nFor untold millions of years the earth was given up to low,\ngroveling, all but brainless, bestial forms, devouring and devoured;\nfor other untold millions it was the scene of a carnival of terrible\ndragon-like monsters--in the sea, on the earth, and in the air--a\ntragedy of monstrous forms enacted upon an unstable stage that rose\nand sank or was overwhelmed by fire and flood. For other long ages\nit was the scene of ape-like creatures struggling to be man, living\nin caves, contending with savage beasts, hirsute, forbidding, living\nby tooth and claw and muscular strength more than by wit, followed\nby the long historical period during which man appeared and has\nfought his way to his present stage of development, through blood\nand carnage and suffering and misdirected activities, dogged by all\nthe evil and destructive passions, obstructed and thwarted, cut\noff by plagues and wars, engulfed by earthquakes, devoured by fire\nand flood, blinded by his own ignorance, consumed by his own evil\npassions, yet making steady progress toward the position which he now\nholds in the animal kingdom.\n\n\nIV. SCIENCE AND MYSTICISM\n\nThe bogey of teleology frightens a good many honest scientific minds.\nTo recognize anything akin to intelligence in nature, or to believe\nthat a universal mind is immanent in, or a part of, the cosmos, is\nlooked upon as disloyalty to the scientific spirit.\n\nLamarck\u2019s idea of an indwelling directing principle in organic\nevolution discredited him with Darwin, and with the leading\nbiologists since his time. Yet Darwin said he could not look upon the\nuniverse as the result of chance. But he faltered before the other\nalternative--that any will or design lay back of it.\n\nIt is unfortunate that these words connote things purely human, and\nto that extent are likely to lead us astray. But are not all our\nterms human, even the word \u201castray\u201d itself? Can we have any other?\nEmerson says that anything may be affirmed or denied of the Infinite,\nand that God can be hinted only in signs and symbols. In trying to\ndescribe time, we need a new language that differs as much from our\nordinary speech as algebra differs from arithmetic. The circle and\nsphere are the only complete types of Infinity.\n\nIn Professor Loeb\u2019s mechanistic conception of life there is no hint\nof mind or soul; all is matter and force. All the mechanists and\nenergists and materialists unconsciously endow their matter and force\nwith creative power, thus elevating them to the rank of a _Deus_.\n\nScience knows no mysteries; it knows only insoluble problems and\ncomparatively few of them. But may not one see mysteries in nature\nwithout being a mystic? Physical facts may be inexplicable, but we\ndo not call them mysteries. The birth and development of the cell is\nwonderful, but can we say that it is mysterious? Does not mystery\nimply something occult and unknowable? Is a biologist or evolutionist\nto be charged with mysticism because he refuses to admit that the\ndevelopment of species is all a matter of chance? If he believes,\nfor instance, that the horse as we know him was inevitable in that\nsmall beast of Eocene times, the eohippus, is he to be charged with\na teleological taint? Or if we speak of the predestined course of\nevolution are we unfaithful to the true scientific spirit? Is not the\nacorn predestined to become an oak? Does growth imply a mysterious\nguiding force or principle? The little brown house wren that fusses\nand chatters here around its box on my porch has come all the way\nfrom Central America. Did something guide it? Life is full of this\nkind of guidance. Not much of nature can be explained by addition and\nsubtraction; not much of it can be explained by mere mechanics, or\nphysics; not much of it can be explained by the doctrine of chance.\nThere are reasons behind reasons. You may give good physiological\nreasons why the heart beats, why the liver secretes bile, why the\ndigestive processes go on and our food nourishes us, but can you find\nthe mind by dissecting the brain or connect mind with matter?\n\nMysticism belongs to the sphere of our religious emotions, and when\nwe read natural phenomena through these emotions we are mystical.\nWe cannot say that the course of evolution has been directed, and\nwe cannot say it goes by chance. The changes of the seasons are not\ndirected; the circuit of the waters from the earth, through the sea\nto the clouds and back to the earth, is not directed; the orbs in\ntheir courses are not directed; the sap in the trees, the blood in\nour veins, are not directed; neither are these things by chance. \u201cAn\ninward perfecting principle\u201d is the divinity that shapes the ends of\nall organisms.\n\nMany scientific men are so shy of teleology that they tend to the\nother extreme and land in a world of chance.\n\nNow, if man and all the other forms of life are the result of chance,\nthen Chance is a very good god and should be written with a capital.\nNo matter what we call the power out of which the universe flows, or\nwith which it is identified, it is a veritable _Deus_.\n\nWe cannot affirm that we are the result of chance, nor the result\nof design, as we use these words in our daily lives. These words\napply to parts and fragments of which our lives are made up. They\ndo not help us in dealing with the whole. We share in the life of\nthe universe; we are a part of it, and what keeps it going keeps us\ngoing. What set evolution on foot and evolved the organic from the\ninorganic is the parent of us all. It is not we that are immortal;\nit is life, and the universe. We pass like shadows, but the sun\nremains--for a season. We say of a thing, or an event, that it came\nby chance, when we see no will like unto our own directing it; at\nthe same time we know that the laws of matter and force control\neverything. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without their immutable\ndecrees. In the same sense the hairs of our heads are numbered.\n\nWhen we discuss or describe the universe in terms of experience, we\nare dealing in half-truths. We cannot describe a sphere in terms of\nangles and right lines; no more can we describe or interpret the All\nin terms of our own experience.\n\nIf it were Chance, or Darwin\u2019s Natural Selection, or orthogenesis, or\nwhatever it was, that brought me and all other forms of life here,\nthat gave me my mind and body, that put my two eyes and my two ears\njust where they are of most service to me, and my two arms and hands,\nand my two legs and feet, and all my internal organs, my double\ncirculation, my heart to pump the blood and keep the vital machinery\ngoing, my secretions and my excretions, my lungs to lay hold of the\nair and purify the blood, my liver and kidneys to eliminate the\npoisons and effete matter, my marvelous digestive system to furnish\nthe fuel that generates the physical power, and, more than all\nthese things, that looked after my germ in the old Cambrian seas\nand brought it safely down through the hazards of the long road\nof evolution and developed it and made me a man, and gave me the\ncapacity to contemplate and enjoy this amazing universe--the power or\nthe blind force or the law of chance, I say, that could do all this\nis god enough for me. I want no other.\n\nDo we expect to see the Natural Providence at work as we see man at\nwork? Nature works from the inside. In the human sphere there is a\nmaker and a thing made. Not so in the universe. Things are in their\nplace without being made. Our concepts of the beginning and the end\ndo not apply to them. The words \u201cchance\u201d and \u201cdesign\u201d are born of our\nlimited knowledge.\n\nThat man or an ant or a leaf or a flower could result from the\nhaphazard jostling together of the molecules of matter, or the units\nof force, is unthinkable. Could one get an intelligent sentence, or\none\u2019s own name, by putting the letters of the printer\u2019s type in a\nhat and shaking them up till the crack of doom?--an old and trite\ncomparison, but it seems to state the case fairly. And yet, how can\na naturalist fall back upon teleology? Is not Nature sufficient unto\nherself? Must we inject our own little methods and makeshifts into\nthe ways of the Eternal? We might as well try to walk off the sphere\nas try to compass this problem in the terms of our own experience.\nThe inscrutable, the unthinkable, the unknowable, confront us on all\nsides.\n\nSo far as I can see the Creative Energy in nature has no plan nor\nend. Plans are the ways of the finite, not of the Infinite. Man alone\nhas plans and ends. The Infinite cannot be defined or interpreted in\nterms of our human lives. It transcends all speech. To name any one\nthing as the purpose and end of creation is like naming the end of a\nsphere, or the direction of a circle. All bodies with which we deal\non the earth have an upper and an under side, but the earth itself is\nall top side; there is no under side, though the orbs in the heavens,\nto our eye, have a lowest point or bottom side. Every tangible body\nwith which we deal rests upon some other body, but the orbs float in\nvacuity. The irregular solid bodies with which we deal have three\ndimensions--length, breadth, and thickness--but, properly speaking,\nthe sphere has none of these; it has only mass.\n\nWhen we discuss or attempt to describe what we call God, or what I\ncall the Eternal, in terms of man, as the theologians do, something\nwithin us rises up and says, No. A magnified man, or a man raised\nto the _n_th power, is not God; he is still man. I fancy that with\nmost men the denial of a God means simply this: there is no God who\ncan be described in the terms usually employed. One is an atheist\nbecause he cannot accept a God made in man\u2019s image. It belittles the\nMystery. Our belief in God is so radical that we reject half-gods.\nThe fatherhood of God means no more than the manhood of God, or the\ngovernorship, or the judgeship, of God.\n\nIn many respects the manlike God falls below his human prototype,\nbeing more cruel than any human being dares to be.\n\nNo, we cannot measure the Infinite Mystery with our foot-rule.\nBoundless space is the negation of space. We can say that there is\nno space in the sense that we can say that there is no God. There is\nno motion unless there is something at rest; there is no Infinite\nGood unless there is Infinite Evil. Hence we have invented a hell to\nbalance heaven, a Devil to offset God.\n\nThe universe is a reality, though we cannot define it. Life goes\non, though we cannot account for it. Boundless space exists, though\nwords fail us in the attempt to fathom it. The earth has its center,\nthough we do not know whether we should be standing on our heads or\nour heels were we to reach it. Heavenly bodies do collide, though we\ncannot visualize the collision. Our language fails us when we come to\nthe ultimate questions.\n\nThat this is the best possible world, humanly speaking, I have no\ndoubt, yet sin and misery are on every hand. Sin and misery are\nterms of our own which simply express some of the conditions of our\ndevelopment. They are like the terms \u201cup\u201d and \u201cdown,\u201d \u201ceast\u201d and\n\u201cwest,\u201d and \u201cnear\u201d and \u201cfar\u201d; they are relative. Nature knows no good\nand no bad; all is good; that is, all favors development. The rivers\nreach the sea, no matter what the obstacles in the way. The seasons\ncome and go, no matter how delayed.\n\nNature\u2019s ends, so far as we can name them, are wholesale--to keep the\ngame going, to heap the measure, to play one hand against the other.\nShe is more solicitous about the race than about the individual. The\nwreck of worlds or suns in sidereal space matters little; there are\ninfinite worlds and suns left. What would really matter would be\nfailure of celestial mechanics. The eclipse of the sun and the moon\noccurring exactly on time, \u201cwithout the untruth of a single second,\u201d\ntells how perfectly the great machine runs. The eclipse itself is an\naccident, but a harmless one; it is not a necessity in the movements\nof our system.\n\nIf man is the end of things, as we would fain believe, then why\nwas he so long a-coming? Why will he as surely disappear from the\nearth? Why has he not come to other planets in our system? When he\ndisappears from our solar system, will not the great procession go\non just the same without him? No doubt of it. He is only an incident,\nand maybe an accident--a lucky throw of the dice.\n\n\nV. IS THERE DESIGN IN NATURE?\n\nWe cannot put to Nature the direct questions we put to ourselves.\nNamable purposes and designs rule our lives. Not so with the All. I\ntold Father Goodman the other day, much to his bewilderment, that I\ndid not think the air was made for us to breathe, nor the water for\nus to drink, nor food for us to eat. We breathe and drink and eat\nbecause our organization is adjusted to these things. The shoe is\nmade over the last, not the last to fit the shoe. The organization\nis fitted, or fits itself, to its environment. Nature is first, man\nis afterwards. Is the notch in the mountain made for the road to go\nthrough? Is the land-locked harbor made to protect our shipping?\nWould it not be as true to say that the wind was made to fill the\nship\u2019s sails, as that air was made to fill our lungs? In dealing with\nthis question of design many persons get the cart before the horse.\n\nOf course there is purpose or design in living things in a sense that\nthere is not in the non-living. Every part of a living organization\nis purposeful. There is purpose in our lungs, our hearts, our\nkidneys, in short in every part of our bodies. There is purpose in\nthe varnish on leaves, in the down and resin on buds, in the wings\nand hooks of seeds, in the colors of flowers and of animals, in\nfact, in everything that makes for the well-being of living things.\nBut not in the same sense is there purpose in the wind, the rain,\nthe snow, the tides, the heat, the cold, the rocks, the soil, the\nfountains. Animate nature struggles; inanimate nature passively\nsubmits. Dead matter forever seeks an equilibrium; living matter\nforever struggles against an equilibrium. The waters separate the\nclay and the sand and the pebbles from the soil and deposit each\nin its own place; but it is not a struggle or an effort; it is\nmechanical adjustment. It is not an effort for certain liquids to\nform crystals, or for certain elements to combine with certain other\nelements and form new compounds, but it is an effort for a tree\nto resist the wind, to lift up tons of water and minerals against\ngravity, to force its roots through the soil or grip the rock, and it\nis an effort for the mother to bear and nurse her young. For anything\nto live and grow, effort is needful; not commonly a painful effort,\nbut a joyous one.\n\nSo, when we ask, Is there design in Nature? we must make clear what\npart or phase of Nature we refer to. Can we say that the cosmos as\na whole shows any design in our human sense of the word? I think\nnot. The Eternal has no purpose that our language can compass.\nThere can be neither center nor circumference to the Infinite. The\ndistribution of land and water on the globe cannot be the result of\ndesign any more than can the shapes of the hills and mountains, or\nSaturn\u2019s rings, or Jupiter\u2019s moons. The circular forms and orbits\nof the universe must be the result of the laws of matter and force\nthat prevail in celestial mechanics; this is not a final solution of\nthe riddle, but is as near as we can come to it. One question stands\non another question, and that on another, and so on, and the bottom\nquestion we can never reach and formulate. The earth rests on nothing\nand floats as lightly as a feather. All matter is probably only a\nphase of the ether, but the ether defies all proof and all negation.\n\nHow quickly we get where no step can be taken! We cannot step off\nthe planet, though we may step off from every object on its surface.\nThere is no heat in sunlight till it reaches the earth; heat is an\nexperience of our bodies, and beings on the remotest planets, if\nthere are any, may and must receive adequate heat, and beings on\nMercury and Venus no more. Terrestrial physics and celestial physics\nmust be the same, and yet celestial mechanics find no place on the\nsurface of our planet. The laws of the cosmos bring to naught our\nmundane conceptions. Where are up and down, east and west, over\nand under, out in sidereal space? We balk at perpetual motion, yet\nin the heavens, and in the interior of matter, behold perpetual\nmotion! Behold motion without friction and energy without waste or\ndissipation! On the earth every visible body rests on some other\nbody, everything has a beginning and an end, but where is the\nbeginning or the ending of the cosmos? Where, then, in this quest do\nwe touch bottom? Nowhere. There is no bottom. Only measurable, finite\nthings have bottoms and bounds. The immeasurable, the Infinite, is\nover us and under us, and our lives are like sparks against the\nnight. But, just as we live in the heavens and do not know it, so we\nlive and move and have our being in the Eternal. It is not afar off;\nit is here; we are a part of it, and as inseparable from it as from\ngravity.\n\nWe are not like beings who have moved into a house, made and\nfurnished and provisioned in anticipation of our coming. We are\ncreatures born in a house, or amid an environment to which we\nmust slowly and more or less painfully fit ourselves. We are the\nconsequent, not the antecedent. In a different world we should have\nbeen differently constituted. In a bigger world no doubt our bodies\nwould have been bigger and our strength greater; with less or with\nmore oxygen in the air, no doubt our lungs would have been different.\nWith less light no doubt our eyes would have been larger, and with\nmore light they would probably have been smaller. We do not feel\nthe pressure of the atmosphere, but make the pressure more or less,\nand we are at once disturbed. The deep-sea fishes fairly explode\nwhen brought to the surface, and no doubt the surface fishes would\nbe crushed in the deep sea bottoms. Just as we adjust our flying\nmachines to the tenuity of the air, and our oversea and undersea\nboats to the density and weight of the water, so Nature adjusts her\norganisms to their environment.\n\nMan avails himself of all possible aids. His voluntary conquests of\nnature are many and are constantly increasing, but his involuntary\ndependencies upon her are many also. He did not launch himself into\nthis world, and he did not give his body, with all its wonderful\norgans and powers, the shape it has, or elect to breathe or see or\nhear or breed or eat or sleep. Something else determined all these\nthings for him. What is that something else? Our fathers called it\nGod; we call it Nature, because we live in a scientific and not in a\ntheological age. We are pantheistic and not theistic. Our gods are\neverywhere, in everything created. Our minds are no longer hampered\nby the idea of a maker and a thing made, a ruler or a governor and a\nthing ruled or governed. The unity of Nature and God is a conception\nfostered by science. We are compelled to adjust our minds to the idea\nof a causeless universe, to a universe without beginning and without\nending, without a maker or a designer.\n\nOur conception of cause and effect, or beginning and ending,\napplies only on the surface of the earth; where currents and\ncounter-currents, action and reaction and interaction, are in\nperpetual see-saw; where every body rests upon some other body, and\nevery cause has its antecedent cause; where we can live only by\ndealing with parts and fragments, and by separating one thing from\nanother. The astronomic laws and conditions, or our conceptions of\nthem, are thrown into confusion the moment we try to apply them in\nour practical mundane lives. In vain we try to abolish friction\nand achieve perpetual motion, but the heavenly bodies move without\nfriction, and move forever and ever. Motion is the prime condition\nof the universe. It is the condition or necessity we are under in\nthis world, on the surface of this planet, that sets us on the\nquest of final causes and gives rise to our conceptions of the made\nand the maker, the good and the bad, the end and the beginning. We\ncannot say that we are watched over by the gods--our personification\nof the universal mind that pervades nature--nor that we are not\nwatched over by them, because that were to use the language of our\nsurface existence. All we can say is that we are a part of the\ncosmos, fragments of the total scheme of things, and share its laws\nand conditions, and that the more perfectly we adjust the nature\nwithin us to the nature without us, the better we fare. With the\nInfinite there is no time and no space, only an everlasting here, an\neverlasting now.\n\nYet how can puny man interpret the universe or say aught of it in\nterms of his mundane experiences?\n\n\nVI. OUR IMPARTIAL MOTHER\n\nThe laws and processes of Nature which to us are so beneficent, and\nwhich seem made for our especial benefit, were in full operation\nbefore life as we know it had become established. In fact, the\nfatherhood and motherhood of Nature are all thoughts of our own,\ninventions of our necessities. The paternity of gravitation and the\nmaternity of frost and snow are in no respect different. We are\nthe chance children--chance from our limited point of view--of an\nimpersonal, unhuman, universal mother. We may say, humanly speaking,\nthat Nature takes forethought of her children, but not afterthought.\nShe provides that they shall actually appear in due time in this\nuniverse of conflicting and struggling forces, then lets them shift\nfor themselves. They are born on the firing-line, in the field of\nperpetual war, and none escape unscathed. Indeed, they are moulded\nand adjusted and equipped by the very conditions in which the peril\nof their destruction lies. Gravity crushes them, and gravity gives\nthem their powers. Fire consumes them, and water drowns them, and yet\nout of these things they came.\n\nIt is as if some god had planned the universe as a vast plant for\nthe production of the myriad forms of life, each in its own place\nand season. In our little corner of it at a given hour of the great\ngeologic clock one form appears, or many forms; at another hour\nother forms emerge, till man himself emerges as the culmination of a\nlong line of lowly forms, many vestiges of which still cling to him.\nBut the world is no more for man than for the mice and vermin that\npester him. It is for all.\n\nThe mystery back of all--what shall we say of it? And the good and\nthe evil that are so inextricably blended with it--what of them?\n\n\nVII. BAFFLING TRUTHS\n\nThe grand movements of Nature, both in the heavens and in the earth,\nare on such a scale of time and distance that without the aid of\nscience we could get little or no hint of them. Immeasurably slow\nand slight they are, according to our standards. The stars are\nfixed points in the sky to our unaided vision. Throughout the whole\nhistoric period they have shown little or no change in their relative\npositions, though they are moving in varying directions at the rate\nof many miles a second. Come back in a thousand years and there is\nno change; in thirty or forty thousand years, and changes of place\nmight be barely perceptible to an unaided eye. Not till hundreds\nof thousands of years would Orion, or the Big Dipper, have become\nnoticeably distorted, and probably not till millions of years would\nthe heavens present combinations of stars forming new constellations.\nThe Pole Star will after millions of years probably drift far from\nits present position, and the Milky Way be found in another part of\nthe heavens. When viewed from the extreme points in space one hundred\nand eighty millions of miles apart which the earth\u2019s orbit around the\nsun gives us, the fixed stars remain fixed, they show little or no\nparallax. To touch but the skirts of the Infinite exhausts our powers.\n\nThe geological changes upon the surface of this earth--mere\nmustard-seed in space that it is--are on such a scale of time that\nonly an unfaltering scientific faith can take them in. The mountains\nand the valleys seem eternal, but to the eye of the geologist they\nare as flitting as the summer clouds. Look upon a Catskill landscape\nwith its long, flowing mountain-lines curving over summits three or\nfour thousand feet high, and its deep, broad, cradle-like valleys\ncheckered with fertile farms and homesteads, and try to think of it\nas all the work of the slow and gentle rains and snows--geologic\ntime stroking them almost as gently as a mother caresses her baby.\nTried by human standards we live in a stable universe; change stops\nwith the hills and the stars; but, tried by geologic and astronomic\nstandards, it is as unsubstantial as the snows of winter or the dews\nof summer. Perpetual flux and transition mark even the stars in their\ncourses. Astronomers calculate the weight of the earth in terms of\nits own tons, something like six sextillion tons, but in and of\nitself it weighs nothing; its weight is the pull of some other body,\nin itself pound balances pound; it is only by detachment from it\nthat bodies have weight. As we approach the center, a pound would\nbe less and less; halfway down it would weigh eight ounces only; at\nthe center weight would disappear, the pull of matter on all sides\nwould be equal, there would no longer be up or down. Gravitation is\nnot a demon at the center of the earth, pulling all things toward\nhim; it is a force in every atom, pulling and being pulled in every\ndirection. Seek the center of the pulling, and all power vanishes.\n\nThe globe is on such a scale of size with reference to our lives and\npowers that by no effort of the imagination can we adjust ourselves\nto the contradictions presented. It is not by experience, nor by\nliving and acting, that we know it as a sphere, but by thinking and\nspeculating. Even if we travel round it, we get no other impression\nthan that it is an endless plain. We find no under side; it is all\ntop side. The practical inferences we draw from looking at the moon\nare all contradicted by our experiences here. The lower limb of the\nmoon is not lower, as we should find if we were to go there, and the\nunder side of the earth is also the upper side.\n\nOur astronomy is sound, but our actual life gives us no clue to its\ntruths. Only when we turn philosophers do we know the tremendous\nvoyage we are making, and then we only know it abstractly. We never\ncan know it concretely. The swift turning of the planet under our\nfeet, and its enormous speed in its orbit around the sun, are not\nrevealed to our sense as motion, but as changes from night to day\nand from one season to another. Slow, soft, still, the moon and the\nsun rise and drift across the heavens, and the impassive earth seems\nlike a ship becalmed. No hint at all of the more than rifle-bullet\nspeed through space. It is all too big for us. The celestial machine\nis no machine at all to our senses, but its vast movements go on as\ngently and as easily as the falling of the dew or the blooming of the\nflowers, and almost as unconsciously to us as the circulation of the\nblood in our hearts.\n\nWe are in the heavens and are a part of the great astronomical whirl\nand procession, and know it not. It is symbolical of our lives\ngenerally. We do not realize that we are a part of Nature till we\nbegin to think about it. Our lives proceed as if we were two--man\nand Nature--two great antagonistic or contrary facts, but the two\nare one; there is only Nature. We can draw circle within circle, and\ncircle around circle, but we cannot circumscribe Nature. That is the\nfact over all.\n\nAs struggling human beings we diverge from one another, oppose one\nanother, defeat one another. All our differences and antagonisms\narise from our need of action and of living. The lesson of the sphere\nis hard to learn, hard to state. Our powers of detachment are hardly\nequal to it. Our lives are rounded by the great astronomic curves.\nThe contradictions which the intellect reveals, the unthinkable\nmysteries that surround us, the heavens over us, the earth under us\nalways--the relativity of all things--thus does thought set us adrift\non a shoreless sea.\n\n\nVIII. SENSE CONTRADICTIONS\n\nBergson says that we are in trouble the moment we think of a creator\nand a thing created; in other words, the moment we apply to the\nuniverse as a whole the concepts which our practical lives yield us.\nThe only alternative I see is to think of the universe as uncreated,\nwhich, I confess, does not make the problem much easier. I try to\nhelp myself out by saying that our concepts are formed in a world\nin which we deal with parts and fragments, lines and angles on the\nsurface of a sphere, and not with the sphere as a whole. Our senses\ndo not reveal the earth to us as a globe, but as a boundless plain\nwith no under side; we find no limits, and if we continue our search\nlong enough, we come back to the place from which we set out, but\nfrom the opposite direction.\n\nWhen we try to think in terms of spheres and solar systems, our\neveryday concepts avail us very little; in fact, they set us down\nwrong-end up. We look at the moon or the sun and we say, Surely if\nwe were at the South Pole of either of these bodies, we should be as\ntruly on the under side of it as the fly is when it alights at the\nSouth Pole of the globe in our study. We should be in a position\nopposite to that which we should occupy at the North Pole. That every\npoint on the surface of a cosmic sphere should be on top, or rather\nthat there should be no top, and no bottom; that these concepts\nshould be abolished; that if two inhabited globes should come in\ncollision, each would seem to the people upon the other to be falling\ndown out of the heavens upon them; that out in sidereal space not\neven the Huns could drop bombs, or send up balloons, because there\nwould be no up and no down--when we grasp these facts, I say, we are\nat the end of our tether; we not only do not know \u201cwhere we are at,\u201d\nbut we find there is no \u201cat.\u201d Our minds can deal with the cosmos\nonly in an abstract or mathematical way. As a concrete fact even our\nlittle earth is too much for us. Not merely too big, it contradicts\nall our experience. If we could build a sphere a mile through, or\nten miles or a hundred miles, or ten thousand miles through, could\nwe stand upon it at the South Pole? When we think of the daily\nrevolutions of the earth upon its axis, we are compelled to think of\nit as turning over, because it brings the sun above us by day and\nbeneath us by night, and hence the puzzle to the unlettered mind as\nto why the lakes and ponds do not all spill out.\n\nAmong the heavenly bodies other laws prevail; there is motion without\nfriction or dissipation of energy; there is no body at rest; there\nis no motion in right lines, but only in curved lines; there is no\nbeginning nor ending; there is only eternal progression; and this is\na condition of things that throws our mental adjustments all out of\ngear. The problem of God, the problem of creation, the problem of\nfuture life, throw our mental adjustments out of gear in the same way.\n\nThere is order and harmony in our own solar system and doubtless in\ncountless others in the immensity of space, but the cosmos as a whole\ndoes not seem to present this harmony, as collisions actually occur.\nAstronomers tell us that the units of the starry hosts are moving in\nall directions and that collisions are inevitable, though at such\nvast intervals, owing to the inconceivable spaces, that human time\ncan take no note of them. A billion of our years, like a billion of\nour miles, count for but little in the infinitudes of the universe.\n\nWhen we try to think that the universe had a creator, that there\nwas a time when it did not exist, that it was called into being by\na power apart from itself, do we not fall down completely? We can,\nof course, think in arbitrary terms; our imaginations are equal to\nalmost any feat (Lewis Carroll\u2019s was equal to \u201cAlice in Wonderland\u201d;\nDante\u2019s was equal to making the world shudder over his pictures of\nthe inferno): but the understanding has to have solid ground to go\nupon, and where is the solid ground in our idea of creation? We are\noff the sphere, alone in space, face to face with the Infinite, and\nwe have no language in which to express ourselves.\n\n\nIX. MAN A PART OF NATURE\n\nWe habitually think or speak of ourselves as something apart from\nNature, as belonging to some higher order of reality, when, in fact,\nwe are as much a part of the total scheme of things as are the trees\nand the beasts of the field. True, we are separated from them by a\ngulf, but the gulf has been bridged, and bridged by Nature, and both\nsides are equally her territory.\n\nNature is the one supreme reality, the sum total of the visible\nand invisible bodies and forces that surround us, out of which we\ncame and of which we form a part. Nature is all things to all men,\nbecause she is the larger fact, and holds an infinite diversity in an\nall-embracing unity.\n\nWhen we come to look upon man in this light, when we see his whole\ncivilization and all his achievements upon the earth--his science,\nhis philosophy, his art, his religion, yea, his follies and crimes\nand superstitions, his wars and hatreds, as well as his heroism and\ndevotion--as parts of Nature, as expressions of the same total cosmic\nenergy as are all things else, we have gained an astronomic point of\nview; we see things in orbic completeness.\n\nNature is all-inclusive. We cannot draw a circle around that circle.\nWe have so long been wont to solve our riddles by invoking the\nsupernatural that the habit has become ingrained. We can only do\nas Carlyle did, feed our minds with words and fall back upon the\nnatural-supernatural.\n\nOur attitudes toward Nature differ as widely as do our occupations,\nour characters, and our temperaments. There is the direct, practical\nattitude of the farmer, the miner, the engineer, the sailor, the\nsportsman, the traveler, and the explorer; there is the gay and\nholiday attitude of the camper-out and the picnicker; there is the\nsympathetic and appreciative attitude of the nature-lover; there is\nthe imaginative and creative attitude of the artist and the poet;\nthere is the more or less rapt and mystical attitude of the religious\nenthusiast; there is the inquisitive and experimental attitude of the\nman of science; and there is the meditative and speculative attitude\nof the philosopher.\n\nWe almost invariably personify Nature and read our own traits and\nlimitations into her. We say she is wise or she is foolish; she\nis cruel or she is kind; she fails or she succeeds. The early\nphilosophers said that Nature abhorred a vacuum. Darwin says that\nshe \u201ctells us in the most emphatic manner that she abhors perpetual\nself-fertilization.\u201d There are times when the most rigid man of\nscience humanizes Nature in this way. We look upon ourselves as\ntaking liberties with her; we discipline her and train her in the\nways she should go for our good; we pit her forces against one\nanother. Her flowers, her birds, her sunsets, her rainbows, her\nwaterfalls, her mountain lakes, her ocean-shores, her midnight skies,\nat times move us and lift us above ourselves. On the other hand,\nthere are times when we frown upon her, or despitefully use her and\ncall her hard names. When her storms or her frosts or her blights or\nher droughts or her insect hordes destroy our crops, or lay waste our\nforests or sweep away our buildings or kill our cattle or inundate\nour towns and villages, we instinctively look upon her as our enemy,\nand, so far as we are able, arm ourselves against her. Emerson\nspeaks of Nature as that \u201cterrific or beneficent force.\u201d It is both.\nIndeed, we may use a stronger adjective and say that at times it is a\nmalevolent force.\n\nWe ascribe all our human qualities and traits to Nature. Indeed, we\ncan hardly speak of her without personifying her. As we are a part of\nher, how can we fail to see our own traits in her? At least, how else\ncan we interpret her except in terms of our own being? Early man did\nthis entirely. All the natural forces and appearances took on his own\nimage, and were for or against him. When we seek to interpret Nature\nwe still do it in the terms of literature, of poetry. We humanize\nher, which means, of course, that we interpret ourselves. Nature\nreflects the spirit we bring to her. She is gay, somber, beautiful,\nwinsome, repellent, wise or foolish, just in the degree in which we\nourselves are capable of these emotions or possess these qualities.\nShe is terrifying because we have a capacity for terror. She is\nsoothing when we are in a mood to be soothed. She is sublime only so\nfar as we have the capacity to experience this emotion.\n\nIt is our reactions to Nature that give rise to the qualities we\nascribe to her. The music of the \u00e6olian harp is not in the wind; its\norigin is the reaction of the harp to the wind, but it is not music\nuntil it reaches the human ear. The colors of the landscape are not\nin the rocks and trees and waters, but in the experiences of the eye\nwhen the vibrations of ether which we call light are reflected back\nto it from these objects.\n\nWe create the world in which we live. I love Nature, but Nature does\nnot love me. Love is an emotion which rocks and clouds do not feel.\nNature loves me in my fellow beings. The breezes caress me, the\nmorning refreshes me, the rain on the roof soothes me--that is, when\nI am in a mood to be caressed and refreshed and soothed. The main\nmatter is the part I play in these things. All is directed to me and\nyou because we are adjusted to all. No more is the kite or the sail\nadjusted to the wind, the water-wheel to the falling water, than are\nwe adjusted to outward Nature. She is the primary and everlasting\nfact; we, as living beings, are the secondary and temporary facts.\n\n\nX. THE FITTEST TO SURVIVE\n\nThe survival of the fittest does not mean the survival of the best\nfrom the human point of view. The lower orders of humanity are better\nfitted to survive than the higher orders--hardier, more prolific,\nhaving a fuller measure of life. The cultivated plants--wheat, corn,\nrye, barley, oats--are less fitted to survive than what we call\nweeds. The latter can shift for themselves, but the former cannot.\n\nWe lament the decay of the native Anglo-Saxon stock in this country,\nand the increase of the races from southern Europe and from the\nOrient. They stand our pitiless sunlight better than do the\ndescendants of our Puritan ancestors. From our point of view this\nrule of natural selection will not result in a superior race, but in\nan inferior; not in better men, but in better animals. Character and\nintellect win in those fields where character and intellect tell, but\nwhere muscle and brawn and vitality tell more they fail.\n\nThe Japanese have great power of survival; they are hardy, prolific\nand pushing. The Germans also have great survival power, greater\nthan the French; they are more prolific, more materialistic, nearer\nthe brutes; they are not handicapped with much soul. They are\nmorally blind, but intellectually clever. Their moral blindness and\ninsensibility have resulted in their downfall. Great Britain leads\nthe European nations because she is not only hardy and prolific, but\nshe also has the gift of empire; she builds upon law and order; she\nestablishes justice and fair play.\n\nIn the Darwinian sense the Jews are the fittest to survive of all the\nraces of man. They are prolific and grasping; they will always get\nwhat belongs to them, and a little more; they are bound to possess\nthe earth. The only drawback I see is that they do not take kindly to\nthe soil. Trade alone will not give a nation the supremacy.\n\n\nXI. THE POWER OF CHOICE\n\nThink how we come into the world, what an important thing it is to\neach of us and to the world, and yet how fortuitous and haphazard it\nall is, and what precautions are often taken to prevent our coming!\n\nSee the deformed, the half-witted, the low-browed, the degenerate,\nthat come. The great army of the common, the few capable of higher\nand finer things. Nature apparently finds her account in one class\nthe same as in the other, in Pat as well as in Paul, in the inferior\nraces as well as in the higher.\n\nIn our manufacturing affairs we aim to turn out the best article\npossible--the best shoe, the best hat, the best gun, the best book;\nbut Nature makes no such effort in the case of man, though she does\nin the case of the lower orders. Probably every individual bird or\nbug or four-footed beast in a state of nature is perfect of its\nkind, that is, suited to its place in the scheme of organic life. But\nhow different with man! It is the price he pays for his freedom, his\npower of choice. The birds and the beasts have no power of choice,\nthey are entirely in the hands of Nature. They are all moulded to one\npattern.\n\nThe advantage that comes to man from his power of choice is greater\nvariation, hence greater progress. He crosses or reverses or turns\naside the laws of Nature, or bends them to his will, and for this\nprivilege he pays the price of idiocy, deformity, and the vast mass\nof commonplace humanity. His gain is now and then men of exceptional\nability, geniuses, who lead the race forward. We know that every\nimproved breed of chicken or sheep or swine will come true, but we\ndo not know in anything like the same degree of certainty that the\nEmersons and the Lincolns and the Tennysons will repeat and continue\nthe type. Cultivated fruit relapses in the seed, and cultivated\npersons often do the same.\n\nOn the other hand, rude and ordinary humanity now and then far\ntranscends itself in its offspring, just as the new and choice apple\nor peach or plum has its humble origin in a seedling.\n\n\nXII. ILLUSIONS\n\nIn his \u201cConduct of Life\u201d Emerson has an essay on \u201cIllusions\u201d in which\nhe describes the semblance to midnight skies paved with stars which\nthe guide produces in the Mammoth Cave by hiding himself and throwing\nthe rays of his torch athwart the ceiling set thick with transparent\nrock crystals. The effect is quite startling. For the moment it is\nhard to resist the conviction that you are actually looking upon the\ncloudless sky at night. But in reality is not the noonday sky just as\nmuch of an illusion, except that there are no mimic stars? The blue\ndome overhead is an illusion. There is no dome there. The sky is a\nmere apparition. It is not a body or a reality as it seems to be;\nit is mere empty space, though it has the effect upon us of a vast\nblue dome. How genial and inviting it looks when we see it peeping\nthrough the clouds, and how glorious when we see it swept free from\nclouds! Its purity, its serenity, its elevated character, move us to\nregard it as the abode of superior beings. The telescope dispels our\nillusions; the sky is not a transparent realm, but only an extension\nof earthly conditions. Heaven, the abode of the blest, takes its name\nfrom this negation of vacancy. Our notions of a personal God are\nsimilar illusions. God is as real as the sky is, and no more so, even\nthough in our devout moods we lift our eyes heavenward and identify\nhim with this comforting illusion.\n\nAll our life illusions brood over us. The night is only a shadow--the\nnegation of light; and yet it plays a part in our lives as real as\nthat of health or friends or climate, as real, but of another kind.\n\nTime itself is an illusion. The future does not exist nor the past;\nyet how are our lives influenced by the memory of the one and our\nanticipations of the other!\n\nThe world is, indeed, full of illusion. We fancy that luminous\nbodies shoot out rays of light such as we appear to see when we look\nat them. We see beams and scintillations when we look at the stars\nand the sun; but is it not all a trick of the eye? The light from a\nluminous body goes out in all directions, not in separated rays, but\nas vibrations in the ether. When we throw a stone into a still pool\nof water a wave motion is set up which spreads in concentric circles.\nBut the vibrations called \u201clight,\u201d considered as a whole, assume the\nform of a sphere; they go from the luminous body to every point of\na hollow sphere. We see a star as a bright point in the sky, but if\nthe universe were full of eyes, every eye could see that star; its\nlight goes to every point of the hollow sphere of Infinity. But no\nmore than does the light of the candle in your hand, or the lamp on\nyour table go to Infinity, if unobstructed. Stars which cannot be\nseen by the most powerful telescope must yet radiate their light into\ninfinite space. Is that light lost? Modern science seems to hold to\nthe view that in the ether of space no rays of light can ever be\nlost. What becomes of them? It is certain that a wavelet in a lake\ncan be lost if the lake is large enough. It soon dies out. It becomes\ndissipated. Energy cannot be destroyed, but it can be scattered or\nturned into heat or light or electricity, and the waves that break\nand die upon the beach, no matter how cold they are, give up their\nenergy as heat. They must raise the temperature some fraction of a\ndegree.\n\n\nXIII. IS NATURE SUICIDAL?\n\nEmerson never committed himself to a belief in immortality as usually\nunderstood--continued existence in another world; but he was always\non the lookout for hints and suggestions to spur his lagging faith on\nthe subject. He read Martial and praised his literary faculty. He is\nthe true writer, he said, a chemical and not a mechanical mixture:\n\u201cMartial suggests again, as every purely literary book does, the\nimmortality. We see we are wiser than we were: we are older. Can\nNature afford to lose such improvements? Is Nature a suicide?\u201d The\nsame questions I have heard Whitman ask, questions asked probably by\nthoughtful men in all ages.\n\nBut are not such questions prompted by our own petty economies? We\nmust save what we have gained. Not so Nature. Gain and loss with her\nare one. All is hers. She has infinite time, and infinite abundance.\nHow can she afford so many dead worlds and burnt-out suns scattered\nthroughout sidereal space, like boulders in a New England field? How\ncan she afford to wait millions of years before life comes to the\nsuperior planets, if it ever comes? What economy is that which strews\nthe way of evolution with untold numbers of extinct species? What\neconomy is that which makes one species prey upon another?--which\nundoes with one hand what she achieves with the other? Nature was\nmillions of years in bringing man out of the earth,--the end and\nflower of her whole scheme from our point of view,--and probably\nin far less time he will have disappeared from the earth. How can\nshe afford it? \u201cIs Nature suicidal?\u201d She certainly is, tried by\nour standards. Not that she is less than we, but so inconceivably\nmore. She plays the game for her own amusement. She evaporates the\nrivers and the seas, confident that the water will come back again.\nShe keeps the currents going; the ebb and flow never cease. Night\nand day, life and death, go hand in hand. Her \u201cimprovements\u201d are\nimprovements for a day, an hour, a moment--like snowflakes on the\nriver--\u201ca moment white, then gone forever.\u201d They are crystals that\nperish, flowers that fall. Nature knows no exhaustion; she can repeat\nthe process continuously. Only the unlimited is inexhaustible. The\ninfinite goes on forever. Our economics pale in the face of Nature\u2019s\nprodigalities. A race like the Greeks perishes, and Nature\u2019s treasury\nis still full. Every spring in our climate the marvel of leaf and\nflower is repeated in the plants and forests, and every fall the work\nis undone. The great, the noble, the heroic, youth, age, manhood,\nwomanhood, fail and disappear, and still the game goes on. The rivers\ndrain the hills and mountains, and still they never run dry. Spring\nand summer do not exhaust the fertility of Nature. The rivers carry\nthe soil into the sea, but they do not carry it off the globe. We\ncannot defertilize the earth. What the seas lose, the clouds gain;\nwhat the clouds lose, the earth gains; what the hills lose, the sea\ngains; and so the circle is complete.\n\nNature has her own economies that answer to our own. In the use of\nmeans to an end, as in the living world, there must be economy of\ntime, of space, of power; there must be adjustments, compensations,\nand so on. In the tropics vegetation takes its time. No hurry; the\nheat does not fail. In the temperate zone there is less time, and\nthe pace of vegetation is faster. In the frigid zone it is faster\nstill, the time is brief; there is no prodigality of leaf and stalk\nand flower; hurry up is the cry. The stalk is short, the flowering is\nbrief, the goal is the seed which must be matured. In our climate,\nif a plant gets a later start, or is cut down and compelled to bloom\nagain,--for example, the burdock,--how it hastens, how it pushes out\nits seed-vessels from the main stalk! The late fall dandelions do not\nindulge in long stalks; they bloom close to the ground and develop\ntheir down-seed balloons or parachutes at once. In the Far North the\nwillow and birch are mere running vines, but they achieve fruit.\n\nThe economy of living nature is the basis of our economy; we improve\nupon it, we take a short cut, we save time and save power. We trim\nour trees, we remove obstructions, we fertilize, we graft, we sow\nand plant. Nature is prodigal of her spawn and pollen to offset the\nelement of chance that enters into the action of the winds and the\nwaves.\n\nThe wild creatures have their instinctive economies and ways of\ngetting on in the world. They prepare for the winter; they provide\nfor their young; they practice the arts of concealment; they are\nwise for their own good; they do not commit suicide. The plants have\ntheir economies, and the insects have theirs, but when we talk of\nthe economy of Nature, we are beyond soundings. Nature cannot spend\nmore than she earns; her ledgers always balance; her capital cannot\nbe impaired. There is no waste, in our sense, in the universe. Can\nyou destroy magnetism by pulverizing the magnet? Would electricity be\nquenched if no storm-cloud ever again appeared in the sky?\n\n\nXIV. THE PERSISTENCE OF ENERGY\n\nIs it not reassuring to know that we cannot get out of the\nuniverse--that whatever is real about us cannot be destroyed, but can\nonly suffer change? All the elements that enter into my body must\npersist; they always have persisted through all the vicissitudes of\nastronomic and geologic time. We are as sure of that as we are sure\nof anything, and we are sure that they will continue in some form\nto exist. We believe it without proof. Our scientific faith carries\nus over this gulf--our faith in the oneness and integrity of the\nuniverse. Is there anything real, in the same sense, in what we call\nour minds or souls? Huxley was convinced that consciousness was as\nreal as matter and energy, and must persist like them--persist in\nother persons who follow us; but how about our individual selves?\nAnd how about consciousness when the race of man becomes extinct?\nWe can only take refuge in the thought that consciousness will\ndawn and continue in other worlds through all time, or rather\nendless time, since the all of a thing implies limits. Equally to\nmake consciousness coeval with matter and energy, we must think\nof it as having existed in other worlds throughout an endless and\nbeginningless past. But my consciousness and your consciousness\nare bound up with certain combinations of matter which we know are\nunstable--in fact, are the result, in a sense, of their instability,\ntheir ceaseless change.\n\nIn the final change, which we call death, what happens to\nconsciousness? When we try to think of it in terms of our actual\nexperience with tangible bodies, we think of it as gone out,\nnon-existent, as truly so as is the flame of the candle when we blow\nit out, or as is the star form of the snowflake when it is melted.\nDoes it help us any to think of the soul, or consciousness, in terms\nof the imponderable bodies--light, electricity, radio-activity?\nDo all these wireless messages that go forth into the air, go on\nforever? Do these impulses reach the farthest stars, and still\npersist? Do our thoughts persist upon the ether? Here, in this room,\nhere in this air that you may inclose with your two hands, are\nvibrating wireless messages from far and near, though we are not\nable to detect them. Here also the ether may be tremulous with the\nthoughts of our friends on the other side of the globe, yes, and with\nthe thoughts of our friends who have ceased to live, as we know life.\nThe ether of space may still be vibrating with the thoughts of Plato\nand Aristotle, of Moses and Solomon.\n\nDo we impress ourselves momentarily upon the ether around us,\nand is this what the mediums and the clairvoyants recover? Is\nthe persistence of our thoughts upon the ether the secret of the\nmind-reader\u2019s art, and of all the marvelous things disclosed by\npsychic research? Is this the only immortality, the immortality of\nthe endless persistence of vibrations from our brains? Or must we\nthink of our personalities as disembodied and drifting about as\nseparate entities in the great Nowhere?\n\nThough a dreamer and an idealist, I am only truly interested in a\nnatural explanation of things--an explanation that is in harmony with\nour experiences in this world. The so-called supernatural explanation\ndoes not interest me at all. We cannot grasp it and bring it to the\ntest of reason and experience. It is like a bridge with one or more\nspans missing--only faith can carry us over, and faith that has\nnothing to stand upon cannot really carry us over. It travels in a\ncircle, and leaves us where it found us.\n\nEnergy is certainly one of the realities of the cosmos, though we may\nnot be able to form a concept of it as we do of matter. We cannot\nvisualize it. We know it only through its effects upon tangible\nbodies. Why may there not be a principle of life or vitality as\nreal as is energy--another form of energy which we can know only\nthrough its effects upon matter; inseparably bound up with matter as\nenergy is; not with all matter, but with a limited amount of matter,\nas is magnetism--a peculiar form of force or energy, dependent\nfor its manifestations upon well-defined conditions and reaching\nits highest manifestations in the mind or consciousness of man.\nSpirit, as we name it, is only a word which stands for no verifiable\nreality--something separable from matter and independent of it.\nWhat victims we are of words! When we get a name for a thing we are\npersuaded the thing exists. The vital process is inseparable from\nthe physical processes; it supplements or controls them, but is more\nthan they are. Life is not a spirit, but a form of energy potential\nin matter, and developed and active when the conditions are right.\nA living body is moved by a new force just as truly as a piece of\nmagnetized steel is moved by a new force, or as truly as a new force\nstreams through the telegraph-wires--a transformation of other\nforces, and behaving in a new way, and producing new results. There\nis nothing new under the sun; all are made of one stuff; but there\nare endless transformations and permutations of this one stuff, and\none of them is the phenomenon of life, or vitality.\n\nElectricity is not matter, but it is the most unmistakable and\nubiquitous form of energy known to us. The human mind is a phenomenon\nof matter; how related to the electro-magnetic world we know not, but\nundoubtedly in some way bound up with it.\n\nTo discuss the soul or attempt to interpret it in terms of these\nmundane forces will, of course, offend the so-called spiritualists.\nSo long have we been taught to look upon the soul as belonging to\nanother world, another order of things from that of the body. Whitman\nsays that soul and body are one, and leaves his puzzled reader to\nsolve the riddle as best he can. Heaven and earth are one in the same\nsense--there is nothing alien or irreconcilable between them. The\nflower and its stalk, the perfume and the root, are one in the same\nsense. The mind resides in the gray matter of the brain, and depends\nupon the food we eat as truly as does the body.\n\nWhen we discuss these questions in terms of our religious training\nwe reach far different conclusions, or, rather, we start with far\ndifferent conclusions; but how can we relate these conclusions to the\nconcrete facts as we know them?\n\nThere is enough that is verifiable in clairvoyance and mind-reading\nand mental healing to convince us that we are immersed in a world\nof subtle forces that ordinarily we wot not of; that in some way a\nprocess of give and take between us and these things is constantly\ngoing on, and that our relation to them is at least one form or\nsuggestion of our immortality. We are a part of the wave of energy\nthat sweeps through the cosmos, as truly as the drops of the sea hold\nand convey the tidal impulse. We know, or think we know, the sources\nof this tidal impulse, but the attraction between earth and moon and\nsun is reciprocal--a give-and-take process--and is only a phase of\nthe sum total (if the Infinite can be said to have a sum total) of\nthe energy of the cosmos.\n\nThe magnet and magnetism are one. If you melt or pulverize the\nmagnet, you dissipate, but do not destroy the magnetism. The clouds\ncome and go; now we see them, and then there is only blue sky where\nthey were. Change, but not destruction. When the thunder-cloud\ndisperses, where are its terrible bolts? Withdrawn, probably, or\nredistributed into the inmost recesses of matter or of the ether. The\nenergy of the human brain and body cannot be destroyed by death, only\nchanged. If consciousness is a force, then it, too, must persist. It\nseems, in some way, the equivalent of the force of the body, at least\none of its phenomena. But is it anything more than the analogue of\nthe light which the electric spark emits, and which is light only\nto the eye? Consciousness is such only to itself; it cannot be seen\nor felt or known by other consciousnesses. What we know about the\nconsciousnesses of others, we know through our own.\n\nIn the presence of the death of our friends no doubt this is a\ncheerless and depressing kind of philosophy, but in the pursuit of\ntruth, if we are sincere, we do not seek to administer to, or to warm\nand cheer our human affections. Our seriousness will be measured\nby the extent to which we put all these things behind us. Heroic\nself-denial finds a field here as well as in the struggles of life.\nWe do not want to cheer ourselves with illusions, no matter how\nwelcome they are. \u201cAll\u2019s right with the world.\u201d The laws of life and\ndeath are as they should be. The laws of matter and force are as they\nshould be; and if death ends my consciousness, still is death good.\nI have had life on those terms, and somewhere, somehow, the course\nof nature is justified. I shall not be imprisoned in that grave where\nyou are to bury my body. I shall be diffused in great Nature, in the\nsoil, in the air, in the sunshine, in the hearts of those who love\nme, in all the living and flowing currents of the world, though I may\nnever again in my entirety be embodied in a single human being. My\nelements and my forces go back into the original sources out of which\nthey came, and these sources are perennial in this vast, wonderful,\ndivine cosmos.\n\n\n\n\nXIV\n\nSOUNDINGS\n\n\nI. THE GREAT MYSTERY\n\nNo man in his senses can fail to grant the reality of the Great\nMystery, the inscrutable and unspeakable Something which lies back of\nus and works in and through us, the vast Cosmic Energy of which we\nand all forms of life are manifestations, and in which we live and\nmove and have our being, call it physical energy or psychic power, or\nwhat you will.\n\nWe are not here by our wills; we do not have our eyes and ears,\nand the other wonderful mechanisms of our bodies, and all our\nvaried instincts and capacities and aspirations of our own will and\ninvention. We have little or nothing to do with the functioning of\nour various bodily organs, scarcely more than we have to do with the\ncolor of our eyes, our innate dispositions, and our mental aptitudes.\nIn something not of us, at least not subject to our wills and\nwishes, is to be sought the explanation of our appearance, and that\nof all other forms of life, in this world. In other words, we are\nan integral part of a system of things which transcends our powers\nand baffles our understanding. After we have granted all this, can\nwe still feel the solid ground beneath our feet in accepting the\nexplanation and interpretation which any of the formal religious\nsystems, old or new, place upon it? I think not.\n\nIn the presence of the midnight skies, of the creative and\ndestructive cosmic processes constantly going on in the awful depths\nof the sidereal space, of suns and systems coming in and going out\nlike blooming and fading flowers, in the presence of the geological\nand biological histories of the globe, or of the histories of the\ndifferent nations and races of the globe, does not most of our\nChristian mythology seem utterly childish?\n\nHow strange that we should crave a creed or a belief that goes\noutside of our experimental knowledge; that is independent of it,\nnot subject to its tests and limitations; something afar off and\nirrational and inexplicable, and beyond the reach of time and change!\nWho is the philosopher who said that we are guided by our common\nsense in everything but our religious beliefs?\n\nWe can taste and see and touch and smell and eat and drink and\nmeasure and accumulate and organize and assimilate scientific\nknowledge; it gives us a place whereon to stand our Archimedean lever\nwith which we can move the world and the whole sidereal system of\nworlds. But with our so-called theological knowledge, and with much\nof our metaphysical knowledge, it is like trying to move with a lever\nthe mountain upon which one stands.\n\nFurthermore, grant that the religious sense of mankind is real, one\nof the most real things in life,--so real and valuable that the\nlife, the literature, and the art which have it not seem shallow\nand ephemeral,--a living sense of the Infinite Mystery in which we\nare embosomed and our constant relation to it,--grant this, I say,\nand yet our creeds and systems of salvation do not minister to it.\nThey are too legal; they know and explain too much. With them the\nadministration of the universe is as simple and judicial as a police\ncourt, save that in human courts of justice there is no deputed sin\nor atonement. This is a gratuitous, manufactured mystery of the\ntheologians, as are the Trinity and the saving grace of rites and\nceremonies.\n\nScience has real mysteries. Catalysis is one. How or why the presence\nof one body should cause two other bodies to unite chemically without\nparting with an atom of their own substance--as in several cases in\nindustrial chemistry--is certainly a mystery. On the strength of such\nand similar facts in chemistry, shall we image or invent a whole\ncategory of mysteries which are beyond the reach of verification?\n\nWhat mystery hovers about all chemical reactions! What a miracle\nthat two invisible gases, such as oxygen and hydrogen, should, when\nchemically united, produce a body so utterly unlike either as is\nwater! The turning of water into wine is as nothing in comparison,\nbut even that feat we want to see done if we are to believe it.\n\nWhat a mystery shrouds the whole subject of electricity and\nelectro-magnetism! A sort of disembodied force, working its will upon\nmatter and yet subject to none of the laws of matter. Spirit?--but a\nspirit we can evoke at will, and make to do our bidding, to run our\nerrands, a spirit more friendly than unfriendly. How prone the common\nmind is to think that because a thing is mysterious it must be true!\n\nAs I have already emphasized, as man is a part of Nature, so are all\nhis creeds and myths, his religions and his philosophies, a part of\nNature. What validity does that give them? What support is lent to\nour creed by the fact that it has been slowly evolved out of the\nreligious experiences of the centuries? Our sense of truth is also\nan evolution, and varies from age to age. That a thing is a part\nof Nature does not settle its value. Shadows are a part of Nature;\npuff-balls, fungi, marsh-gas, disease-germs, and a thousand other\nundesirable things are a part of Nature.\n\nAlthough the various religious systems of mankind must have their\nnatural history, I regard them only as so many diverse attempts to\nclothe the spirit against the cosmic chill of the vast, unhoused,\nunsanctified, immeasurable out-of-doors of the universe. This they\ndo in varying degrees, and will continue to do, some appealing to\none type of mind, or--shall we say?--one stage of development, some\nto another. The philosopher looks on and smiles, or pities, and is\ncontent.\n\n\nII. THE NATURAL ORDER\n\nEven great thinkers like Mr. Balfour recoil from naturalism and\ncheerfully embrace supernaturalism. Mr. Balfour finds the key to the\nfundamental problems of life in the miracle of the Incarnation. He\ninjects into the natural order a theological concept, and the riddle\nof man\u2019s life is solved. To the naturalist such a conclusion is as\nimpossible as to hope to quench his thirst with the symbols, H_{2}O.\n\nWe may say every man born of woman is an incarnation of the\nInfinite spirit, and the hyperbole may stand, but to affirm that\none particular man in the historic period was an incarnation in an\nentirely other and more significant sense, is to read magic into\nmatters of common sense. It is an imaginary solution. It is an appeal\nfrom the natural to the non-natural. It is offering an artificial\nsolution to a natural problem. One might as well attribute a failure\nof the crops to one of the political parties, or an epidemic of\ndisease to an historical document. The doctrine of the Incarnation\nis as far outside the realm of natural law as is magic, and to see\nin this the master key to creation is like ascribing all the sin\nand misery of the world to Adam\u2019s transgression in the Garden of\nEden. The childish plan of salvation of our fathers is as good as\nany other so long as it holds men up to higher standards of life and\nof thought; but the day is fast passing when it can do this; natural\nstandards must in the end as surely prevail in religion as in our\ndaily lives.\n\nThe nature that we see about us is enough for all forms of life\nexcept man; why should he flatter himself that his appearance and\nlife demand something extra, some miracle, something mysterious and\nincomprehensible? Why not invest the gods we have and know with the\nextra power demanded, rather than appeal to gods we know not? How\nthe fire warms us, how our food nourishes us, how we sprang from a\nmicroscopic germ and grew to be the men we are, are miracles enough.\nEvery living thing is a miracle as wonderful as the Immaculate\nConception or the Incarnation, but of a different order. If I knew\nhow the meat and bread which the poet eats is turned into poetry,\nor how the pond-lily weaves its satin and gold out of the muck and\nslime of the creek-bottom, I should possess a secret that would make\nme cease to wonder at the so-called \u201cmiracles.\u201d In the face of the\nmarvels we hourly see about us in living Nature, why should we look\nafar off and invent marvels of a new order? Why should we invent\nimpossible problems, and then invent impossible explanations of them?\n\nThe nature gods we know; we live in daily and hourly converse with\nthem; we see and know that we are dependent upon them every moment\nof our lives. These gods--air, water, fire, earth--and the greater\ngods whose eyes blink to us in the midnight skies, why not credit\nthem with the gifts that we ascribe to the imaginary gods of the\nsupernatural?\n\nThe more we search into the ways of Nature, the more wonderful and\npotent we find them to be. It may be that if we could penetrate to\nthe true inwardness of matter, we should find the key to the mystery\nof the soul and the master key to all our problems. But we feel that\nwe must look afar off, we must have recourse to the strange and the\nmiraculous. How the impossible does attract us! Even the fantastic\nmay be made the basis of a religious cult. In Florida, in a remote,\nsecluded place we found a religious sect, embracing men and women\nof culture and refinement, who upheld the social and civic virtues\nand cultivated the industrial arts, yet who deemed it essential for\ntheir soul\u2019s salvation to disbelieve all our popular astronomy, and\nhold to the idea that, instead of living on the outside of a globe,\nwe live inside of a hollow sphere, and that the sun, moon, and stars\nare appendages of this sphere, and not at all what we ordinarily take\nthem to be. The expounders of this faith are not at all disturbed by\nsuch facts as a ship at sea dropping below the horizon, or an eclipse\nof the moon showing the shadow of a round body falling upon it.\nSuch appearances only confirm their theory. These Florida fanatics\ndefy common sense and the exact demonstrations of science. Our\nsupernaturalists superinduce another order above and around the order\nwe call \u201cnatural,\u201d and in a theological concept, the Incarnation,\nlink the two together. That they are linked at any other point is not\nclaimed. In the age of miracles they were linked at many points and\non many occasions. Any saint could link them together at will, and\nreverse or hold up the processes of the natural order and substitute\nthose of the supernatural.\n\nSuch events as miracles come very easy to the mind imbued with the\nold theological concepts. Why should not this omnipotent being who\nmade and rules the world and all that it holds, and who has a scheme\nof his own to carry out with regard to man, step in at any time and\nannul natural law or link it up with the supernatural? Belief in the\ntheory of such a being cuts many knots, while it ties others that\ndefy all our wits.\n\nLife is so great a mystery that we need not invent others. We have\nthe proof of life always, what proof have we of the Incarnation? We\nknow what destroys life, what favors it, what conserves it, but we\ndo not know its origin. We know something about the stars, and we\nknow the constellations are only imaginary groupings. The historical\nevents upon which our creeds are founded are of the same character.\nThe Trinity is a constellation. The miraculous birth of Christ is a\nconstellation. The fixed stars of man\u2019s moral nature and religious\naspirations are alone real. All the mythologies built upon them are\nas fanciful as Orion and the Big Dipper. All the various religions of\nthe world, with all their supernatural features, are a part of the\nnatural history of man\u2019s religious instincts. Man\u2019s craving for the\nsupernatural is as natural as our discounting of the present moment,\nand no more significant. The natural becomes trite and commonplace\nto us and we take refuge in an imaginary world above and beyond it.\nThe understanding becomes sated, and we long for something we cannot\nunderstand.\n\n\nIII. LOGIC AND RELIGIOUS BELIEFS\n\nOf late years I am often moved to say to myself: \u201cWhy kick the old\ntheology after it is dead?\u201d--as I have often been tempted to do.\nIt is almost like spurning the bodies of one\u2019s father and mother.\nThe old creeds may be outworn, but they have fathered and mothered\nus all. They have served and saved untold generations of men.\nChristianity, mythical and irrational as much of it is, has yet been\nthe salvation of the world for nineteen centuries. Of course it has\nbeen a source of evil as well as of good, as all religions are, but\nthe good has greatly predominated. In fact, it is the bed-rock upon\nwhich our civilization is founded. It has saved men in this world by\ninspiring them with the desire to be worthy of a better and future\nworld.\n\nWe are saved, I often say, not so much by the truth of what we\nbelieve, as by the truth of our belief, by its genuineness, its power\nover our imaginations, its hold upon our character, its fostering\nof an incentive to right conduct and noble deeds. Whether it be\nCatholicism or Calvinism or Methodism or Quakerism or Christian\nScience or the Japanese ancestor worship or Buddhism, if it holds us\nto higher ideals and gives sobriety and sincerity to our lives, that\nis its true function.\n\nIn fact, any religion is good which supplies a man or a people with\na workable theory of the universe. In practical matters, in dealing\nwith real facts and forces, man is compelled to be logical or he\ncomes to grief--he must keep fire and powder apart. But in his\nreligion and speculations he is bound by no such necessity; he is\nfree to indulge the wildest dreams.\n\nMan does not expect fire or flood or frost or wind or rain to favor\nhim. He does not put fluids in leaky vessels, nor a leaky roof\nover his head, nor plant his house on a foundation of sand. His\ncarpenter\u2019s level does not lie, nor his plumb-line make a mistake.\nBut in his religion he may be as capricious and fantastic as he\npleases; he has a free hand; he may even flog his gods if they\ndisplease him, and it is all the same. His creed is a passport to an\nentirely different world.\n\nThe religious sect which I visited in Florida, which held that we\nlive upon the inside of a hollow sphere, treated our astronomy with\nscorn, yet seemed to live sober, sane lives, and to do honest work.\nBut if they carried out the theory of the hollow sphere in practice,\nin their navigation, in their clocks and sun-dials, or in anything\nelse, how quickly they would come to grief!\n\nChristianity is a workable hypothesis; it solves the problem of\nlife to vast numbers of persons; but how irrational and puerile its\nphilosophy, founded upon the myth of the fall of Adam in the Garden\nof Eden! Destroy this myth and you have cut off the tap-root of\nChristianity. But do we not know, in the light of evolution, that\nman\u2019s course has been upward and not downward, that his \u201cfall\u201d was,\nin fact, development into a higher state of being?\n\nThinking men must find some sort of a solution of the problems of the\nuniverse, and feeling men and women must have some tangible, concrete\nthing that in a measure satisfies their emotional natures. The human\nheart cannot live on cold philosophical abstractions. The ceremonies\nand observances and rituals of the Church give one something he can\nsee and feel. For my own part I do not need this sort of thing. Every\nday is a Sabbath day to me. All pure water is holy water, and this\nearth is a celestial abode. It has not entered into the mind of any\nman to see and feel the wonders and the mysteries and the heavenly\ncharacter of this world.\n\nAll religions look away from the earth to some fairer and better\nabode, quite oblivious of the fact that heaven, wherever we find it,\nwill be of our own making. If we do not find it here, we shall not\nfind it anywhere. But the great mass of struggling, toiling, human\nkind must be comforted and encouraged by the prospect of emancipation\nfrom the grossness and suffering of this world. Goethe acutely said\nto let those who could not have literature or art or science, have\nreligion.\n\nThink of the many sturdy, God-fearing, church-going, simple folk one\nhas known in his youth--how impossible their creeds, but how worthy\ntheir lives! It requires the heroic fiber to accept the creed of\nCalvinism; it is a proposition that tries a man\u2019s mettle. The current\ngeneration is too frivolous and empty to be impressed by it; not\none in a thousand is man enough to accept it. The movies suit them\nbetter. But what granite stuff went to the making of our Pilgrim\nfathers!\n\nCease all Christian effort, all organized Christian charities, all\nChristian enterprises in the fields of education, social betterment,\nsanitation, amelioration of the masses, and our civilization would\nsuffer. Then why rail at the old creeds, I say again. They prepared\nthe way for science, and for the religion of nature. Carlyle said\nto Emerson on that memorable day in 1833 when the two sat down in\ntheir walk over the Scottish hills, \u201cChrist died on the tree: that\nbuilt Dunscore kirk yonder: that brought you and me together.\u201d The\nold creeds nursed heroic, God-fearing and God-loving men. True, they\nsometimes disguised the wolf in sheep\u2019s clothing also, but that is\nthe fault of human nature.\n\nLet us be as faithful to our day and generation as our fathers were\nto theirs. Wendell Phillips said that to be as good as our fathers\nwere, we must be a good deal better. Shall we rail at our Puritan\nancestors for the hardness of their creeds? Although the Pauline plan\nof salvation seems childish to us, it seemed the foundation of the\nuniverse for our fathers. To clinch a nail you need something hard,\nand the Calvinistic creed has clinched the resolution of many a man.\n\n\nIV. A CHIP FROM THE OLD BLOCK\n\nIt makes me more charitable toward my neighbor\u2019s creed, childish\nthough I think it is, to remember that it came out of his life,\nor out of the life around him, as truly as did my own. We cannot\nseparate man, and all that revolves around him, from the totality\nof things. There is no depravity or cruelty or perversion in the\nworld that is not fed by the life of the world. The war that has\ndepopulated and devastated Europe is just as legitimate a part\nof total Nature as were all the fruits of the ages of peace and\nprosperity. Everything in the woods is a part of the woods, and bears\ntheir stamp; everything in the sea is a part of the sea. The tumor,\nthe ulcer, and the disease, are a part of our bodies, and are fed by\nits vitality. In our practical lives we are compelled to separate\na part from the whole, to accept this and reject that, but when we\nessay to comprehend the whole we must see that all are but parts, and\nthat our philosophy is lame if it does not see that the so-called\ngood and the so-called bad are fruit of the same tree.\n\nWe are prone to separate ourselves from the rest of Nature and to\nclaim for ourselves much that we deny to all other animals, such as\nthe existence of the soul, and its immortality. But we are all of\none stuff. Out of the earth has come a creature that has changed the\nsurface of the earth over vast areas; that has changed the course of\nrivers, and the face of continents; that has harnessed the forces of\nthe earth and turned them against themselves. How the earth elements\ncame to organize themselves into this creature--here we can take no\nstep!\n\n\nV. A PERSONAL GOD\n\nI once heard an Irish laborer refer solemnly, with an upward lift\nof the head, to the man up above. He did not refer to the man down\nbelow, but no doubt might have done so had occasion required. If we\nhave one, we must have the other to keep the balance. The man up\nabove must keep his skirts clean, and to admit of this the man down\nbelow must be the scapegoat.\n\nHow long has the belief in the reality of these two manlike beings,\nthe one all good, the other all evil, ruled in the minds and hearts\nof men! The old Hebrew prophets were drunk with the idea of a manlike\nJehovah. A terrible man they made of him--a cruel, despotic ruler,\nwreaking his vengeance on his enemies, exacting an eye for an eye\nand a tooth for a tooth, a lover of righteousness, but a vengeful,\njealous, angry God. And the man down below was his fit counterpart,\nblocking and marring or defeating the plans of the man up above.\nThese conceptions go with the infancy of the human reason.\n\nSo many phases of our religious belief are the result of imperfect\nknowledge and false conceptions of the world in which we live! They\ncome down to us from an earlier time, when the earth was regarded as\nthe center of the universe, all other bodies revolving around it. Man\nlifted his eyes and his hands to heaven in an appeal to the heavenly\npowers.\n\nIt seems as if the religious sense of the mass of mankind was, by\nthe operation of some psychological law, forced to externize and\nvisualize, yes, and humanize, the object upon which its interest\ncenters. Orthodox religion, while proclaiming that God is a spirit,\nthat He is everywhere, that He fills all nature, that not a sparrow\nfalls to the ground without his notice, and that heaven is not a\nplace, but a state of mind, yet makes its God a personal being,\nendowed with our human attributes, with likes and dislikes, sorely\ntried by our sins and weaknesses; nearer us sometimes than at others,\npresent everywhere, yet abiding in one particular place called\nheaven--these and many other childish and contradictory things.\n\nThat keen, clear-minded man, Cardinal Newman, regarded God under the\nimage of a maker, detached absolutely like any human workman from\nthe work of his hand. He is the Eternal King, absolutely distinct\nfrom the world as being its center,--\u201cUpholder, Governor, and\nSovereign Lord.\u201d \u201cHe created all things out of nothing, and preserves\nthem every moment, and could destroy them as He made them.\u201d \u201cHe is\nseparated from them by an abyss, and is incommunicable in all his\nattributes.\u201d This being is always described and interpreted in terms\nof man, or of our own finite human nature, reflecting in his outlines\nhuman history, human political and social institutions, and the aims\nand objects of concrete human beings. He does not hesitate to relate\nthis God to \u201cevery movement which has convulsed and refashioned the\nsurface of the earth,\u201d and hence to make him responsible for the\ndeath and destruction and misery which have attended earthquakes and\nhave set back the tide of human progress. Of course every noxious\ninsect, every noxious plant and beast and death-dealing germ is from\nHim also. \u201cWars when just\u201d are from Him also. Who or what are they\nfrom when they are not just, the great Cardinal does not say. Can\nboth sides be just? Into such absurdities does the conception of a\nmanlike God lead us.\n\nThe modern scientific mind, quite as imaginative--if not more so--as\nthe typical theological mind, never gets mired in such contradictions\nor tangled up in such childish anthropomorphism. Such confusion\narises out of the habit of mind which sees the whole creation\ndirected to man; his good is its one object and aim, and when his\ngood suffers, something has miscarried. The cruel and destructive\nthings in nature can only be accounted for on the theory that some\naboriginal calamity, like the fall of man, had visited the world\nbefore God took charge of things.\n\nThe naturalist sees this as the best possible world, sees that Nature\nis not an indulgent stepmother, but a strict disciplinarian; that\nthe good and well-being of all is her aim; that suffering and defeat\nare relative; that God\u2019s ways to man are not justified in a day or a\nweek, or in this place or that, but require ages and continents to\ncome to their full fruition. The good and the evil that will come\nout of the terrible World War will not all be apparent this year, or\nnext, but only in the perspective of history--in the sum total of\nhuman progress of the ages. Such a view is a slap in the face of our\negotism which demands instant returns, and which makes the individual\nsupreme.\n\nWith Nature, as I have so often said, our standards of good and\nevil apply to us alone, and they change with the changing years.\nThe naturalist sees that pain and delay and defeat are the price\nof development; that the world is imperfect, and man is imperfect,\nbecause growth and development are the law of nature; that there is\nalways a higher level, and always will be, which we realize only when\nwe look back. A perfect world, as we use the term, would mean the end\nof all development.\n\n\nVI. THE ETERNAL\n\nHow much is in a name! When we call the power back of all God,\nit smells of creeds and systems, of superstition, intolerance,\npersecution; but when we call it Nature, it smells of spring and\nsummer, of green fields and blooming groves, of birds and flowers and\nsky and stars. I admit that it smells of tornadoes and earthquakes,\nof jungles and wildernesses, of disease and death, too, but these\nthings make it all the more real to us.\n\nThe word \u201cGod\u201d has so long stood for the conception of a being who\nsits apart from Nature, who shapes and rules it as its maker and\ngovernor. It is part of the conception of a dual or plural universe,\nGod and Nature. This offends my sense of the oneness of creation.\nIt seems to me that there is no other adequate solution of the total\nproblem of life and Nature than what is called \u201cpantheism,\u201d which\nidentifies mind and matter, finite and Infinite, and sees in all\nthese diverse manifestations one absolute being. As Emerson truly\nsays, pantheism does not belittle God, it magnifies him. God becomes\nthe one and only ultimate fact that fills the universe and from which\nwe can no more be estranged than we can be estranged from gravitation.\n\nThe moment we seek to interpret the Eternal in terms of our own\npsychology, we get into trouble. We cannot measure the Infinite by\nthe standards of the finite. Our economies, our methods, our aims are\nnot those of Nature. God, in the sense in which I use the term, does\nnot plan and design and adapt means to ends as does man. God is no\nmore the maker than He is the thing made. How natural for us to think\nthat the air was made for us to breathe, the water for us to drink,\nthe light for us to see, and the earth for us to inhabit! But these\nthings are older than we are. I have seen a pumpkin growing in the\nfence and fitting exactly into the niche amid the rails, but was not\nthe fence there before it was?\n\nThere is design in Nature, but not in the sense that there is design\nin human affairs and contrivances. There is no designer. There are\nliving machines, but no machinist. Things grow. Evolution is a vital\nprocess. Man\u2019s course is a right line, Nature\u2019s is a circle. Man\naims to cut out the waste, the pain, the failures. How does Nature\ntrim her trees or renew her forests or weed her gardens? Only by a\nsurvival of the fittest or the luckiest. Every branch that dies and\ndecays and falls from the tree does so at the risk of the health\nand well-being of the whole tree. Often the decayed branch leaves a\nhole that in time causes the death of the tree. See how evenly the\npine and spruce and hemlock and oak forests get planted by Nature\u2019s\nhaphazard method, but think of the time involved! But what is time\nto the Eternal? Man cuts out the time and gets his forest quickly.\nHe trims his wood and avoids the danger of delays and decaying wood.\nHe selects such plants for his garden as he desires, and avoids the\ndangers of the struggle to survive. He takes the side of the weak\nagainst the strong, but Nature favors only the strong.\n\nThe rain falls upon the just and the unjust. The weather goes its way\nirrespective of you and me. Storm, tempest, frost, drought, sunshine,\nare no respecters of persons. The seasons came and went before man\nappeared, just as they do now. The Eternal never takes sides as\nman takes sides, but because it does not, should we lose faith?\nThe Eternal takes sides as the sun takes sides, and not otherwise.\nThe light shines for all. Providence is a universal beneficence.\nThe clouds go their way. The beneficence is seen in the slow\namelioration of meteoric conditions through countless \u00e6ons, till the\ncloud and the bow appeared, and with them conditions favorable to\nlife. The impartial rains are oblivious to our human needs, but, as I\nso often say, they are on the side of life. They are on the side of\ndevelopment. They made the sublime drama of evolution possible.\n\nThe weather favored us \u00e6ons before we were born, because it favored\nlife. Therefore, when we say that the Eternal is neither for us nor\nagainst us, we mean in our special human sense. He is on the side of\nthe righteous only when the righteous live according to the rule of\nNature or rightness, or in harmony with the eternal order. And he is\nagainst the unrighteous when they transgress this order. In vain do\nwe pray for victory on the eve of battle, except in so far as prayer\nputs courage into our hearts. Victory is for him who marshals the\nphysical and moral forces the most skillfully. The victory is from\nthe Eternal whoever wins, because it is the fruit of the order which\nIt established, or, rather, which It is.\n\nAs we cannot get away from Nature, we cannot get away from the\nEternal. He sticketh closer than a brother, closer than the blood in\nour own hearts, not always to bless and to cheer, often to hinder\nand depress. Not all ease and joy is life; it is as often struggle,\ntears, defeat.\n\nNot by placing God afar off in the heavens--a supersensuous,\nsupermundane, supernatural being--do we make the problem easier.\nNot till we bring Him down to earth and incarnate Him (the old myth\nof Christ again), and identify Him with everything without us and\nwithin--not till God becomes man--do we see a light under the feet of\nFate; not till then do we see love and fatherhood and brotherhood and\nsacrifice and humility and beneficence and altruism in Nature. When\nwe see man as a part of Nature, we see him as a part of God.\n\nIn humanity alone do we see the face of justice, of mercy, of\ncharity, of forgiveness, of reverence, of renunciation--human\nvirtues, they, too, come out of the heart of Nature. If this is a\nhard gospel, still it is tangible, real, livable. We cannot live\nother than on familiar terms with Nature. In her we see the sources\nof our power, our help, our health. We know the conditions of our\nwell-being. We know the price we have to pay for each blessing. Our\nreason, our intelligence, we come by honestly and inevitably. Their\nfountainhead is in Nature.\n\nAmid the agony and turmoil of war we need not lose faith. We know\nthat Nature is still Nature. If disease and pestilence and famine\nrage, we know that there are weapons with which to fight them. We\nknow that order comes out of chaos, that life comes out of death. We\nhave neither to curse our gods nor to praise them, neither to do\npenance nor to offer burnt offerings, but only to take and use wisely\nthe gifts they bestow.\n\n\nVII. AN IMPARTIAL DEITY\n\nWhat difficulties and contradictions we fall into the moment we\nidentify Nature with God, and what equal or greater difficulties we\nfall into if we refuse to identify Nature with God! True it is that\nin the former case we bring God very near and make him very real; we\nsee and feel our direct and continuous dependence upon Him--indeed,\nthat we are a part of Him; that every breath we draw, and every\nthought we think, and every pound of energy we put forth is in and\nthrough Him; and that we can no more wander or escape from Him than\nwe can escape gravity or chemical affinity. There are no skeptics or\natheists in regard to Nature. It alone exists and goes on forever.\nBut here comes the pinch! God as Nature is not only the author of the\ngood, He is the author of what we call evil also; He is as many-sided\nas Nature is. The savage and merciless aspects of Nature are of\nHim also; He is in the jungles of Africa, as well as in the walks\nof culture and refinement; in the destroying tornado as well as in\nthe gentle summer breeze; in the overwhelming floods as well as in\nthe morning dews. He is as much the author of disease as He is of\nhealth; of war, pestilence, famine, as He is of peace, plenty, and\nthe progress of the world. He is in the trenches and the slaughter\nof the contending armies as truly as in the most peaceful and pious\nfamily or social circle in the world. The asphyxiating gases are his,\nand the bursting bombs, no less than the breaking hearts and the\nprayerful souls at home. The comets that come like apparitions in the\nheavens, and then are gone, and the stars that shine steadfastly,\nare all a part of the same scheme. The dragons and monsters that\npossessed the earth and the fruits thereof for millions of years in\ngeologic time were the work of that divinity which shapes our ends\nto-day.\n\nWe separate ourselves from Nature and flatter ourselves that we\nbelong to another and higher order; that we alone are of divine\norigin, and not involved in the fate of the rest of Creation; but\nwe are fragments of the same granite that forms the foundation of\nthe earth. \u201cI am stuccoed with birds and quadrupeds all over,\u201d\nsays Whitman. The reptile was our ancestor; we were cradled in the\nold seas; we are kin to the worm and the mollusk; we derive from\ncreeping, swimming, noisome things, from the slime and mud of the\nold sea bottoms, from the cosmic dust and the solar radiations. Why\nshould we put on superior airs when not one atom of matter will turn\naside for us, not one law of physics cease to operate to save us from\ndestruction? The vast army of elemental forces knows us not. We may\ndivert them and bend them to our will, but they heed us not; they\ndestroy us the moment we lose control.\n\nNature does not love us any more than she hates us; she goes her way,\nindifferent.\n\nThe best we can say about it all is that Nature, or the Natural\nProvidence, is too big for us to grasp; that in these seas we can\nfind no soundings. But we are here, the world is beautiful, life is\nworth living, love always pays; Nature serves us when we know how to\nuse her; when we plant and sow wisely God will send the increase.\nFriendly or unfriendly, of God or of the Devil, the physical forces\nhave ministered to us. More things have been for us than have been\nagainst us; more winds have blown our barks into safe harbors than\nhave dashed us upon the rocks. There are more refreshing showers\nthan devastating tornadoes; more sunshine than forked lightning;\nmore fertile land upon the earth than parched deserts; a broader\nbelt of genial climates than of frigid zones. Thorns and spines\nand nettles are the exception in vegetation; stings and venomous\nfangs are the exception in animal life. Hawks can catch the smaller\nbirds, yet there are vastly more small birds than hawks. The weasel\ncan catch the rabbit and the squirrel and the rat, yet there are\nten-fold, fifty-fold, more of these rodents than there are weasels.\nThe carnivorous beasts of the plains and of the jungle do not\nexterminate the herbivorous; there is more good than evil everywhere;\nmore peace than war; more kindness than cruelty. The God of Nature\ngoes his way, but his way is our way; we have arisen out of Nature;\nas it is, the chances of life have been in our favor; the stream\nmakes its own channel; the waters find their way to the sea; they\ndo not all stagnate on the way. Some of the seed which the winds\nsow falls upon barren places, but not the most of it. Some men are\nborn criminals or cripples or malformed, but not the majority. The\ncreatures preyed upon always vastly outnumber the creatures that prey\nupon them. And in truth, in the whole realm of Nature more things\nwait upon man than war upon him.\n\n\nVIII. FINITE AND INFINITE\n\nThe unnamable, the unthinkable, the omnipotent, the omnipresent,\nwe cannot discuss or define in terms of our humanity. The moment\nwe try to do so we are involved in contradictions, just as we are\nwhen we try to define the sphere in terms of the plane. The sphere\nhas no length, it has no breadth, it has no thickness, in the sense\nthat bodies upon its surface have. It has no weight, and it has no\nbeginning and no end, and we may say that its motion is eternal rest;\nyet rest implies motion, and motion implies rest.\n\nWhen we say that there is no God, we only mean that there is no\nbeing that we can define or conceive of in terms of man. Nothing in\nthe finite can help us in dealing with the infinite. The Infinite,\nthe Omnipotent, the Omnipresent, cannot be a being without sharing\nthe limitations of being, or without being subject to the bounds\nof time and space. If God is everywhere, He is nowhere; if He is\nall-powerful, his power has no contrary, and hence ceases to exist.\nOne after another the human and personal attributes we ascribe to Him\ndisappear when we try to conceive of Him in terms of the infinite.\nThe infinite is equivalent to negation. There are no terms in which\nwe can define the ether; it is the negative of all things that have\nlength and breadth and thickness, or motion or rest or substance, or\nfriction or cohesion, or place or power. An infinite being is as much\na contradiction of terms as a square or plane sphere would be. If\nGod is a person, with human-like attributes and emotions,--though we\ncall them divine,--it is legitimate to ask, Where is He? where was He\nbefore the solar systems took form? where will He be after they have\nagain become formless?\n\nOur inevitable anthropomorphism prefigures the Infinite as superman;\nHe is man magnified to infinity. He is the supreme king or ruler of\nthe universe. We dream of seeing Him face to face; He has eyes, ears,\nhands, feet, and the emotions of love, anger, pity, and the like. Man\nthus imposes his own form upon the power that is and upholds the\ncosmos. He carves it into his own image, and then seeks to propitiate\nit and influence it as He Himself is propitiated and influenced.\nPraise is sweet to it, honor is sweet, revenge is sweet, because\nthese things are sweet to man.\n\nWhen we call this force Nature, we bring it near to us and can see\nand feel our direct relation to it. We are bone of its bone and\nflesh of its flesh. We see its impersonal or unpersonal character.\nWe get light on the vexed problem of good and evil which is such an\ninsoluble enigma to the theologians.\n\nNature embraces all; she fathers and mothers all; has no\npartialities, knows no exceptions, no miracles, no deputied\natonements, no evil apart from the good and no good apart from the\nevil, no life without death and no death without life.\n\n\nIX. THE INSOLUBLE\n\nWhat desperate efforts mankind has made to shape this vast, blind,\nunconscionable power we call Nature into an image of a God that would\nsatisfy our moral and spiritual wants and aspirations! Where did men\nget their standards of such a God? They have evidently been slowly\nevolved through the friction of man with man. They have possessed\nsurvival value. Love, truth, justice, mercy, have contributed to\nthe fullness of life and to length of days. One may adopt Biblical\nlanguage and say that righteousness endureth forever. The triumph\nof the wicked is only for a season; it may be a long season, it\nmay embrace whole periods of human history, and entail measureless\nsuffering on the human race, but change and retribution surely\ncome. The way of man\u2019s moral and material progress is like the\nstream that now hurries, now tarries, is now disrupted and noisy in\nrapids and falls, now sluggish and almost stagnant in long level\nreaches, but which does go forward and reach its goal at last. But\nis there not some predetermined bent toward righteousness,--not of\nthe ecclesiastical sort, but of the scientific sort,--toward the\nrelations of man with man, that results in the greatest good to the\ngreatest number,--a bent inherent in the nature of things? Would\nevolution have taken the road toward man and all the other forms of\nlife blindly, accidentally? Would it have started at all had there\nnot been some initial impulse, or some thought, somewhere, of all\nthat was to follow?\n\nThe doctrine of design does not meet the problem; the doctrine of\nchance does not meet it. Design in our human world means a designer.\nWhat, then, does it mean in the non-human world? There can be no\ndesign in such a world, because the human mind is not present. There\ncan be no chance, because a chance jumbling and collision of the\nprimordial elements could not result in the organized matter that is\nlife, any more than a thousand of brick dumped upon the ground can\ntake the form of a house. The brick and mortar demand an architect,\nand organized matter demands an organizing principle. Whence its\nsource? There we are where no further step can be taken. What about\nthe divine mind? But that is jumping the whole question. If you place\nyour God here, I shall ask him some embarrassing questions, such as,\nWhere did you come from? Where have you been all these \u00e6ons? Why are\nyou so wasteful and dilatory in your methods? Why have you made the\nworld so full of misery? Or, I might ask the question a little boy\nasked his father: \u201cWhy did God make Satan?\u201d The problem, it seems to\nme, is quite as embarrassing to us mortals with a God as without one.\nIt is just as hard to account for a God as to account for the initial\nimpulse. In both cases we have in our hands a rope with only one end.\nIn trying to find the other end, we only get ourselves hopelessly\ntied up.\n\n\nX. PAYING THE DEBT\n\nIn my youth I often heard the old people speak of death as \u201cpaying\nthe debt of Nature\u201d--\u201cHe has paid the debt.\u201d Life puts us in debt to\nNature--the earth, the air, the water--for the elements of our bodies\nand the powers of our minds, and the time inevitably comes when we\nmust settle the account. That we are going to have something left\nover--that we have only to pay the debt of the body, and not of the\nmind--is one of the dreams that it is hard for most persons to give\nup. Will not then the universal mind that pervades Nature claim its\nown also? Can you and I hope to remain detached from it forever? Is\nthat a consummation devoutly to be wished?\n\nBe assured that no particle of soul or body can be lost. But\nprocesses may cease; the flame of the lamp may go out, and the sum\ntotal of force and matter remain the same. When a blade of grass\ndies, a process has ended, and as mysterious a process as went on in\nC\u00e6sar\u2019s brain and body. And when all life on the earth and in our\nuniverse ceases, if it ever does, the problem would remain just as\npuzzling, if we can fancy ourselves still here to puzzle over it. We\nare links in an endless cycle of change in which we cannot separate\nthe material from what we call the spiritual.\n\nThe water in our bodies to-day may have flashed as a dewdrop\nyesterday, or lent itself to the splendor of the sunrise or sunset,\nor played a part in the bow in the clouds. To-morrow it may be\nwhirling in the vortex of a tornado, or helping to quench the\nlife of a drowning man, or glistening in the frost figures on the\nwindow-pane. The movements of the brain molecules in which the\nphenomena of thought and consciousness are so mysteriously involved,\nthey, too, are links in the cycle of change.\n\nOne of our younger poets, John Russell McCarthy, has had the courage\nto say:\n\n            \u201cthat we must look for life\n      Hereafter, not by one and one,--your soul\n      Alone among the souls of other men,\n      Drifting and staying, a thing apart forever--\n      But we must see when all at last is counted\n      And the great sum is made, how one by one\n      We have returned to Her, the Mother of All,--\n      The bit of soul-stuff that She loaned us.\n\n      For we must live at last a part of Her--\n      For we shall be forever as one with Her.\u201d\n\nThe reverent old people to whom I just referred paid the debt long\nago, and the day of reckoning for some of us cannot be far off. After\nthe account is closed who or what has profited by the transaction? We\nare prone to put such questions to Nature, but they are irrelevant.\nThe universe is not run for profit, as we use the term. So far as we\ncan see, it is run just to satisfy the \u00e6sthetic and creative feeling\nof the Eternal. When the sidereal systems in space run down, they are\nwound up again, and suns and planets are started anew. The great game\nnever comes to an end; in fact, it is unthinkable that it should ever\nhave begun, except as the flowers begin in spring, or as a man begins\nwhen he is born. Antecedents! Antecedents!--always. We cannot apply\nour standards of loss and gain to the dealings of the Eternal with\nus. \u201cThat I have positively appeared,\u201d says Whitman, \u201cthat is enough.\u201d\n\nEach of us is an incarnation of the universal mind, as is every beast\nof the field and jungle, and every fowl of the air, and every insect\nthat creeps and flies; and we can only look upon creation as an end\nin itself. To ask what the great spectacle is for, is to betray our\ntradesman habit of mind. Man is a link in an endless chain of being.\nIf we ask what he is for, the old answer of the catechism is as good\nas any--\u201cTo glorify God and enjoy Him forever.\u201d In other words, to\nmake the most of his life and strive for the highest happiness, which\nis knowledge and appreciation of the universal. Coleridge says we\nglorify God when we work for the well-being of mankind.\n\nHow quite impossible it is for us to adjust our minds to the thought\nof death--to the thought of the absolute negation of life! When we\ntorment ourselves about death, about the coldness and darkness of the\ngrave, about being cut off from all the warm and happy currents of\nlife that flow about us, we are unconsciously thinking of ourselves\nas still living, or as conscious of the gloom and negation that\nawait us. Thus, when Huxley wrote to a friend (John Morley) that the\nthought of extinction disturbed him more and more as he neared the\nend of life, he fell into this common fallacy, or contradiction. \u201cIt\nflashes across me,\u201d he writes, \u201cat all sorts of times with a sort of\nhorror that in 1900 I shall probably know no more of what is going on\nthan I did in 1800. I had sooner be in hell, a good deal--\u201d as if he\nexpected to lie awake nights in his grave lamenting his sad fate and\nsaying to himself, \u201cI had sooner be in hell,\u201d where also he expected\nhe would be conscious of his improved condition!\n\nWhat possible difference could it make to him if he did not know\nany more in 1900 than he did in 1800? Did he expect to enjoy his\nknowledge in 1900? If not, why worry about it? What he was really\nlamenting was that he did not know then and there what he might\nknow if he lived till 1900. He knew that human knowledge was making\ntremendous strides, and the thought that he should not share in its\nadvancement chilled him.\n\nIt is all very human, but very childish. We may to-day dread some\ntask or ordeal that we are to face to-morrow, because to-morrow we\nexpect to be alive, but shall we shrink from the to-morrow of death\non the same grounds?\n\nThere is wisdom as well as wit in the epitaph in dialogue which a\nclever Greek Byzantine composed for Pyrrho:\n\n\u201cArt thou dead, Pyrrho?\u201d\n\n\u201cI do not know.\u201d\n\nIf we put the same question to our own dead, if they could answer,\nthey would say, \u201cWe do not know.\u201d If they knew, would not that be\nproof that they were not dead? May we not answer Huxley that if\nconsciousness is extinguished with life, he is not going to lie\nawake nights in his grave worrying about it? There is comfort in the\nthought that if there is no immortality, we shall not know it.\n\nRereading that wise and delightful old Frenchman, Montaigne, I find\nthat more than three hundred years ago he was of the same mind that\nI am in this matter: \u201cWhy should we fear a thing whose being lost\ncannot be lamented?\u201d \u201cTo lament that we shall not be alive a hundred\nyears hence is the same folly as to be sorry we were not alive a\nhundred years ago.\u201d\n\nAn avaricious man might worry if he knew he would have no more money\non the next Christmas than he had on the last, unless his physician\nhad assured him that he could not be alive on the next Christmas.\nThen, if he worried, it would be on account of his heirs. But one\u2019s\nheirs cannot inherit his wisdom; it dies with him.\n\nDeath is such an extraordinary, such an unspeakable event that we\ncannot think of ourselves as non-existent. When you try to see\nyourself in your own coffin, or standing beside your own grave, it\nis still as a living man that you thus behold yourself. It is, of\ncourse, as living men and women that we are disturbed over thoughts\nof the grave. The future is just as secure for us all as is the past.\nA moment between two eternities is life; a spark that draws a brief\nline upon the darkness and is gone. The spark has its antecedent\ncondition in the wood and coal and the processes of combustion\nfrom which it sprang, and it has its subsequent conditions in the\ninvisible gases into which it has vanished, but as a point of heat\nand light, it exists no more. Our wise attitude toward death is, I\nthink, to forget or ignore it entirely. We shall not know it when it\novertakes us. \u201c_Avida nunquam desinere mortalitas._\u201d \u201cMen must endure\ntheir going hence, even as their coming hither--ripeness is all.\u201d\n\n\nXI. DEATH\n\n\nI\n\nIn death the elements of the body are not changed--oxygen is still\noxygen, carbon still carbon. What has happened, then? Can it be\nexplained by saying that a process has been reversed? Does it bear\nany true analogy to the redistribution of type after the printer\nhas set it up and printed his book? The type is the same, but the\nrelation of all the units has been changed. The printer has arranged\nthem so that collectively they expressed to him certain meanings or\nideas. These ideas did not exist in the type, but in the order of\nits arrangement. In one order or combination the letters meant one\nthing; in another order or combination they expressed quite another.\nThe same type will spell dog or God. When redistributed and returned\nto the different fonts, the letters express nothing but themselves.\nIf this is a true analogy, then, in the case of the living book, man,\nwhat stands for the compositor and printer? We can only call the\ncompositor the organizing impulse; but whence this impulse, and whose\nidea is it trying to express? The redistribution of the elements of\nthe body is done through the activity of other forms of life--the\nmicro-organisms--those minute forms reduce the body to its original\nelements. As we thus have life at the end of the life of an organism,\ndo we also have life at the beginning of the organism? Ancestral life\ncertainly, or the primordial germ; but is there a living principle\nback of and before all? Does the logic of the situation force us to\nthe belief in an original Creator? The human mind is so constituted\nthat in some form or under definite concepts, we have to postulate a\nfirst or primal Cause; we have to think of a beginning; but is there\nany beginning to a circle, or any center to the surface of a sphere?\nThere may be no beginning or no limit in time or space to the cosmos.\nThis is unthinkable to us in our present state. Yet in making that\nstatement I am thinking of the unthinkable. We can deal only with\nparts of Nature; as a whole it is beyond our power to grasp. All\nbodies on the earth\u2019s surface unsupported fall; this is our universal\nexperience. All moving bodies come to a standstill unless power from\nwithout is constantly supplied. Perpetual motion is impossible, but\nthe earth and the other planets are unsupported, and their motion is\nperpetual. Or we may say that they fall forever toward the sun and\nnever reach it, and that the sun falls forever toward some other\nsun or system and never reaches it. The laws of force and matter as\nwe contend with them in our experiences are inoperative in sidereal\nspace; there is motion without friction, energy without waste,\ndissipation without exhaustion. Neither upper nor under, neither\nfalling nor rising, neither end nor beginning. Cause and effect,\nrest and motion, are one. The self-activity of the universe quite\ntranscends our experiences; the self-maintenance of living bodies\nis far beyond our reach; any end to the chain of causal sequence is\nquite unthinkable to us. Our minds are made in that way. They are\nfashioned in the school of cause and effect.\n\nNothing can get out of the universe because there is no out to the\nuniverse. Can that which has no ending have a beginning? Can that\nwhich has no circumference have a center? Can we think of anything\nso hot that it could not be hotter? Or so small that it could not\nbe smaller? Or so big that it could not be bigger? No, because our\nminds have been schooled in this comparative method. Our sense shows\nus a world of degrees. We can think of absolute darkness, but not\nof absolute light. In the Mammoth Cave you may realize absolute\ndarkness; but even on the sun itself would you experience absolute\nlight? We seem to be able to find an end to the negative, but not to\nthe positive. We can think of a body as at absolute rest, but can we\nconceive of it going so fast that it could not go faster?\n\nDeath is our consciousness of a peculiar change in matter, just as\nlife is our consciousness of the opposite change--one destructive,\nthe other constructive. The constituents of the body remain\nunchanged, but a peculiar activity set up among the particles,\nby what, we know not, is instituted in life and ceases in death.\nAn organism is made up of organs, all working together, but each\nsubordinated to the whole. The whole, this concerted action, may\ncease, and the individual dies, as we say, and yet the minute\nsubdivisions, the cells, may be alive. Certain ferments in the body\nmay go on for some time after the life of the man has gone out. And\nliving cells may go on multiplying endlessly without producing an\norganized being.\n\n\nII\n\n\u201cIt is all right,\u201d said Walt Whitman to me as I was leaving his\ndeath-bed and hearing his voice for the last time--\u201cIt is all right.\u201d\nOf course it was all right, and it will be all right when each and\nall of us fall into the last eternal sleep. Else it would not be.\nOur being here is all right, is it not? \u201cFriendly and faithful,\u201d\nsays Whitman, \u201care the arms that have helped me,\u201d and friendly and\nfaithful must be the arms that bear us away. If it was good to come,\nit will be good to go--good in the large, cosmic sense, good in that\nit is in keeping with the spirit of the All. Not the good of our\nbrief personal successes and triumphs, but good as evolution is good,\nas the processes of growth and decay are good. If life is good, death\nmust be equally good, as each waits upon the other. From what point\nof view can we say that death is not all right? Certainly not from\nthe point of view of this universe. Archimedes could have moved the\nworld had he had some other world upon which to place his lever, and\nwe must have some other universe to plant our feet upon to condemn\ndeath.\n\nAs I have already said, we look upon death as an evil because we look\nupon it from the happy fields of life, and see ourselves as alive in\nour graves and lamenting that we are shut off from all the light and\nlove and movement of the world. Does our prenatal state seem an evil?\n\nDid anything begin _de novo_, when we came into being? Not the\nelements of our bodies surely; they were as old as the cosmos; not\nthe germ of our minds and souls; they were as old as the human\nrace and older--old as the first dawn of life. Is it the _I_ that\nis new?--that which makes you you and me me? And that is probably\nnothing more than a new distribution and arrangement of the physical\nand psychical elements and forces of which and by which we are made.\nThe pattern of our personality is new; each of us differs somewhat\nfrom all the myriads of human beings who have lived upon the earth;\nbut is form, pattern, personality, separable from the material that\ncomposes it?\n\nIt may be cheerfully admitted that when we look at the question in\nthis light, we are whistling to keep our courage up. What of it? The\nband plays to keep the courage of the soldiers up when they go into\nbattle, and what are we but soldiers fighting the good fight of truth\nagainst error, of courage against fear, of the heroic against the\npusillanimous? The whole is greater than any of its parts. Nature is\nmore than man. We must learn to efface ourselves. The soul knows no\nrewards or punishments. If it be heroic to sacrifice life in this\nworld, it may be equally heroic to sacrifice life in any other world,\nso that we prove ourselves worthy of the gods.\n\n\nXII. HEAVEN AND EARTH\n\nTruly things are not what they seem. When we put heaven and earth\nfar apart, we think as children. Heaven and earth are pretty close\ntogether. The shortest arm can reach from one to the other. When we\ngo to heaven we shall not have far to travel, and I dare say the\nother place is quite as near, and, if reports be true, the road is\nbroader and easier to travel. What children we are in such matters!\nThe wisest men have the language of ignorance and superstition\nimposed upon them. How difficult it is not to think of the heavens up\nthere as a reality, something above us and superior to us, a finer\nworld, nearer God, lighted by the stars, the abode of spirits, the\nsource of all good, our final celestial home. Did not Elijah ascend\ninto heaven? Did not Paul have heavenly visions? Have not the saints\nin all ages turned their faces and lifted imploring hands to heaven?\nHow these things have burnt themselves into our minds! We cannot\nescape them.\n\nIn our floods of religious emotion we instinctively look away from\nthe earth. The mystery, the immensity, the purity of the heavens\nabove us make us turn our faces thitherward, and as naturally make us\nturn downward when we consider the source of evil. The poor old earth\nwhich has mothered us and nursed us we treat with scant respect. Our\nawe and veneration we reserve for the worlds we know not of. Our\nsenses sell us out. The mud on our shoes disenchants us. It is only\nWhitman with his cosmic consciousness that can closely relate the\nheavens and the earth:\n\n      \u201cUnderneath the divine soil,\n      Overhead the sun.\u201d\n\nTo most of us the morning stars that once sang together are of\nanother stuff. The music of the spheres must be vastly different from\nthe roar and grind of our old rusty and outworn planet. So we turn\nto the heavens, the abode of purity and light. So do we discount and\nblack-list the earth where we have to pay in struggle and pain the\nprice of our development. Think you we should not have to pay the\nsame price in any other world worth living in?\n\nEmerson in his Journal quotes his brother Charles as saying long ago\nthat \u201cthe nap was worn off the earth\u201d; it was become threadbare, like\nan outworn garment. Probably it seems so to each of us as time goes\non. In places in Europe the nap must be very short at this time. But\nthe nap will come again, even on those shell-swept regions, after\nNature has had her way. Nature grows old in geologic or in cosmic\ntime; the mountains decay, the waters recede; but in man\u2019s time the\nearth is endowed with perennial youth.\n\nScience strips us of our illusions and delusions; it strips us of\nmost of the garments in which the spirit of man has sought in all\nages to clothe itself against the chill of an impersonal universe;\nit takes down the protecting roof of the heavens above us and shows\nus an unspeakable void strewn with suns and worlds beyond numbers\nto compute, but nowhere any signs of the blessed abode to which our\nreligious aspirations have pointed.\n\nIt is interesting, in this connection, to note the attitude of the\nold writers, such as Cornaro, the Italian, toward the heavens. They\nevidently look upon the heavens as outside of Nature. In speculating\nas to why it is that some persons have so little vitality, Cornaro\nreckons the influence of the heavens may be one cause. He says he\nnever could persuade himself to believe that Nature, being the mother\nof all, could be so ungenerous to any of her children; hence it must\nbe some hostile influence from above. Similar notions seem to have\nbeen held in Shakespeare\u2019s time:\n\n                              \u201cIt is the stars,\n      The stars above us, govern our conditions;\n      Else one self mate and make could not beget\n      Such different issues.\u201d\n\n\nXIII. THINKING AND ACTING\n\nIt is true we do not, as a rule, act without thinking, or without\nsome sort of psychic process, but thinking and acting are radically\ndifferent. Or, we may say that the practical reason is alone\nconcerned in action, and the abstract intellect in general reasoning.\nWhen we come to act, we know that we are free to choose between two\nor more objects or courses; when we think or reason abstractly, we\nknow the will is not free. Every act has its antecedent cause. But\nwe are practically free because we feel no restraint or compulsion.\nWe feel responsible for our acts. We do not blame our red-haired\nfather, or our grandfather of Irish blood, for our hasty temper; we\nfeel that this is our very selves. What we call moral responsibility\nrests upon this sense of freedom. We are not aware of the fatality\nthat binds us, any more than we are of the weight of the atmosphere\nthat presses upon us so tremendously. At the court of absolute\nreason we see what puppets and automata we are, but at the court of\npractical justice we see and feel that we are free to do right as we\nsee the right. The contradictions which Balfour sees, in his chapter\non \u201cNaturalism and Ethics,\u201d between the results of practical life and\nof abstract reasoning is of a kind which one sees everywhere in the\nuniverse. The circle is a perpetual contradiction. How can a line go\nin all directions?--and in no direction? In our practical lives there\nis an upper and an under, an up and a down, but away from the earth,\nor considering the earth as a whole, there is no such thing.\n\nRighteous indignation at the misconduct of others, or\nself-condemnation, repentance, remorse, are reasonable feelings\nbecause we actually feel them. We have no choice in the matter. To\nwhatever conclusion abstract reason leads us in regard to them, it\ndoes not affect our practical conduct, because our conduct is founded\nupon the sense of freedom. We are here to act, to do, and not to\nreason abstractly. This is the tree of the forbidden fruit. When we\neat of it we know things that may stand in the way of our practical\nliving. Balfour should see that we are determinists or naturists when\nwe reason, but free agents when we act, and that there is no getting\naway from the contradiction.\n\nI may be the duplicate of my father, or of my grandfather; every one\nof my traits may be inherited; but that does not prevent me from\nfeeling that they are my own; they are vital in me as they were in\nhim, and I feel responsible for my own acts just as he did for his,\nthough I could not act otherwise. I could not, but I did not know it.\nI thought I could act as I pleased.\n\nThe world which philosophy reveals to us is vastly different from\nthe world practical life reveals. We are sure that light and sound\nare real entities, but philosophy tells us that one is the sensation\nwhich vibrations in the ether, set going by the sun, make upon the\noptic nerve, and that sound is the sensation which vibrations in\nthe air make upon the auditory nerve. When we know this we do not\nchange our action in reference to them--they are still just as real\nto our senses as ever they were. The moral law is not discredited\nor overthrown when we discover through the abstract reason that\nfate, or necessity, rules our lives. We made the moral law and we\ntry to live up to it. We do not always succeed. All trees aim at the\nvertical position; it is the position which gravity imposes upon\nthem; but owing to various accidents and conditions the trees are\nnot all plumb. How free they seem to grow at almost any angle with\nthe plane of the earth\u2019s surface! How they run out their branches\nhorizontally in defiance of the gravity that rules them and lift up\nin their trunks and leaves tons of water and other minerals against\nthe pull of gravity! How free they seem, how they bend to the wind\nthat would overthrow them, how various they are in form and habit of\ngrowth, in the shape of their leaves, the kinds of their fruits, the\ncharacter of their roots! Yet science shows us how the unalterable\nphysical laws rule them. They lean toward the light and the free air\nin obedience to physical and chemical laws. And yet, no doubt, if\nthe trees were conscious of themselves, as we are, every oak-tree\nwould say, \u201cI feel free to be an oak,\u201d and every pine-tree and beech\nand willow and maple would feel a like freedom. The Irishman feels\nno compulsion or necessity in being an Irishman, nor the Frenchman\nin being a Frenchman. All life is held in the leash of physical and\nchemical laws, and yet knows it not.\n\nWe feel that there is beauty in nature; when we reflect, we know\nthat the feeling for beauty is an emotion of our own minds, and\nnot a quality of outward things. Scenes radically different awaken\nthe emotion in us, or may awaken it in one and not in another\n(see Emerson\u2019s ecstasy on a bare moor). The world is what we make\nit, and duty is what we make it, and the ugly is what we make it.\nPutrefaction, repulsive to us, is to science a beautiful chemical\nprocess. Odors that are offensive to us are evidently agreeable to\nthe dog. Sounds which please us seem to disturb him. The absolute\nis outside of life. If the orbs of the heavens were conscious, they\nwould doubtless feel free to go where they do go; it would be their\nchoice; it would pain them to do otherwise. The comet rushes toward\nthe sun with joy; the music of the spheres is the expression of their\nfreedom and contentment. Can you help winking when the flashlight\ngoes off, or when a missile passes near your eyes? Our voluntary\nactions are equally based upon physical laws.\n\nBalfour, in his \u201cFoundation of Belief,\u201d talks about the beauty of\nholiness, the beauty of sanctity, but these things are beautiful\nonly to a certain type of mind. The time will come when they will\nnot be looked upon as beautiful or desirable. These conceptions\ngrew when men lived for another world, when this world stood to\nthem as the sum of evil. Men then saw nothing holy or divine on\nearth except the denying of earth. That state of mind has largely\npassed. Holy men have had their day. We see now that this world is\na celestial body, and that all our conceptions of heavenly abodes\nare untenable. For my part the most lovable and admirable men and\nwomen I have known had no savor of sanctity. They were wise, kind,\nhelpful, loving, living with zest the life of every day, intent on\nmaking their earthly lives square with what is generally accepted\nas right conduct, and therefore comfortably indifferent to what the\ntheologians are so concerned about--salvation after death, and the\nsecuring of their \u201cmansions in the skies.\u201d Martyrdom bravely faced\nexcites our admiration, all heroic acts are beautiful and admirable,\nand there are good naturalistic reasons why this should be so. But\nour religious history has begotten a whole brood of ideas that must\ngradually fade and go out, and our standards will more and more be\nthose of this world.\n\nMr. Balfour would hardly deny that the organ with which we do our\nthinking and reasoning and form our deductions, the organ which\nis the seat of our emotions of the beautiful and of religious\naspirations, is a mass of gray and white matter, and that all these\nthings are the result of certain molecular changes or movements in\nthe fluids or solids of the brain substance; in other words, that\nthere is a physical and physiological basis to all our mental and\nemotional life. Does this material side in any way discredit these\nfaculties and feelings? Does not all that we call the spiritual\nadhere in the material? Can we find that inner world, or any clue to\nit, by dissecting the brain? Has it, therefore, any reality except in\nour imagination? Prove that it exists apart from or independent of\nthe body, and there is no more to be said.\n\nBut what I wanted most to say is that the reason of things, or final\nexplanation of things seems to take the poetry and romance out of\nthem. Reduce religion or \u00e6sthetics or art to terms of psychology, and\nthey no longer appeal to the emotions or stimulate the imagination.\nNaturalism is true--reason can reach no other conclusion--but the\ntruths of naturalism do not satisfy the moral and religious nature.\n\nThe heart is a big, strong, self-acting, muscular pump, but when\nwe lay our hand upon the heart and refer our emotions, our love,\nour aspirations, to it, we idealize it, we do not then think of its\nphysical function and character. By this act we are still deferring\nto the ancient and outworn belief that in this region resides the\nsoul--the part of man that loves and hates and hopes and fears.\n\nThe brain is the temple of the mind or the vestibule of the spiritual\nworld, but we can explain it only in terms of anatomy, physiology,\nand physics which darken and chill our sensibilities.\n\nThings and movements come about through natural processes, not\nthrough supernatural ones, but when we state these processes in the\nonly terms in which they can be stated, the religious soul feels\nhurt and orphaned. All our religious or theological explanations of\nthings discredit matter and the material world, discredit Nature and\nall her processes. Evolution is anti-religious; that man is of animal\norigin is still a hard doctrine to the old-fashioned theologian. Why\nis it not equally a hard doctrine to him that we were ever babies\nor embryos, carried about and associated with the viscera of our\nmothers\u2019 bodies? We have got to exalt the natural, the material, and\nfree our minds from the illusions of the old theologies before we can\nsee the truth and beauty of naturalism. The sacred, the celestial,\nthe divine, the holy, all are terms that date from a prescientific\nage, before man\u2019s relation to the universe was understood. They are\nsignificant only in reference to another world and another life of an\nentirely different order.\n\nThe eternal, immutable moral law to which Balfour refers, what is\nit? Who instituted it? Is it other than the law of right and wrong\nwhich mankind is coming more and more clearly to see, and more and\nmore fully to value in the course of evolution? You may set the\nseal of some hypothetical, supernatural power upon it, but what\nabout supernatural powers in a universe governed by natural laws?\nThe religious enthusiasm of the race, the saints, the devotees, the\nso-called holy ones, have doubtless had their value; they have helped\nlubricate the grinding machinery of life; but their day is at an end.\nWe must invest our fund of love, our veneration, our heroism, our\nmartyrdom in this world, and not look to the next.\n\nThat Nature is irrational, unhuman, no one can deny, not because she\nis less, but because she is more; she is above reason, above man.\nOur reason calls Nature irrational because the reason is a special\nfaculty, and is limited; it takes in the arc, so to speak, but\nnot the full circle. Nature is irrational, not because she is not\nsuffused with mind, but because she does not count the cost, because\nour economies do not fit her especial scheme. Life is synonymous\nwith intelligence; all organic nature shows the working of the primal\nmind--the adaptation of means to specific ends, and the steady\nimprovement from lower to higher.\n\nWhat we think, when trying to render an account to the reason of\nthe enigma of life, often has little relation to what we do, as\npractical, struggling beings. We are free to think in all directions,\nfree to move in but few. Our thoughts are like the vapors that drift\nwith the winds, or that expand equally in all directions. Our actual\nlives are like the waters that must flow in definite channels,\nand turn some wheel or irrigate some tract of land, or quench\nsome creature\u2019s thirst. That naturalism, with minds which take an\ninterest in it, should result in low standards of life, or in any\nform of disorder or failure, I do not believe. Only clear, strong,\ntruth-loving spirits can accept this explanation of things. Much more\nmentality is demanded than is demanded by the old conceptions. Hence\none has to face the terrible realities and discipline the spirit to\naccept them. In the old views, in supernaturalism, all this is done\nfor one by the Church and one is a member of a personally conducted\nparty to heaven.\n\n\nXIV. THE TIDE OF LIFE\n\nWe cannot find God by thinking. Thinking starts us on an endless\nquest. We can find neither end nor beginning to the sequence of\ncause and effect. It is a circle that ends and begins forever in\nitself. Men find what they call God in action, in experience, because\nin these practical dealings with the forces of this world they are\nunder the law of cause and effect. They find beginnings and endings,\nthey find an upper and an under side, they find a lower and a higher,\na greater and a smaller: but in thought all things are relative. Some\nwise man has said that if there were no God, we should have to invent\none--invent one if we wish to explain the world in the terms of human\nexperience. Thinking turns the world topsy-turvy.\n\nOur religious natures are still Ptolemaic. The heavens still revolve\naround us. We do not with the eye of the flesh see ourselves in this\nworld as on a sphere--on a celestial body floating in space; we see\nourselves as on an endless plain over and under which the heavenly\nbodies pass. It is only with the eye of the mind that we see things\nin their true relation and see that there is no up and no down, no\nunder and no over, apart from the earth, and no God who rules as\na ruler rules. We do not gain the tremendous facts of astronomy\nthrough our everyday experience; our search after scientific truth\nreveals them to us. Through this inquiry we see the grand voyage we\nare making among the stars, and see that the heavens are not a realm\napart from us, the abode of superior beings, but are our veritable\nhabitat; that our earth is a celestial body among myriads of others,\nand that when we solemnly lift our eyes heavenward, we are lifting\nthem to other worlds made of the same stuff as our own. Our religious\nemotions and aspirations lead us to look away from the earth and\nto imagine finer and fairer realms, but disinterested science does\nnot humor our illusions; it brings us back to earth again, back\nto the heaven we despise. Hence the trouble the narrow religious\nnature has with science. It experiences a cold shudder before its\nrevelations and will none of it. It will have beginnings and endings,\nboundaries and limitations, heavenly and earthly, and will read the\nimpersonal laws of the universe in terms of our personal human needs\nand relations. It sets up a judge and ruler of creation modeled on\nour human plan, and then to get out of the dilemma in which it finds\nitself, with all the sin and misery and injustice of the world which\nit finds upon its hands, and which omnipotent love and mercy could\nnever tolerate, dopes itself with theological casuistry that seeks\nto justify the ways of God to man. It is a world-old problem. The\nonly way I see out of it is by purging our minds of the old dogmas\nand boldly facing the reality as science shows it to us. Religion\nas the world has so long used the term--that human mixture of fear,\nreverence, superstition, and selfish desire--has had its day. We\nmay still marvel and love and admire and rejoice, but let us fear\nand plead and tremble no more. There is nothing to be afraid of\nworse than ourselves, and nothing to implore and propitiate farther\nremoved from us than the rain and the sunshine. In the end all things\nwork together for our good--not always for the good of to-day, or\nof to-morrow, or for this man or that man, but for the good of all,\nfor the good which evolution brings in its train. Evolution brings\nwhat we call evil also, but evil is a term of our human experience,\nand the Infinite, the Eternal, knows it not. What is evil to one\ncreature in the struggle for life we have seen to be good to another,\nand often what our religious fears recoil from, science sees as\nthe beneficent operation of law. In Nature nothing is unclean; her\nchemistry meets and appropriates all, even when we flee or faint. Our\nphysical well-being forces upon us the conception of the clean and\nthe unclean, but in the processes of the Nature that sustains us both\nare one.\n\nWe are adjustable creatures. We are neither sugar nor salt, neither\nround nor square, neither iron nor lead; we yield and we resist,\nwe melt and we freeze. We are as adjustable and as adaptive as the\nleaves of the forest. The firmly woven texture of the leaf, its\nmobile stem, the flexible branch to which it clings, make it secure\nagainst the ordinary vicissitudes to which it is subject.\n\nMan is the most adaptive of all creatures; he is as local as the\nturtle, and as cosmopolitan as the eagle. All climes, all conditions\nof wet and dry, of plain and mountain, of sea and shore, of island\nand continent, are his. His home is the world. Lately he has\nconquered the air with forces of the earth. Will he yet conquer the\nether with forces of the air? Already the ether conveys his messages,\nbut no mechanical contrivance of his can yet lay hands upon it.\n\nLet me again say that by the Natural Providence I mean the general\nbeneficence of Nature, the blind, undiscriminating, uncalculating,\ninevitable beneficence which brought us here and keeps us here,\nand makes it good for us to be alive, despite the vicissitudes and\nthe occasional apparently lesser phases of malevolence to which we\nare subject. The changing seasons, the fertile soils, the rains,\nthe dews, the snows, the blue skies, the green earth, the flowing\nstreams, the gentle winds, in fact all the conditions that make life\npossible and permanent, are expressions of this beneficence. The\nwhole movement of evolution, with all its dark and forbidding phases,\nis an expression of it. Allow time enough and the turbid stream\nflows itself clear, and the stream of evolution is fast losing, has\nlost, most of its terrible and repellent features. At its flood, in\nearlier geologic times, one may say that its waters were charged\nwith the elements of huge, uncouth, and terrible forms which have\nbeen mostly eliminated; the current has cleared and purified as\nit advanced; the dragons and monsters have nearly disappeared; the\nreptiles have receded and left the fowl and birds; the saurians are\ngone, and in their stead we have the more comely and useful forms\nof mammalian life. From our human point of view--and we can have\nno other--creation has refined. The tide of life is still like a\nriver that has its noisome and unlovely margins, but how has it\ncleared and sweetened since Permian and Jurassic times! The scale\nof animal life has changed, less bone and muscle and more nerve and\nbrains, less emphasis laid upon size and more upon wit. Only in\nthe insect world are the dragons and monsters, and the carnival of\nblood and slaughter, repeated. In the shade of a summer tree, or in\na clover-field, one may see minute creatures pursuing or devouring\none another which, if enough times magnified, would rival any of the\ndragons of the prime.\n\n\nXV. FAITH FOUNDED UPON A ROCK\n\n\nI\n\nProbably that overwhelming calamity, the World War, set more good\npeople adrift upon the sea of religious doubt and skepticism than all\nthe accumulated evils of the past ten centuries. Men were everywhere\noutspoken in their want of faith in the Providence in which they\nhad so long trusted. I heard of an English clergyman who declared\nthat if the Germans won in the war he would never open his Bible\nagain. Another English parson, with the thought of the war weighing\nupon him, published a volume of discourses which he called \u201cThe\nJustification of God.\u201d But judging from my own experiences with the\nbook, the lay mind will find the grounds for justification as hard a\nriddle to read as the original one.\n\nOnly a faith founded upon the rock of natural law can weather such a\nstorm as the world passed through in the Great War, but unfortunately\nsuch a faith is possible to comparatively few--the faith that the\nuniverse is radically good and beneficent, and that the evils of life\ngrow upon the same tree with the good, and that the fruits called\nevil bear only a small proportion to those called good. Persons who\ndo not read the book of nature as a whole, who do not try their\nfaith by the records of the rocks and the everlasting stars, who\nare oblivious to the great law of evolution which has worked out\nthe salvation of man and of all living things, through good and ill\nreport, through delays and sufferings and agonies incalculable, but\nthe issues of which have been unfailing, who do not see the natural\nuniversal order working in the fiery ordeal through which all nations\nduring the historic period have passed, who have not learned that\nthe calamities of men and of peoples are not the result of the wrath\nof some offended divinity, but the ups and downs in the long, hard\nroad of human development, and that, in the nature of things, justice\nis meted out to all men--if not in a day, then in a year, or in a\nthousand years; if not to the individual, then to his family, or to\nhis race--those who take no account of all these things soon lose\ntheir reckoning in times like ours.\n\nEvery good deed, every noble thought, counts in the counsels of the\nEternal. Every bad deed, every ignoble thought, counts also. But the\nstream tends to purify itself; the world is thus made; evil is real,\nbut short-lived; the remedial forces of life and nature burn it up or\nconvert it into good. Our fertile landscapes are the result of the\nwear and tear of geologic ages; fire, flood, tornadoes, earthquakes,\nvolcanoes, have all had a share in shaping them. Decay and death have\nfed the sources of life. Our own history as a people and the history\nof the European countries exhibit a like contrast and mingling of\ngood and evil. We are too personal in our estimates, too limited in\nour perspectives; thoughts of our own comforts and private aims are\ntoo much with us. We must give Providence the advantage of a wiser\nperspective.\n\nThe thoughtful mind, capable of viewing these things on a bigger\nscale, does not need a world calamity to reveal the unsatisfactory\ncharacter of the reigning gods. The daily course of events does\nthat. Infantile paralysis, for example, with its long train of the\ncrippled, unoffending children, or a man being slowly eaten up with\ncancer, or a mother losing her life in trying to save her child from\nflood and fire, and scores of other similar things, show what a thin\nveneer our theology puts upon ugly facts.\n\nOur ecclesiastical faith must be housed in churches and kept warm\nby vestments. The moment we take it out into the open and expose it\nto unroofed and unwarmed universal nature, it is bound to suffer\nfrom the cosmic chill. For my part, I do not have to take my\nfaith in out of the wet and the cold. It is an open-air faith, an\nall-the-year-round faith; neither killing frosts nor killing heats\ndisturb it; not tornadoes nor earthquakes nor wars nor pestilence nor\nfamine make me doubt for one moment that the universe is sound and\ngood. The forces which brought us here and provided so lavishly for\nour sustenance and enjoyment; that gave us our bodies and our minds;\nthat endowed us with such powers; that surrounded us with such beauty\nand sublimity; that brought us safely through the long and hazardous\njourney of evolution; that gave us the summer sun, the midnight\nskies, and the revolving seasons; that gave human love and fellowship\nand co\u00f6peration, childhood, motherhood, and fatherhood, and the sense\nof justice and mercy, are beneficent and permanent forces. They are\ndirected to me personally because they are directed to all that live;\nthey are the cause of the living, the essence and the sum of all\nlife of the globe. I do not mind if you call them terrestrial forces;\nthe terrestrial and the celestial are one. I do not mind if you call\nthem material forces; the material and the spiritual are inseparable.\nI do not mind if you call this view the infidelity (or atheism) of\nscience; science, too, is divine; all knowledge is knowledge of God.\n\nI have never taken shelter in any form of ecclesiasticism. I\nhave never tried to clothe myself in the delusive garments of a\nsuperstitious age. I have never pinned my faith to a man-made God,\nhowever venerable. I have inured my mind to the open air of the\nuniverse, to things as they are, to the dealings of a Power that\nexacts an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; a power that deals\non the square. Those apparent outlaws of the heavens, the comets, do\nnot disturb the naturist; sidereal space strewn with dead worlds and\nburnt-out suns do not disturb him; the spectacle of the great planets\nrolling through space void of life for untold millions of years, does\nnot disturb him; and if life should never come to them, and should\nultimately disappear from the earth, he would not lose faith; he\ncould behold Europe drenched with the blood of a needless, wicked war\nand not lose faith; he could see civilization retarded and the unjust\ncause triumph, and still know that the Creative Energy has our good\nat heart and always will have it.\n\n\nII\n\nThe demand of our day is for a scientific religion--an attitude of\nmind toward creation begotten by knowledge, in which fear, personal\nhopes, individual good, and the so-called \u201cother world,\u201d play little\npart. Virtuous actions, upright conduct, heroic character, the\npractice of the Golden Rule, are seen to be their own reward, and\nthe security of the future is in well-doing and well-being in the\npresent. This is not religion in the old ecclesiastical sense, but\nin the new scientific sense; a religion that moves us to fight vice,\ncrime, war, intemperance, for self-preservation and in brotherly\nlove, and not in obedience to theological dogma or the command of a\nGod; a religion that opens our eyes to the wonder and beauty of the\nworld, and that makes us at home in this world. The old religion is a\ntree that has borne its fruit. It is dying at the top; it is feeble\nat the root. It no longer touches men\u2019s lives as of old. The great\nthings that are done to-day are not done in the name of religion, but\nin the name of science, of humanity, of civilization. The brotherhood\nthat has force and meaning is no longer a sectarian brotherhood; it\nis larger than all the churches combined.\n\nThe naturist must see all things in the light of his experiences in\nthis world. He experiences no miracles; he sees the cosmic energy as\nno respecter of persons; he sees the rains falling alike upon the\njust and the unjust; he sees the vast, impartial, undiscriminating\nmovements of Nature all about him; he learns that the land cannot\nsustain life without the fertilizing rains, yet he beholds the clouds\npouring out their bounty into the sea just as freely as upon the\nland; he beholds the inorganic crushing the organic all about him,\nand yet he knows that the latter is nothing without the former.\n\nIf God and the universal cosmic forces are one, how surely is God\non both sides in all struggles, all causes, all wars, righteous and\nunrighteous! We behold warring nations praying to the same God for\nvictory; we see this same God now apparently favoring one side,\nnow the other, and we are bewildered. Our theology takes us beyond\nsoundings. But the naturist is not bewildered; he can read the riddle\nand reconcile the contradictions. Napoleon (if it was Napoleon)\nwas right when he said that God was on the side of the heaviest\nartillery--the more power, the more God.\n\nThis may be a hard, chilling gospel; it is like going naked into the\nstorm; but how can we deny it? Can we refuse to face it?\n\n\n\n\nXV\n\nTHE POET OF THE COSMOS\n\n\nThe world has had but one poet of the cosmos, and that was Whitman.\nHis mind, his sympathies, sweep through a wider orbit than those of\nany other. I am bold enough to say frankly that I look upon him as\nthe greatest personality--not the greatest intellect, but the most\nsymbolical man, the greatest incarnation of mind, heart, and soul,\nfused and fired by the poetic spirit--that has appeared in the world\nduring the Christian era.\n\nIn his lines called \u201cKosmos\u201d he describes himself:\n\n      \u201cWho includes diversity, and is Nature,\n      Who is the amplitude of the earth, and the coarseness and\n            sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of the\n            earth, and the equilibrium also,\n      Who has not look\u2019d forth from the windows, the eyes, for\n            nothing, or whose brain held audience with messengers\n            for nothing,\n      Who contains believers and disbelievers, who is the most\n            majestic lover,\n      Who holds duly his or her triune proportion of realism,\n            spiritualism, and of the esthetic, or intellectual,\n      Who, having consider\u2019d the body, finds all its organs and\n            parts good,\n      Who, out of the theory of the earth, and of his or her body,\n            understands by subtle analogies all other theories,\n      The theory of a city, a poem, and of the large politics of\n            these States;\n      Who believes not only in our globe with its sun and moon, but\n            in other globes with their suns and moons,\n      Who, constructing the house of himself or herself, not for a day\n            but for all time, sees races, eras, dates, generations,\n      The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable\n            together.\u201d\n\nLet me say at once that, whatever else \u201cLeaves of Grass\u201d may\nbe, it is not poetry as the world uses that term. It is an\ninspired utterance, but it does not fall under any of the usual\nclassifications of poetry. Lovers of Whitman no more go to him for\npoetry than they go to the ocean for the pretty shells and pebbles on\nthe beach. They go to him for contact with his spirit; to be braced\nand refreshed by his attitude toward life and the universe; for his\nrobust faith, his world-wide sympathies, for the breadth of his\noutlook, and the wisdom of his utterances.\n\nWhitman is first and last a seer and a philosopher, but his\nphilosophy is incarnated in a man; it is fluid and alive; it breathes\nand talks, and loves and breeds; it nurses the sick and wounded\nsoldiers in the hospitals; it makes him the friend and brother of all\ntypes of humanity, of the outcast woman not less than of the man or\nwoman of perfect blood:\n\n      \u201cNot till the sun excludes you do I exclude you.\n      Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves\n            to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and\n            rustle for you.\n             *       *       *       *       *\n      \u201cWhoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid\n            and liquid,\n      You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky,\n      For none more than you are the present and the past,\n      For none more than you is immortality.\u201d\n\nMy studies of nature and of the universe help me to understand\nWhitman much more than does my reading of literature itself.\n\nWhitman is rapt and thrilled when he looks up to the midnight sky.\nHis very style is orbicular and concentric. The scientific aspects\nof astronomy do not engage him for a moment, any more than they did\nthe old Hebrew prophets; his science becomes human emotion. He is the\nhuman soul matching itself against the starry hosts, coping with them\nand absorbing them:\n\n      \u201cThis day before dawn I ascended the hill and look\u2019d at the\n            crowded heaven,\n      And I said to my spirit, _When we become the enfolders of those\n            orbs, and the pleasure and knowledge of everything in\n            them, shall we be filled and satisfied then?_\n      And my spirit said, _No, we but level that lift to pass and\n            continue beyond._\u201d\n\nIs there not more than astronomy in these passages?\n\n      \u201cI open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,\n      And all I can see multiplied as high as I can cypher edges but\n            the rim of the farther system.\n      Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,\n      Outward and outward and forever outward.\n      My sun has his sun and round him obediently wheels,\n      He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,\n      And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside\n            them.\u201d\n\nAgain he says:\n\n      \u201cIt is no small matter, this round and delicious globe, moving\n            so exactly in its orbit for ever and ever, without one\n            jolt, or the untruth of a single second.\u201d\n\nHe is filled with \u201cthe great thoughts of space and eternity,\u201d and\ncommon things assume new meanings in his eyes:\n\n      \u201cI lie abstracted and hear the meanings of things and the\n            reason of things.\n      They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen.\u201d\n\nWho before Whitman ever drew his poetic, his \u00e6sthetic, and ethical\nstandards from the earth, from the sexuality, from the impartiality\nof the earth, or his laws for creations from the earth? Only the\nwisest readers are prepared for their unliterary flavor:\n\n      \u201cI swear there can be no greatness or power that does not\n            emulate those of the earth.\n      There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborates\n            the theory of the earth.\n      No politics, song, religion, behavior, or what not, is of\n            account, unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth,\n      Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude\n            of the earth.\u201d\n\nWe all see in Whitman, as we see in Nature, what we bring the means\nof seeing. Readers of him are likely to see their own limitations\nfor the limitations of Whitman. It is as if we thought that the\nlength of our sounding-line was the measure of the ocean\u2019s depth. It\nmay be so, but it is not always so. A man of strict moral and ethical\nideas, according to conventional standards, will find Whitman rank\nwith original sin. Is not Nature rank with the same form of evil?\nWhitman did not shrink from natural tests. Naturalism was the essence\nof his religion.\n\n      \u201cNothing out of place is good, nothing in its place is bad.\u201d\n\nBut the good in Nature is vastly more than the evil, else you and I\nwould not be here, and the good in Whitman is vastly more than the\nevil, or he would have been forgotten long ago.\n\nEvil, as we use the term, attends all great things. Evil--some man\u2019s\nevil--comes out of the sunshine, the rains, the protecting snows. One\nof our poets objects to Whitman\u2019s saying that evil is just as perfect\nas good. Whitman does not say it is just as desirable, but just as\nperfect. Are not these things we call evil perfect--snakes, nettles,\nthorns, volcanoes, earthquakes? Is not a fungus as perfect as a\nrose?--a toad as perfect as a bird? Each obeys its own law. The germs\nof typhoid fever and of pneumonia are just as perfect as the germs\nthat favor us. Whitman said:\n\n      \u201cI permit to speak at every hazard Nature without check, with\n            original energy.\u201d\n\nThe hazards are great, but the stakes are great also. Readers who\ncannot stand an utterance of this sort should go to Pollock\u2019s \u201cCourse\nof Time,\u201d or Young\u2019s \u201cNight Thoughts,\u201d or Dr. Holland\u2019s \u201cBitter\nSweet.\u201d\n\nWhitman bares his mind and soul to us as he bares his body. There are\nno masks or disguises. His inmost heart is as nude as his anatomy.\nNothing is dressed up. No fashionable tailoring at all. There is\nnowhere the air of the studied, the elaborated. When other poets\nstand before the mirror, Whitman looks off at the landscape, or goes\nand bathes and admires himself. Or, to vary the image, when other\npoets distill perfumes, Whitman aims to give us the fresh breath\nof the unhoused air. In this respect he stands alone among modern\nEnglish-speaking poets. He is the air of the hills and the shore, and\nnot of a flower garden, or of a June meadow, or of parlors. That is\nwhat disappoints people. He aims at beauty no more than a wood or a\nriver or a lake or a jungle does. His aim is to tally Nature.\n\nIt was my rare good fortune to know this quiet, sympathetic, tolerant\nman for more than thirty years, and to walk or saunter with him at\nall seasons and hours. Often at night he would stop and gaze long\nand silently at the stars, and then resume his walk. He was an\neasy-going, lethargic man--nothing strenuous about him, never in a\nhurry, never disturbed or excited, always in good humor, cleanly,\nclad in gray, with a fresh, florid complexion, large, broad, soft\nhands, blue-gray eyes, gray-haired and gray-bearded. He was fond\nof children and old people. What a contrast were his placid and\neasy-going ways to the astronomic sweep and power of his poems, his\nspirit darting its solar rays to the utmost bounds of the universe.\nWhen I was with him I did not feel his mighty intellect, I felt most\nhis humanity, his primitive sympathy, the depth and intensity of his\nnew democratic character, perhaps also that in him which led Thoreau\nto say that he suggested something a little more than human.\n\nWhitman\u2019s attitude toward Nature stands out in contrast to that of\nall other poets, ancient or modern. It was not that of the poet who\ndraws his themes from Nature, or makes much of the gentler and fairer\nforms of wood and field, spring and summer, shore and mountain, as\nhas been so largely the custom of poets from Virgil down. Take all\nthe Nature lyrics and idyls out of English and American poetry,\nand how have you impoverished it, how many names would suffer! Nor\ndoes Whitman\u2019s attitude in any degree conform to the worshipful\nattitude of Wordsworth and so many other poets since his time. He\ndid not humanize Nature or read himself into it; he did not adorn\nit as a divinity; he did not see through it as through a veil to\nspiritual realities beyond, as Emerson so often does; he did not\ngather bouquets, nor distill the wild perfumes in his pages; he did\nnot fill the lap of earth with treasures not her own--all functions\nof true poetry, we must admit, and associated with great names. Yet\nhe made more of Nature than any other poet has done; he saw deeper\nmeanings in her for purposes of both art and life; but it was Nature\nas a whole--not the parts, not the exceptional phases, but the total\nscheme and unfolding of things.\n\nHe sings more in terms of personality, of democracy, of nationalism,\nof sex, of immortality, of comradeship; more of the general, the\ncontinuous, the world-wide; more of wholes and less of parts,\nmore of man and less of men. His religion takes no account of\nsects and creeds, but arises from the contemplation of the soul,\nof the Eternal, of the universe. We do not get the solace and the\ncompanionship with rural nature in Whitman that we get in the modern\nnature poets. With them we admire the \u201cviolet by a mossy stone,\u201d\nor the pretty shell on the seashore; with Whitman we saunter on\nthe hills, or inhale the salt air of the seashore, or our minds\nopen under the spread of the midnight skies--always the large,\nthe elemental, the processional, the modern. The scholarly, the\nelaborated, the polished, the architectural, the Tennysonian perfume\nand technique, the Wordsworthian sweet rusticity and affiliation with\nfells and groves, the Emersonian mysticism and charm of the wild and\nthe sequestered, were not for him or in him; nor the epic grandeur of\nMilton, the dramatic power of Shakespeare, nor, usually, the lyric\nthrill of many of the minor poets. You embark on an endless quest\nwith Whitman; not on a picnic, nor a \u201cday off,\u201d but a day-by-day and\na night-by-night journey through the universe:\n\n      \u201cI tramp a perpetual journey,\n      My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut\n            from the woods.\n      No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,\n      I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,\n      I lead no man to a dinner table, library, or exchange,\n      But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,\n      My left hand hooking you round the waist,\n      My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the\n            public road,\n\n      Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,\n      You must travel it for yourself.\u201d\n\nHe who can bring to Whitman\u2019s rugged and flowing lines anything like\nthe sympathy and insight that beget them, will know what I mean. Our\nmodern nature poets are holiday flower-gatherers beside this inspired\nastronomer, geologist, and biologist, all in one, sauntering the\nstreets, loitering on the beach, roaming the mountains, or rapt and\nsilent under the midnight skies. When, now, in my old age, I open his\npages again and read the \u201cSong of the Open Road,\u201d \u201cCrossing Brooklyn\nFerry,\u201d \u201cThe Song of the Broad-Axe,\u201d \u201cThis Compost,\u201d \u201cWalt Whitman,\u201d\n\u201cGreat are the Myths,\u201d \u201cLaws for Creation,\u201d and scores of others, I\nseem to be present at the creation of worlds. I am in touch with\nprimal energies. I am borne along by a tide of life and power that\nhas no parallel elsewhere in literature. It is not so much mind as it\nis personality, not so much art as it is Nature, not so much poetry\nas it is the earth, the sky. Oh, the large, free handling, the naked\ngrandeur, the elemental sympathy, the forthrightness, and the power!\nNot beauty alone, but meanings, unities, profundities; not merely the\nbow in the clouds, but the clouds also, and the sky, and the orbs\nbeyond the clouds. A personal, sympathetic, interpretive attitude\ntoward the whole of Nature, claiming it all for body and mind,\ndrawing out its spiritual and \u00e6sthetic values, forging his laws for\ncreation from it, trying his own work by its standards, and seeking\nto emulate its sanity, its impartiality, and its charity.\n\nWhitman wrote large the law of artistic productions which he sought\nto follow:\n\n      \u201cAll must have reference to the ensemble of the world, and the\n            compact truth of the world;\n      There shall be no subject too pronounced--all works shall\n            illustrate the divine law of indirections.\n      What do you suppose creation is?\n      What do you suppose will satisfy the Soul, except to walk free,\n            and own no superior?\n      What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways,\n            but that man or woman is as good as God?\n      And that there is no God any more divine than Yourself?\n      And that that is what the oldest and newest myths finally mean?\n      And that you or any one must approach creations through such\n            laws?\u201d\n\nWhitman\u2019s standards are always those of Nature and of life. Emerson\nhung his verses in the wind--a good thing to get the chaff out of\npoetry or wheat. Whitman brings his, and all art, to the test of the\nnatural, universal standards. He read his songs in the open air to\nbring them to the test of real things; he emulated the pride of the\nlevel he planted his house by. Always is his eye on the orbs, and on\nthe earth as a whole:\n\n      \u201cI feel the globe itself swift swimming through space.\n      I will confront the shows of day and night,\n      I will see if I am to be less real than they are.\u201d\n\nHe would have his songs tally \u201cearth\u2019s soil, trees, winds, waves.\u201d\n\n      \u201cCan your performance face the open fields and the seaside?\u201d\n\nhe demands of those who would create the art of America.\n\nHis poems abound in natural images and objects, but there is rarely a\ntrace of the method and spirit of the so-called nature poets, some of\nwhom bedeck Nature with jewelry and finery till we do not know her.\n\nIn one of his nature jottings, written in 1878 at his country retreat\nnot far from Camden, New Jersey, he speaks thus of the emotional\naspects and influences of Nature:\n\n  I too, like the rest, feel these modern tendencies (from all\n  the prevailing intellections, literature, and poems) to turn\n  everything to pathos, ennui, morbidity, dissatisfaction, death.\n  Yet how clear it is to me that those are not the born results,\n  influences of Nature at all, but of our own distorted, sick, or\n  silly souls. Here amid this wide, free scene, how healthy, how\n  joyous, how clean and vigorous and sweet!\n\nI do not wonder that Whitman gave such a shock to the reading public\nsixty years ago. This return, in a sense, to aboriginal Nature,\nthis sudden plunge into the great ocean of primal energies, this\ndiscarding of all ornamentation and studied external effects of\npolish and elaboration, gave the readers of poetry a chill from which\nthey are not yet wholly recovered. The fireside, the library corner,\nthe seat in the garden, the nook in the woods: each and all have\ntheir charm and their healing power, but do not look for them in Walt\nWhitman. Rather expect the mountain-tops, the surf-drenched beach,\nand the open prairies. A poet of the cosmos, fortified and emboldened\nby the tremendous discoveries and deductions of modern science, he\ntakes the whole of Nature for his province and dominates it, is at\nhome with it, affiliates with it through his towering personality and\nalmost superhuman breadth of sympathy.\n\nThe egotism of Whitman was like the force of gravity, like the poise\nof the earth, the centrality of the orbs. Nothing could disturb it,\nno burden was too great for it to bear. He seemed always to have in\nmind the self-control and the _insouciance_ of Nature. He would fain\ntry himself by the self-balanced orbs. His imagination was fired by\nthe undemonstrative earth; he would be as regardless of observation\nas it was. He was moved by the unsophisticated freshness of Nature.\nHe saw that the elemental laws never apologized; he would emulate the\nlevel he planted his house by:\n\n        \u201cthese shows of the day and night,\n      I will know if I am to be less than they are.\u201d\n\nHe will not be outfaced by irrational things:\n\n      \u201cI will see if I have no meanings, while the houses and ships\n            have meanings,\n      I will see if the fishes and birds are to be enough for\n            themselves, and I not to be enough for myself.\n      I match my spirit against yours, you orbs, growths, mountains,\n            brutes.\n      Copious as you are, I absorb you all in myself, and become the\n            master myself.\u201d\n\nIt is these cosmic and natural-universal standards to which Whitman\nappeals, that mark him off from all other poets or bards who have\nyet appeared, and which, I hope, justify me in singling him out and\ngiving him a place in this volume.\n\n\n                                THE END\n\n\n\n\n                          The Riverside Press\n                       CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS\n                               U . S . A\n\n\n\n\n  TRANSCRIBER\u2019S NOTE\n\n  Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been\n  corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within\n  the text and consultation of external sources.\n\n  Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added,\n  when a predominant preference was found in the original book.\n\n  Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,\n  and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.\n\n  Pg 182: \u2018Java man of Du Bois\u2019 replaced by \u2018Java man of Dubois\u2019.","title":"Accepting the universe : $b Essays in naturalism","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":81818}