Class Book- S "Si WHAT LIFE SEEMS TO ME AN ESSAY BY S. F. SHOREY Second Edition The real aim of life seems to be the build- ing of the present man into a larger man, one having a much greater spherical capacity of mind than has anyone we know now as man; an expanse of consciousness, of knowledge, * of sympathy, of reliability, one having vastly higher ideals, greater strength of will, self- control, keener insight and appreciation. A personality with the above attainments, and thereby freed from prejudice and deceit, raised above intrigue, greed and selfishness, working in co-operative harmony with others, seems to be on the way, as a more remote aim of the unfolding move. OTHER BOOKS BY S. F. SHOREY Happiness and Continuous Personality A continuation of the subject matter of What Life Seems to Me. Price 25c. Postage 2c. In paper. Injustice and National Decay. A search foi^ the cause of social disorder and national decay. Price in paper 25c; in boards 40c. Human Progress and Party Functions. A study of political party action, to ascer- tain which party, if either, tends to be- friend the many. Price in paper 25c; in boards 40c. Human Harmonieis and the Art of Making Them. Now out of print. A revised edition is in preparation. The Greater Men and Women. Also out of print, and a revised edition is in preparation. Two new books are in preparation on the sub- jects of originality and human intelligence and the art of its increase. WHAT LIFE SEEMS TO ME AN ESSAY BY S. F. SHOREY Author of "The Greater Men and Women as Factors of Human Progress," "Injustice and National Decay," "Human Progress and Party Func- tions,'' "Human Harmonies and the Art of l^alcing Them," "Happiness and Continuous Personality." Seattle, Wn. S. F. Shorey^ Publisher Copyrighted September, 1920 By S. F. Shorey OCT 1 3 1920 1 c_ »C1A599381 -\\ <■ CONTENTS The New Edition The Inquiry If Death Ends Personality? For What Then Do Men Live? The Moral Concept — It's Awakening Appreciative Feeling Must Not Happiness Be Earned? Of What, Then, Is Life In Pursuit? The Cosmic Urge Within Us THE NEW EDITION THIS little volume is an inquiry concerning the facts of life as they appear and pass on before us. What, the question is herein asked, does a rational consideration of these facts lead us to infer concerning the evolution of human capacity, continuous personality and happiness? An outline of the results of the inquiry can be found in the introductory chapter, ^^The Inquiry/' In the preparation of this — the second edition — the matter of the first has been largely rewritten, enlarged upon, more clearly expressed, and so changed in its sequence as to more closely approach the natural order. The first edition — but a few copies of which remain unsold — has been retailed over one coun- ter, with advertising confined to the recommenda- tion of its readers. This fact speaks for itself in the form of results, and has much to do with the second appearance of the book in its improved form. THE INQUIRY CONCERNING life as a fact, normally con- stituted men and women do not feel in doubt. But the how and the why of its creation and final destiny they do not know. Nor has the whither of its going been far traced with great certainty. Even though the entire program of human life, past and future, may be passing on before us in present-day appearances, the science and the art of its reading are but little evolved. It is a property of the life concealed in all or- ganic forms, to respond more or less awakeningly to all its external contacts. The human life leads other forms of life, by being more responsive. In its higher manifestation known as intelligence, re- sponse appears as thought action. By the contacts of life, men are set to asking questions, and to seeking the answers. With per- sistent ejBfort, they appear to answer them improv- ingly. What, is herein asked, can be the meaning of life? What, if anything, approaching an answer, can be inferred? What, by a rational procedure can be learned from the facts of life as they appear and pass on before us? Are we fated beings, and if so, to what extent? Is free action of the will a human function, and if so, at what place does it begin and where end; in what events expressed, and in what events not expressed? Or are we automatic actors? Do we draw our thought supply ready-made from the Cosmic fountain of intelligence? Does thinking mean merely the tapping of a storehouse of ready-made thought forms? Or are we entities having some independent power of action, person- alities supplied with the materials and principles of construction, with sufficient power of will to start thinking and building somewhat independ- ently, an ever-improving self, through improving forms of action? Life is a term of existence in the midst of sur- roundings in which the sphere of human conscious- ness may be seen awakening and enlarging by struggle. By the facts of life, men are often led to infer and reason out other, similar facts, which lie beyond experience. In other words, we are invited, even urged by the experiences of life to guess, and we are encouraged to keep on guessing, by meeting with a reasonable amount of success. Among the many factors of human progress, this power to guess correctly stands near, if not at the head. What, then, of the human life, we again in- quire? Did it start automatically, spontaneously; did it just happen, or was it instituted? If insti- tuted, was it set up for the sole purpose of this one life, made up of struggle, serving, perhaps, as its creator's plaything? There is in life's move, that which has the ap- pearance of design or purpose, in that it is enticing and driving all men to build to bettering, purpose- ful ends. Some things have come to seem quite plain ; social improvement, for instance, from which all persons are receiving more or less benefit. Since evolution is now fairly well understood, the student finds strewn along the unfolding path- way of the races of men, evidence that civilizing progress has been made, but made slowly; and, while bettering results have been cumulating, the speed of forward move has been accelerating. Though not quite so evident, the individual also has been and is improving. In both cases, improvement appears to have taken place largely through events which arrived from beyond human consciousness. Men have been driven and coaxed to improve far more than they have volunteered to improve. Intelligence and will being slow to awaken, personality slow in the build- ing, increase in the amount and quality of human initiative also is achieved but slowly. 8 All appear compelled to pass through great ex- periences of trouble, to learn what seems to be comparatively little; experiences involving individ- ual sacrifices far too great for the amount of gain, if valued for the use secured during the time of a single life; while not a few are made to sacrifice life to gain personally no more than an empty glory, of which they can know nothing. This movement, taking place very largely through ^n unavoidable and brutal struggle, leads us to in- quire why some plan could not have been devised to secure all this improvement, and even more, in a comfortable way. Life moves improvingly onward. In most things having sense contact, a bettering change may be observed ; the building, tearing down and rebuilding, and in this effort to build better forms, the power to build cumulates. On turning to history, evidence is found of civ- ilizing improvement. With each epoch a better social organism appears, made and used by individ- uals for their own enjoyment and improvement. But if this life is all, we pause to inquire the why of this struggle ; by what necessity established ? If this life is all, to what end is all this effort expended, more than in the building of the child's playhouse? For this life gives but little justice, returns but little happiness to the individuals en- gaged in the building struggle. In the facts of life we are unable to discover much evidence of a plan to give liberally of enjoy- ment in this life. On the contrary, evidence ap- pears more plentiful of a plan to keep men so far on the way, fighting and uncomfortable, a fact which leads us to infer that these conflicts of life may be building for us all a strength of personality, that peace, justice and happiness could not build. Stupidity, dishonesty, crime and tumult in the midst of great and happiness-making things to easily learn and to do, cannot be accounted for by a one-life theory, set in motion by an all-wise, all- powerful and just creator, having in view the hap- piness of human beings in this life. There is some- thing more, very apparently, that life is trying to build. For though men seek happiness, through all the other things they seek in life, they succeed in finding no large amount of happiness. Evidently, however, something is gained. A gain in size and strength of personality may be observed. Even under the most adverse circum- stances, we are led by appearances and reason to believe that each leaves life a somewhat larger personality than he came. 10 We are well aware of much of how men live, and by what they live. But for what do they live? What becomes of this larger grown man? When he passes from our view does he cease to live and improve? Is this the end? Is he denied for all time the enjoyment of that which he has worked and sacrificed to gain? If this life is all, he has lived only to assist in the evolution of a social organism. But the social organism is not a living entity. It has no personality, no self-consciousness. Can its evolution, as some contend, be the central pur- pose of the struggle of life? Which, the makers or the made, the personalities or their evolving social equipment, appears most likely to be preserved and continued ? Is the struggle engaged in evolving larger intel- ligences, in the building and preservation of the rational element, the thinking personality, the self- conscious being, a larger man? If not, what? Even now, does not the larger man appear to be on the way, having passed the beginner's point of personal initiative, the initial stage of free-will action, having arrived at a place from which on- ward he is to do more of his own thinking and building ? Is there not, then, evidence of the coming through 11 human growth of a larger man than what we now know as man, a being equipped with far great- er expanse of consciousness, greater knowledge, greater strength of will ; with the keener sensibilities through which more reliability, sympathy and in- creased power of appreciation can find expression, making up on the whole, the greater capacity to enjoy? The dispute over whether the creator of this universe is a personal being or a cosmic intelli- gence, matters not in the least. But there are some thoughts that do matter, some considerations that have a practical bearing on the philosophy of life. If the creator of this universe is the omnipotent and omniscient intelligence he appears to us to be, and if in the creation of the human being he had in view a one-term life of happiness, the task for such a being would have been a simple one to per- form. Would such a creator have created and envi- roned the human being as we find him? Would he not have created him with a capacity for enjoy- ment far transcending present capacity, created him wise and honest at the start; surrounded by all of the enjoyable which he has now reached, and even far more? By what necessity is he driven and coaxed 12 through the struggle of life as we find it, to obtain the little that life gives? For whether cosmic or personal, how can we conceive this power to be other than intelligent, and sufficiently so to have created at the start a condition to give and a human being with a capac- ity to receive far more happiness than he is now obtaining? Even if this life is all, and this brutal struggle a necessity, happiness could still have been made possible to the human being, by so equipping him with desires and nerves, as to enable him to find a completed enjoyment in whatever surroundings he might be placed. If this life is all, and the creator is the being we conceive him to be, why does life fail so signally to meet the requirements of our concept? Such a God could not fail. There is something wrong, either with our god concept or with our theories of life and its purpose — one or both. If this life is all, it is a cruel affair, even though due to limited human understanding and perverse conduct. For man has had nothing to do with his own creating, and but little with his subsequent building. If, therefore, he is the product of a just and omnipotent creator, and has but this one life to live, why was he not created with sufficient 13 intelligence to understand the plan and to avoid that which brings upon him so much unhappiness? Many occurrences, if measured by a one-life theory, may justly be termed cruel, as in Nature's wanton destruction of human life and property; the storms of human passion and greed, daily taking place, beyond the power of human beings to control. And if the personalities do not survive the pro- cess by which they are improved, if after being en- larged, they are not preserved and passed on through to the other side, to enjoy the growth which they have worked and suffered to gain, how can all this infernal experience be claimed as the work of an all-wise kindly father and just creator? If this life is all, then many of the facts of life are not seemingly cruel — they are actually so. Un- less suffering is carving out larger men and women, building soul capacity, larger personality, it is sim- ply the infliction of pain, for which we can see no purpose. But the great trials of life are constructive in their effect. As a rule, suffering projects into fu- ture action a larger-grown personality, in evidence of a design having in view the welfare of the indi- vidual. Whereas, were it possible to now establish a condition conforming to the highest ideals among 14 us, would it not at this crude stage of growth work human degeneracy; as becomes evident from what happens to most men when a little prosperity is gained ? The foregoing, with so much more among the facts of life not yet understood, except that they are realized to infinitely transcend in greatness the greatest power of human understanding, when duly considered, leads to the inference that the existing plan of life and action is one well fitted — best fittted, it seems most probable — to secure the high- est end of human welfare, and that the carrying out of the program along this line will some time culminate to this end. In fact, this may be the only possible way to achieve the end in view. For could man have been projected into this life with great and perfected capacity to enjoy, with surroundings to corre- spond, how could he perform other than automat- ically? It gradually dawns upon the consciousness that, in order to make of man a freely-acting entity, the cruelties of life may be indispensable; anyhow, they are an unavoidable part of the established process of all unconscious unfoldment. In this way, feeling and appreciation of posses- sions are cultivated intensively, the will increased in freedom, strength and sphere of action, and the 15 purpose thereby served of driving man into awak- ening, and into the undertaking of conscious self- cultivation. It would appear difficult for a rationally func- tioning mind to believe that a blind un-conscious force could contrive and set in motion the law of unfolding life known as evolution; that a struc- tural, effect revealing an intelligence so far tran- scending the power of human interpretation as we find it, could be planned and set in motion by an unintelligent cause. In their efforts to learn something of the mean- ing of life by collecting, classifying and interpret- ing some of the facts of life, scientific investigators have made many important discoveries. But com- paratively few of the facts have yet been observed, and fewer still collected and classified, while those already dealt with, seem to have been but partially interpreted. So far as present gain of knowledge goes to explain lifers meaning or purpose, other than that we are improving, and seem to be on the way to a larger and better life, little has been accomplished by scientists, and most of the interpreting efforts of religion-makers are unscientific and feeble guesses — many of them absurd. 16 IF DEATH ENDS PERSONALITY SO much, in introductory outline. But for what purpose, if any, are men evolving. Why are they being coaxed and driven to act in mass har- mony? The social fabric of a people is determined by, and is equal in value to the average of their intel- ligence. Upon their intelligence depends their mu- tual understanding, harmony of mass action relia- bility, moral conduct and consequent happiness. And upon their experiences of life and education, depends their intelligence. As before noted, the social organism has no per- sonality, no consciousness. It serves its units, but can neither enjoy nor suffer. It is not, evidently, an end in itself any more than is a steam engine. Instrumentally, it assists the growth of its human creators, like the steam engine, by reflex, in the same manner as human growth and happiness are assisted by all other human contrivances. There seems to be some further object in this struggle in which man is so buffeted and wantonly sacrificed; this struggle in which he awakens to find himself submerged and compelled by the ne- cessities of his existence to take part, with no knowl- edge of whence he came, whither and for what pur- pose he is being driven, with no possibility of 17 escape, except through the gateway of death; some object other than either a continuously bettering society, or bettering individuals in a series, each member of which becomes extinguished with phys- ical death. Does there not appear herein an aim which lies beyond the one of social evolution, a further and larger aim, an aim to unfold present human per- sonalities into beings greatly transcending present human understanding; an aim to build that which rises above social forms, survives physical death, and toward the fulfillment of which the social organism serves but instrumentally ? If this life is all, what matters anything but to squeeze out of each day's experience the last spark of pleasure possible, along lines of least resistance, as many are now doing? If this is all, why spend so much time and effort in learning and earning that which this life leaves neither the time nor the opportunity to use? Why does life as we find it demand the injustice of personal sacrifice? For if this life is all, can the belief that this sacrifice is a noble unselfishness be other than a delusion, due to the stupidity of men taught by privilege-holding leaders and dark age religions. If this life is all, why should any man of the 18 present generation sacrifice his happinesSj much less his lifcj to gain that for the next generation, which its individuals may then be but little better able to appreciate, than are we what has been gained for us by the sacrifice of those who have passed on before us? If this life is all, what right has society, more than the god of a pagan temple, to demand of the individual a sacrifice for which it can give nothing in return ? When viewed from the standpoint of one life, what can be more absurd and unjust than this call upon some individuals — the young men, for in- stance — to give their lives for other individuals in whom they can have no possible interest, that unborn generations may enjoy what they are called upon to throw away? If this life is all, at what place, in what manner, and to whom does all this sacrifice bring enjoyable glory? Unless there is more, can it be other than a great mistake, a deluding lie? If the human life has no further purpose than that which may be achieved in about three score years and ten, neither it nor society has much value ; not enough, in fact, to pay individuals for the trouble of being born and fighting for existence. For unless personality survives bodily death — unless 19 evolutionary results are individually retained, life, with the discomfort and struggle through w^hich most of the inhabitants of this world are obliged to pass, has but little value — in some cases is quite worthless — and a few lives appear to be consid- erably in the nature of an imposition. If this be all— if physical death means personal extinction — life's great irony is that we fail to awaken to most of our possibilities and opportu- nities until too late for this awakening to be of any value. If personal existence ends with this life, there is but little worth being created for; neither is there anything in life that can be satisfactorily explained. If this short life, out of which even the most fortunate obtain but little, is all, why were we created ? To what end these agonies, some of which no one escapes? If our career on earth is all, why pursue either wealth or wisdom, at the expense of the pleasures of each day? For even with the most successful efforts, neither comes early enough to be long en- joyed. Nor can the fortune which comes ready-made be sufficiently appreciated to be much enjoyed, or for long. However, the fact that compulsory action is found set up in the law of life as a condition of 20 existence, is freighted with meaning and there is much therefrom for the student to learn. Life must be fought for; substance, as well as appre- ciative capacity to enjoy must be earned. There is at work in life ever unfolding action, moving in response to what appears to be some design. With great effort men learn and earn much that they have no time to use, and if they are not given the opportunity of another life in which to use and enjoy the knowledge, if not the means, which they gain too late to use and enjoy in this existence, are they not denied that to which they are entitled, from, an allwise and just creator? If what we feel in the matter be reliable, if we know what justice is, and assume that this one life comprises all there is of existence, is it not absurd to also assume that creation is the work of a wise and just God? The religions of the world postulate a just cre- ator, but in most cases with little proof to offer in support of their theory, that any rational person could accept. Of course there are many facts of life leading us to infer that somehow, somewhere and some time, to each individual, is given an exact measure of justice. Such facts are misleading, how- ever, and the inference is wrong, unless the indi- 21 vidual life, so long as desired, is a continuous one. To create the human being, with a desire to learn, in an environment where he is both driven and encouraged to learn that which he has no time to use, to allow him to make mistakes which he is given no time to correct, to compel him to see what he has missed, what he might have been, what he might have accomplished, when too late to be of any personal value, does not appear to the rational person to be just. If all this preparation is given no opportunity to serve some purpose which very evidently it has no time to serve here, what can be its meaning? If personal existence ends with physical death, why all this unfairness of inequality which lies beyond the control of the individual, as found in parentage, education, environment, natural capacity, and what we call accident or circumstance? If in proof of continuous life, that which so strongly urges us to learn what can be of no earthly use, to do also so much that can be but little or not at all enjoyed — if this desire for personal contin- uity and the effort to achieve this end has no mean- ing — if the discoveries of modern science and psy- chic research contribute nothing in proof thereof, we have no proof left. And unless further life be a fact, what we do 22 on earth beyond self-preservation and daily en- joyment can matter but little, for we are deceived by our feelings, our hopes and the many facts of life. We are, in fact, merely puppets, serving in what capacity we do not know, unless, perhaps, as our creator^s playthings. So he who is not reasonably well convinced by the evidence within and around him, of the per- sistence of his personality, has a right to be a pes- simist; for it must be difficult for one who sees no proof of further life for the individual to be an optimist. When one tells me that he feels his life to be worth the living merely for this one life, and that if I do not feel the same it is my own fault — if he believes what he says — he is not constituted like myself. His consciousness, his desires, his aspira- tions, his sense of justice are not like mine — we differ radically. Through some element of personality with which I am not equipped, this man has been able either to obtain from life so much of satisfaction that if, as he closes his eyes for the last time, he does not quite welcome the extinction in which he believes, he is but little disturbed by the prospect. This life does not satisfy me — I desire more. Of what value to me is what I might have been, but 23 am not; what I might have accomplished, but did not; what I might have enjoy ed, but did not; and all for the reason that I did not know enough? Why is it that I have failed to make the ex- perience of this life so complete as to satisfy my desires for life? In fact, why does living intensify my desire for life, even to the extent of continuous existence, or until my desire for life has become exhausted? Why do we find so many in search cf some elixir of life? It cannot be because this present life affords so much happiness. Is it not, then, in the hope of better things to come, the few samples of happi- ness, experienced on the way, in the vision they furnish of a future of increasing happiness through increase of honesty, efficiency and wisdom; in the probability these glimpses afford of a continuous and improving personality? Through lack of ability to obtain and to use them, most of the opportunities in the world are at present of no value to most men. Why is it that capacity to discover, to invent, to use and to enjoy, must be acquired? The many wonderful possibilities in ourselves and in our environment, just ahead and in sight, with others constantly coming into view, indicate 24 that we are moving forward in response to some unseen purpose. But of what value to us of today are all these unmaterialized visions, all this monopolized and idle wealth, the million and one things of use; things which everybody will be able to obtain a few generations hence, when we are dead, and men have become wiser? There are millions in the world, who on grad- ually awakening, would feel the tremendous in- justice and incompleteness of life much more keen- ly, if at the same time they also felt that this one life is the extent of personal duration. What better scheme to torture those who believe that individual life ends with this material exist- ence could be devised, than the one of awakening them to a knowledge of what they have missed ; to a realization of what they might have accom- plished and enjoyed, and only at a time of life too late for this awakening to be to them of any per- sonal value? Why, if this life is all, the growing keenness of feeling among us that it is not well to take ad- vantage of our fellow man? Few persons care to repeat the experiences of life, but nearly all do desire, with what they have gainedj to live on and continue the improvement. 25 And if you, reader, do not belong in this great company of men and women who see what they have missed through their ignorance, who see what fools they have been, and only when too late for the discovery to be of any personal use — there are but few of your kind. If you feel that life has given you so nearly that which through your aspirations and surround- ings it promised you, that desire for more is dead within you, and you are quite content, at death, to bid a final adieu to personal existence, you are certainly unique. If this be your feeling in the matter, do you not so far differ in consciousness from the mass of the human family, so far depart from the normal, as to belong among the human freaks, curios or unclassified mutations of life? Anyhow, you are distinctive — a one-life optimist — one equipped with a condition of mind which may be due to the fact that either you have not yet awakened to the desire for more life or have out- grown the desire. If, on the other hand, you feel that personality ends with physical death, while at the same time you see and feel the incompleteness and injustice thereby entailed — see what your ignorance and other handicaps have caused you to miss, and without re- course of further opportunity for expression — if 26 you are a being in whom desire for further life and expression has awakened and is not yet ex- hausted, you have a right to be a pessimist. What else can you be? If it be true that in your own experience, in your interpretation of Nature^s meaning, in the reading to be found in the well-expressed sciences of life (the biological sciences), in the fields cov- ered by physics and chemistry, in the promise of hope, so strongly implanted by Nature within the majority, in the evidence psychic research has to offer; if in all these you find insufficient evidence of continuous personality to lead you to believe in its probability, this belief is in you difficult and perhaps impossible to awaken. But if this be true, what argument can you find for natural justice, what proof in all Nature of the existence of a moral law, what foundation upon which to build an ethical science, what reason for believing Nature to be anything but unjust and cruel? If you have been successfully taught to believe in the hell of our current religion, as a place to which you may be consigned as a future habitation, you still have a cause for complaint, and may wel- come extinction, for extinction beats hell. In this life, just when lessons have been learned, which, had they been known at the beginning might 27 have made life worth living, the learner dies, and if his work has borne fruit, the bulk of this fruit will be gathered and enjoyed (or, as a rule, squan- dered) by others. In fact, to those believing that present existence begins and ends all for the individual, most lives must seem to be failures, for they can see that the majority are compelled to take part in a drama in which the shrewdest, most selfish and unscrupulous shirkers often win; in fact, that the triumph of the villain is so frequent as to quite compel the denial of the existence of compensation, of any natural plan to secure final justice. The average life, although one of sufficient com- fort to keep the individual interested and doing, is far from being ideal, while the lives of at least twenty-five in one hundred of the human family are filled with extreme experiences of suffering, many of which are disastrous and tragic. These experiences often follow in quick succession. Think of being caught in a train wreck, pinned under a car, and slowly roasted to death; think of the religious martyrs of the Middle Ages; think of the poverty-stricken inhabitants of all large cities; the victims of disease, of shipwreck, of bank fail- ures, demagogues, fakirs, coal mine disasters, and of war. If we have but one life, are these insti- 28 tuted in the nature of things by a kind and benevo- lent father? If none of the million and one aspirations in- herent in each of us are ever to be realized, why do they exist? Have they no meaning? 29 FOR WHAT, THEN, DO MEN LIVE? FOR what, then, do men live? No man in this life ever succeeds in realizing more than a frac- tion of his ambitions. Were the human life confined to this one term of existence, men and women should, as a matter of fairness, be equipped with no more ambitions than with the means and time to realize. They should be rewarded with the feeling of completed tasks, preparatory to quitting. If this life is all, instead of being coaxed and driven into new attainments, they should be equipped with keen desires, and abundantly sup- plied with the means for their perfect satisfaction. Unless, from what many individuals are now doing, a very much larger reward of happiness is ultimately to be secured, the present flow of events can with little satisfaction be accounted for. Why a stupidity so dense, that no better arrange- ment among nations has yet been reached, than one under the influence of which millions of the best young men of each nation become periodically slaughtered? Why the existence oi an economic system within national lines, enforcing idle money, idle hands, idle machinery and idle acres — more acres than could be used, were they accessible to thousands in want, and many dying of hunger? Think of this, and then imagine, if you can, that 30 "" men realize what they are doing; wonder how long their stupendous foolishness of dishonesty and slaughter is to continue; wonder if for all this work, sacrifice and suffering, no more is to be gained for the individual than this life, and a sys- tem of economic fairness for future generations; wonder if all those engaged in the building are to pass on unrecompensed. If human personality ends with physical death, creation is a structure of injustice. For with but this present life, justice to man would demand that he be sent into this life with far more intelligence and honesty than he now has, in fact, that he be equipped with the means and a precise knowledge of what to do to obtain the greatest amount of happiness, with no desire for more life. In a one-life experience of justice there could be no mistakes, no disasters, no sickness, no pov- erty; for there would be no fairness in dra^ic experiences given to teach the individual that which he could never use and enjoy. It seems rational to suppose that if this life is all, man would have arrived equipped with a phys- ical organism he could not so easily destroy; so equipped mentally and emotionally as to receive therethrough the highest enjoyment, for further lessons would be unnecessary. 31 Effort in such a life would be a pleasure, since it would be made for the enjoyment of its imme- diate fruits ; climatic and economic conditions would be perfect; there would be neither compulsory ac- tion nor degeneracy in inaction; labor would be delightful action, or wholly unnecessary. There would be no sickness, and existence would be ideal, for there would be no desire for further life, and all would depart this life satisfied and smiling, for it would be a thing felt to be completed. Man, on the contrary, appears impulsed and en- vironed to strive and gain wisdom; for wisdom, when gained, is the one thing which enhances the enjoyment value of all his other possessions. Wis- dom gives access to the means to gain the use and enjoyment of more of itself j in that it shows how to obtain the use and enjoyment of more of all other things — even of money, which most persons believe to be the one thing in the world worth striving to gain, but which, when used unwisely, often brings more trouble than does poverty. Moral conduct, reliability and happiness do not precede, but follow the gain of wisdom. The ballot is of value only so far as men have learned its wise and honest use. Hence it is of comparatively little value today. A gain of wisdom, then, appears to be the cen- 32 tral purpose of the lure and drive of life. For in the proportion that wisdom is gained, has the way been opened to the comfortable acquisition of all other desirable things, including the happiness to which all these other things contribute as an ultimate aim; but to little pupose, so far as most individuals are concerned, if this life is all. Jus- tice, in the interest of happiness, comes into the general practice of a community, in proportion to its gain in average of wisdom. Each individual is brought into life in contact with countless numbers of unseen opportunities, and is left to awaken to their existence by strug- gle; to learn to discriminate, to will, to select and to build character, by building many other things. But after all the trouble of learning and build- ing, he derives but little benefit therefrom, in this short life. For what purpose, then, the gain? To the observing person, there is nothing more certain than that all men are being lured and driven to improve. A growing dislike of the trite, and an increasing desire for the less common, appear as repulsion and attraction accompanying this growth. There is always enough incentive to effort found in each life to make certain of some results. But there is the evidence in our daily life that 33 we are not far on the way; evidence of unawake- ness, a lack of high-grade personality. The ma- jority yet respond more readily to being driven to improve them to being enticed to improve; they fail to see far ahead, and fall below the line of sufficient will and wisdom to initiate and keep up self-betterment in times of prosperity. Could ten thousand dollars be placed in the hands of every man and woman in the world today, tomorrow few reformers could be found, no an- archists, few bolshevists. A few could be taken out of the reform ranks with five dollars, others would require ten dollars, but with ten thousand dollars to each man and woman, voluntary self -improvement and social re- form would practically disappear from the earth, until in a few months the majority had, by ex- hausting their allotment, become needy and humble. But ignorance, making evolving action a necessity, would still remain, voluntary impulse would re- main, rivalry, jealousy, hatred and vanity would manifest, all' of which the independence secured would bring out, intensify, and set men to fighting. The dark age attitude latent in some minds, can be evoked by a very few dollars. The moment the man belonging to the great majority feels the least independence, he begins to show off; the bully, or 34 small man, crops out in his conduct at the first opportunity. Not a very small number among us with an automobile — were there no penalty at- tached — would average running over one person a day, and enjoy the experience. We are, however, on the way improvingly. Slow- ly we are learning to direct our own evolution; learning to see the great possibilities the pursuit of knowledge places in the hands of awakening man, though as yet he is moved up the ladder of life chiefly by being driven. If personal unfoldment can be personally con- ducted, my neighbor awakened to the fact, may be gaining more personality in this one life by con- sciousj deliberate efforts to improve, than I, without such effort, can gain in many, though I may not be in the least aware that my neighbor is gaining more than myself. Personality, however, in process of evolution, ap- pears to protect itself from destruction at the hands of others, with its own conceit, while being driven upward, unconscious of the real motive of life's pursuit. How rapidly, then, while crossing the present stage of improvement, over which eighty per cent of the human family are being slave-driven, can human surroundings safely improve to meet 35 the requirements of personal unfoldment, how rapidly change for the better and still retain com- munity equilibrium ? Has the time come, when in the interest of safe progress, the majority can be entrusted with the appropriation and use of the abundance of means by which they are surrounded? At the present low stage of self-control, appre- ciative understanding of the art of thrift, the sci- ence and philosophy of use, would not any race now in existence if equipped with such abundance, deteriorate, rather than improve? Would not such comfortableness as this abundance would afford, act upon the average mind of today much like a hot climate? Evidently we are now deprived of what we would have, had we learned to meet the requirements of possession, and some day will have by having learned to meet them. The right to see and to have has a price, in the nature of mental growth. Opportunities, at this brutal stage, appear to be for the few who can see them and seize them, and not for the many kept blind by their own self- indulgence, indifference, laziness and dishonesty. That the price of possession or the purchase price of what we desire is knowledge, we are long in learning. 36 It is the earning and appreciative conserving of the things of this life that entitles the individual to their comfortable use, not merely the being born among them; and it is the idea-forming capacity which plans the great ways of production, and guides hands and feet into ways of specific earn- ings. Were the pioneer organizers, planners of great enterprises of production — men who see and do things in large ways — to at once turn the bene- fits of their plans over to the many, the many would never learn the plans, never learn to use them appropriately, and appreciatively, or to plan for themselves. To reach through the opening consciousness, then, a viewpoint from which the natural requirement of possession and use can be seen to be a gain of knowledge, appears to be a matter of the greatest importance; and largely by being driven, we are learning and moving toward the time of reaching. Intelligence expands through group experience, as well as through individual experience. Group rivalry, national, political and social, serves as a spur to action; serves also to correct moves, and to preserve sufficient balance of power to insure stable growth, improving change or evolutionary unfoldment. This rivalry protection is indispensable to the 37 move. For could there arise at the present stage of human arrival, a party, religious organization, nation or individual, equipped with the povi^er to dominate the world — a happening against which progress has always been and still is fighting — it would, with its belief in itself, and consequent bul- lying ignorance, wreck present civilization, and set back progress for many generations. This conflict in motion between and among groups of men, between the organization and the units of the group, also between nations, is serving a very important function as a moving and cor- recting spur, in the interest of their mutual im- provement. Only to the extent that in the process of growth dead forms and waste matter cause in- convenience and suffering, can they be discarded, and in the discard, awaken men sufficiently to es- tablish a voluntary process, in the form of a more scientific system of educational change, with the art of its application. Since few men have yet learned to far initiate their own awakening and freedom, for some time in the future, unscrupulous men will be needed for this purpose; needed to arouse and inform slug- gish and unthinking men, by inflicting upon them the injustices which make them suffer. Though the self-destruction of ignorance and 38 of injustice is established in the unfolding law of life, it works slowly through its involuntary stage. Few yet learn faster than their ignorance brings them inconvenience; few see and remove the ob- stacles from the pathway of life, until hurt by them. The great ideas that move the world of men and women are fished from the deeps, and set in motion by the few. Hands and feet are moved to act productively by brains. The idea is the subject matter of consciousness and feeling, and these, in turn, determine the capacity to enjoy or to suffer. The sphere of man's knowledge is determined by ideas, and is that within which his will may be trained to assist selective control, and to initiate successful action, with ever greater freedom. Out- side this sphere, though the will may act freely, its product is uncertain, for it has no guidance. A definite knowledge of what to do and how to do, must precede and accompany the successful do- ing. Though each discovery, each invention, is made by the pursuit of an idea, so slow is the move, in some cases, that in arresting attention and find- ing the way into the consciousness, the feelings and the practical affairs of men, years, generations and sometimes centuries are consumed by the process. However, awakening appears through the action 39 of a process which may be controlled and hastened. A habit of seeking educational experience for this purpose needs to be formed, controlled in action while achieving its ends, and abandoned as an ex- perience when it has no more to give, and tends to become a mere habit of action. In fact, rapid progress means a growing dynamic power of habit- forming and using; a growing power also to break up static conditions, a power to abandon any given habit when it ceases to respond progressively. In books are now stored the ideas which are to determine the future conduct of men, for a long time to come. In our very large educational experience, we are far from being sufficiently unfolded and awak- ened to select for ourselves, a long way from hav- ing reached the proper degree of right feeling to insure honesty. Nature, or the law of life, therefore, in select- ing the means to serve this larger awakening, puts us through a tremendous training school. As in- dividuals we are impulsed by a desire to escape experiences of discomfort and suffering. Leaders of men serve by coercing the led. If successful, they cannot serve very far beyond the the average intelligence and honesty of their con- stituents, and give the best they know, for by their 40 direction the masses must yet be given a certain amount of awakening inconvenience. Hence there is always a fight on between governments and in- dividuals; the one acting arbitrarily and tyran- nically, and the other ignorantly and rebelliously, each correcting and improving the other. While the race is crossing the stage of blind unreliability, this involuntary, undemocratic, bully- infected stage of its unfoldment, it can endure much suffering, much tyranny, and enjoy an im- mense amount of flattery; for its wisdom is small, its feelings not moral, its ideals not high, and its conduct of life correspondingly low. The process is still one of moving men with kicks toward the point where they can be awakened with ideas. There are yet among us a few back numbers who must be sent to reflect in prison to learn better than to rob a henroost. And the foxy, criminal seeker of political place will be sent there to learn better than to betray his trust, when men become but a trifle better informed in political economy. In proportion to its increase, does knowledge enable men to make better use of everything. Ob- jects of ambition, as they become wiser, will be less offensively sought and less selfishly expressed. At what point along the way ambitious and unscru- 41 pulous men will be no longer required to awaken other and more sluggish men, we are now unable to see. The world moves successfully forward through the leadership of those having a desire to do more than the ordinary. The more one can believe that the world needs him — depends upon his efforts — the more vividly he can imagine that the world cannot well do without him; the more he can feel that he is ^^IT," the more he can convince himself or become convinced by his own desires and by the applause of others, that he is Atlas, with the entire world resting upon his broad and able shoulders, the more he can accomplish, for accomplishment is but the form-externalizing action of a psychological process. The exercise of large ambition needs watching, however, for oftener than not it is found without moral attachment, so far invading and usurping the rights of others as to require checking. The world is improving, but there yet remains in action a very large percentage of what appears to be an early-age tendency, a pre-civilization form of ambition, made possible by inheritance, by rever- sion of type, and by privilege-conducted education. Men of this dark-age, selfish type, equipped with a desire to triumph oyer others — to play the part 42 of the autocrat and the bully — love to set them- selves apart to dictate, to be admired and to bid for the applause of the indiscriminating many. And their leadership explains the governments, the po- litical parties and the churches, which, if allowed to do so, would so far dominate the minds of men, as to roast all at the stake who dare dissent from privilege-established programs, and with their bullying ignorance would throttle progress. We are today experiencing a reaction against freedom of speech and democracy, a current setting strongly in the direction of the dark ages. And individuals of this tyrannical type are not confined to leaders of men. They are found wherever ignorance, the cause, is found ; even among school-drilled men, but never among the truly en- lightened, who have risen above much of the fool- ishness of which the ignorant become guilty. In nine case^ out of ten, the man of little intel- ligence will act the part of the bully with his first opportunity, feel independent and begin showing off with his first thousand dollars, act arrogantly and tyrannically, if ever given a position of author- ity, grow envious and jealous at the success of his neighbors and relatives, and become wonderfully animated with profiteering patriotism in times of war, and for some time after, while the tide of 43 ignorance and destruction is ebbing. This small- ness of ignorance is often exhibited, even in high places of trust. Hence the need of vigilance, for in the interest of human progress and happiness, the influence of this type needs to be eliminated as rapidly as pos- sible. The future has in store a time when the ideals of men, elevated with enlightenment, will lead them to act from higher motives, a time when through the ambition to give honest service, they will become progressive factors of tremendous pow- er, and be appreciated. The time is not yet, however, for though the ideals are ready,w^w are not ready, in that the best of ideals have not been sufficiently well taught in either the home or the school, to become active in the minds of men. Until such time, then, as educational interest in these ideals has awakened, the masses are to be used and taught by back-number bullying men and institutions, in promoting their selfish schemes of ambition. For some time yet, therefore, men are to be cured by the tyranny they, with the opportunity, would inflict upon others, by the tyranny of others inflicted upon themselves. Since few can see the meaning of struggle, and 44 the possibilities of educational improvement, no race, nation or community, and few . individuals, can now improve much without being made to suf- fer. Speaking from the ideal, what leaders of men owe to their constituency for the opportunity to gratify their ambitions is honest service; yet it is most frequently used as a private possession, and for selfish, grafting ends. Few in public place are great- ly moved by a desire to serve well, few are satisfied with applause, their salary and personal improve- m.ent, but either seek to obtain the private monopoly of the natural opportunities of millions of other men, or to betray and cash in to the highest bidder, the function of service with which they are en- trusted. The correction of all this must appear slowly, as a matter of unfoldment. Before present knowl- edge, everij can be practiced, the result of which would be reliability of conduct, the majority must have passed through sufficient of the suffering due to ur^'reliability to reach honesty, democracy of feeling, or enough to kill out the snob, the greed and the vanity in themselves. Again, by inconvenience men are driven to learn, and by still more inconvenience, to practice what they learn. The spur of inconvenience will cease 45 t'^ be needed as fast as we learn to perform in an- ticipation. Great benefits are ultimately to come to the world from the freedom offered by democratic forms of government, but only so fast as the world is driven by suffering to perform democratically. That to the use of other forms of power is at- tached a responsibility in proportion to the power, in that use and honest use are naturally required i\\ the hands of its possessors, is altogether too little realized and heeded by individuals, by communi- ties or by nations. For instance, a correct knowledge of political economy is known to the world, but due to the fears and influence of those who hold special privi- leges, it- is as yet kept out of both politics and edu- cation, the penalty for which is our present dis- turbed condition of the world, a condition which may yet lead to a world revolution. In its evolution, therefore, the human family is now crossing a stage of great disturbance and un- controlled action; suffering to learn, and suffering again to learn to honestly practice what it learns. As fast as life in its larger sense of meaning can be glimpsed, ignorance gives' way to knowledge, dishonesty to honesty, injustice to justice, jealousy 46 to mutual helpfulness, animosity to reciprocity, con- tempt to appreciation, distrust to confidence. The ability to see that all great questions have two sides, that life in matter takes the dual form of manifestation, tends to make men tolerant, for it comes of a process the effects of which helps the conservative to see the indispensableness of the lib- eral, and the liberal to see the indispensableness of the conservative ; it assists in the gradual awakening of each individual to the rights of other individ- uals, of each side to the truth possessed by the other side. Even now, a glimpse of both sides has here and there been caught, in consequence of which co-operation begins gradually to creep in between leaders and led, employer and employed. The great belief, also, in superior and inferior, the consequence of which is strife, is beginning slowly to disappear. However, leaders of men in thought and action are still necessary, for during these early stages of com.munity unfoldment, few are equipped with much initiative knowledge. Men, in common with other animals, improve but slowly. By means of observation and imitation, gradual awakening ap- pears; slowly is self-reliance, the power to infer, to rationate, to generalize, to organize and to moralize, reached. 47 And is it not because, with the many, these later mental equipments are in process of unfoldment merely — largely in the coming — because they de- pend too exclusively upon authorities and pictures, and must have, though often misled by them, lead- ers to follow, to look up to and to imitate. Hence the observing person can see that the present life is an intermingling of every stage, plane or mountain range of individual growth; use any set of tangible figures you prefer to represent the intangible unfoldment of the personality, the souls or minds of men. Account for it as we will, there are comparative- ly few among us who have finished crossing the plane of imitation, and thrown away the crutches used in the crossing. The majority are clinging to something, made up largely of glamour and pre- tense — a church, club, society, lawyer, doctor — they are dominated and taught by authorities, while at the same time being repeatedly disappointed by them. The less we know, the less self-reliant we are, the more do we look for from others, and the more do our teachers disappoint us. This form of disappointment throws us back upon our own re- sources. So there comes a time — as a rule this is but grad- ual, and through countless disappointments — when 48 the awakening soul becomes detached and rebel- lions, hatcheSj throws off its shell or shackles, and starts crossing alone the plane of protest, growling, fighting and suffering; a plane crossed by a few quickly, with education, in a few years or even months, for the pathway has been fairly well sur- veyed and educationally mapped, by those who have gone before us. Yet others consume a lifetime, or even, it may be, many lives, in reaching through experience alone, the plane of continuous, purpose- ful reconstruction, co-operative action and com- fortable forward move. It seems rational, then, to infer that through the discomforts of life, the action we call work, the lure of pursuit, and even through suffering, all are being driven and enticed across consecutive planes of mental life, and over divides to other planes, each in its succession a trifle higher. For what, then, do men live? 49 THE MORAL CONCEPT— ITS AWAKENING AS may have been inferred while reading pre- vious chapters, there are before us, playing a part in the affairs of men, two phases of the evolu- tionary process: The first is the lower or animal, the compulsory, involuntary, unconscious, slave- driven phase; the one out of which the second in order, the higher, conscious, voluntary, sought-for, educational phase has become in part evolved into working order. The first is a process of slow growth; the second a much more rapidly working process from the start, and one that can be and is being continu- ously enlarged upon and increased in rapidity of move. Both, however, are natural. But in one life of educational evolution, more attainment can be achieved than in several lives of the involuntary type. This comparatively few realize, in conse- quence of which a high grade of voluntary unfold- m.ent, purposeful self-cultivation, lies some distance in the future, and can be reached only through great improvement in the science and in the art of edu- cation, brought about by the efforts of the mentally and morally awakened few. Even the most elementary lessons, men are long 50 ill the learning. For ages they have been suffering, in consequence of unreliable conduct, but slowly coming to see that reliable conduct, if put into prac- tice, would bring confidence, and its consequence of harmony of action and happiness. And how far, during all this time, it has succeeded, is shown by ' the present disturbed condition of the world. Each species of animal life on this globe has been obliged to demonstrate its fitness to survive, by sufficient change of habit to meet the require- ments of the changes which took place in its sur- roundings. A part of this fitness consisted of being able to overcome with muscular power rival species and rival individuals in the struggle for subsistence; but muscular power, applied, evidently, with a degree of intelligence greater than that of most of the species overcome. In other words, the survival-determining factor in evolution is mind. Were this not true, the hu- man species, with its comparatively weak organism, would never have struggled to the top. The key, then, to the mystery of evolution is found, not in the biological sciences, but in the science of psychology. In man it is that which wills, thinks, reasons and conducts the process of learn- ing ever more intelligently. At present, the line by which the mind of man 51 is divided from the mind of the highest of the lower animals, is very distinctly drawn. The human mind is marked by memory, the power to think, by conscience, rationality, will power, and regard for the rights of others, all of which it has been sufficiently susceptible to the lessons of inconve- nience to learn. The human phase of evolution must have started countless millions of years since. There was, evidently, a time when from the lower animal life a separation began to take place, a time when the line between the two started and came gradually to form ; when the mind of the now human species in the battle with the muscle of the brute, appeared in doubt, followed by a time when it began to win, and to come marching rapidly up through the ages to a higher plane,^ leaving all the other animals behind. Thus, evidently, human fitness to survive mentally differentiated from the fitness of the brute to survive, and the present place of arrival reached — the one of cultivation, or hu- man phase of growth by the greater susceptibility of the human being to be taught by the memory of his experiences. But even with educational means, much of the brutal fitness to survive which resides in the power to overcome, to kill and to take from others, is still retained in the practices of the human life 52 through the belief that it is a naturally constituted part of the human fitness to survive; and out of which belief, men are being but slowly driven by the troublesome effects of the conduct thereby prompted. But slowly the realization is reached, that fitness to survive has appeared through the gradual discard of the animal fitness to survive; that fitness must come to be sought; and through higher qualifica- tions of survival — that is, through truthfulness, re- liability, justice-rendering — a gradually improved moral fitness. The human life appears to be unfolding in ac- cordance with a plan more or less clearly outlined. The best to take in next steps can be seen with a fair amount of clearness, and the hitches in the program appear to come of the fact that men do not take these steps as well as they may learn to take them. That is, the meaning of the correcting element in the program, the feeling of discomfort, suf- fering, is not yet sufficiently well understood to be heeded and practiced. If the naturally estab- lished process for improving the conduct of men be viewed as one of cruelty, it may be considered as cruelly kind, or as kind in action as'it can be, and make of man what the plan has in view, a 53 something so far better as to be utterly beyond our present comprehension. Much of the change destined to take place in the life and mind of the child, as life goes on,^ is well known to his father, who finds him today bit- terly crying over his broken toy. The evolution of the social organism becomes evident to the beginner in the study, but by fur- ther investigation and consideration, he is led to infer a more remote aim — the unfoldment of hu- man personality — in the achievement of which the social organism is evolved to serve instrumentally. The real aim, then, seems to be the building of the present man into a larger man, one having a much greater spherical capacity of mind, than has anyone we know now as man; an expanse of con- sciousness, of knowledge, of sympathy, of relia- bility; one having vastly higher ideals, greater strength of will, self-control, keener insight and appreciation. A personality with the above attain- ments, and thereby freed from prejudice and de- ceit, raised above intrigue, greed and selfishness, working in co-operative harmony with others, seems to be on the way, as a more remote aim of this unfolding move. There are many facts in life contributing their testimony in evidence thereof. 54 All persons resent unreliability of conduct. This resentment in operation in the affairs of men, will finally show them that it pays to be honest, to drop deceit and injustice. This resentment is also des- tined to wipe out all undemocratic, predatory and bully-inclined types of men; to do the same thing to the same types of institutions and nations. It is destined to displace animal fitness to survive with human fitness to survive; for a large part of that which fits the animal to survive, when practiced by man, constitutes his fitness to pass away. Special privileges are destroyed by the resent- m_ent against their injustice, of holding a resent- ment still further intensified by the unjust use of the power which they confer. Of old it was ob- served: 'IThose whom the gods would destroy they first make mad." That in men and things which unfits them to survive, is their offensiveness ; they destroy themselves with their obnoxiousness, in failing to serve honestly, fittingly. It may be observed that privileges having the longest life, are those made to serve the largest amount of common good. The vain, unjust, arrogant and tyrannical use of any power, creates the opposition to effect its removal or destruction. It not only stimulates the moves of the wronged ones, who are destined to 55 effect the removal, of those who do the wrong, but to blind those to be removed. Thus, the climax of evolution seems aimed to take the moral form. The necessity for destruc- tive revolutions in the interest of progress, will disappear as fast as the lesson to meet the re- quirements of progress with improvement in edu- cation and conduct is learned. 56 APPRECIATIVE FEELING IN viewing life from another angle, the same conclusion is reached. Most of what men know of right and wrong they appear to have learned from experience. The world's present fund of knowledge seems to have cumulated more through struggle than through deliberate seeking. Right moves have been learned by the inconvenience of wrong moves. Could pathways of wisdom-gaining be retraced, they would be found strewn with the wreckage of experience, involving loss, sacrifice and suffering. Personality, with all its knowledge and emo- tional capacity, appears to be the product of suc- cessful struggle. The struggle for a thing creates a knowledge of the thing, the feeling of pleasure that comes of earned possession. Possession gives satisfaction, in the proportion that the struggle to possess has brought with it the feeling of appreciative understanding. In other words, the effort that brings the things of use, brings also appreciative understanding, and capac- ity to enjoy — happiness. Life gives the opportunity to make the effort. Each accomplishment brings with it a recompense in the form of a feeling of right to have and to use. 57 The enjoyment of music, food, and in fact all things of use, can be greatly intensified by deliberate efforts to understand and to use with frugal ap- preciation, rather than wastefully. Nor are human thought and speech any exception to the rule. The enjoyment experienced in the satisfaction of the animal desires, is the form of feeling through which higher forms of enjoyment are reached, human happiness evolved. But is the degree* of feeling enjoyed by the ani- mal understood by the animal, and of sufficient in- tensity to be regarded as happiness? If ignorance is bliss, the stone evidently is in a state of perfected bliss. There are apparently many degrees of conscious- ness, and some of which the conscious one neither understands nor appreciates; a state which cannot be considered as one of happiness. The enjoyment of our experiences, then, is high in proportion to our understanding of what we experience. The building of human capacity to enjoy, and the liberation of the opportunity to prepare things to enjoy, are increasing by the unfolding process of effort, largely unconscious, and without being able to give much of happiness to the average individual in the span of a single life. Happiness is the fruit of such effort as may be 58 termed right conduct. Not only sowing^ but right sowing, must precede the successful reaping and enjoyable use of a field of grain. In every depart- ment of life, the reaping of a harvest of happiness follows as fast as right sowing of conduct is under- stood and practiced. Living the family life, as games are played, in the sense of one trying to win from the other without the earning, is the cause of a large percent- age of family difficulty. Employers, employees, doctors, lawyers, merchants, in their efforts to reap more than they sow, produce the same results. Reaping the unsown harvest is stealing. Ground rent collecting is the reaping of a harvest not sown by the reaper. Our land holding, banking, and governing systems of all kinds, are guilty of the same reaping on a gigantic scale, and are thieving systems, the evil results of which are at this moment very much in evidence. A little later, labor unions are to do the same thing and retaliate. These forms of reaping will be no longer in- dulged in, when a deeper understanding of cause and effect applied to human conduct has been reached, that is, when sufficient scope of outlook has been gained to enable men to see the harmony and happiness-making power of fair dealing. Justice produces harmony. Competition among 59 small men of today, sets them to quarreling and wasting their energy. Among the wise men of the future, it will merely stimulate a wholesome rivalry, and bring out the best in the participants. For there is abundance in the world for all to use, but none naturally intended to be held out of use by one when needed by another; none can safe- ly be used to dominate other persons and direct their conduct of life. There is a natural law to protect personal growth, freedom to act within personal lines, and co-operatively with others, beyond personal lines. The slow recognition of this law may be observed to be evolving in every move of the human life. The resentment shown at the invasion of personal rights, is the feeling through which moral conduct is evolved. This feeling tends also to draw dis- tinct lines of personal demarkation, and to drive each to attend to his own affairs, or to work with others in mutually helpful ways. The shirkers of the community bring trouble for all; laziness creates resentment, and unfits man to survive in his sphere of action, no less than the lower animal in its sphere. Consequently, the place of the lazy man slowly eliminating himself, is being taken by the man who learns to like work, the evolving man, the new, the 60 later, the higher natural man of honest endeavor, better fitted to survive, in the interest of that fair play through which alone harmony and happiness can be reached. Thus do all other elements of discord gradually give way by self-destruction, to that which better serves in the interests of har- mony; that is, unfitness to survive is largely a matter of personal selection, made for the benefit of those from among whom the unfitted betakes him- self. The line of least resistance — easy methods, short cuts, shirk-and-get-rid-of-work ways, laziness and play, are the old natural; love of work is the new, the later evolved and the higher natural. Only after long continued pursuit, at the end of unintelligent and direct pleasure-seeking, has the victim, through the discomfort entailed, learned better than to repeat. And this is the program of life, through which endeavor seems being made to entice and drive all onward; into survival and the freedom of ever greater wisdom and honesty. And it must destroy those with whom it cannot succeed. The rule in the pursuit of happiness in this life is, to find it in small quantities, and mixed with much disappointment, for the reason, evidently, that neither the wisdom to find nor the capacity 61 to receive is yet large. The price of happiness is work well performed; the effort to secure a thing cultivates at the same time the capacity to use it enjoyably. Most of the difficulties of life are due to not knowing that which can be learned, and much of it easily learned. The fact that the majority are still driven to improve, and to surpass in material success their friends and relatives, by their emotions of envy, jealousy and hatred, reveals the degree of human progress now reached. The truth is that men have not yet learned enough to be ready to receive, nor are their surroundings yet prepared to give any high degree of happiness. The central aims of the move of life appear to be a gain of knowledge; a gain which is insured by the spur of discontent on the one hand, and on the other, by enough enjoyment secured along the way to keep us all trying for more, inspired by the hope of at some time and place finding much greater enjoyment or actual happiness. Present achievement is but the foundation of the human structure. Successive planes of increasing happiness have not been reached, nor are they to be reached, over avenues of direct happiness-seeking, but through 62 the increase of knowledge, wisdom and a growing intensity of feeling derived from successfully meet- ing the combats of life. In order to enjoy a cottage beyond anticipation, it must first be con- structed. The plan of progress is being gradually under- stood, and a better practice instituted to assist the move; but so far, the slave-driven form has been but little displaced by the educational. Most of what we are enjoying today in the way of gain as embodied in invention, is due to the inconvenience of using poor tools and machines. All along down through the ages, poorer things of all sorts — and in a particular way does this hold true of conduct — have destroyed, or displaced them- selves with the better, by making men suffer. The automobile is an accumulation of effects — the up-to-date of efforts to avoid inconvenience of travel piled upon inconvenience, a product of loco- motion discomforts, reaching back no man can say how far, into the dim ages left behind us. Only by its entailed difficulties do men learn to avoid errors of way. Hence has arisen the saying: "Necessity is the mother of invention.'^ All that is known of the science and the art of getting well and keeping well, has been learned through pain. All the new healing cults: mental, 63 psychological, magnetic and medical, though many and differing in name, in form of expression and application, constitute the up-to-date of knowledge gained by the discomfort of sickness. This body of knowledge is accessible to those only who through some form of personal adversity have overtaken the procession, with the selective power of will and understanding. The good citizen, good neighbor, good husband and good father, is one who has, somewhere and some time, experienced that suffering through which sufficient fellow-feeling has become evolved to ena- ble him to successfully take the examination. We have much to say of democracy, the world has reached a large measure of the democratic in book-made theory. But it has not yet suffered enough to deserve to enjoy practical democracy by having evolved sufficient of the democratic feeling to set up the practice. The world aspires autocratically, and gives to democracy a party meaning, by failing yet to comprehend it in its higher sense of ''equal rights to all and special privileges to none.^' It is not yet willing, because it is not yet intelligently and feelingly ready, to give and take simple justice. When the world has reached the democratic in knowledge^ the feelings will be ready to set up 64 the practice of democracy. Then autocratic bul- lies, bosses, vampire law makers, with their flunkey equipment of expensive pretense in defense of spe- cial privileges, such as prisons and armies, will soon pass away. In no way other than through the evolution of the democratic in understanding and feeling, is it possible for men to rise higher in practice than a government made by the few and for the few. There appears to be a reason much larger than most reasons given, why a government by the people and for the people has not yet been estab- lished. It can not be established, so long as the majority in each nation hate all other nationalities but their own, and are moved to achievement by a desire to triumph over and humiliate friends, relatives and neighbors, instead of by a happi- ness-making desire to act among them in mutually helpful ways. Is not this quite prevalent belief that the re- tention of the **pep'' of life will be removed by the discard of human brutality, due to the fact that many are yet struggling through the blindness of moral childhood? And does not suffering appear to be the chief factor in the process of awakening in the many the moral sense, thus performing a 65 function which experiences of happiness cannot perform ? ' Consequently, in many cases, a club is at present a better instrument of reform than turning the other cheek. For in the cases of those who have an abundance of cheek to turn, turning the other cheek often means sparring for still greater advan- tage. He who has learned to improve while prospering, and while well to so live as to keep well, has reached the stage in his unfoldment, of the few, but the place toward which all are moving, and from whence all are destined to learn and move rapidly forward, without being kicked and made to greatly suffer. Today, however, it cannot be denied that to the extent of their gain of that which gives the oppor- tunity to enjoy without effort, do the majority proceed to seek the pleasures of sense, fail to learn, become lazy, and begin straightway to degenerate. If any short cut to permanent happiness has been found, any elixir of life compounded, and easily-applied way to happiness discovered, it is a? yet but little in evidence. The belief in short cuts, however, found in near- ly all the more modern creeds and cults, may be explained by recognizing it as the lure of hope, the 66 beckoning hand of dreams, the call of human ideals for the far away, a call which keeps men in pur- suit, in the belief that the end of the journey, though far distant, is near at hand. However, the realization of present ideals can be hastened by effort. Goals can be much more rapidly reached by more work and less of being driven. They are to be reached by innumerable failures along the way. To one having had the opportunity to observe great variety of human conduct, great facilities to meet types of the best minds in books; one with the ability also to reason his way back to the causes of the effects by which he is surrounded ; each cult appears to be made up of individuals, kindred in type, grouped around some ideal fitted to serve, in a general way, both the sympathetic and com- petitive needs of each individual of the group, while at the same time serving as a rival group to assist the evolution of other groups, the ideals of which, in some cases, cannot, of course, be of a very h?gh order. From this viewpoint, then, modern cults, with their perpetual-youth beliefs, their elixirs; with their beneficent helpfulness ; can be the more readily understood. There cannot be found one among them which is not believed by its votaries to be 67 the only way; and each has in proof of its power, its correctness and its divine intrenchment, a sup- ply of short cuts, in the form of genuine miracu- lous cures, to present : as Christian Science, New Thought, Christian Healing, healing by prayer, by will and the direction of invisible teachers. For this attitude of mind there is a very good ex- planation ; found in the unfolding law of life, which responds encouragingly to all constructive human effort, and gives rise to further effort. The way of short cut, therefore, to perpetual youth, to happiness and wisdom-gaining, which certain cults belive they have already reached — as shown by their smug belief in the completeness of their own particular elixir, combined with their sweet-smiling contempt of all others, is an ideal which is being but slowly reached in the realization. It takes time. At intervals along the way we find their members suffering the pangs of disillusion, stumbling and learning new lessons. Their attitude can be better understood, per- haps, by recognizing the wave motion of progress; that the crest of each wave terminates at a point a trifle higher than its successor ; that at nodal points of time and growth, bud, blossom and fruit may suddenly appear in the form of a general mental awakening or expanse of consciousness, and the 68 birth of many new cults, all of which may be ra- tionally conceived to have arrived, not miraculous- ly, but in response to the faithful evolutionary work of years, or even of centuries. So can the same thing be seen to hold true of the individual. May not what is now called cosmic consciousness be viewed as the bloom and the fruiting of age-long evolution ? May not the present cult-hatching be viewed as the result of a process long in action, of a long time brooding under the turbulent breast of the ages, instead of having arrived through the discov- ery of short roads to perpetual youth, over which its votaries believe it to have arrived? And is not the present bloom and fruitage to pass through another, and still another brooding and hatching, on to a nodal point in time, somewhat higher in position than the present? And is not this belief in being able to easily find short ways and elixirs, one among the soothing delusions that keep us moving on over the long way? This destroyed in men and women, were they able to see the work, the trouble and the length of time necessary to find, to survey, to guide and pave short ways, would they not lie down to rise no more? For is the average adult of today, in his 69 ability to conceive time past or future, more than a child a trifle larger grown? It takes time. How often do we finish up any undertaking sooner than we expected? Are we not led forward by our belief in easy accomplish- ments ? Usually we get through in two hours what we hoped at the start to accomplish in one, in from two to ten years our projects for a year, and to finish up what we have planned for one lifetime, w^ould take many lives. To make a fortune and find time to enjoy it, is confidently looked forward to by the young man. The first is seldom accomplished, and the second much more readily. This lure and drive of life, apparent everywhere to the observing and the thinking, is, when recognized and expressed, always taken by the adolescent mind as a pessimistic view. This short-cut belief in the minds of most men, lures them onward, and may it not also be con- ceived to be a prophecy of greater realization stored in future ages than we are now able to dream, but achieved with many disappointing delays along the way? To be able to realize that an indispensable re- quirement of successful moves is the careful prep- aration that takes time, is to be rid of many illu- sions, to avoid many disappointments, to move 70 more evenly and comfortably forward, and to ac- complish more by meeting the problems of life with the optimism of knowledge, rather than with that of a blind belief or faith. The greater motive power of the human life, lies as yet, beyond human consciousness. Consequently, much of the bad in human conduct is not purposely so. Acts of error and of evil design are, as a rule, mistakes made through ignorance. The better things to do lie beyond knowledge, and therefore beyond selection. Suffering is an effect, back of which, to produce, a cause has been at work, and so it is with happi- ness. In proportion to one's power of will and knowl- edge of the cause of unhappiness, can unhappiness be avoided, prevented from appearing or removed, and happiness made to appear and remain. In this little volume the suffering of life has been recognized, that its cause, ignorance, might also be shown, with the end in view of its removal. It is largely a plea for education. In order to bring happiness, suffering would not be necessary, were human beings wise enough to do that which would secure to themselves happi- ness without suffering, and to the extent that they do this, do they cease to suffer. Though suffering 71 is a fact, and appears to be a necessity, we are not here prescribing suffering, but that which suf- fering itself prescribes — wisdom, a gain of knowl- edge; for, to the extent that knowledge appears, suffering retires. The discomfort of the wrong move tends to awaken men to the fact that large enjoyment re- quires large knowledge; that knowledge brings with it capacity to enjoy; that happiness cannot lead the capacity-building move, but must follow as a consequence. The happiness secured along the toilsome way, appears in bits, as if to encourage the belief that greater wisdom and happiness can be secured. The facts of life make it appear that we are moving toward something not yet in view; a cu- mulation of results which lie beyond the horizon of this lifers consciousness. Many are found doing that in life which they cannot rationally explain; a few appear to enjoy the overcoming of great difficulties, and take upon themselves experiences of great discomfort, instead cf the opposite, which they might easily have. The move of the human life appears to be one to gain knowledge and power of will. So far do a small number renounce happiness to gain knowledge, as to take away the ordinary pleasures of life. And 72 if not in the interest of knowledge-gaining, for what? Why do a few sacrifice their lives to what they feel to be their particular duty? In cases where voluntary effort to learn is not exercised, compulsion steps in to initiate the move. Whether rich or poor, successful or unsuccessful, no one can do precisely what he prefers ; no circum- stance in life can be found in which educational experience can be avoided, no circumstance where action, much of which is unpleasant, can be escaped. How much of this experience is selected, how much imposed ? Are we not moved, in our conduct of life, by a proclivity which lies largely beyond both will and intelligence, by a tendency set up in the original or cosmic plan of life that compels us to act in certain ways, while we gradually gain sufficient strength of will and intelligence to act as conscious individuals, voluntarily? And for what, if not to gain independence of action and a product of personality to be used beyond the border line of this life, since but little of either gain can be used on this side? Is it not very evident that there has been and still is a law established by an intelligence operating through human conduct, much larger than human intelligence personally directed? If this life was purposed to give human happi- 73 ness, it has certainly missed the mark. If but this one term of personal existence was the creative intent, the human being should have been different- ly equipped, differently constituted and impulsed, differently environed, as set forth elsewhere in this essay. If the creative intent was to give happiness in this life, men should have been sent fully supplied with wisdom, with mutual understanding, with the ready-made feeling of appreciation and honesty, with plenty to eat, plenty to wear, and in other ways to enjoy, instead of being obliged to work for this equipment, only to be deprived, in many cases, of the use and enjoyment when gained. Why does a warm climate fail to produce a hardy and vigorous race, except that it fails to impose the obligation to work, the necessary discipline of life ? Why do hard knocks produce men best worth while, except that they are disciplinary, that they furnish something to overcome; compel the neces- sary educational action? Why do men fight to gain things of so little worth, and that can be used for so short a time if gained? All the facts of life seem to contradict the belief that among the first purposes of this life is the one to give individual happiness. We are in pursuit of ideals, but were the leading purpose of this life 74 the one to give happiness, we need not and would not waste time in pursuit of ideals, we would know all we need to know. The pursuit of ideals, however, is a fact, and a significant one, even though in the pursuit, prac- tically speaking, few have succeeded in capturing a high grade. Either directly or indirectly, we are all in pursuit of ideal happiness, without ever being able to secure the direct object of our pursuit. The pursuit does not appear prepared to bring much immediate happiness, but a happiness more remote and greater, secured through a commensurate im- provement in appurtenance, and gain of capacity to enjoy. The surroundings of this life are far from ideal, yet judging from that which is plentifully in evi- dence all around us, no one knows enough, appre- dates enough, has enough right feeling to enjoy, in any high degree, the gifts of life and the con- quests of work already secured. The life of the individual is not long enough to build much, or to open consciousness to a very high grade of controlled appreciative enjoyment. The human being of today seems merely the basement of a grand structure yet to appear, the good start of a building far transcending any yet conceived. And the rational inference is that in 75^ the dim distance there looms a pair of revised hu- man beings, a man and a woman possessed of power to do and capacity to enjoy, impossible for even the best among us to now clearly outline, and they have not yet appeared in the dreams of the majority. To the importance of building this larger pair, through a more intensive educational effort, mor- ally pursued, a few have begun to awaken. But at the present rate of structural speed — the rate pur- sued by the majority — how much can be accom- plished in a century? Can the best human ideals of today be reached by these in one, two, three, or even a hundred lives like the one through which the majority of men and women are now being driven and led? Justice to these, then, must give them time to live, to fight, to lie, to betray, to steal, and to suffer the consequences of all this foolishness, in the in- terest of their awakening to take control of their own living. Since a one-life theory explains satisfactorily but few of the facts of life, while a theory of continu- ous personality explains nearly all the facts, the latter is by far the more rational of the two. Why, on reaching a certain stage of unfoldment, do men and women awaken with a tremendous de- sire to learn? Why, upon awakening, do they feel 76 such a keen sense of regret at the waste of time previous to their awakening? Why do many strive so fiercely for attainments that can have no possible use in this life, and then gradually cease to be in- terested in these attainments when reached, unless the results have been stored as personality? Why desire and find so much need for change; why are we all driven by suffering to break habits; why unable to find a resting place? Is not life a school, rather than a pleasure excursion? Are we not being awakened by the tuition of conflict, and graduated from grade to grade? If not, why so many adults struggling through the first reader of practical life, why so much waste of time in quarreling over trivial matters, why the failure to arrive educationally at mutual under- standing, in the interest of happiness? If this life begins and ends human personality, why the Great War, a conflict allowed to be prepared and set in motion by a few of the most unscrupulous and ignorantly ambitious among men, at a time when a very large percentage of the world in both intel- ligence and feeling, appear to be evolved beyond such barbarism? Does there not appear therein an effort to teach men to progress without such conflict; an effort to teach the world to educationally eliminate its un- 77 fitted to survive, to teach it the importance of dis- carding its atavistic types, to leave out of active history its historic left-overs, to displace the bar- baric concept of civilization with ideals of a grade so high that war may cease to appear to be a thing of glory? To such as live in unfoldment on the war plane, the pomposity of war fiends, and vampires in human form, makes them seem desirable personages. There is established in the unfolding law a slow move which eliminates the no longer fitted to serve, in the interest of wisdom and happiness- giving; a move to destroy warfare, injustice, tyr- anny and falsehood, or to make them destroy them- selves, together with their authors. This move can be hastened. Most leaders in these stupendous dramas of in- justice, serve in the belief that the world needs what they try to impose upon it; and they serve as blindly and as instrumentally, apparently, as the steam engine, without, as a rule, for a moment realizing that it means the destruction of them- selves and what they stand for. In evidence, note the assumed dignity of their conduct, the absurd pomposity, the patronizing man- ner toward their mental and moral superiors, all making up a body of cohduct to provoke not the 78 smiles of the gods alone, but of all thinking men and women who behold in this the doom of an old order. The observing person feels obliged to interpret a large percentage of what he observes in our every day life as made up of the mental action of this same antique type, due to a middle-age residue of men having full-grown dignified beards, but equipped with adolescent minds; and at this stage cf growth, no longer needed by others, except as a nuisance, made useful as a spur to action. Hence, in the interest of social welfare, the work- ing of the law may be observed in their self-elimina- tion as rapidly as they finish their spur work. But if they are evolving personalities, as they appear to be, should they not have other lives and opportunities to improve, to become actual men? Human beings seem to be moving toward a larger and happier life, consequently the central aim to be looked for in progress is the moral aim, the evidence of which appears everywhere in the move. All instrumentalities of human injustice, as above mentioned, all monopolistic institutions and bully- ing tendencies are self-destructive. But why are men so constituted that this destructive process makes them suffer, unless it is educating to larger ends than this life, as well as eliminating? Why do they not enjoy war, the slaughter of their sons, the destruction of their property, unless the suffering part of the program is doing some- thing, which so far along the unfolding way, en- joyment has never accomplished, and cannot now accomplish? Happiness, like all other things of life, appears to be meted out to men and women but little faster than they learn to use it wisely. Why? In the compulsory learning there may be no purpose, but its effect gives it all the appearance of purpose; it serves to make men think and know, serves to strengthen wills, and particularly to make them feel, or more largely conscious. Great eliminating periods, epochal upheavals, break in upon the world from beyond the human ken, but soon after being over, somewhat higher ideals are found in action, a little more knowledge and honesty in practice, a little higher grade of feel- ing and happiness, combined with a somewhat greater strength of will, and a dawning conscious- ness that the great destruction and suffering of the epochal change could not only have been avoided, but, by educational means, far more than such up- heavals ever accomplish could have been secured for less than half the expense. Whether or not, then, struggle, discomfort and suffering were established in the program of life 80 to carve out ever larger human personalities — beings with greater expanse of consciousness and ever greater freedom in the action of the will, initiative and creative power — this is what it appears to be engaged in doing. It is the work in which the so- cial organism now appears to be instrumentally engaged. All group improvement seems to be moving to- wards ends larger than single human life service, for in all these great upheavals, many apparently innocent parties are sacrificed to gain for others something for which they pay nothing; as the sacri- fice of one generation for the next, and no more worthy, than the one sacrificed. Are the young men who fall in these battles not to have another opportunity of life in which to com- pensate them for the sacrifice which they are driven by ignorant men to make in this life? If not, there appears no good reason for believing in compensa- tion; that justice is any part of the plan to give; that life is anything but fatuous. So we are once more led to inquire if there is evidence of any directing mind back of these de- structive upheavals, if they are human-made, or appear by the action of a cosmic and educational law? And in this inquiry do we not discern a beneficent law of growth, acting through uncon- 81 scious human instrumentalities, and in the interest of their enlarging capacity and continuous sur- vival ? Could the human race step into a society gov- erned by the best ideals of today, what would it do with the occupancy? Would it not act much like a **pig in a parlor"? In other words, would it not in such a society, raise sufficient hell to fit it to its own educational needs? For many reasons, this life fails to satisfy me. I feel that I am slowly improving, but that there is not yet enough of me to satisfactorily and legiti- mately commmand either myself or my surround- ings. I see myself here learning rather than enjoying; and out in the distance, as a dimly outlined some- thing, larger and better. The master-man cannot be a mere figment of the imagination. He must be a realizable ideal, a possibility, which when realized, will be able to act within his own sphere of right, in harmonious as- sociation with others of his kind, each acting with- out conflict of function. We are all imprisoned by a limited" conscious- ness. The tremendousness of time needed to effect miracles of progressive change, we fail to grasp. Nature's aims, and her resources to achieve her 82 ends are concepts which lie beyond the human vision. There appears to be in process of forma- tion, however, a larger being through human un- foldment. Having caught in the move a larger aim, life appears in pursuit of some tremendous accomplish- ment; to be at work on a plan far too ambitious to either culminate or to be understood in this life. When contrasted with our ideal man, most per- sons appear to be struggling through a mental ado- lescence; not a small number seem to be wading in the mud of mental childhood, at play with their little red mental wagons in the midst of mighty things to do. No high degree of enjoyment has as yet been gained in the social life, the home life, the sex life or the business life, consequent upon the lack of the keenness of feeling and vision, which the wis- dom of more experience must bring. Comparative- ly few appear able to glimpse any mighty purpose, and stupendous plan in process of carving out future human happiness. 83 MUST NOT HAPPINESS BE EARNED? THE plan does not appear to be one to secure to the human being much happiness in this life for in order to do so, it would have been neces- sary to create him with a definite capacity to enjoy — with certain desires — and to have equipped his surroundings with the means to fully satisfy these desires, without the painful struggle on his part to obtain them. The plan appears to be to give happiness in this life only so far as earned, the only way ap- parently to build a freely-acting personality. In other words, the best way, and perhaps the only way, to raise man above automatic animal action, is to put him through a process which drives him and coaxes him to raise himself. Hence, in the establishment of the feeling of inconvenience, and in stubborn cases, the feeling even of suffering, is found the corrrection of erro- neous moves and wrong conduct, a suffering which the rational person of today refuses to view as a creator's punishment. Even in cases where suf- fering follows acts knowingly wrong, we cannot view it as punishment in the sense of human un- derstanding. For how can it be necessary for the power through which this universe came into ex- 84 istence to punish its own creation as a correction for its own mistakes? Are we not growing larger ? Are not the combats of life pioneering the upward way, and the hurts serving as a spur to that corrective action which is a necessity of growth? Must not this be so, for are we not yet too small in understanding to per- sonally manage the moving facts of life to the end of growth, combined with a happiness having much value ? We are small of calibre. The majority still resent being tied to a task, and yet, by making good at one's tasks, is about the only way men learn. Birth introduces us to a task, to which fitness to survive ties us. The American Indian refused to be tied to a task, and lost his inheritance. The quest of happiness is a universal pursuit, but the getting is slow of process, because we have not as yet well learned the way. The gain of happiness follows the gain of capacity to enjoy; that is, happiness follows the gain of knowledge, through which greater strength and freedom of will is gained, more reliability, increased intensity of feel- ing and power to execute. We enjoy most that which we appreciate most, because it is that about which we know most. To the extent of one's gain of general knowl- 85 edge, including science, philosophy, mathematics, psychology, music, economics, ethics and other fields of knowledge, has he enlarged his consciousness and increased his capacity to enjoy. Happiness may be conceived to be a harmonious state of mental action within the individual field of knowledge, an action that cannot be beyond consciousness. To enjoy beyond our knowledge is impossible. Knowledge must precede enjoyment. The greater the knowledge, the greater the enjoyment. For capacity to enjoy is co-extensive with knowledge of the enjoyable. The known limit of human capacity makes it appear probable that there are many things better worth knowing, than the things we think of most value. Human evolution can be expressed in terms of physiology. It means the mastication, digestion, absorption and assimilation of the things of life, as well as the elimination of the effete ; that is, the discard of that in life no longer useful, or no longer fitted to serve. Could one know something of every branch of recorded knowledge, he would have a tremendous capacity to enjoy, and be able to enjoy. So far on the way, the surplus yield of happi- ness over misery is to most persons little more than 86 enough to keep them in pursuit of a happiness they hope to realize, but which they — there are many reasons for believing — do not yet know enough to realize. So slowly do we learn, so stubborn does cur awakening appear to be, that to secure the end in view, the desire for betterment in the pro- cess of growth, must in most cases be accompanied and stimulated by a certain amount of inconve- nience, and in a few cases, a misery that can pause but little short of causing suicide. Much happiness, then, is impossible, under cir- cumstances of purposeless living, necessitating be- ing taught by suffering. When collected, classified and rationally con- sidered, are there not facts in abundance in our everyday life, to show that the discomfort of wrong moves is incessantly at work, driving us all slowly into right moves, wakefulness and improvement, and that from the present time, with increasing wakefulness, we are to work more purposefully, rapidly and comfortably into the form of improve- ment we call education? When measured by ideal conditions of happiness, there is at present comparatively little happiness in the world. This little, however, is a fact, and its increase is another fact — making greater happi- ness to come appear very probable. Increase of 87 life's conveniences, and of the capacity to receive and use appreciatively, is found taking place, and in proportion to this increase is experienced a cu- mulation of controllable happiness. In these two improvements is hidden the secret of the evolution of happiness. During the unfold- ing process, covering a time previous to the ap- pearance of much happiness, sufficient contentment is vouchsafed — granted to the life of ignorance — • not to give bliss, as is commonly believed, but enough comfort of life to keep it on the way. Su- perlative joy is the happiness of great understand- ing, and can appear, increasing in intensity, only as rapidly as ignorance ends. The method adopted by Nature allows to men the happiness they seek, in proportion to the intel- ligence used in the seeking, or the readjusting, im- provement of self and surroundings. To have learned to co-operate with this law of adaptation in the interest of increasing means and capacity to enjoy without being driven to do so, is to be in possession of the most important instru- mentality of use and progress that the experience cf life has to give. Ignorance and stubbornness are forever meeting the trouble they do not know how to manage. Refusal to learn tends to bring sufficient dis- 88 comfort to prevent laziness, stagnation, atrophy. A gain of intelligence with which to meet the new problems of life is required, and he who does not volunteer to furnish this gain, is urged to do so by some form of inconvenience, followed in cases of refusal to act, by suffering; a suffering which, if still unheeded, passes its victim on among the un- fitted to survive. When it can be clearly seen that few will learn during times of happiness; that a life of content- ment is not educating — in that the contented one feels no need of improvement — the cause of the turmoil of life can be better understood. And when generally understood, will not a con- tinuous and rapid progress be made, a fast growing happiness be found in voluntary intelligence-gaining, in the art of education, of education properly so- called ? To the extent that the ability to see the better thing ahead is gained, is the ability gained also 10 form this better thing, and make way for its adoption, by the gradual elimination of the old and less worthy. Had the men in power previous to the late great war, been able to see its coming, in the causes at work; to see the comparatively little of value it was to bring to the world for the price paid, the 89 war would not have taken place. For they would have been able to see a way to obtain this little and far more, at but a trifle of the cost of the war, and without demoralizing effect or the sacrifice of a single life. What has been painfully gained by the pursuit of war, might have been comfortably gained by the pursuit of wisdom educationally established. If not, education is impossible. The plans of those who seek purposely, termi- nate successfully and satisfactorily, in proportion to the intelligence used. Life offers the opportunity to learrij to earn sub- sisistence, and gain some happiness. It is so im- pulsed and environed as to educate, in the sense of awakening in the individual a continuously larger consciousness, a greater strength of will and increas- ing freedom of action, to the point of voluntary control of the unfolding life. Consequently, certain indispensable requirements of growth are found entering into the process, one of which is that present dreams of happiness — or, in the words of the poet, ^Xistening to the Salutation 01 the Dawn,'' must be continually interrupted by the nags of external conditions which keep alive the cosmic lure and urge within us. For could dreams come true with little effort, or were each 90 dream in its turn easily and satisfactorily inter- preted, men would soon pause in sweet content, and move on no more. The line of least resistance we call habit, then, admits of a comfortable move for a limited time only. Established in all men is a desire for change, and a tendency of this desire, acting as though in response to an airrij prevents habit-slavery from fastening itself upon and strangling the life of the mdividual, as well as of the human race, with stag- nation. Waste must be eliminated, obstructions removed from the channels along which life carries the re- building material of her evolving forms. Hence this desire for change, this unsatisfied longing in man that prompts him to travel and seek some- thing new; a change of food, climate and clothing; the feeling that does not allow him to let well enough alone, is the action of the psychological part of the habit-breaking process, and a factor of progress having tremendous value. For progress, in its process, is dual — construct- ive and destructive, and the service of habit in the process is confined to conserving constructive effects ; is dovoted to holding on, to producing fixity of structure, changelessness. Hence, habit-using needs intelligent superintending. Men tend to form hab- 91 its which master the desire for something new and prevent progressive change. All structures are but experimental forms, tentative holdings. In its fixing tendency appears the necessity, in the interest of progress, of breaking habits, as well as ol making them. Not only must bad habits be abandoned, but new habits must be formed. Higher forms, in- creasing in variety, must be forever emerging from and displacing the older and lower. In a practical and educational way, the possibil- ities therein contained are far from being fully un- derstood. If men learn, they must from time to time voluntarily change their ideas and ways of thinking, or be compelled to do so. Few have reached the larger understanding of how habit-forming and breaking may be used to effect a comfortable forward move. Few realize change to be necessary. Most men live in their early-made habit grooves, and in their conduct of life after reaching a certain age, tend to sink into a condition ever more changeless, helpless and un- comfortable; a condition in which, if life does not end prematurely, they linger on in childishness, uninteresting objects, to be humored by all about them. Likewise, in their discussions, their reading, their 92 voting, and their religious seeking, do we find the majority in a static mental condition, unable to improve, because of their habit-made pre-udices. And if in an argument, a bulwark of lies seems necessary to defend their views, they immediately proceed with the building. This slavery of prejudice or mental habit, at times emotionally manifesting, and now^ the rule of the human life, the law of progress has in pro- cess of slow correction. As, therefore, the sense-controlled and automatic actor allows his belief in short-cuts to negative bliss, and habits to gain control, he is gradually seized with unrest, filled with discomfort urging a change. But there are among us the stubborn cases of a prehistoric heritage. In many men this urge fails apparently to effect more than a fraction of its pur- pose. Consequently, to manage these, a more urgent means than the one of mere discomfort, is found established in the law of life, a sharper spur to meet the moving requirements; some form of suf- fering, such as sickness, business failure, disaster, a great war; some disturbance of sufScient size to develop the adequate intensity of feeling, to break up old habits and grasp of control in the interest of new and progressive building. 93 In a very particular way has this fact held true, and still holds true in the breaking up and removal of privilege-holding groups of men, governing groups, v^ealth producing and distributing groups, also groups of control in religion. However, once the conflict has been passed through, the old order broken up, and the readjust- ment made, the change, as a rule, is found to be for the better. The urge, as well as the lure of life, is onward. So in reviewing the experiences of his life, the pro- gressive man finds few among them, even those of the honeymoon sort, which inspire a longing desire for return. In the cinders of his experiences, he discerns but few diamonds, and in history he finds his own case paralleled. There is within us all an unsatisfied longing, a feeling that somewhere ahead there is greater hap- piness than any yet found, a feeling that we gain most by moving on. This feeling has much to do with keeping us on the move forward. In Nature's storehouse awaits the abundance to serve all of the specific needs of men. That life may be kept moving unfoldingly, the plan is equipped with irresistible inducements to keep up the species. That this task may not be shirked, Nature entices and pays for the service in the 94 glamour of love-making and the joys of honey- moon experience, followed by parental love. For a term, we find as a compensation, sweet- hearts buried by their feelings, followed by a term of parentage, in which the man and the woman are again submerged by their feelings, the interest in their children. For these children, in most in- stances, no task is found to be too arduous, no sac- rifice too great that has to do with their reaching adult age prepared for the battle of life. In ex- tremely few cases, however, does the course of the family life move smoothly on. Even parents are not allowed to stop and rest v/ith having placed the service of the family life with its lessons behind them. In proportion to their further needs, they are obliged to take other lessons of experience. Often, therefore, they are awakened from their restful feeling of having per- formed well, by a rude kick from their children, a bruise of greed or of forgetfulness, if not of ungrate- fulness or deprivation. This occurs, however, you may have noticed, much more frequently in the large families of less intelligence, than in the smaller families, where much pains have been taken to cultivate greater intelligence. Lack of preparation for marriage, over-breeding 95 and under-educating have a penalty attached, that as a rule parents must pay, in suffering from neg- lect of themselves by their children. Children thrown out into the world in ignorance are usually all through life pressed for time, for means, and often dulled in sensibility. It may well be believed that this experience of parents is a needed part of their education; for they must not only earn their joyous experiences, but by suffering, be taught to feel, also to act more wisely. As a rule, the children of such parents are considerably protected from suffering, by being somewhat oblivious to the pain which they inflict on parents. They act unconsciously and instru- mentally, rather than intelligently and purposely. Nor do they at the time realize that they, too, are acting with equal foolishness, and are likely to pass through about the same experience. Feeling, confined to the family life, tends, like all narrow fields of experience, to produce selfish- ness, in consequence of which, it often leads to dis- honesty, and it may lead to crime. It is but a short step on the unfolding way. It must, therefore, make men and women suffer, in order to arouse in them a feeling to take them further on the way to a larger inclusiveness. There seems to be a great meaning in the fact 96 that though every experience of this life tends to enlighten, to enlarge upon and to intensify the feel- ings, no experience seems to give all it should give. Perfect satisfaction, it is very probable, is nowhere felt — the urge is onward and upward — desired hap- piness always appears to be just ahead. Comfort- able settlements in life in time become palling; something more is desired, or something happens to start things moving. This imperfection of life's surroundings and of its expression, everywhere seen and felt, is by the man of understanding viewed optimistically rather than pessimistically. This dissatisfaction with self, with conditions, and with efforts in nearly every experience of life — that holds true, as a rule, of books, food, travel, farms and farmiq^-, house work, the dwelling place, climate, neighbors, calls and callers, work, government, chilcVen, discussions, plans, friends, cats and dogs — is viewed by the man of understanding, as a matter of indispensable im- portance. In fact, were it not a rule to which there are few, if any, exceptions, progress would be impossi- ble. And the greater the need of growth, the greater must be the sum of fault and imperfection found; the greater the restlessness, the change 97 sought, the disturbance experienced and the im- provement made. Have you, objecting reader (be honest in your answer), during your whole life, had many ex- periences of perfect satisfaction, many flawless dia- monds of emotion? Can you name a half-dozen, and if not, can you see therein any larger meaning? Is it a matter for repining, that only at intervals of time, the slackening of the speed of the move admits of some enjoyment, but not for long? Does there appear anything wrong in the fact that life gives but samples of happiness, allows only so much as we have earned a right of capacity to receive? Were it not that all of lifers experiences, even the most intense and thrilling, are accompanied by more or less that is unsatisfactory, would man be moved to seek further? Even in cases where re- sults are greater than anticipations, are we not thereby enabled to see unrealized possibilities, and lured and urged to reach them? Or have you, reader, reached in wisdom of se- lective contacts, and in aliveness, a degree of execu- tive power, wisdom and happiness, sufficiently high to give you, in your experiences, flawless satisfac- tion? If so, have you not reached the goal, or been discarded by progress? Before you answer, how- ever, correct any tendency you may have to over- 98 imagine, also any tendency to lie about the matter, in order to elevate yourself in the estimation of those to whom you lie. This lack of satisfaction, due to the expanse of our ideals and needs for larger growth, keeps us in pursuit. This, when fully understood, changes an- ticipation of fear to the power of joyous pursuit. The lure of anticipation rewards with the pleas- ures of pursuit, followed by the realization which brings with it the more intense and satisfactory feeling of accomplishment and possession. But no form of pursuit, however successful it may be, can in the nature of growth bring perfect and lasting satisfaction. Following each realization, a new anticipation must appear. This desire to go on serves instrumentally, and must lure men on to an increased sphere of consciousness, and ever larger accomplishments. He, therefore, who finds in the incompleteness of human accomplishment matter for complaint, has but little or no knowledge of life and its way of progress. In few experiences of life, does familiarity breed contempt in the mind where a deeper knowledge has been gained of the arrangement to store and hold the products of experience, in the form of character; enlarged capacity to do and to enjoy. 99 For with such gain, one can see even in lower orders of human conduct, that the contemptible deserves less to be condemned, being due, as it is, more largely to lack of understanding, and to that which they know not how to control, than to evil intent. Men and women are seldom as guilty as they seem. They do wrong, as we understand the mat- ter, but often unconsciously. That which they do, knowing it to be wrong, they feel to do with an intensity which they are not yet sufficiently strong in will to resist. It is impossible for any human being to use ap- preciatively, that in life which he yet lacks the capacity to understand. In a particular way does this lack of appreciation hold true of ideals of con- duct and of education. Many, therefore, are found performing unwisely, rejecting opportunities to read, to think and to act improvingly ; found abus- ing offers of advice, friendship and other matters of life too large for their capacity to admit to appreciative use or service. The too-large is always either rejected or abused by men and women, often with contempt, and the capacity better fitted with something found among a lower order of things, life and action. Whatever the seeming on the surface of things 100 may be, it is highly probable that we become Inter- ested in, pursue and capture a very close ap- proximate to the next things needed in the order ol our unfoldment. Are not the lessons of life best taught by experiences of about the right size to meet the requirements of next steps in the learning cf a larger wisdom and its consequent happiness ? For while a lesson is in progress, there is usually found forming in the mind of the learner a new desire, a larger ideal, one that nothing but a new, a larger experience, a more ambitious undertaking will satisfy; an experience which in the pursuit may bring much happiness; or it may be necessary that, in order to achieve the desired end, it involve great suffering and apparent failure. Decline of interest in objects of pursuit, begins as a rule, to take place soon after they are secured, and for the reason, very evidently, that in few cases is the thing secured or made the end. There is an ever present imperfection of human conduct, and of structure. Few, if any, ever find what they do, or say, or make, quite satisfactory. To be some- what taught by work, and to know more at the finish of a given undertaking than at the start; to find the insight clarified during the process, the foresight extended, the sphere of consciousness en- larged, is, as a rule, the reward. 101 So it is with word and deed, with things made, with acts confined to self, and with the conduct of h*fe toward others. The lesson learned in each pursuit of life — there are many good reasons for believing — is of more importance than the capture of the thing consciously pursued. In fact, the lesson learned and filed for future use, appears to be and h the prime object of all structure, speed and con- duct, // life, as it seemSj is engaged in building the larger man of the larger capacity for happiness. The correction of mistakes gives a new interest and a new lesson. The builder may be able to revise or to improve the old, with a change of parts, ,or he may be obliged (it may be cheaper) to build entirely anew, in either machinery or conduct. , The knowledge-gain of the individual cumulates; so, also, does his power to gain knowledge and to progress; that is, the more a man learns, the faster can he learn. The learning of the ignorant person, his getting a start, is slow and laborious. So it is with the races of men. It must have taken ages, nearly countless, to evolve an alphabet. Take note of its rapidly-acting power today. Hence, in the interest of their awakening change, men of little intelligence are driven from the ex- cellent opportunities, the plentiful and easy of ac^ cess, in their immediate vicinity, which they do not 102 know enough to see and make useful. It is by our lack of knowledge that we are kept unappreciative and indifferent. Through ignorance, in its various forms of manifestation, as inaction, bad temper, jeal- ousy, contempt, deceit, pretense — the feeling that perhaps nothing is worth while — we remain fitted to be displaced by those able to learn. Thus, the aborigine, not being able to grasp the value of his American continent, was displaced by a race of larger understanding. Human progress would soon stop, were there no arrangements to drive men out of their preju- dice or habit ruts, and make them learn. The same thing holds true of nations. The Great War was evidently one of Nature's epochal efforts, a world shock, in the interest of a universal habit breaking and world awakening. Had leaders of the nations engaged in the con- flict known enough to educate their people out of their prejudice ruts, and kept the average of in- telligence and honesty but a trifle higher, this war would not have been needed and allowed to take place. But they had not learned to do this, nor have they yet learned. Men and nations still in- tensify their group prejudices, instead of breaking them. On turning to labor and monopoly — labor, the 103 manual producer of wealth, and monopoly, the holder and manager of the means of wealth pro- duction — the same law of growth is found in action. The two factors, by fighting, are to learn that the fight is in no sense necessary, except to increase the capacity to see both sides and human functions and relationships in larger and right ways. The prodigal youth leaves his home for the same purpose of learning by experience. The young man of large mental calibre may need other experi- ences by finding his home too narrow and non-pro- gressive to serve his needs of growth. The less calibred youth needs to be cured of his blinding narrowness by experience. In his case, familiarity with his surroundings without understanding, has created in his mind a feeling of indifference. He may be surrounded by great opportunities, for which he feels nothing but contempt. By having caught some of the fads, fashions and ephemeral foolish- ness of his day, home, to him, may seem to be old- fashioned. By his feelings he is driven far away, and into fields where other and far more needed experiences can be obtained. Before he can return from his prodigal trip with open eyes of understanding, he must be taught by suffering; taught to feel and to learn voluntarily. 104 Ignorant, gossipy, lying country neighborhoods are thus (in the interest of their awakening) ex- plained. Few among them have had much experi- ence, and few are readers. Hence they fail to understand the larger opportunities and persons of their surroundings. But they do grow somewhat by the struggle for subsistence, and by quarreling. As a rule, men and things of large value are here under-estimated, and equals are found engaged in quarreling over the most trifling matters. If among them there happens to be born one a lit- tle wiser than the majority, he is misunderstood, usually disliked, viewed as a freak or with jealousy, lied about and driven to the city, where, though less familiarly known, he is better understood, bet- ter appreciated, and will rise nearer to his true value among those approaching his calibre. In communities where ignorance reigns supreme, men and women take offense at trifles. Once of- fended, they proceed to cherish a bitter, revengeful hatred, constitute a very uncomfortable element, and often a dangerous one in the community. Most country school teachers will understand. The con- duct of such communities is due to narrow living, narrow reading and narrow thinking. He who finds himself living in an isolated coun- 105 try neighborhood not of this kind, is to be congratu- lated. The little informed need moving; hence they are always greatly attracted by the distant in time and space, in the far-away green fields, dead and distant men, and are better served by the near and familiar, when made up of the mediocre; for they have not yet earned the right of capacity to see, to feel, to use and to enjoy the greater among the near at hand men, women, opportunities and privileges of life. It is because they have not learned the wise use of many things in life, that the majority are held at arms length by the few who understand the fact. Communities in which the average of mental and moral capacity is small, are always engaged in some form of uproar. They manage, however, to keep on living and doing, for the compunctionless ease with which all concerned can meet lie with lie, gives them a reasonable comfort of life in an en- vironment where men and women of larger mental capacity would be tremendously uncomfortable. And when this is seen as a process of awakening mind and supplying its storage battery needs, which is Nature's way of awakening that understanding without which no appreciation of people, of places, or of things can be reached, our pessimism vanishes ; for by their conduct all men are planting and har- 106 vesting about what they now need, and gradually by learning more, they will lie less, perform bet- ter, and supply themselves better for the day of future use as larger personalities. Both philosophers and scientists are started thinking and guessing by some suggestion, a point from which, or hint by which they are enticed and urged to go on guessing and thinking. Among the most evident results of human ex- perience is growth of personality. May not this fact lead us to surmise, at least, if not to rationally infer the process to be continuous through lives of re- peated embodiments of some form; lives increasing in value, but in which during their early stages little is learned in a single life, while later on much will be learned in a single life, because set about more purposefully, with increasing under- standing ? Being deliberately undertaken, education is a rapid process of unfoldment. Progress is most rapidly made in the great and thickly populated centers, where there is most of the spur of personal contact, rivalry, competition. Sparsely populated districts are as a rule conserva- tive districts. It is in great cities that most great ideals are born into action, where there have always 107 been better schools, better libraries, and during the past few hundred years, lectures and book stores. Yet strange as it may seem, comparatively few are, even yet, awakened to appreciate these oppor- tunities, and to extract therefrom high value. The many, instead — being unawakened and unguided — gravitate to the pleasure-seeking channels of self- destructive fads and vices, and call it recreation. Nearly all, evidently, are slowly improving, but for the larger part, the functioning of men is in primitive ruts. Fear of the opinions of others assists small minds, and is morally bracing. It bridles the tongue, nar- rows bad conduct, puts on a clean collar, drives to club and church joining, to the bathtub, cleans up the front yard, and makes men and women tolerable long before they are tolerant. The most important lesson of life — that something cannot be wisely and comfortably used when had for nothing — seems the most difficult one to learn. Wherever one party gains at the expense of the efFort of another, there is a loss entailed by friction, and more or less hatred on the part of the loser is engendered, and loss of self-respect on the part of the material gainer. In our ignorance, we all flit from one drastic experience to another, in search of something for 108 nothing, while failing, and learning a trifle from each experience. The dog and his master are indi- viduals, but traveling in company, each receives a very different educational product from his ex- perience; each takes up to the limits of his capacity. But so it is with men and women who travel ; the amount taken on the way is proportioned to the preparation of capacity to take: a capacity deter- mined by previously acquired knowledge. The way men view and use themselves and their surroundings, then, is a very accurate measure of the degree of their awakeness, that is, their calibre. The cynic, the sneering 'pessimist, the man with the ''chip on his shoulder," as we say, more ready to argue than to discuss, and ever ready to fight all opinions, other than the narrow ones of his own education and experience, is merely struggling across the trouble stage of the adolescent mind. He whom you find on the way with a growl and the tear-filled eyes of self-pity, you will also^ as a rule, find about the same, and to be a whining failure — a failure that is quite as much due to the errors and dishonesties of his own life, as to those of the men, the institutions and systems to which he attributes them. Often his failure is due entirely to his own error of way. Such men and women, evidently, have not as yet 109 sighted the unfolding law of life, either as to adjust- ing their surroundings to themselves, or themselves to their surroundings. A requirement of intelligent effort is found es- tablished in the laws of life. Living exacts a price, and he who in the belief that the world owes him a living, thinks he can shirk paying the price, ere long finds himself in trouble ; for life is not fatuous. Unawakened ones are far too prone to attribute their poverty, their troubles and failures of life to others, rather than to themselves; their own lack of knowledge, wastefulness and laziness. You cannot win with honesty, we are often told. As a matter of fact, however, hom many of the dishonest winnings, commonly viewed as successful, have ever been followed through to their finality? If success worth the having is ever won by dis- honest methods, our belief in moral evolution is a mistaken one. True success may not be made up of many dol- lars, but of that which has far more value. True success must be won by a gain of understanding, honest work, economy, self-reliance, firmness; and when thus won, brings money, and with it much that money cannot buy. It is a common mistake of simple minds to sup- pose that wasteful spending is true living, and leads 110 to the innumerable difficulties of indebtedness, loss of independence and failures, along the way through life. Nature appears to be trying to make something larger of us all, and she is as kind as possible in doing that which must be done, in order to meet the requirements of this aim. Reaching the place of wise and deliberate conduct of life, is a matter of slow movement, unless set about with deliberate educational effort to achieve this particular end. There is a penalty attached to prodigal use, on the one hand, and to miserly hoarding, on the other hand, each due to an unwise attitude of mind. So the reader need not imagine that his troubles are so much greater than those of most others. Even those who refrain from conduct purposely wrong, make mistakes in their learning, but they can gain greatly in strength and wisdom by fight- ing out the correction thoughtfully and largely alone. Sympathy has value, but so has lack of sym- pathy. Lack of sympathy may tend to embitter a small soul, but it cultivates sympathy in the larger one; it puts "pep'' into the character, stiffens the backbone, gives stamina, vim, snap, and the strength of mastery. This program of the human life is far from being 111 as partial on the one hand and brutal on the other as it seems. No more than the man of poverty, does it allow the man of millions to shirk and es- cape the experiences of discomfort and even of suf- fering. Experiences differ, but may we not sus- pect in all cases they take the learner through the most appropriate disturbance to reach the desired aim. The rich, no less than the poor, have their edu- cating experiences of life. Both are to obtain more therefrom when they have learned to use experience to better ends; learned their self-destructive effect of dishonesty, the futility and unmanliness of mere complaint; learned to waste less time weeping over past mistakes and failures, to spend less time and money in fighting ^ and more in educating. The man of millions earns the right to be happy, only so far as he has gained honestly what he holds ; learns that even then his possessions are held consid- erably in the nature of a loan or trust, and should be used beyond his own needs, educationally for others, rather than to exploit and take advantage cf others, or to take away their experiences, by a monopoly of their opportunities. So, too, must the poor man learn to be opulent, to demand the opportunity to build the capacity to earn and to enjoy his earnings; and the right to be 112 happy, by being true to the possibilities of knowl- edge-getting with which he has been entrusted. Nature's favorites are very largely in the seem- ing; all men are rebuked with more or less of in- convenience and suffering in the interest of their improvement, rebuked for the neglect of their op- portunities, also for the priveleges granted them, and which they proceed to abuse; the wealthy man for his efforts to monopolize and exploit, the poor man for his ignorance, self-neglect, dishonesty, hatred, and tears of self-pity. Each may find in life the experiences fitted to his growing needs, comparatively few of which the average man has learned to use understandingly and therefore wisely. Often, in the prison life a needed education is found, though one which might have been better gained in less time, for less expense, and with far more ease, had the learner known enough to stay out of prison, and to use his opportunities to proper ends. It is theoretically possible to do that which few ever succeed in doing — to act wisely, without first acting foolishly. Wise conduct must be thought- fully acquired. Practice leads toward perfection. In the making or earning of a thing, alone, can the 113 capacity be created to understand, to appreciate, to wisely use and enjoy the thing. To the extent that something for nothing is ob- tained — like sudden prosperity, an unearned for- tune, unearned wages, or by stealing— -does the re- cipient thereof become prodigal and meet trouble. Those who learn to use themselves and their sur- roundings wisely and bravely, truly succeed. The too-timid to claim his own, must be kicked into the braver attitude of self-reliance, self-appreciation, and use. The selfish types who greatly over-esti- mate themselves, and the value in the world of their service to others, progress has in hand to humiliate into a sane and wholesome modesty — even Napo- leons are taught this lesson. In awakening timid persons to their true value, they are often better served with the heroic treat- ment which the world gives them, than with words of encouragement from the kindly disposed. Nature has a treatment for each case in her uni- versal program of happiness-earning. To praise the one of small calibre, flatteringly, to boost, and to pay him more than he earns, to trust him with a kindly consideration beyond his understanding and appreciation, and therefore beyond his deserts, is certain to lead him into an over-estimate of him- self ; often to abuse the kindness, even to become an 114 enemy of the one who gives the treatment. Parents having an only son or daughter frequently make this mistake, and are sometimes cured by its results. Comfortable, appreciative use must come with the earning and the learning. In all departments of the human life, the swag- ger of ignorance may be observed in men in the event of their having secured unearned or easily acquired prosperity. Few seem able to use any newly acquired form of power discreetly, or when en first discovering some new power within them- selves, to hold back the egotism and dishonesty which it tends to evoke. To obtain the means of considerable independ- ence is of very great importance in this life, if used, as it quite frequently is not used, in the in- terest of self-improvement, as well as in other le- gitimate ways. For the discovery of one's ability to secure some independence, means the discovery of a new power, the use of which must be learned. In the meantime, while the learning is on, the *'swell of the head'' needs watching. Poverty means that the right of capacity to be rich has not been earned ; and is not necessarily a praiseworthy condition. 115 In present conditions and events can be seen evidence of great lack and great wrong. Great possessions are not praiseworthy holdings, unless obtained by honest means, and used in fair- ness and without ostentation. All humane persons feel that the two extremes of wealth and poverty should not exist, but the facts must be recognized, and when more philosophi- cally and deeply considered, lead us to see that all this inequality will pass away as fast as these ex- tremes learn what honest earning and honest use will do to bring happiness to all. Toward this dream or distant picture, men are slowly moving, and by fighting rather than by vol- untary efforts conducted with intelligence and hon- esty. Let us not imagine, then, that this tremendous struggle in which the world is now engaged, is nearing the end. It has a great work to perform, and appears at this stage of human unawakeness, to be the only means of education that can be suc- cessfully employed. We are awakened to the use of our means of self-protection, taught to feel re- spect for the rights of others, by being fleeced. So long as we act on the belief of a brutal fitness to survive as being the best, we must live and learn our lessons in a world of brutal conduct. 116 If the majority reap comparatively little benefit from present gain of progress, whom have they to blame but themselves? For their deprivation is due to a system which they in their waste of means and spare time in pursuit of pleasure, self-indulged lazi- ness, and therefore ignorance, allow to persist while they are deluged with abundance of information, which, if heeded, learned and used, would enable them to get together and install a system in which no tyranny, slavery and poverty could exist. This system is in process of evolution. To its establishment men are being driven. It means one to be; one not of ever greater compulsion, but of ever greater individual independence of action. When a man has become wise, he will be reliable. When all men become wise, all will be reliable, all free, all rich. The apparent intent, then, of this struggle of life, is to awaken, to evolve human character of a higher class, and to the end of a more remote and larger happiness. Every social system — monopol- istic, monarchial or socialistic — that interferes with freedom to compete, will be found want- ing, and ultimately will be cast off among the un- fitted to survive, with tremendous suffering of all concerned. 117 To the extent of this struggle, through which the laws of life come to be understood, events an- ticipated and used as opportunities, will rapid for- ward movement be made, harmony of action creep in, and happiness be secured. But for some time to come, we may look for most initial steps to be taken blindly, moved largely from behind the scenes of life, beyond human knowledge and will. The cultivation of self-reliance without being driven, is a matter of great importance. In learn- ing to do for ourselves that which we now employ high-priced quacks to do for us, we gain in strength of will and wisdom, and remove the necessity fox lawyers, doctors, failures, religious revivals, pris* ons, police and war. In this way the attachment, detachment and re- attachment, through which feeling and correct use are evolved, run through all life; and the evident purpose is an educational one — the learning of les- sons by way of many experiences — it is the push and the pull of progress. This feeling of enough of a thing; this desire for change, for something new and better, is made up of that repulsion and attraction which makes possible construction and reconstruction in all the forms of life's expression, and should be used with 118 understanding. Except for this very important iconoclastic urge and reconstructive lure, life could never in its action depart from the line of least re- sistance; never could it throw off the bondage of habit, of prejudice, of dogma, get out of its ruts and go on with better and higher building, to the end of a higher happiness. 119 OF WHAT, THEN, IS LIFE IN PURSUIT? IN former chapters it has been shown that all life is born into surroundings where surviving needs cannot be met without effort. Thus, through action which is largely compul- sory, do human beings become individual; uncon- sciously they are driven onward and upward into conscious control and direction of their unfoldment into higher conditions of existence. Possibly, as referred to in a former chapter, some way other than the one of compelling them to make all this improvement for themselves might have been established. This way, however, serves to confer responsibility, to strengthen and free the action of the will, to drive and coax man onward and upward, and on the way to a cumulation of knowledge, and increasing reliability of word and deed. A being capable of creating and setting in mo- tion this universe, should be able to devise the best plan for human unfoldment — a small part of the creation. And in viewing this work in the light of present gain of knowledge, it seems safe to as- sume that this, the evolutionary way of life, is a most excellent way; the best so far, as we are yet able to conceive, possibly the only way. 120 In the natural tendency of man, and in the urge and lure of his surroundings, may be seen all the equipment necessary to make his improvement pos- sible and continuous. Subsistence must be earned, and by his own efforts. So must his surroundings be fitted to serve his needs. He is so constituted as never to be able to reach sufficient perfection in his earnings and fittings, to give complete satisfac- tion. Since he does not particularly like work, he seeks by work to get rid of work along lines of least resistance, seeks to find ever easier ways to supply his needs and to gratify his desires. Thus does he keep moving and improving both himself and his surroundings. In the meantime, he grad- ually learns to like work, and goes on emerging ever more completely .out upon the plane of volun- tary and comfortable action. All along the way, while being enticed to im- prove by his desire for less and better work, and for better things, he is encouraged to proceed with successful effort. The discomfort of his compul- sory struggle, of his dissatisfaction with himself, with what happens, with what he has and what he does, drives him to improve both himself and ni? surroundings. All self-improvement appears to be made possible through the instrumentality of the nerve lines of 121 the body, back over which the experiences of life are passed, to be stored in the form of memory and feeling, not only as organic results, but also as psy- chological results, in the subsconscious mind or mem- ory. This storing process of the nervous system seems to stand at the head of its functions. Prog- ress appears to be a psychological process, rather more than a physical one, or we may say that all improving results manifest naturally through a psy- chological process. In the unfolding, building seems to work by reflex, from the within to the without, more than the reverse. This bustling, stinging, excruciating discipline of life, which refuses to let up for a moment, is an educative process, dual in action, and works by external stimulation and internal response. Thus, a desire for accomplishment builds up from within, with the knowledge, the energy and the will of creative action. Increase of understanding appears as the central achievement of human living; fitness to survive de- pends upon observing the law in conformity there- with. Each individual is found equipped with suf- ficient freedom of will to improve or not to im- prove, and he will decide to improve as fast as he is driven to understand that on improvement de- 122 pends increase of means, capacity to enjoy, and fitness to survive. Suffering cannot be intended as punishment in the sense in which human beings use the term. It serves, however, to promote and protect progress, by making the way to happiness understood and felt. In that it is a warning discomfort in times of inaction, it tends to promote action to stimulate production and to protect the product. Or we may speak of it as a reminder through which attention is arrested, and errors of way corrected. For, in our lack of efforts to learn, we encounter the consequences of sickness, of poverty, warfare and unreliability by which we are taught to make the effort to learn ; taught the better ways of volun- tary improvement. In our efforts to improve, we also make mistakes^ and learn to correct them by the inconvenience entailed. It is by the discomforts of wrong living, that most right living is taught, and the lessons repeatedly taught, until finally turned into practice, much as in the evolution of the lower animals. The rat still survives, by having evolved much persistence, and by the retention of some power of adaptation; that is, it is somewhat intelligent and not quite automatic in its action; it learns from its mistakes, and the majority of men have learned 123 to do but little more. Can the inconvenience to which life subjects the rat be viewed, in any sense, as what orthodox Christians call punishment, or even in quite the sense of what Theosophists call Karma? Is it not due rather to the adaptive strug- gle? First acts are seldom right, and never perhaps quite satisfactory, even when right, till verification has been obtained by trying one or more wrong ways. Thus are lessons learned ; thus do men evolve an equipment of voluntary education, an alphabet, a printing press, a supply of books, of magazines, of papers, and of schools. The established plan unfolds human intelligence, and the free action of the will to make intelligence useful; it also unfolds moral conduct to make life enjoyable, consequently, to achieve the end in view, the program must leave open the way for all to be about as lazy, as dishonest and as criminal as they choose. It must also, for the same educational purpose, permit freedom to all to shirk, to lie, to cheat and to fight. It does not, however, allow the unpleasant con- sequences thereby entailed to be avoided. Could these be shirked, the plan would be frustrated, for the lessons would not be learned. Though the evolution of human personality takes 124 place under conditions ot freedom to seek and find the law of its own unfoldment, few among us have reached that stage of personal growth when great lessons can be learned in comfortable ways. Not many have learned to reason their way back from the ills of life to even their immediate causes, and extremely few can reach causes which lie somewhat more deeply imbedded. For this same lack of reason, few can see and plan far ahead; few can generalize, few seem able to see with sufficient clearness to prevent by reform the bad future results now in preparation by their present conduct of life. Hence, the prevalence of sickness, revolution and war, ignorantly prepared. The program of this life appears to be one of awakening, by building the capacity to see in larger ways, rather than one to enjoy the trifling capacity already gained. The human concept of duration being a very lim- ited one, the move in the direction of happiness- gaining appears to be a very slow process, and as a m.atter of fact, present gain, or the gain made large- ly by experience or practice, is slow, when compared with what might be accomplished by experiment, educationj efforts to improve, more intelligently, earnestly and honestly undertaken. In the early ages, the discomfort of being driven 125 through experience to learn was viewed as punish- ment, at the hands of an unseen power, and in the human sense of punishment; the fact, apparently, which in part gave birth to the devil and hell of all the religions thus equipped that have ever arisen among men. Life may be better viewed, we think, as made up of learning from the discomforts of experience. To make this learning more deliberate and pur- poseful, lessens the trouble and constitutes the wis- dom of life and action. The feeling of apprecia- tion, and therefore of enjoyment, comes by way of the effort that brings not alone bread and butter, but greater wisdom, more freedom, expanse of consciousness. The fact that the speed of the improving process is allowed to move more slowly than it need move, is due largely to the reluctance of parting from the old, the prejudice-clinging of the affections to old forms and modes of action, the **hold-on'* of the mind, the static psychology that accompanies and retards the move of all bettering change. It is well, however, to keep in mind the evidence that, in part, the slowness is in the seeming; that evolution is at work on a plan for human welfare far too mighty to be carried out in accordance with 126 our limited understanding of size and quickness. Progress has far to go, much to do. Why are we all held in slavery by the persistence of institutions that make men unreliable — when honesty and freedom could be easily doubled with a few simple changes that would make it pay men to be honest — unless all this slavery and unTiappiness is doing something for men that freedom and hap- piness could not accomplish? Will not this condi- tion for some time continue? Can tt change for the better faster than higher ideals are made to lead? Plainly, to men to whom living means no more than the present life with its gain and grati- fication, life can give no great amount of happi- ness. In so far as one has learned to volunteer improve- ment instead of waiting to be driven to improve, so far has he learned one among the very important lessons of life. In all life there is a requirement of improving change, that serves better in the human life and all its appurtenances, if recognized and made at its first appearance of being needed. Waiting entails a loss in the form of delayed use of the new, also a loss of time that must be given to the expensive breaking up and removal of time accumulations of . waste and dead forms, as may be observed in sick- 127 ness and failure, in the home and the business life of the individual, and in the national life in the form of revolutions and other forms of warfare. Men in groups and as individuals, are forever mov- ing onward into situations where more highly or- ganized forms are required as instrumentalities of progress, or even of continued survival. The delay of progressive political and economic changes by the creation and working retention of special privileges, is a stupidity largely responsible for bringing about revolutions and international wars. Why, then, the formation, why the retention, why the blindness, if happiness in this life, rather than knowledge-gaining, is the creative aim? For even the privilege-holding beneficiaries, not utterly blind, should be able to see that happiness for them- selves as well as for the majority is impossible, ex- cept through the instrumentality of a system grant- ing ^^equal rights to all and special priviliges to none." Men are not equal, but they have in the nature of things, equal rights. In whatever direction we seek, the program of this life appears planned to give only enough en- joyment to hold human interest while passing through the discomfort necessary to build capacity to take large enjoyment and receive greater happi- ness than this life is able to give. 128 In order to render endurable the discomforts that accompany the destructive discard of the things of life no longer fitted to survive, the involuntary exchange of the poorer factors of progress for the better, men set up psychological sedatives or totem poles in great number and variety of form, instead of meeting as they are slowly learning to do, each requirement of the law of change at its inception. Back in the dim ages, sun worship, star worship, sex worship, nature worship were in vogue ; later on many other guesses were made, evolved and in- stituted, coming down to Buddhism, Christian Sci- ence, New Thought, etc. So that life, on the whole, is becoming more pur- posefully conducted, because more thoughtfully, more philosophically, more scientifically and com- fortably conducted. Men are making for them- selves better gods, or better expressed god concepts, because the image, the ideal man after which they pattern their gods is improving. The enlightening of men, is by making them reliable, putting their devils out of business, and enabling them to improve without the assistance of a devil. The present sum of human knowledge has been gained very largely by the undirected struggle of life ; it is more a product of occupational experience than of deliberate effort to learn. Most of what 129 we are and have today, has been picked up and passed along during the days that are past; future men and possessions are being more purposefully carved out in the struggle of today, with the assist- ance of education. Slowly is it being learned that the highway leading most directly to freedom is the one of voluntary enlightenment. To voluntarily acquire good health and the abil- ity to work easily, cheerfully and skillfully, is to achieve a very large measure of freedom and com- fort of life, while lack of effort, or work under protest, usually brings trouble. Yet the majority still learn of the short way at the end of the long way, and all learn through some form of imposed slavery, largely self-imposed or allowed. Some learn their lessons mobilized, others in the treadmill of the family life, the pro- fessional or the business life, while a few must yet be awakened by a term in the penitentiary. The rule of life is that so far, lond and expert- sive ways are taken to learn short lessons. Why unless during the time of learning the obvious lesson, the process is of necessity a slow one, be- cause something not so obvious is being gained, a larger capacity, a capacity to receive happiness which the smallness of present capacity will not admit? 130 Progress does not appear to be satisfied with either present human ability to do or capacity to enjoy. Awakening instrumentalities, therefore, are not mistakes, and they may be seen in operation and in abundance all about us, with beneficent psychologi- cal attachments of only-way religions, to keep men and women endurable to themselves and to others. For if, during the time of the smarting experiences of their awakening, they were not held in check by their fears of' men, institutions, and totem poles or god concepts, each would be a menace to the other. Though compulsory or warfare education always comes high, to teach big lessons it seems to be nec- essary; and w^e manage to meet our tuition fees with church support, bonds, mortgages, installment- buying, interest, personal property tax, rents, bank monopolies, and by investing in other high-priced shoddy and quackery, for we are evidently but on the way, struggling through present-day stupidities to something larger. Many men take advantage of other men, when and where they find they can do so, and see no penalty attached. And in cases where these others are driven by wrong to learn to protect them- selves against wrong, they survive themselves among the fitted to survive. 131 Warfare, apparently,-"is meeting some require- ment of group education, and must continue until such time as all the lessons have been learned that quarreling between individuals, conflict between and within groups, and warfare among the nations can teach. Only by assuming the purpose of life to be edu* cational, with the working process so far chiefly in- voluntary, can what we find in life, including mon- opoly, misguiding monopoly-controlled newspaper education, and warfare, be explained with any sat- isfaction, for all the facts of life contribute their testimony in evidence thereof. In no way but as an educational function, are we able to explain most of the facts of leadership. However much a leader of men may know, he is allowed to accomplish comparatively little, for the educational requirements of his constituency pre- vent a wisdom of service much beyond the average of intelligence and honesty. To obtain place, the leader must first subscribe to the dominant religion of his day, and as a repre- sentative, he must lead his church, club, city, state and national group "into and through sufficient dis- honest, infernal, and foolish experience and suf- fering, to meet their expectations and the require- ments of their educational needs. 132 For instance, no man, however great his wisdom might be, could become president of the United States without first creating the impression that he subscribes to the Christian religion. Whether by design or otherwise, out of the struggle of life, improvement emerges as an effect.. In this world of abundance, it has taken countless ages of want and suffering to teach men to produce much to useful ends. Other ages have passed and are passing in teaching them to distribute these products with honesty. How much longer does this fight need to con- tinue, to bring about sufficient awakening to make men reasonably just and honest? What form must it assume, how intense must it become, what degree of revolutionary destruction must take place in reaching the pause, and the time of intelligent and honest reconstruction? The answer must be given speculatively, for we do not know the dimensions of the plan, the size of the achievement, nor quite the density and stub- bornness of the ignorance to be overcome on the way. 133 THE COSMIC URGE WITHIN US CAN these philosophies of life, then, which advocate the retirement of the individual from the broad highways of conflict to the secluded by- ways of life, be of the wisest? If so, why are things as we find them? Comparatively few who believe in our back-to- nature theories, retire to the Walden Ponds of life. For there resides within us all a forward lure, and within our surroundings an urge, a proclivity here and a necessity there, which will not allow us to find much satisfaction in seclusion. Even the din of warfare is yet attractive to many, who attribute this attraction to their red blood, instead of to the fact of an adolescent mind. Note the difficulty with which a physically ma- tured young man is kept on the farm. We find him drawn by an irresistible desire into the stren- uous life, lured to seek expression in the maelstrom of traffic, drawn into the bustling current of the streets by the feeling that he must take part in the turmoil and the strife; that he must step into the struggle where rapid change takes place; and glad- ly does he change his palling silence, deadening, changeless contact, for noise, variety and rapid motion, even though it may tire, worry and bring disaster. 134 There he may not live as long, but he lives more largely and intensively to the purpose of his im- proving needs, while he does live. Man is a social being, impelled to seek unfoldment in the pleasures and tortures of personal contact, to seek the experi- ences that evolve the better physical, mental and moral man, to make up the larger personality. Freedom appears, harmony creeps in, comfort of social action develops as fast as capacity unfolds, and mutual understanding is reached, through sym- pathies and a knowledge of facts learned and' held among men in common. Toward this end, no other one factor of progress has served so largely as the printing press. Do not those who deny that present civilization is of a more highly evolved grade than any of those by which it has been preceded, fail to recognize the tremendous civilizing power given to the present by the printing press? To this wonderful fastener and disseminator of knowledge, is chiefly due the fact that a citizen living in the storm and bustle of today has an opportunity to learn more in one year, than a citizen in the days of Ancient Rome lived and learned in two, possibly five years. For we have moved on, through an evolving change chiefly psychological. Men are awakening by print- ed page suggestion. In their early stages they imi- 135 tate, and we speak of their ^'aping/' meaning that the lower animals are realized to improve by imi- tation. It is due chiefly to the printing press, that a far larger degree of general intelligence, of mutual understanding and freedom of group action has been reached than in any former age of the world, though it appears to be but at the beginning. With the printing press as a means of gaining further intelligence, and a better understanding within and among large competing groups of men and women, it is very doubtful if ever again it will be possible for any group of religious fanatics, any political party, combination of monopolistic rascals, or any nation led by a half-insane bunch of greedy, bullying egotists, to arise, sufficiently large in num- ber, intensity of belief and power, to dominate the world and plunge it into a darkness such as it passed through during the Middle Ages; and this, not- withstanding the menace of monopolistic wealth on the one hand and monopoly-tending socialism on the other, both of which must be watched continu- ously and fought back by the saner freedom-holding element. In spite of the monopoly of paper to prevent it, the printing press has a great progressive work before it. So have other forms of education. 136 The most evident function of the experiences of this life is to teach lessons. The more men are driven to learn, the faster do they volunteer to learn. Rather, then, than recline negatively during the day in some protected nook, is it not better to act purposefully, to return from the day's work with something having been learned, something ac- complished, even though at the expense of being tired, and with a headache? If you, reader, happen to be laboring under the influence of some of these semi-truthful "back-to- nature" philosophies, meanwhile, blaming yourself for remaining in this bustle of life, you may, by thinking, come to realize that you are acting in re- sponse to an urge and a need within you calling for a much larger and more active conduct of life than this reverting, negative philosophy of '^back-to- nature." This active life is ours. What we need is the education of experience in an active life, rather than retirement; more education, properly so-called, to the end of more intelligence, more self-control to act within the turmoil, more initiative and posi- tiveness to demand the opportunity to act more fully, honestly, wisely and comfortably. Why is it that men and women so often turn back to the superstitions of their childhood in re- 137 ligion, when they become old and good for little, or when they have failed to learn what they might have learned? Have they not, by having acquired fixed habits, become lazy and inactive, loaded them- selves with dead matter, lost their power to make energy and to improve; in consequence of which, getting through with life by slow suicide? Is this dream of perpetual youth a delusion, or the beckoning of a realizable ideal? Few in this life learn half what they might learn, and what men will some day come to learn in the time of a longer and better conducted single life. To become more fully conscious of life's unfold- ing way, is to keep more closely in pursuit of our best ideals. For, in this unfoldment, discoveries and inven- tions break in upon the consciousness through life's contacts, and make trouble for men in the propor- tion that their use is thoughtlessly learned. So it is found to be with the birth of ideals. Their evolution into practice is slow and trouble- some unless thoughtfully undertaken. Every act is preceded by the birth of the idea by which it is prompted; hence every invention is the materialized form of a mental prototype, made up of ideas. Even in learning a trade, knowledge of what to do, must 138 precede the doing, and the more deliberately made, the better. In education, theory precedes practice, and the better the theory is learned, the more wisely con- dected will be the practice that follows. The way to all human achievements is pioneered by the thought manipulation of ideas, consequently no man can ever express his thoughts quite as fast and as well as he can think them. The idea is the lure of the pioneering mind ; it is a picture that breaks in upon the consciousness, or is set up by that mental power which makes pro- gressive change possible. Hence, the idea is the building material of the imagination. It appears as a forerunner, not as a realization, as something to practice reaching, for — a lure to keep up human interest. The realizations of today were once but ideals — the hopes of remote yesterdays. The ideals of today are the possible realizations of some remote or near tomorrow. Ideals seek tangible expression through the mind ; as ambitions, as the call of a picture to be painted, 2 song to be sung, a gold mine to be prospected, a machine to be invented, a book to be written, a speech to be made, a farm to be tilled, a thought to be expressed, each of which, from the day of its 139 inception in the mind, to the day of its appearance in some tangible form, keeps clamoring for ex- pression. So is kept up the march of ideals, by the improving change of self and society, changes in both of which, though taking place at an accelerated rate of speed, are still slow of process, when compared with what in all probability the move will become in a not very remote tomorrow, when ideal-realizing as well ?s forming has become the more particular concern of education. Through this uproar and expensive conflict car- ried on between those who desire change and those who are opposed to change — both sides largely ig- norant of the right thing to do — many of the best among men, women and ideals of today are denied normal expression. Nature effects her wonders of improving change through a process of continuous reconstruction, a simultaneous move of construction and destruction, which, without creating more disturbance than the birth-pangs of growth, leaves behind it a product of improvement to show for its effort. This — Nature's method — we are long in becoming wise and honest enough to adopt in education; we are long in learning to refuse to fix upon ourselces, or to have fixed upon us rigid forms of conserva- 140 tism, which must be broken up and cast aside all at one time by some murderous conflict, long in learn- ing to adopt that which will make for quiet and comfortable progress. So, do we find man, as an individual, long in learning better than to load himself with physical, intellectual, moral and spiritual garbage, long in learning not to fix upon himself habits of killing prejudice that cannot be cast aside. The arrival of very intense efforts to educate, appears to lie some distance in the future. Warfare, turmoil and suffering must serve their allotted time in making of men as educational factors, what progress has in view, by driving them to see that each great question of life has two sides. At present in action may be seen on the one side groups of blind reformers, performing with but little intelligence. We have with us the great army of weeping sentimentalitsts ; those, also, of the loud, denouncing, screaming, destructive sort. The same lack of understanding explains the con- duct of the smaller company on the other side, made up of the stubbornly selfish, monopolistic, grasping and holding types of men. Since education is likely to be some time in giv- ing to men sufficient general knowledge ; knowl- edge of philosophy, of science, of history, and par- 141 ticularly of political economy, to enable them to realize that the conservative and the progressive are the two inseparable halves, the complementary factors of unfolding life in all its forms, much conflict may yet be looked for. Warfare, the school of ignorance, greed and dis- honesty, is a tremendously expensive institution at which to educate. It is, however, encouraging to reflect that as a school, it is slowly unfitting itself to survive, slowly disintegrating, slowly effecting self-destruction, slowly giving way, by slow suicide, to the splendid ideals even now making their way into life and action. Reform, however, is in part made to appear a slow process by the rapid march of our ideals; how rapidly the speed of progress is increasing, may be somewhat realized with the ability to look back through history over the toilsome and wreck-strewn pathway of all the bettering changes made previous to our time. And with a knowledge of psychology and of political economy, it would be possible to see something of how slowly we are improving, when compared with the speed that might be reached, with sufficient knowledge of psychology and of true political economy to enable men to act as a unit, ar.d consequently without fighting. Such knowledge would also act as an excellent 142 nerve tonic for impatient, would-be reformers, and would soon set up a wiser and more comfortable re- form move. Without yet having learned it use, this generation holds in its educational storehouse all knowledge of importance which has been gained during the ages left behind us, and in the ground rent which it now allows to flow into private pock- ets, to create disturbance, it has the funds of its application. Awakening appears to take its own time. Mental gain has always waited, and must still await the slow move of physical adjust- ments. Though practice cannot and should not be expected to keep pace with theory — the real to over- take the ideal — yet practical application should be kept in active pursuit of the ideas by which progress is pioneered. To the degree that men approach right action, do they find comfort; to the degree of their de- parture therefrom, or to the extent of their wrong action do they meet with discomfort. When viewed from the surface, these effects of the two kinds of action, the good and the bad, seem to be reward and punishment, in the human sense of understanding. But when seen to accompany the unfolding process of all life, and mterpreted as Nature's way of making her educational intent 143 or plan known through feeling — comfort and dis- comfort — is to have reached, we think, a far more rational view of their meaning. For he who fails to provide himself with the specific demands of life — the objects of his desires — with food, with clothing, with a place to sleep, with friends, with amusement, with a pursuit, with information, with a strengthened will, fails to equip himself with toleration, with honesty, reliability, with self-control, with a variety of things to enjoy, and even with things of ambitious endeavor, finds himself in a very much worse dilemma than when he works to provide them. Earnest, honest en- deavor certainly brings, on the whole, an enjoyment of life which is never reached by the shirker. Whether rich or poor, living requires action from all. In time, all are driven to learn that even when acting up to their best, the end of each finished piece of work, or specific conquest is reached with a feeling of comfort, made up of about two-thirds satisfaction and one-third of disappointment; while failure to live up to the best, adds embarrassment to disappointment, and often an entailment of suf- fering. In his belief that he is the victim of '*hard luck," we find the lazy man with tears of self-pity trying to obtain help from some worker, and because he 144 finds it difficult to be honest, he does not mind get- ting it for nothing. Nearly every man of action, of thrift, and of generous impulse, knows the lazy man by having cried to help him, and in return for his generosity, by having met not only with loss, but often with ingratitude, entire lack of appreciation, and in some cases, treatment of a still meaner kind, particularly in case assistance has been rendered in a charitable way. Of course, much of the poverty of the world, and much of the dishonesty, may be traced to bad eco^ nomic co7iditions, but so may bad economic condi- tions be traced to dishonesty, and both can be traced to a cause — still more remote — that of ignor- ance. Undeniably, the majority of those in need are reaping what they have sown. As a rule they are shirkers; they are too lazy either to learn or to earn, too unwise and extravagant to save for an emergency, and need their lessons of distress as a spur to awakening action. The rebuking experience meted out to the man who comes to the rescue, seems to argue very strong- ly that by his act he has broken a natural law. There are social problems to solve, but so, also, are there individual problems to solve, consisting of self-improvement and self-support. There is a 145 sphere within which each, in order to meet the nat- ural requirements of his own unfoldment, must work things out for himself, for the law of life's action and growth is such that no one can appre- ciate that for which he puts forth no effort. Man finds himself so constituted and environed, that he can and must act; and apparently, until such time as action becomes a pleasure, since refusal is invariably met with rebuke, in the form of some difficulty. The reward of work he finds to be growth and enjoyment; and by an effort of the will, directed by reason, he ultimately finds that laziness can be overcome. Since, then, work appears to be an established and indispensable requirement of growth and sur- vival, it follows that he who does for another that which appears to have been cosmically planned for this other to do for himself, breaks a natural law, involving the payment of a penalty, which, as noted above, cannot be shirked. It also follows that he who selects himself to act as the keeper of his brother's personal affairs, fails to understand the law of life and action. In any community where some men need to act as keepers of other men, this need can usually be traced back to some ignorance or dishonesty resulting in de- privation. Nature says to us all. ^'Hands off your 146 brother^s personality, as well as his possesssions. I am his better keeper. If your brother needs you as his keeper, it is most likely only because of some wrong having been perpetrated — because he has either directly or indirectly been despoiled by you or others. Allow him a chance, and I will attend to his laziness. Except in self-protection against his aggressions, hands off your brother and his be- longings, or the penalty is yours." Any individual may legitimately offer informa- tion to another; advice ^ when called for, suggestion or education, but to go further in dictating the use of all this, means trouble for the dictator. For a very good reason. Nature rebukes the med- dler. Our charities, and most of our well-meant gifts are shown to be wrong by a lack of apprecia- tion on the part of the recipient, and even by the resentment of those upon whom we try to impose them. To do a brother's work for him, to give him that which will enable him to shirk the best gifts in life, his work lessons, tends to injure L)oth parties to the transaction. Prodigal sons art cultivated. They are petted, pampered, neglected and spoiled sons; as a rule they are spendthrifts, by not having been taught thrift, and appreciation of means with work and economy. 147 Than the quickly gained money of the unearned for- tune or successful gamble, there is no more deadly enemy of thrift, morality and progress in action among men. Dwellers of the tropics are Nature^s prodigals, reserved for the inspection and enlighten- ment of those who, when given effects, can find the cause. Whatever supplies the needs of men without work, before they have learned to like work; what- ever enables them to shirk the natural consequences of their acts, deprives them of their indispensable educational discipline of life. Hence, reformatory prohibitions, coercions, sup- pressions, and charities fail in their aims — they are wrong in principle, and are made to seem right only because of the existence of great injustice in the world. Charity is made necessary by laziness and ignor- ance on the one hand, and on the other hand, by the dishonest, monopolistic exploiters of men, who operate beyond the short, dust-dimmed sight of those whom they despoil. Despoliation would be impossible, were the ma- jcrity of men sufficiently well taught in political economy to understand so simple a thing as the rental value of land, and the way of its making. This once understood, the greed of comparatively 148 few men could not deprive the millions of their means of education, opportunity for action, and legitimate expression of life. Despoliation, how- ever, is possible, and because men are uninformed, not yet sufficiently awakened to rise above the preju- dices of the false education imposed upon them by their exploiters, to set up independent thought, and throw off the yoke peacefully. Life's expression is of two kinds — individual and social. As an individual, you have a natural right to advise your brother, when advice is called for, but not to coerce him. So long as he remains sane, and his conduct affects none but himself, you have no moral right to restrain him from acting as seems to him best, even to the extent of making what you call a "fooF' of himself, for this is the way he learns. Rebellion is the product of some form of frus- tration, such as prohibition, coercion, suppressed ac- tion of individual will, injustice; of such laws and their administration as strengthen in men the evil which they aim to weaken. A brother deprived of his right to keep himself, becomes a rebel, and in the eyes of a large body of sympathizing friends, a martyr. Consequently, a rebel leader is, as a rule, a brother deprived of his personal rights. In cases where charity does not arouse resentment n the in- 149 dividual, it tends further to weaken or to destroy his last spark of ambition and self-respect. The complaintj even, of the faithful son, tends to make the prodigal son appear to the unthinking to be a victim of wrong; thus winning for him a v/ide circle of sympathizers, who on his return, slaughter the ^'fatted calf"; for the many are prodi- gal. Unlike the faithful son, whose superiority of- fends it, the prodigal element affiliates on a lower plane of life, near the stench and the tumult of the ebb and flow of the human tide. Progress sanctions, even requires, restraint of conduct on the part of some, which deprives others of their legitimate freedom to act. There will be no more wars, when men have learned to practice sufficient restraint to act reliably, each remaining within his own individual sphere of right. Usurp- ative meddling and coercion are destructive of happiness. This same thing holds true in the matter of in- formation giving. Information, including advice, may be comfortably taken by thinking men, when offered in the form of suggestion, but when forced upon them dogmatically, even when of the best, is taken by few other than negative minds. Nature has set up in her law of progress an endeavor to protect the unfoldment of individuality, 150 by instituting in the individual a feeling which makes him resent deprivation, also the commands, particularly the arbitrary commands, which would, if complied with, prevent the free action of his will. Consequently, most attempts to manage the af- fairs of others, meet with rebuke and failure. We respect the democracy of the horse, his right to select for himself, when on being led to the water he refuses to drink, while often failing to pay the same respect to our fellow man. Independent action provides for the unfoldment of individuality, and is the most fundamental law of education. The mind of the child, therefore, should not be dogmatically managed, but led by suggestion — not driven out, not lifted and carried out, but stirred into sufficient wakefulness to improve by its own efforts. The freedom to act needs careful guarding. Con- sequently, dogmatic education, coercion, prohibi- tions are wrong in principle. They are resented by the average person, and rejected by all those who equipped with natural proclivity, are unfold- ing into a larger understanding. 151 €/ CARTER PRINTING COMPANY 1630 SEVENTH AVE. tbvie^^ A LIST OF HELPFUL BOOKS I am carrying continuously about six thou- sand volumes of stock along the particular lines of practical psychology, such as New Thought, Theosophy, Christian Science, Divine Science, Spiritual Healing, Mental Medicine, Psycho- Therapeutics, Suggestion, Yogi Philosophy and Spiritualism, as well as all sorts of physical bet- terment books, such as books on breathing, exercising, eating and dieting, fasting and bath- ing; other books touching on all phases of the personal winning of good health and of keep- ing it. I have also books on Astrology. Palmistry, Mind Reading, Clairvoyance. Of course this de- partment is but a fraction of my stock, as I have about ninety thousand volumes well shelved and classified for easy inspection. In the following list the postage has not been added to the prices: The Pocket Dietitian. By Dr. J. H. Tilden. A famous little book which continues to be a general favorite. Price $1.00. The Elixir of Life. By Mirza Murad Ali Beg. A brief consideration of the means by which a longer human life can be secured. Price in paper 25c. Atlantis. By Ignatius Donnelly. Price $2.50. The Intellectual Development of Europe. By J. W. Draper. 2 vols., $3.50. The Conflict Between Religion and Science. By J. W. Draper. Price $2.00. In Tune With the Infinite. By Ralph Waldo Trine. Price $1.75. Fourteen Lessons in Yogi Philosophy. Price $2.00. The Bhagavadgita. Price 50c and 75c. Selected Papers on Philosophy. By William James. Price $1.00. 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