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 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 OR 
 
 THE GOD OF SCIENCE 
 
 AND 
 
 THE ILLUSION OF SELF 
 
 An Interpretation of the Philosophy, Religion, 
 and Ethics of a Rational and Scientific Monism 
 
 BY 
 
 ALFRED WARD SMITH 
 
 Author of "A New Theory of Evolution," 
 
 "The Evolution of Beauty," etc. 
 
 "As wider skies break on man's view, 
 God greatens in his growing mind; 
 Each age he dreams his God anew, 
 And leaves his older God behind. 
 He sees the boundless scheme dilate 
 In star and blossom, sky and clod; 
 And as his universe grows great, 
 He dreams for it a greater God." 
 
 — Chadwick. 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 
 
 1914 
 
<*. 
 
 ^1 
 
 Copyright, 1914 
 Sherman, French & Company 
 
 SEP II 19(4 
 
 ©CI.A380284 
 
"If the king goes mad, and goes about to find the king 
 in his own country, he will never find him, because he is 
 the king himself. It is better that we know we are the 
 king and give up this fool's search after the king." 
 
 Vivekananda. 
 
 "What doest thou now, looking Godward to cry, 
 * I am I, Thou are Thou; I am low, Thou art high '? 
 I am Thou that thou seekest to find Him; 
 Find thou but Thyself, Thou art I." 
 
 Swinburne. 
 
 " A man who disbelieves in his own divinity is an atheist." 
 
 Vedanta. 
 
 "And a man who doubts his own Godhood is an infidel, 
 for in us God lives and moves and has His being, just as 
 * in Him we live and move and have our being.' " 
 
 " Here in the Light, I am I, and Thou art Thou; but out 
 there in the surrounding dark, you and I and God are One." 
 
 Prof. Carpenter. 
 
 "You truly are one with God, part of His life; He is 
 the very soul of your soul." 
 
 Prof. Boyoe. 
 
 " What is this intellectual love of God but the love where- 
 with God loves Himself." 
 
 Spinoza. 
 
 "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father," for, "I 
 and the Father are One," and, " In that day ye shall know 
 that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you," and 
 "Whatsoever ye do to the least of these my little ones, ye 
 do it also unto me " ; " That they may be one, even as thou, 
 Father, art in me and I in Thee, may they also be in us," 
 for " I in them, and Thou in me that they may be perfected 
 into One." 
 
 Jetui {John 10, 14 and 18). 
 
"Nothing in the world is single 
 All things by a Law Divine 
 In one another's being mingle." 
 
 Shelley. 
 
 " One undivided Soul of many a soul 
 Whose nature is its own Divine Control 
 Where all things flow to all 
 As rivers to the sea." 
 
 Shelley. 
 
 " Are the mountains, waves and stars 
 A part of me and of my soul 
 As I of them? " 
 
 Byron. 
 
 " The heart and soul of all men being one, this bitterness 
 of his and mine ceases. His is mine, I am my brother, and 
 my brother is me." 
 
 Emerson. 
 
 "The pettiness, the feebleness, the squalor of the sense 
 of being * Me ' was too evident. In that new world the 
 craving for personality is seen to be a sordid lust of 
 the flesh. They were in me, I was they, and we were * It.* 
 The All now absorbed the Many. It had engulfed all hu- 
 man individualities and entities, so that personality had 
 ceased to have existence or meaning." 
 
 Frederick Harrison. 
 
 "The belief in individuality is the doctrine of fools." 
 
 Vedanta. 
 
 " Tho' difference be none, I am of Thee ; 
 Not Thou, O Lord, of me; 
 For of the Sea, is verily the wave; 
 Not of the wave the Sea." 
 
 Sankara. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 Introduction i 
 
 I The World op Illusion .... 1 
 
 II The Evolution of the Many out op 
 
 the One 31 
 
 III The Unifying Tendency of Science . 36 
 
 IV The Unifying Tendency of Philoso- 
 
 phy 47 
 
 V The Dynamic and Diffusive Charac- 
 ter of all Being 55 
 
 VI The Evolution of Social Bodies . . 61 
 
 VII The Evolution of Social Minds . . 72 
 
 VIII The Dynamic Nature of the Mind . 88 
 
 IX The Illusion of Memory .... 101 
 
 X The Cosmic Ego 112 
 
 XI The Social Ego 115 
 
 XII The Ethics of Monism 145 
 
 XIII The God who Finds himself . . .157 
 
 XIV The God who Realizes and Perfects 
 
 himself 170 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE GOD WHO FINDS HIMSELF, OR THE SELF- 
 DISCOVERY, SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND SELF-RE- 
 ALIZATION OF THE ONE AND ONLY REAL 
 BEING OF THE WORLD. 
 
 The Spirit of the universe is eternally striv- 
 ing to realize and find itself in the world and man. 
 Self-realization, self-discovery and striving is the 
 law of God's life just as certainly as it is of man's. 
 In fact, it is the law of man's partial and earthly 
 life, only because it is originally the law of God's 
 whole and universal existence. It is man's duty 
 to strive and realize himself, only because it is 
 primarily the law of God's whole universe to strive 
 and realize itself. The law of cosmic evolution, 
 in truth, is nothing but the law of the striving 
 towards self-realization of the universal Being or 
 God of the world. Evolution is the fact and 
 principle of God's endless seeking and striving 
 towards self-development, self-discovery, self-real- 
 ization and self-perfection. Evolution signifies 
 the self-realization of God, and hence it is a law 
 of self-realization to man because he is, in truth, 
 but a part, — organ and function of the divine 
 whole. The Spirit of the universe is always seek- 
 ing to find itself, and always striving to realize 
 itself in the life of man. But man, who is a 
 product of the evolutionary process, grows intel- 
 
ii THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 ligent and enlightened only by slow degrees. He 
 is primitively but an intellectual and spiritual 
 child, and grows to mental maturity and spiritual 
 manhood only by steps and stages. He is at 
 first the inevitable victim of ignorance, stupidity, 
 and fear; of mental immaturity and spiritual 
 childishness. He is easily led astray into false 
 and plausible pathways that lead him away from 
 his true self and true God, and lure him on to the 
 belief in a false self and in false and futile gods. 
 He thus becomes the inevitable and innocent dupe 
 of illusions and superstitions at a certain early 
 stage of his mental and spiritual career, and it is 
 as appropriate to this period of man's mental 
 and religious life that the following parable of 
 the Swami Vivekananda applies. 
 
 " If the king goes mad," he says, " and goes 
 about to find the king in his own country, he will 
 never find him, because he is the king himself. It 
 is better that we know we are the king, and give 
 up this fool's search after the king." 
 
 This parable of the Hindu monk and philos- 
 opher gives the keynote to the following discus- 
 sion. Its meaning is perfectly simple and plain, 
 and, briefly interpreted, it would read like this: 
 If the God of the world, — or, as Monism claims, 
 the one and only real and complete Being of the 
 world, — is blind and ignorant in its human form 
 of its own very self-hood, and goes groping to 
 find some other being than itself as a whole, it 
 will never find it, because this other and second 
 
INTRODUCTION iii 
 
 being is unreal, and exists only in its own be- 
 clouded mind and immature imagination. It is 
 better, therefore, that this one and only real Be- 
 ing shall know, in its human form, that it is God, 
 and give up this foolish and futile search after 
 an imaginary God outside and beyond itself, as 
 a universal and organic whole. 
 
 Still more fully interpreted and understood, 
 this Hindu parable would mean this: The one 
 and only Being of the world, — the infinite, eter- 
 nal, and all-embracing organism of the universe, — 
 exists: here on this earth and in the mind of man 
 as an evolving, slowly learning, immature, and 
 groping intelligence. It is still in its period of 
 childhood, or immaturity ; its mental eyes are still 
 half-closed; it sees nothing clearly and truly as 
 yet. Everything is vague, dim, shadowy, and un- 
 certain. It is the credulous and uncritical victim 
 of illusions, appearances, and imaginations. It 
 does not even see or know itself truly ; it does not 
 know what it is, or where it is, or why it is. (And 
 to an intelligent being no greater spiritual trag- 
 edy is conceivable than this. This is the supreme 
 tragedy of human life.) It is all at sea. It can- 
 not locate or orient itself, or get its true bearings 
 in the vast and vague ocean of being. It cannot 
 truly find itself, see itself, or know itself. It is 
 a lost being, because it is still a half-blind eye, 
 and a half-grown intelligence. It has not yet 
 come to its full, mature intelligence, nor to its 
 full, open, and unclouded vision. It has been for 
 
iv THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 ages groping in the dark, grasping at shadows, 
 and searching for the imaginary, non-existent, 
 and impossible creatures of its imaginations, fears, 
 and hopes ; and never has it succeeded in finding 
 or securing them because, forsooth, they did not 
 exist except in its own beclouded and undeveloped 
 mind; and, further, because, as it is beginning to 
 know, the only real being that exists is itself; 
 that is, its whole, universal self; and man exists 
 here on earth as the brain and consciousness, the 
 head and intelligence of the universal cosmic or- 
 ganism, whose evolving and slowly maturing 
 organ, structure, and psychic function it is. Out- 
 side of this perfect, indivisible, all-embracing 
 cosmic organism, of which man is a psychic organ, 
 no other and second being exists, as man is be- 
 ginning to surmise, or to know. 
 
 The period must eventually come, in the normal 
 growth and evolution of the human, and earthly 
 mind of the universe, when, reaching towards its 
 intellectual maturity and spiritual manhood, it 
 will finally, definitely, and clearly find itself, and 
 know itself and its own real world. The cosmic 
 intelligence manifested here on this earth in the 
 evolving, growing, and maturing mind of man 
 must finally discover, when it reaches its full pow- 
 ers, — maturity and manhood, — the gross decep- 
 tions and plausible illusions of which it has been 
 the childish and credulous victim in the past and 
 early periods and stages of its growth and devel- 
 opment. And then it will see and know, as with 
 
INTRODUCTION v 
 
 a truer and higher vision, that the other and im- 
 aginary beings it was seeking, — the other and 
 impossible gods it was groping after, — were 
 nothing but the ghostly shadows of itself and its 
 cosmic organism as a unitary, indivisible, and 
 perfect whole. The God outside the world, it will 
 finally find, is only the ghostly shadow of the real, 
 living, and conscious God within. 
 
 The mad king of the Hindu parable, after his 
 native reason has been restored, finds that he him- 
 self is the king that he, in his delusion, has been 
 seeking. And so he gives up his delusive and 
 futile search for an imaginary, impossible, and 
 non-existent king that existed only in his clouded 
 mind and imagination. And so the king, his rea- 
 son being fully restored, finds himself at last, but 
 never did he find, and never would he find, that 
 other, imaginary king which existed only in his 
 diseased imagination, and which was only a ghostly 
 shadow and reflection of himself. 
 
 So the cosmic being and intelligence manifested 
 here on this earth in the growing and maturing 
 mind of man is finally coming, in the normal course 
 of its growth and evolution, to its full maturity, 
 and intellectual and spiritual manhood ; and as 
 it does so it is beginning to find itself, and know 
 itself and its own real world of being. Man, as 
 the human brain and the earthly mind of the cos- 
 mic organism, is beginning to find that this true 
 cosmic organism of which he is the true psychic 
 organ and spiritual function is the true Being, 
 
vi THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 the true God, that he, in his intellectual immatur- 
 ity and spiritual childishness, has so long been 
 seeking elsewhere, outside, and always in vain. 
 Always in vain has been his search for this other 
 being outside, because this other being existed 
 only in his own immature and childish mind, and 
 was nothing but the ghostly apparition and re- 
 flection of himself and his own real world as a 
 unitary whole. 
 
 As the mad king of the parable, after his native 
 reason had been restored and he had found him- 
 self, gave up his mad and fruitless search for an 
 imaginary king, so the cosmic being and intel- 
 ligence manifested in and through the mind of 
 man, — now that it is coming, in the due and nor- 
 mal course of its evolutionary growth, to the full 
 and perfect maturity and manhood of its reason 
 and spiritual powers, and is beginning to clearly 
 and surely find itself and know itself, — is also 
 beginning to give up its immature, childish, and 
 fruitless search after an imaginary and impossible 
 Being and God outside of itself and its real world 
 as an organic and perfect whole. For it is be- 
 ginning to see clearly, surely, and finally that this 
 vast and varied cosmic organism of which it is 
 a spiritual organ and function is the one and only 
 possible Being that exists ; and the one and only 
 possible God there is. And so the time is coming, 
 and has already come for some, when it will be 
 better, far better, that man should know that he 
 and his real world are God and should give up for 
 
INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 good and forever his delusive and childish search 
 for a shadowy, ghostly, and imaginary God oui> 
 side the universe and the life of man. 
 
 So God, — the infinite, eternal and perfect 
 organism of the universe, — through man and in 
 man, as through and in his earthly mind and hu- 
 man brain, is beginning at last to find himself 
 and know himself; and to find and know himself 
 as God, as the supreme, one, and only Being of 
 the world. Man is an eye of the universe, 
 through which it sees itself clearly and surely at 
 last, and perceives itself divine. Man is a brain 
 and mind of the cosmic organism as a whole, 
 through which, at last, it clearly and surely knows 
 itself, and knows itself divine. Here, on this 
 earth and in the mind of man, the universe be- 
 comes conscious and self-conscious, and finds and 
 knows itself. Man is a head upon the cosmic 
 body, a mind within the cosmic brain, an eye 
 within the cosmic skull; and through this human 
 head and brain, this earthly eye and mind, the 
 cosmos sees, and finds itself, and knows itself at 
 last. When man thinks, the cosmos thinks ; and 
 when man knows, the cosmos knows ; and when 
 man finds and knows and realizes himself, then the 
 Universe finds and knows and realizes itself. For 
 man is not one being and the Universe another, but 
 they are one, — as organ and organism are one, 
 as brain and body, as part and whole, as flower 
 and plant are one, — one indivisible, cooperative, 
 and organic whole. 
 
viii THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 As the poet Shelley said : 
 
 " I am the Eye, with which the Universe 
 Beholds itself, and knows itself divine." 
 
 As the eye and brain is to the whole human body ; 
 as the rose is to the rosebush ; as the little carbon 
 filament in the electric lamp is to the whole light- 
 ing system; so is man, — the cosmic organ and 
 function, — to the whole cooperative cosmic 
 organism. As the whole human body displays its 
 vision through the eye, and its reason through 
 the brain; as the rosebush exhibits its beauty and 
 perfume through the rose; as the lighting system 
 manifests its radiance and light through the little 
 carbon filaments ; so the cooperative cosmic organ- 
 ism displays its self-consciousness and reason, its 
 self-discovery and self-knowledge, through the 
 brain and mind of man, and others like him in 
 other worlds or planets. 
 
 And as it is the whole human organism that sees 
 through the eye, and not the eye merely that sees 
 for itself; and the whole human body that thinks 
 through the brain, and not merely the brain that 
 thinks for itself ; as it is the whole rosebush which 
 displays its beauty and sheds its perfume on the 
 air, and not merely the blossom itself; and as it 
 is the whole lighting system which cooperatively 
 and jointly displays its radiance, brilliance, and 
 light upon the nightly scene, and not the little 
 carbon filaments selected and delegated to immedi- 
 ately perform this specific function; so it is the 
 
INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 whole cooperative and indivisible cosmic organism 
 which is conscious and self-conscious, — which 
 thinks, and knows, and finds when man thinks, 
 and knows, and finds, — and not merely that little 
 cosmic organ called a man, which, so to speak, has 
 been selected and delegated by nature, along with 
 similar intelligences in other worlds, to immedi- 
 ately perform that particular and most important 
 function for the universe as a whole. 
 
 Man is merely one of nature's brains and minds, 
 and Nature thinks, and knows, and discovers her 
 truths through these human brains and earthly 
 minds of hers. As the eye is something more than 
 itself, separately considered; as the brain, the 
 flowers, and the lights, are something higher than 
 themselves, regarded in isolation; so is man some- 
 thing more and something higher than himself; 
 something more and something higher than a little 
 microscopic man. He is a genuine organ and 
 function of the universe; an eye and soul of the 
 world, a mind and heart of God. So when man 
 finds and knows himself, when he truly orients 
 and locates himself and gets his real bearings 
 and place in the world, it really means and signi- 
 fies this: that the Universe, or cosmic organism, 
 or God, has found himself in his world of being 
 as a whole. Thus God finds and knows himself 
 in man and through man ; and thus man finds him- 
 self in God and of God ; for man and God are not 
 two separate beings, but are as the organ and 
 organism, the function and being, the brain and 
 
x THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 body, of one indivisible and cooperative unit and 
 whole. 
 
 Is this monistic theory and organic conception 
 of the universe and man the true one? Is this 
 conception of the universe as a vast, varied, and 
 genuine organism; of the solar system as a bona 
 fide sub-organism, branch or limb of it; and of 
 man as a true psychic organ and spiritual func- 
 tion of the unitary whole, the true one? What is 
 an organism? It is, essentially, a unitary system 
 of interdependent parts and organs which divide 
 their labors and functions, and cooperate in har- 
 mony and mutual reciprocity, to realize the ends 
 or results for which the whole unitary and indi- 
 visible system exists. Is the universe an organ- 
 ism according to this definition? I believe it 
 certainly is. The solar system is certainly such 
 a differentiated and cooperative system of parts 
 and organs, the sun acting as a vast transmitting 
 dynamo of living and conscious energies, the 
 planets acting as receiving stations, and man, es- 
 pecially, acting as the efflorescence and spiritual 
 achievement of the whole cooperative activities 
 and energies of the system, Man is the blossom 
 and the solar system is the plant; and man blos- 
 soms, not by himself or through himself or for 
 himself, but as the representative and delegated 
 function of the whole system. But the solar sys- 
 tem itself is not the whole organism of being ; it 
 is only a sub-system, sub-organism, or branch of 
 the universe as a unitary whole ; and it must stand 
 
INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 in some dependent or interdependent relation, be a 
 differentiated and cooperative part and organ of 
 the reciprocally related and mutually reacting 
 system of the universe as a whole. 
 
 That we do not know much about the universe 
 as yet, nor the exact place and function of the 
 solar system in the cosmic system, is true; but 
 that the latter has some place and function is 
 certain, and is already known in part. The solar 
 system cannot be an independent and isolated 
 body any more than man is, or the earth and other 
 planets are. It must form a part of a larger 
 and truer cooperative organism and whole of be- 
 ing, — the universe, — the final, complete, and per- 
 fect organism of all existence, the God of modern 
 science and philosophy. The universe might be 
 rudely likened to a vast and perfect cosmic plant, 
 of which the solar systems were the branches, the 
 planets were the branchlets, and the conscious 
 intelligences like man were the flowers, the beauty, 
 the color, and perfume — in fact, the efflorescence, 
 end, and result of the vast, varied, and cooperative 
 efforts of the cosmic organism as a unit and a 
 whole. The flowers, eyes, and minds are never 
 independent and separate things, representing 
 and functioning for their little separate selves 
 alone; they are delegated functions, which rep-= 
 resent and function for the whole of which they 
 are mere parts. They are differentiated, spe- 
 cialized, and set apart, simply to perform their 
 particular functions for the whole cooperative 
 
xii THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 body. It is here in the mind of man, — and other 
 beings like him in other worlds, no doubt, — that 
 the Cosmos comes to self-consciousness, self-dis- 
 covery, self-knowledge and self-realization. It is 
 here that a head, brain, and mind of the universe 
 is located. Its consciousness is specialized, local- 
 ized, and focalized in this particular planet and 
 in these human forms. So when man thinks and 
 knows, the universe thinks and knows, as in and 
 through its human head and brain. Man does 
 not think and function for himself alone ; he thinks 
 and functions as the delegate and representative 
 of the universe at large. He does not think 
 through or by himself alone any more than the 
 flower blossoms through and by itself alone. He 
 thinks through the powers and labors of the whole 
 infinite and eternal universe, as the flower blos- 
 soms through the powers and efforts of the whole 
 plant. Man is an efflorescence, here on this earth, 
 of the vast cosmic plant ; he is an eye of the world 
 and a mind of the universe. Man is something 
 more and something higher than himself, some- 
 thing vaster and something grander than a mere 
 and little man. He is an organ, function, and 
 representative of the infinite and eternal universe. 
 He is an eye and soul of the universal world. He 
 is the intelligence and heart of God here on this 
 earth, at least, as other rational beings are, un- 
 doubtedly, in other worlds and planets. 
 
 If this universe is a genuine universe, then it 
 must be a bona fide organism. If it is not a real 
 
INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 organism, then it must be a mere aggregation and 
 totality, an inexplicable sum-total of innumerable 
 independent and separate beings and things. 
 Whether it is a real organic universe or only a 
 duiverse, or pluriverse, or multiverse, we hope to 
 show, more or less, in the following pages. This 
 problem of the unity, duality, plurality, and 
 multeity of the world of so-called beings and 
 things involves the important and vital questions, 
 to us, of the positive individuality of man and 
 the immortality of the individual soul; and we 
 hope to throw some little light upon these absorb- 
 ing questions. There has been of late years a 
 remarkable revival of interest in, and advocacy 
 of, spiritism among a number of prominent scien- 
 tific men. Now there is a fundamental and ir- 
 reconcilable antagonism between a thoroughgoing 
 monism and spiritism. If monism is true, then 
 spiritism must be false, for spiritism is really 
 pluralism and atomism and dualism, as regards 
 the mind and body ; while if spiritism is true, then 
 monism and a perfectly organic conception of 
 the cosmos must be false. There is no possible 
 compromise between a bona fide monism and spir- 
 itist doctrines. One or the other must be repu- 
 diated by all honest thinkers. Two such 
 irreconcilable theories cannot logically be enter- 
 tained by the same mind. No honest and 
 thoroughgoing monist can believe in the plurality 
 of really separate spirits, or in the duality of 
 mind and body, either during life or after death. 
 
xiv THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 Nor can he believe in the immortality of abstract 
 psychic states, which is just what spiritism im- 
 plies. To him, the immortality of a bald abstrac- 
 tion is nonsense and nothing less. In fact, he 
 must deny the existence of any such abstraction 
 as a pure soul, even during life. Monism dis- 
 counts and discredits such theories, or assump- 
 tions, at the very start. It has " nothing to 
 arbitrate " with spiritism at all, and it can easily 
 prove that the notions of spiritism have not a 
 logical leg to stand upon. Monism must logically 
 deny, not only the immortality of the entity called 
 a pure spirit after death, but also the existence 
 of any such entity before death and during life. 
 For a pure spirit is a pure mental abstraction 
 of the analyzing intellect, and has no existence at 
 any time, either during life or after death. Spir- 
 itism assumes a duality of soul and body and a 
 plurality of separate and isolated spirits. Mon- 
 ism necessarily denies both this duality, and this 
 plurality. Spiritism also assumes the continu- 
 ance after death of a pure spirit, chained and 
 imprisoned in a purely material body during life. 
 Monism denies the existence of any purely ma- 
 terial bodies, or of any purely psychical spirits 
 during life. Hence there cannot be any continu- 
 ance after death of something that never existed 
 during life, — viz., a purely abstract psychical 
 spirit. 
 
 " I look for ghosts, — but none will force 
 Their way to me; 'tis falsely said 
 
INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 That ever there was intercourse 
 Between the living and the dead." 1 
 
 THE ONE AND THE MANY. 
 
 Modern science and philosophy are rapidly 
 demonstrating to the minds of unprejudiced 
 thinkers that there is but one real integer of being 
 in existence in all this vast and varied universe. 
 The scientists and philosophers of to-day are re- 
 discovering, through the marvellous progress of 
 modern science, that great and revolutionary 
 truth which the sages of ancient India discovered 
 thousands of years ago, and which they pro- 
 claimed in that significant saying of the Vedanta 
 scriptures : there is but " one Being without a 
 second." The universe, therefore, if this be true, 
 which I no longer doubt, has but one real inhabi- 
 tant. The entire population of the universe is 
 one. The highest and greatest number in exist- 
 ence is the number one, which stands for, repre- 
 sents, and symbolizes the one and only real integer 
 of being in existence. All other, so-called, higher 
 and larger numbers, like 2, 3, 4», etc., to infinity, 
 are, in reality and truth, nothing whatever but 
 lower, smaller, and inferior numbers which stand 
 for, represent, and symbolize not any integers 
 of being whatever, but merely the many in/numer- 
 able fractions of being into which the one and 
 only integer of being has superficially sub-divided, 
 differentiated, and distinguished itself in the 
 
 i Wordsworth. 
 
xvi THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 process of its formal or morphological evolution. 
 According to the Hindu scriptures, Krishna said, 
 " I am the One and I wish to be the many " ; and 
 so, out of his original and formless unity, he 
 evolved the formful and innumerable many. Yet 
 never for an instant did he lose his native and 
 original oneness. The number one is the only 
 whole number, the only integral number, the only 
 infinite number there is. All other numbers are 
 partial, fractional, and finite numbers. One is 
 the supreme and transcendent number; it is the 
 number of all numbers; it is the sum-total and 
 footing up of all other numbers; for all other 
 numbers added together only make up a total of 
 one. It is the mother-parent of all other num- 
 bers ; for out of it all numbers originally came, 
 and back into it all numbers will finally go. 2 It 
 is the all-inclusive and all-comprehensive number 
 because it includes and comprehends within itself 
 all other numbers as fractions, fragments, and 
 portions of itself. It is the unlimited and in- 
 dependent number, for it is not limited by, or 
 dependent upon, any other number. One is the 
 sublime, divine, and Godlike number, for this num- 
 ber, and this one alone, represents and symbolizes 
 the sublimity, divinity, and deity of the world, — 
 the transcendent Number One whom we call God, 
 or the cosmic-social Organism and Intelligence of 
 the world. 
 
 2 This is the science and philosophy of number; as Pro- 
 fessor Ladd says : " All numbers refer back to unity." 
 
INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 The motto of the cunning and selfish men of 
 the world is : " Look out for number one" they 
 taking it for granted that each and every human 
 being is, in some real sense, an integer of being 
 and a real number one. But the foregoing 
 philosophy of numbers shows how ignorant and 
 futile they are. No, we human beings are not 
 " number ones," nor integers of being at all ; we 
 are merely the infinitesimal fractions of being, the 
 infinitesimal functions of the one and only integer 
 of being there is. We are not " number ones," 
 but only number one nUlionths 3 of the original 
 and only Number One. And as these number 
 one-nillionths, these infinitesimal fractions of the 
 real Number One, our divine and cosmic duty and 
 devotion, loyalty and love, should be given it as 
 to our God, — the Cosmic-social Organism and 
 Intelligence of the World. 
 
 "E PLUBIBU8 UNUM." 
 
 There is " one Being without a second " ; there 
 is but one integer of being, but there are many 
 innumerable fractions of being contained within 
 this whole and completed one. Thus is solved 
 the pretended difficulty of the problem of the One 
 and the many. " E pluribus unum " is the 
 organic principle of the universe as it is the politi- 
 cal motto of the United States. The One is the 
 
 3 The letter n is used as an algebraic symbol for the in- 
 finite or indefinitely great or numerous. A nillionth in this 
 sense would be an infinitesimal fraction. 
 
xviii THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 organic integer; the many are the organic frac- 
 tions; the One is the cosmic organism of the 
 world ; the many are the cosmic organs, struc- 
 tures, and functions of the whole: the One is the 
 superficially subdivided, differentiated, and dis- 
 tinguished, but still profoundly united and in- 
 tegrated organism of the world ; the many are the 
 superficial subdivisions, differentiations, and 
 distinguishable forms, parts, and organs of the 
 still profoundly unitary whole : the One is the in- 
 tegral, cosmic, and social individual and person 
 of the world; the many are the innumerable 
 individualized and personalized organs and 
 functions of this worldrpersonality, and world- 
 intelligence. The One is the whole cosmic mind, 
 soul, and spirit; the many are the innumerable 
 partial minds, souls, and spirits. The One is the 
 cosmic integer of individuality and personality; 
 the many are the cosmic fractions of individuality 
 and personality. 
 
 Because of the fact that the cosmic organism 
 is not, and cannot be, a simple, undivided unit, 
 but is, and must be, a complex and subdivided 
 one, there arises the necessity for the social or- 
 ganization of the world. Hence the system of 
 cosmic life is, of necessity, an associated and 
 social system ; and so the cosmic organism becomes 
 an associated and social organism, and the cosmic 
 organs and functions become associated and social 
 organs. The individuality of the world becomes, 
 of logical necessity, a complex, multiple, and 
 
INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 multiform individuality, a social individuality, a 
 society of individuals. The personality of the 
 world becomes a complex, multiple, and multiform 
 personality, a social personality, a society of per- 
 sons ; and so the mind, soul, and spirit of the 
 world becomes a complex, multiple, and multiform 
 mind, soul, and spirit, a social mind, a social soul, 
 and a social spirit; a society of minds, a society 
 of souls, and a society of selves and spirits. 
 
 " All are needed by each one, 
 Nothing is fair or good alone." 4 
 
 THE SUPREME NAME. 
 
 By the word " God " we mean the supreme 
 Being of the world; and this title, or name of 
 God, is the supreme name which man can now 
 bestow upon the supreme being of his conception. 
 By religion we mean man's supreme belief in re- 
 gard to this world; his supreme practice flowing 
 from this belief, and the supreme emotions,— 
 devotion, loyalty, love, and enthusiasm, — which 
 this supreme belief inspires and calls forth. 5 The 
 church, in the broadest possible sense of the word, 
 is that supreme social institution which is de- 
 voted to the preaching and practice of this belief 
 and to its utmost realization in the life of man- 
 kind. 
 
 * Emerson. 
 
 s Emotionally considered religion is a kind of cosmic 
 patriotism; intellectually it is a cosmic philosophy; and 
 morally it is a cosmic ethics. 
 
xx THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 THE SUPREME BEING. 
 
 We have found that there is but one integral 
 being and personality in the world; a being and 
 a personality which includes within itself all other 
 subordinate and partial beings and personalities. 
 Hence this all-inclusive and comprehensive being 
 of the world is, and must be, the supreme and 
 transcendent being of the world. This supreme 
 Being cannot remain nameless. This cosmic or- 
 ganism, world-individual, and world-soul is fully 
 entitled to the name of the supreme being, — 
 " God." If this cosmic organism and world-in- 
 telligence is not the supreme Being of the world, 
 and is not the supreme Personality of the world, 
 then there is and can be no supreme Being, and 
 no supreme Personality at all. If this cosmic 
 organism, this supreme Being, is not entitled to 
 the name of " God," or is not worthy of it, then 
 no being can be worthy of that supreme name, 
 or be in any degree entitled to it. Either this 
 being is God, or there is no God. But I believe 
 that this cosmic organism of the world is God, 
 and is fully worthy and entitled to bear that au- 
 gust and transcendent name to which now, in the 
 normal course of human history and religious 
 evolution, it has become the historical heir and 
 natural evolutionary successor. It has become 
 the divine heir and successor to all the gods that 
 have gone before, of all past ages and of all past 
 and passing religions. The true and final God 
 
INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 of the world must be the supreme World-being 
 itself and not some smaller or imaginary part of 
 it ; it must be the great World-spirit, the spiritual 
 fatherland and motherland of all conscious and 
 rational beings. 
 
 " There the Holy Essence rolls, 
 One through separated souls." 6 
 
 " The One remains, the many change and pass ; 
 Heaven's light forever shines ; earth's shadows fly." 7 
 
 THE SELF-DISCOVERY OF GOD. 
 
 Man has discovered and rediscovered God, and 
 he has further discovered that God is that su- 
 preme cosmic and social organism of which he 
 himself is a constituent part and a most significant 
 organ and function. He is one of God's brains 
 and minds, and through this human brain and 
 mind, which is also and at the same time the brain 
 and mind of God, he has discovered the true self 
 and divinity of the world. God, as man and 
 through man, has discovered himself and his own 
 divinity ; God, as the human and earthly organ 
 of his own intelligence, has discovered his whole 
 true organism and his whole true self. Thus has 
 God, — the whole, — found himself through man 
 and in man, — the part ; and thus has man, — the 
 part, — found himself in God and of God, — the 
 
 6 Emerson. 
 
 7 Shelley. 
 
xxii THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 whole. At last God knows himself, and knows 
 himself as God and man. At last man knows 
 himself, and knows himself as man and God. 
 " Know thyself, and thou shalt know God." 8 
 There is no other possible discovery but self-dis- 
 covery, and no other possible knowledge but self- 
 knowledge. All discovery is self -discovery, and 
 all knowledge is self-knowledge, for it is the dis- 
 covery and knowledge of being by its own very 
 self, for all being, in the last analysis, is but one 
 whole being, and it can discover and know no other 
 being than itself because there is no other and 
 second being besides itself. Intelligence is a light 
 for the inner illumination of the one and only 
 world of being, and it does not and cannot exist 
 for the illumination of any outer or other world 
 of being, for no such outer or other world of 
 being exists. The light is all within, and it is 
 the inner light of God's own world. The God 
 that found himself is also man; and the man that 
 found himself is also God. This fact of the ab- 
 solute oneness of all being shows the utter fallacy 
 of such a doctrine as that of the " unknowable " 
 God. 
 
 THE " SELF-KNOWABLE GOD." 
 All being is one Being ; there is but " One with- 
 out a second." Hence the knower and the known, 
 the subject and the object, are really and truly 
 
 s Ex-President Chas. W. Eliot says, in his lecture on 
 "The Religion of the Future," that "the race has come 
 to the knowledge of God through the knowledge of itself." 
 
INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 
 one. All knowledge is self-knowledge, — the 
 knowledge of being by itself and through itself; 
 and in the monistic nature of things it cannot be 
 anything else. Hence all human knowledge is also 
 divine knowledge, for man's knowledge is also the 
 knowledge of God as man. It is God's knowledge 
 of himself. If God is unknowable, then it is to 
 himself that he is unknowable, and not to some 
 other and second being, for there is no other and 
 second being either to know, or to be known. All 
 the knowledge that man possesses is knowledge of 
 this so-called, unknowable God, and it is, more- 
 over, the knowledge of this unknowable God by 
 the unknowable God himself. So that the doc- 
 trine that God is unknowable amounts to the as- 
 sertion that God cannot know himself; that the 
 " One without a second " cannot know itself ; that 
 the " One without another " is opaque as midnight 
 to its own very self. 
 
 " THE INNER LIGHT." 
 
 If knowledge was necessarily and always the 
 knowledge of one being by another, exterior, alien, 
 and different being, then some good ground might 
 exist for assuming that these other, exterior, and 
 foreign beings or things could not be really and 
 truly known to the knower and would be opaque 
 to him. If knowledge, in other words, was like 
 an outer light, — something external and exterior 
 in function and character, something to illumi- 
 
xxiv THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 nate exteriorly the stubborn, opaque, and antag- 
 onistic nature of external and foreign beings and 
 things, then again it might be said that real and 
 true knowledge was impossible. But such is not 
 the nature of knowledge, for such is not the dual- 
 istic and pluralistic constitution of the world of 
 being and of knowing. 
 
 . ..." To know, 
 
 Rather consists in opening out a way, 
 Whence the imprisoned splendor can escape; 
 Than in effecting entry for a light, 
 Supposed to be without." 9 
 
 Knowledge, in the last analysis, is never the 
 knowledge of one being by another and second 
 being, but is always the knowledge of one integral 
 being by its own true self and through its own 
 true self, — the knowledge of the whole organism 
 by the organ of knowledge and through the organ 
 of knowledge, which here on earth is the mind of 
 man, — and so man can say with perfect and lit- 
 eral truth, 
 
 " I am the Eye, with which the universe 
 Beholds itself, and knows itself divine." 
 
 Knowledge, therefore, is like an " inner light," 
 an interior illumination; it is always, in the last 
 analysis, an internal, interior, and native func- 
 tion of both the knower and the known. It is a 
 function for interior self-illumination and self- 
 
 9 Browning. 
 
INTRODUCTION xxv 
 
 enlightenment; and there is nothing whatever in 
 the nature of the known that is alien, opaque, 
 and hostile to the nature of the knower, for the 
 knower and the known are one and the self-same, 
 identical being. Hence there is no reason what- 
 ever in the monistic constitution and nature of 
 the being of the world why it should not be trans- 
 parent and perfectly knowable to itself. God, 
 therefore, is not the unknown and unknowable be- 
 ing of the world, but he is, on the contrary, the 
 self-knowing, self-knowable, and self-known. 
 When man thinks, God thinks, and when man 
 knows, God knows ; for man's intelligence is God's 
 intelligence in its human and earthly form. For 
 God and man are one as brain and body are one; 
 as the partial cosmic organ and the whole cosmic 
 organism are one; as the rose and rosebush are 
 one; as the electric light and whole lighting sys- 
 tem are one. 
 
 " Far more than himself is the man we see, 
 For a mind in the body of God is he." 
 
 THE SELF-REALIZING BEING OF THE WORLE 
 
 Self-realization is a supreme law of the uni- 
 verse. Every particle of energy in the universe 
 persistently strives to assert itself, and so to real- 
 ize and manifest itself according to its inner na- 
 ture and its outer form. Never for an instant 
 does it cease to work, and so to realize itself; 
 never for an instant does it idle, loaf, or shirk, 
 
xxvi THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 and so cease to realize itself in its real and inner- 
 most nature. There is not an atom of idle energy 
 in the universe; every bit of it is persistently at 
 work. This is the meaning of the law of the con- 
 servation of energy. 
 
 The law of universal evolution expresses the 
 method and outcome of the universal effort and 
 struggle for self-manifestation and self-realiza- 
 tion by the being of the world as a whole. Her- 
 bert Spencer has based his theory of cosmic 
 evolution upon the law of the " persistence of 
 force," which really means the persistent self-as- 
 sertion, self-realization and self-manifestation of 
 all the energy and being in the world. Be the 
 nature of universal being what it may (and as 
 far as we can say, a-priori, it may be anything 
 that is not illogical and inconsistent with itself), 
 it undoubtedly realizes its real and intrinsic being 
 to the innermost of its nature and the uttermost 
 of its powers. Self-realization is a fundamental 
 and supreme law of being, and the universal Be- 
 ing, or God of the world, is a great self-asserting, 
 self-realizing, and self-exploiting being. The 
 God of Science is a self-exploiting and self-real- 
 izing God who exploits, realizes, and manifests 
 himself to the uppermost of his nature and the 
 uttermost of his powers in the being, life, and 
 consciousness of the world. He is a God of end- 
 less effort and ceaseless creation, and not of eter- 
 nal idleness, non-creation, and Sabbath-like 
 leisure, rest, and ease. " My Father worketh 
 
INTRODUCTION xxvii 
 
 hitherto, and I work," said Jesus; and the God 
 of Science, like the God of Jesus, is the eternally 
 working, creating, and self-realizing God of the 
 persistently working, creating, and self-realizing 
 man. For God and man are not two separate 
 beings, but only one, as the whole and part, or 
 the living being and its highest function, are one. 
 Man is a representative part, organ, and func- 
 tion of the universal whole, and the self-realizing 
 law of God's universal life is also the self-realiz- 
 ing law of man's. To be and exist means to do 
 and become; and not only to do and become, but 
 to do and become to the uttermost and uppermost 
 of one's nature and powers. It means the maxi- 
 mum and optimum of self-realization and self- 
 idealization. It means to strive and strain and 
 struggle to the limit of one's being. This uni- 
 versal struggle for self-realization is unconscious 
 in the inorganic world, subconscious in the vege- 
 table and lower animals, and becomes conscious, 
 more or less, in the highest. In man it becomes 
 self-conscious, and through increasing knowledge 
 and unceasing effort man begins at last to def- 
 initely discover his perfect identity and unity 
 with the one, only, and universal Being of the 
 world, i. e., in a word, with God. Man in the 
 process of evolutionary self-realization has 
 reached the stage of a definite and divine self- 
 discovery. He has discovered who and what he 
 is, and who and what is God, partially at least. 
 His ignorance, misapprehension and uncertainty 
 
xxviii THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 is giving way to a calm and clear conviction that 
 he himself is a genuine part and a bona fide func- 
 tion of the one, only and divine being of the 
 world. At last, he is saying to himself : " That 
 God for whom I have been searching all over the 
 universe and outside the universe is all the time 
 myself, — not my little, separate, and individual 
 human self, but my great, all-inclusive, divine, 
 and godlike self." Yes, truly he can say: 
 
 " I am the eye with which the universe 
 Beholds itself and knows itself divine." 
 
 But the struggle for self-realization cannot end 
 here. A higher stage of self-realization is pos- 
 sible to man and must therefore be reached. 
 Man not only needs to definitely discover himself, 
 but he further needs to thoroughly know and 
 perfectly understand himself and his own real 
 world of being. He must seek self-knowledge and 
 world-knowledge to the limit of his powers in order 
 that he may reach a higher and truer stage of 
 self-realization and world-realization. And when 
 this stage of self-knowledge and world-knowledge 
 has been attained, then his pathway will be clear 
 to the greatest possible self-realization and the 
 highest possible self-idealization, in achievement 
 and experience, of which he and the world are 
 capable. 
 
 This, then, is the supreme law of the universe: 
 u Thou shalt realize thyself to the uppermost of 
 thy nature, and the uttermost of thy powers ; thou 
 
INTRODUCTION xxix 
 
 shalt find thyself, in truth, in the world of stress 
 and strain; thou shalt work out thy salvation in 
 struggle and in strife." This is the law of God's 
 life, and so it is of man's. Self-activity, self-dis- 
 covery, self-knowledge, and self-realization, these 
 are the steps and stages in the life of God and 
 man. 
 
 THE ILLUSION OF INDIVIDUALITY AND THE 
 SUPERSTITION OF SELF. 
 
 With these preliminary and introductory state- 
 ments to show the general trend and purpose of 
 this essay, we will now proceed to the more sys- 
 tematic treatment of the real problem under dis- 
 cussion, which is, mainly, that of the bona fide 
 individuality of men and things in general, and 
 especially of men, for that is the problem that 
 primarily, and almost exclusively, interests us. 
 We propose to analyze the so-called individuality 
 of man in order to see whether it is a bona fide 
 and profound reality or a superficial illusion, and 
 whether the belief in man's human selfhood is a 
 scientific conviction or a traditional supersti- 
 tion. Incidentally, the treatment of this problem 
 opens up a great many of the profoundest and 
 most important questions in human life; and ac- 
 cordingly as this question of individuality is an- 
 swered for or against, there will result two 
 diametrically opposite philosophies of life, with 
 all that this implies. If the question of man's 
 individuality is answered in the affirmative, then 
 
xxx THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 a pluralistic, and, also, a dualistic, philosophy, 
 religion and ethics will ensue. If it is answered in 
 the negative, then a thoroughly monistic philoso- 
 phy, religion, and ethics will result. In either 
 case a diametrically different attitude towards 
 the world and life will follow, and hence the pro- 
 found significance and importance of this ques- 
 tion and the answers to it. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 
 
 ** Man lives plunged in a world of illusion and deceptive 
 forms, which the vulgar take for reality." 
 
 Democritus. 
 
 The profound philosophers of ancient India de- 
 clared for ages, with practically one voice, that 
 our whole visible world was " Maya," or illusion. 
 So Plato said we were like men chained in a cave, 
 with their faces towards a wall and their backs 
 towards a fire or the light ; and between this light 
 or fire and themselves, men and animals passed, 
 throwing their shadows upon the wall ; and it was 
 these shadows, only, that these chained victims of 
 illusion saw. Their only knowledge was of shad- 
 ows, and so, he said, was ours. And this con- 
 viction that the visible world is one of appear- 
 ances rather than realities has been the general 
 judgment of philosophers down to this day. 
 
 There must be some profound truth in this be- 
 lief, however it may need to be qualified or crit- 
 ically understood. This world in which we live 
 and move and have our being, and which also lives 
 and moves and has its being in us, is, to us evolving 
 mortals, to a vast, though hopefully diminishing 
 extent, a world of sense illusions, deceptive appear- 
 
2 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 ances, and untrue inferences. Hence it has always 
 been to mankind a world of ignorance and grossest 
 superstitions, and the poet Moore was almost 
 right when he said, " This world is all a fleeting 
 show, for man's illusion given." I would rather, 
 however, compare it to a great masquerade of the 
 powers and realities of Nature, in which it was 
 the function and purpose of man's developing 
 mind to tear off and remove the masks and dis- 
 guises by evolutionary degrees until, finally, the 
 complete or satisfactory unmasking of the Being 
 of the world had been accomplished and we should 
 know things as they really and truly are. But a 
 great many philosophers in the past have taken a 
 pessimistic and hopeless view of man's cognitive 
 powers and have declared, not only that we do 
 not know, but, also, that we never can know the 
 true and inner nature of " things in themselves " ; 
 their epistemological creed is not only " igno- 
 ramus/* but also " ignorabimus" — not only that 
 we don't know, but also that we cannot know. 
 They are, in this sense, " agnostics," and believers 
 in the " unknowable." 
 
 But the thinkers of the present time, under the 
 influence of a strong monistic tendency in philoso- 
 phy, are taking a distinctly hopeful and optimistic 
 view of the problem of knowledge, and are declar- 
 ing that man may or can finally, when he has at- 
 tained the full maturity and perfection of his 
 intellectual development and powers, know the real 
 and essential nature of the things of this world. 
 
THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 8 
 
 These might, in this epistemological sense, be 
 called " gnostics," or believers in the knowable 
 nature of reality. As for myself, I take a dis- 
 tinctly optimistic view, and believe that somewhere, 
 and at some time, in this real and natural world 
 of ours, monistically constituted as it is, we shall 
 know the real and essentially true nature of 
 things, and not merely their exterior appearances. 
 For as a thoroughgoing and unqualified monist I 
 believe there is but one real Being, without a real 
 second in the world ; that all consciousness, knowl- 
 edge, and discovery, is the consciousness, knowl- 
 edge, and discovery, of this one Being by its own 
 true self and through its own true self; that, 
 therefore, in the last analysis, it is all self -con- 
 sciousness, self-knowledge, and self-discovery; and 
 not the consciousness, knowledge, and discovery 
 of some other, second, alien, hostile, and opaque 
 being outside of us. 
 
 If all being is really one being, one vast organ- 
 ism, then there can be nothing in the natures of 
 the knower and the known that is alien, opaque, 
 and hostile to each other; therefore, I do not see 
 why this one being of the world may not, some- 
 time and somewhere, develop a knowledge of its 
 own true and essential self. 
 
 " Still we say as we go, 
 Strange to think, by the way; 
 Whatever there is to know, 
 That, we shall know some day." x 
 
 i Rossetti. 
 
4 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 From this monistic point of view, all ignorance 
 is self-ignorance; and all failure to discover 
 means the lack of self-discovery. But whatever 
 may be the true nature of knowledge, and what- 
 ever may be the future nature of man's knowledge 
 of this world, it is unquestioned and unquestion- 
 able that man's knowledge in the past was fear- 
 fully and tragically illusory, and that it is 
 immensely so even in this enlightened present. 
 Mankind has always lived and is living, even to- 
 day, to a vast extent, in a world of appearances, 
 sense illusions, false inferences, and gross supersti- 
 tions; and only by slow, painful, and laborious 
 efforts, as science and philosophy have advanced, 
 has he been gradually discovering something of 
 the real nature of the world around him. And it 
 is through modern science alone, almost, that this 
 truer knowledge is being acquired, and this, un- 
 doubtedly, is to a great extent the peculiar mis- 
 sion and proper function of science — to 
 disillusionize and disabuse the growing human 
 mind, to dispel the delusions which afflict it, and 
 to reveal, — slowly, it may be, but still surely, as 
 the mental and social evolution of man goes on, — 
 the real character and essential constitution of 
 the world. As human evolution goes on, the 
 world of immediate sense illusion is being surely 
 displaced by a world of scientific knowledge and 
 truer reality. There has been an evolution of 
 knowledge, both as regards quantity, quality, and 
 organization, that is certain. As our knowledge 
 
THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 5 
 
 has grown greater in quantity, it has correspond- 
 ingly grown higher and truer in quality. It has 
 become more real and less illusory, more pene- 
 trative and profound, and less shallow and super- 
 ficial. 
 
 Now let us, before going any further on this 
 line, try to discover some good reason, if we can, 
 why man's senses and superficial impressions, — 
 his eyes, ears, and feelings in general, — deceive 
 him as they certainly do, and render such false, 
 or rather deceptive and inadequate, reports of the 
 real nature of the things around him. One very 
 good reason is this : man, as a living organism, is 
 composed of a multitude of little living cells, and 
 these m turn are composed of many organic mole- 
 cules. The molecules, again, are constituted of 
 thousands of atoms, and the atoms, in turn, of 
 electrical corpuscles or ions, which are now as- 
 sumed to be little vortices, — or whirlpools of elec- 
 trical energy differentiated out of, and so 
 distinguished from, the infinite ocean of the un- 
 differentiated pristine ether, or basic and primal 
 substance, or being of the world, — out of which 
 all visible and invisible, perceptible and impercep- 
 tible, things and beings come, from which they are 
 all made, and back into which they are constantly 
 going and flowing, merging and melting, as in 
 " the melting pot, of the molding shop, of nature 
 and of God." 
 
 Now, man as a living organism is placed in an 
 environment which is filled with other organisms 
 
6 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 and things, which, like himself, are of a highly 
 compound and recompounded character. As 
 Prof. R. K. Duncan says : " Every thing in the 
 universe is a swarm of atoms, and every action in 
 the universe is the action of one swarm of atoms 
 upon another." Man, phenomenally considered, 
 is not a simple analytic being, but a compound, 
 complex, and synthetic being, — " a swarm of 
 atoms," or ions, raised to the fourth power ; and 
 all the beings and things in his material environ- 
 ment to which he must adapt and adjust himself 
 and his actions, which he must see, handle, strug- 
 gle, and interact with in numberless ways, are, like 
 himself, compound, synthetic beings and things 
 also. Now, man's senses and intelligence have 
 been developed in reactive response to the active 
 demands of his environment that he, as a living, 
 striving, and struggling organism, adapt himself 
 to it or else die in the attempt or refusal to do so. 
 Man, as a massive and compound being, must ad- 
 just and adapt himself to other massive and com- 
 pound beings and things. His eyes in their con- 
 struction are massive and compound eyes, and so 
 are all his other sense organs. He is, therefore, 
 obliged to see things in the mass, in the large, in 
 composite pictures; and to get collective impres- 
 sions and synthetic perceptions of things instead 
 of cellular, molecular, atomic, or ionic, and ana- 
 lytic visions and views of things. And so he is 
 also obliged to handle and adjust himself to these 
 things in the large, collective, and massive ways. 
 
THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 7 
 
 Man would have no ordinary, everyday use 
 whatever for a pair of microscopic eyes which 
 enabled him to see clearly and distinctly all the 
 cells, molecules, atoms, and ions of which all bod- 
 ies and beings are composed. Such microscopic 
 sight would distract his attention and prevent 
 him from seeing things collectively, as he must. 
 He " could not see the woods for the trees," or 
 the " swarms " for the " atoms " ; and it is the 
 " woods " and the " swarms " as collective wholes 
 that he needs almost wholly to see, and not the 
 analytic constituents of which they are composed. 
 Man needs to see his enemies, food, tools, and 
 weapons, etc., not as swarms of ions, but as col- 
 lective and compact bodies and wholes ; and so it 
 naturally and necessarily happens that man's 
 practical, everyday knowledge, developed as it has 
 been for practical use and adjustment and not 
 for mere theoretical truth, immediately at least, is 
 wholly a knowledge of the collective impressions, 
 composite pictures, and synthetic perceptions of 
 things. Such knowledge, of course, is not and 
 cannot be perfectly or theoretically true, even as 
 regards the material, external, and objective char- 
 acter and appearances of things, while as regards 
 the spiritual, internal, and subjective nature and 
 condition of things our senses, of course, are 
 blind, and give us no direct knowledge at all. 
 Our perceptual knowledge is only a sort of exter- 
 nal and objective half-knowledge, and it is very 
 incorrect even at that. It is very imperfect and 
 
8 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 illusory in character, and when men infer, — as 
 originally and naively they must, — that things 
 are actually what they seem to our practical but 
 uncritical senses, they are wofully mistaken, and 
 are being actually, though innocently, deceived by 
 their mass-perceiving and merely objectifying 
 senses. 
 
 And so it is scientifically true that the world 
 of the practical and uncritical senses is a world 
 of appearances and the greatest illusions; and 
 man, therefore, sadly needs to supplement and 
 correct his sensual and perceptual knowledge by 
 knowledge of the profoundest and truest character 
 possible to be acquired by scientific, philosophic, 
 and critical means. He needs to use and to de- 
 velop every possible faculty of his mind and soul, 
 so that he may, if possible, some day come into 
 a true and adequate knowledge of the nature of 
 being. In pursuance of this need to truly know 
 the real natures of things instead of their super- 
 ficial appearances, science has invented and de- 
 vised a multitude of wonderful instruments like 
 the microscope, telescope, spectroscope, etc., and 
 philosophy has formulated the laws of reasoning, 
 studied the laws of knowing, and in the future, 
 in cooperation with science, will strain every men- 
 tal faculty and use every resource of the human 
 mind in order to discover, if possible, and as far 
 as possible, the real and essential nature of the 
 being of the world. 
 
 And so the disillusioning of man's mind goes 
 
THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 9 
 
 gradually on, and so the evolution of real knowl- 
 edge slowly but surely proceeds. Great and won- 
 derful progress has already been made, in spite, 
 too, of the bitter and tremendous opposition of 
 superstitious and supernatural religions, and of 
 selfish, class-ridden, and reactionary governments 
 whose blind, brutal, and selfish interest it is or 
 seems to be to keep mankind in darkness, igno- 
 rance, delusion, and superstition. When once 
 the slavery of the human mind has been abolished 
 and it becomes free as it never has been, for £,000 
 years, at least, and a truly free society of human 
 minds has been realized, and millions and billions 
 of intelligences the world over have attacked the 
 mysteries and appearances of nature in a passion- 
 ate and untiring effort to discover and to know 
 the truth, I, for one at least, as a thoroughgoing 
 monist who is convinced that all discovery and 
 knowledge is self-discovery and self-knowledge, 
 believe that Nature will disclose her secrets, and 
 that man will know the essential truth at last. 
 The masquerade of Nature will then be over, and 
 the complete unmasking will have been achieved. 
 Then man, as the brain and mind of God here on 
 this earth, shall have found and known himself. 
 
 THE SERIOUS AND TRAGIC NATURE OF 
 ILLUSION. 
 
 Now this ignorance, illusion, and superstition 
 of the human mind is no trivial and unimportant 
 matter, but, on the contrary, it is of the pro- 
 
10 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 foundest and even tragical importance as we can 
 see by reading the past history of the race. I 
 believe, in fact, that practically all of the trag- 
 edy, horror, and shame in human life, both past 
 and present, is due to this satanic cause, and that 
 the complete and thorough destruction of igno- 
 rance, illusion, and superstition will mean the re- 
 alization of the " Golden Age " when God, as 
 man, shall come into his own. Many of the minor 
 illusions of human life have been dispelled, and 
 as a consequence many of the minor tragedies 
 have passed into history; but the supreme and 
 transcendent illusion, the most diabolical and hell- 
 ish superstition, still flourishes in full force, and 
 to it is due practically all of the devilish sins and 
 hellish horrors of the world. 
 
 To what agency are due all the sins and crimes, 
 all the miseries and sufferings, of mankind? 
 Practically to one, viz., human selfishness. At 
 the bottom of every sin and crime, of every pang 
 and agony of mankind, of every foul and ugly 
 blot on the fair face of the world, will be found, 
 in the last analysis, that individual selfishness 
 which separates a man from the life and joy and 
 beauty of his fellows and shuts him up and off in 
 his little cell of self which is to him a little " holy 
 of holies," the sacrosanct tabernacle of his ego. 
 Can any one doubt that selfishness is the root- 
 cause of practically every sin and misery and 
 ugliness in human life, and that if selfishness 
 could be utterly and completely destroyed as Je- 
 
THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 11 
 
 sus hoped to destroy it, the kingdom of heaven 
 would come on earth as he declared it would? 
 And can selfishness be destroyed, — not diminished, 
 I mean, but destroyed completely, root and 
 branch? And if it can be destroyed, how can it 
 be done? By cultivating sympathy and love for 
 others? By developing altruistic sentiments? 
 No! Sympathy, love, and altruism will diminish 
 selfishness, but they do not touch the roots of 
 selfishness and will never tear them out of the soil 
 in which they are fastened and anchored. This 
 cure and remedy for selfishness is not radical, but 
 merely skims the surface, for it assumes the real- 
 ity and permanence of that which is the very 
 spring and fountain of the emotions and senti- 
 ments of selfishness: viz., the separate and indi- 
 vidual self itself. If the individual self itself is 
 an ultimate and basic reality which has, of neces- 
 sity, a permanent and even an immortal existence 
 at the very core and heart of every human being's 
 life, then, of necessity, the central, core-like and 
 heartfelt sentiments, emotions, and loyalties will 
 be, and ought to be, selfish, egoistic, private, and 
 exclusive. The innermost love and loyalty will 
 be given, as it ought to be given, to this innermost 
 core and heart of every human being, — the ego 
 of the individual and private self. And the only 
 love and sympathy which can be given, or ought, 
 in loyalty to the ego, to be given, will be that 
 which can in surplusage overflow and radiate from 
 out of the overfilled precincts of the ego and the 
 
12 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 self. Love and loyalty must begin at home, in 
 the home and the heart of the private ego, and 
 from thence spread outward if there is any over- 
 flow to spread. No! The love, sympathy, and 
 altruism which leaves the private and inner ego 
 intact, as a unique, individual, and monadic thing, 
 essentially separate and isolated in its inner 
 shrine and tabernacle and holy of holies, will 
 never completely and utterly destroy selfishness 
 as it ought to be destroyed. No 1 Selfishness 
 will never be destroyed in this indirect way, and 
 by attacking it from the outside or the rear. The 
 best that can be done in this way will be to dimin- 
 ish it. 
 
 There is only one possible way of destroying 
 selfishness, and that is, so to speak, by destroying 
 the self itself. And the only possible way of de- 
 stroying the self, so to speak, is to completely dis- 
 prove the existence of the self, to show that it is 
 a blind illusion and a superstitious dream, and in 
 this way to completely destroy the belief in the 
 self. And when the existence of the private and 
 exclusive self has been completely and perfectly 
 disproven and the belief in its existence has been 
 completely and thoroughly eradicated from the 
 human mind, then, and not till then, will it be 
 possible to banish selfishness from the world. 
 When men no longer imagine they have a private 
 self, then they will no longer act selfishly, and the 
 sins and sufferings of the world will cease. And 
 then will be, — 
 
THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 18 
 
 " Every tiger madness muzzled ; 
 Every serpent passion killed; 
 Every grim ravine a garden; 
 Every blazing desert tilled." 
 
 Men once imagined that the earth was as flat 
 as a table ; science proved that it was as round as 
 an orange. They thought it was perfectly mo- 
 tionless; science proved that it spun around like 
 a top, and swung around the sun at the rate of 
 67,000 miles an hour. They thought the sun was 
 a little body, several acres in area, that circled 
 round the great big earth; but science proved 
 that it was a million times larger than the earth, 
 and that it was the earth which circled round the 
 sun, once in every year. In these cases, which 
 are typical, and in many others also, science dis- 
 pelled the illusions of man's uneducated and 
 uncritical mind and senses; and not merely cor- 
 rected, but practically and diametrically contra- 
 dicted, the notions and inferences of his mind. 
 The reality was the very reverse of what man's 
 uninstructed and uncritical mind and senses 
 seemed to tell him. And what was true in these 
 typical instances will be equally true in other in- 
 stances to occur in the future, and will be espe- 
 cially true in regard to man's notions concerning 
 his own individuality, personality, and private 
 selfhood. Science and philosophy will not merely 
 correct and qualify his past and present ideas 
 concerning his " self," but it will in this case, as 
 in the others before mentioned, fairly and squarely 
 
14 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 contradict them and " give them the lie in the 
 teeth." It will prove, and just as certainly, that 
 man has no private, individual, personal, and per- 
 manent ego, any more than the earth is flat, mo- 
 tionless, and the center of the solar system; and 
 when it does, then the egocentric notion of self- 
 hood will be relegated to the museum of exploded 
 illusions with the Ptolemaic astronomy of other 
 days, and the cosmocentric theory will take its 
 place. The past and present idea of the ego may 
 fitly be called the Ptolemaic or egocentric theory 
 of the self. And science will prove in this case to 
 be another Copernicus, viz., of the self or soul, 
 and will place the center of the spiritual universe 
 out there, in the universal all and whole, instead 
 of in here, in the microscopic, infinitesimal, and 
 ever-flowing part. It will destroy man's selfish- 
 ness by destroying his belief in his little micro- 
 scopic self. But in return and compensation it 
 will give him instead his great, infinite, eternal, 
 divine, and Godlike self, and his democratic par- 
 ticipation in the common divinity of the world. 
 
 The earth appears to be flat and motionless and 
 the center of the universe, but it is just the very 
 reverse. So it appears to us as though we had 
 permanent, private, and personal egos or souls; 
 but we have nothing whatever of the kind; what 
 we actually have is the very reverse of this; not 
 for one single second of our lives have we a pri- 
 vate, personal ego of our own, any more than the 
 flame of a lamp, or the cataract of the river, or 
 
THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 15 
 
 the waves of the ocean, have permanent and pri- 
 vate egos and selves of their own. 
 
 Man has been the credulous victim and the 
 tragical dupe of many a minor illusion which sci- 
 ence has gradually dispelled. But he is not " out 
 of the woods " yet, for the greatest of all his 
 illusions still remains to be dispelled. 
 
 Let us briefly recount a few of these minor illu- 
 sions, in order to realize something of their 
 importance and tragical character. Men once 
 imagined that the bowels were the seat of mercy; 
 the heart, the seat of courage; the spleen, the 
 seat of envy; that the arteries were air vessels; 
 and that the insane were possessed by devils. 
 And these poor creatures were driven out into the 
 open, beaten and maltreated ; and the only remedy 
 they had for insanity was for the priest or witch- 
 doctor to exorcise or drive the devils out of them 
 by prayer, incantation, or physical abuse. As we 
 read in the New Testament, Jesus commanded the 
 devils to leave certain men who were possessed, 
 and the devils left them, and entered the bodies 
 of a herd of swine, who forthwith became pos- 
 sessed and rushed headlong over a cliff into the 
 sea and were drowned. Man's soul they imagined 
 was a breath which could be heard to depart and 
 escape with the last gasps of the dying. So in 
 epilepsy, hysteria, and, in fact, in all diseases, it 
 was supposed to be caused by the activities of 
 evil spirits and demons, working their malicious 
 intents and diabolical purposes upon the body. 
 
16 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 And so the cure for disease was supposed to be 
 through magic and exorcism instead of through 
 therapeutics or natural agencies. Men imagined 
 the circumambient air to be peopled with multi- 
 tudes of ghosts and devils. When men were in 
 good health, they said they were in good spirits, 
 and vice versa; meaning, in fact, that the good 
 and bad spirits were inside them. The fathers 
 of the mediaeval Church described demons as in- 
 flicting diseases upon men, and the 72nd canon 
 of the Church forbade the casting out of devils 
 by unauthorized persons without a special license 
 from the Church itself. In harmony with these 
 illusions and superstitions there arose the fearful 
 and tragic belief in witches and witchcraft. This 
 belief was practically universal throughout Eu- 
 rope for centuries, and carefully compiled statis- 
 tics and records show that nine millions of poor 
 old women were burned and tortured to death for 
 this imaginary and superstitious crime. 
 
 Going somewhat further back in time, or rather 
 in the stage and degree of human development, 
 we find that among many savage, barbarous, or 
 semi-civilized races, like the Mexicans, Peruvians, 
 and Central Americans at the time of the Spanish 
 Conquest, there existed among them a belief that 
 death was not due to natural causes, but to the 
 workings of malicious spirits and ghosts. They 
 also believed that every man had a sort of spirit- 
 ual double, or ghostly duplicate, which left the 
 body at death and went away to some other coun- 
 
THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 17 
 
 try, beyond the mountains or the horizon, and 
 there resumed his earthly life much as he had 
 lived it here, only, as a rule, much better. And 
 in that far off country beyond the mountains, seas, 
 or horizon, the dead man would need all the wives 
 and women, human and brute companions, he had 
 here, together with his material possessions. 
 And so there arose, in harmony with these beliefs, 
 in many countries, and all over this primitive 
 world nearly, the fearful and tragic custom of 
 immolating the wives and women of the dead man, 
 also his servants and slaves, — or his horses, dogs, 
 and weapons, as among the North American In- 
 dians. For he would need and desire all these, 
 they thought, in that other country to which he 
 had departed at death. In India, in the custom 
 of the " suttee," the widow jumped into the fu- 
 neral fire and was burned alive with her husband's 
 corpse. In Africa, among the Zulus, Dahomans, 
 and Coast Negroes, the wives of the dead man, or 
 chief, killed each other so as to accompany him 
 to the other world. In Mexico at the time of the 
 Spanish Conquest, when a king, chief, or noble 
 was dying and before he was actually dead, his 
 attendants, servants, and slaves would kill them- 
 selves beforehand so that they could travel on 
 ahead of him and make the necessary prepara- 
 tions for his proper and comfortable reception 
 in the other world. It is said that the number 
 so immolated sometimes amounted to several hun- 
 dred. In Peru at the same period a similar cus- 
 
18 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 torn existed, and it is recorded that when an Inca 
 died, " his attendants and favorite concubines, 
 amounting sometimes to thousands, were immo- 
 lated on his tomb." In Dahomey, in Africa, on 
 one occasion, " 285 of the wives and women of 
 the dead king's household killed themselves." 
 
 Now these are only a few instances among thou- 
 sands of a like nature, showing what fearful and 
 tragical illusions and superstitions have afflicted 
 the human mind and cursed human life as during 
 its evolution it has slowly, painfully, and with 
 groping and stumbling steps struggled its way 
 upward into the clearer and brighter light of the 
 present day. During his evolution man's mind 
 has developed its powers of mental vision so as 
 to be able to see and penetrate deeper and further, 
 beyond and behind, the material-seeming masks 
 and appearances which the realities of the world 
 wear to the inadequate and partial visions of the 
 bodily senses. 
 
 This partial and slight review of the toilsome 
 and tragic path of the evolving mind as it has 
 struggled upward from the blindness of the brute 
 to the imperfect vision of to-day, suggests the 
 question: Have we reached the end and the last 
 of these illusions? Have we banished and de- 
 stroyed them all? Are we completely " out of 
 the woods " ? Is the world, and are we and our 
 fellows, just what they seem to be and what we 
 now believe they are? As we peer backward into 
 the past history of humanity, we can plainly see 
 
THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 19 
 
 to-day that many, perhaps almost all, of the 
 greatest horrors and tragedies of human life were 
 due almost entirely to human ignorance and illu- 
 sions. Now, this old and groaning world of ours 
 is still a world of tragedies. There are the trage- 
 dies of war between nations and races; the curse 
 of social conflicts between social and economic 
 classes, between the inheriting and privileged rich 
 and the disinherited and unprivileged poor; the 
 poverty and degradation of the vast masses of man- 
 kind; the crime, drunkenness, prostitution, and 
 disease; the selfishness, greed, hatred, anger, and 
 contempt, which is almost universal; the personal 
 illwill, malice, envy, quarrels, and murders, we 
 meet with almost everywhere. Is all this tragedy, 
 horror, and misery normal, natural, and to be for- 
 ever permanent and incurable? Does man act in 
 this way and produce these fearful results in his 
 life and conduct, knowing and seeing clearly and 
 exactly just what the real nature of this world 
 is, what his own true nature is, and what is the 
 true relationship between himself and his fellow- 
 men? Or are the tragedies and sins of this age 
 and civilization, like many of the minor tragedies 
 of the past which have now been ended, due en- 
 tirely or essentially to some blind belief, some 
 fearful illusion, which has always possessed and 
 still possesses the human mind and so curses hu- 
 man life, poisons the cup of enjoyment, and de- 
 stroys the beauty of the world. 
 
 I believe most sincerely that it is the last. I 
 
20 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 believe that the man of to-day, with a few rare 
 exceptions, is as surely blind and superstitious, 
 and has just as surely a tremendous illusion con- 
 cerning one thing at least, — and that, too, the 
 most central and important of all things to him 
 and to his fellows, viz., his own selfhood, individu- 
 ality, and personality, — as ever his barbarous 
 and less enlightened ancestors had concerning this, 
 as well as many other things. And I am further 
 convinced that to this illusion of private selfhood 
 is due practically all of the selfishness, sin, and 
 misery of the world to-day, and that if this illu- 
 sion of individuality and superstition of self could 
 only be thoroughly and scientifically destroyed 
 and banished, the undying hope in a happier, bet- 
 ter, and more beautiful world which has haunted 
 the mind and heart of man from the beginning 
 until now, would be fully and perfectly realized. 
 The only thing that stands between mankind 
 and comparative heaven on earth is this one su- 
 preme and transcendent illusion of the self which 
 it is the glorious function and mission of science 
 and philosophy to forever dispel and de- 
 stroy. 
 
 That is the monstrous and vicious illusion which 
 stands to-day, like a giant in the way, between 
 man and the kingdom of heaven. That is the il- 
 lusion which makes this world a hell upon earth, 
 and always will, as long as it lasts. That is the 
 superstition which makes this world a valley of 
 tears and a journey through the wilderness; and 
 
THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 21 
 
 never until it has been utterly destroyed will man 
 ever enter the long " promised land." 
 
 " Eager ye cling to shadows, dote on dreams ; 
 
 A false self in the midst ye plant, and make 
 
 A world around which seems 
 
 Blind to the height beyond, deaf to the sound 
 
 Of sweet airs breathed from far past Indra's sky; 
 
 Dumb to the summons of the true life kept 
 
 For him who puts the false life by. 
 
 So grow the strifes and lusts which make earth's war, 
 
 So grieve poor cheated hearts and flow salt tears; 
 
 So wax the passions, envies, angers, hates; 
 
 So years chase blood-stained years 
 
 With wild red feet." 2 
 
 For this illusion of the self is the fountain head 
 and spring of all cold-blooded selfishness, envy, 
 hate, and anger ; of all pride, vanity, conceit, and 
 contempt for others ; of all beliefs in the superior- 
 ity of one's self and the inferiority of others; of 
 all injustice, greed, cruelty, and crime. In fact, 
 it is the real arch-fiend, the very real Devil itself, 
 whose blind malice has always made, and always 
 will make as long as it lasts, this world into 
 a veritable hell. " Man's inhumanity to man 
 makes countless millions mourn," and the simple, 
 scientific reason is because men have always im- 
 agined that they were private, separate selves; 
 that they lived private, separate lives; had pri- 
 vate, separate experiences; and would have pri- 
 vate, separate fates and destinies. And all of 
 
 2 Edwin Arnold, " The Light of Asia." 
 
23 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 this was a vicious and downright illusion. Men 
 are not private, separate beings; they do not, 
 and never can live, private, separate lives, no mat- 
 ter how much they may imagine they do ; and they 
 have, thank heaven, no private, personal fates 
 and destinies. They are not individuals at all, 
 in any genuine, exact, and scientific sense of the 
 word; they are like the flames of the lamps, the 
 jets of burning gas, the cataracts in the rivers, 
 and the waves of the sea. They are merely the 
 ever-flowing kinetic phenomena, the dynamic dif- 
 ferentials, of the one and only cosmic organism 
 and Individual of the world, whose ethereal, elec- 
 tric, material, and psychically conditioned ener- 
 gies flow, and flow, and flow forever, through all 
 the multitudinous and phenomenally individualized 
 forms and portions of its being. Without stop- 
 ping or resting anywhere, or in any particular 
 form for any length of time, its substance, ener- 
 gies, and being flow and stream and fly through 
 all things ; and thus insure for an absolute cer- 
 tainty that in the long run, the eternal and endless 
 run of the universal life, all portions of its being 
 shall have a common, cosmic experience, and a 
 common, cosmic fate and destiny. Every por- 
 tion of being that exists shall experience in the 
 long run just as much of heaven and just as much 
 of hell as every other. 
 
 Men have always imagined themselves to be 
 " static " individuals, spiritually, at least, if not 
 materially. They imagine themselves to be sepa- 
 
THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 38 
 
 rate selves, in some sort of soul- tight compart- 
 ments of their own. But science and scientific 
 philosophy is prepared to-day to destroy this 
 egotistical and perhaps pleasing illusion, and to 
 prove that they are nothing more or less than the 
 transient, dynamic differentials of being as a uni- 
 tary cosmic organism under phenomenally indi- 
 vidualized and personalized forms that are nec- 
 essarily temporary and transient in character. 
 
 And there is as much difference between the 
 fallacious idea of a static and persistent indi- 
 vidual and the true idea of a kinetic, dynamic, 
 and -flowing differential of being as there once was 
 between the exploded idea of a flat, motionless 
 and geocentric earth and the true idea of the 
 round, rotating, revolving and heliocentric earth 
 of to-day. 
 
 And as the illusion of a flat, motionless, and 
 geocentric earth has now been destroyed by sci- 
 ence, and the truth of the round, rotating, re- 
 volving and heliocentric earth has taken its 
 abandoned place, so we can be certain that before 
 many years or generations have passed, the ca- 
 lamitous illusion of the static and persistent hu- 
 man ego, or self, will be dispelled and destroyed, 
 and the truth of the dynamic human differential 
 of being will have taken its deserted place. 
 
 Every fresh discovery of science only goes to 
 prove that the statical and pluralistic conceptions 
 of things are false and illusory, and that the 
 kinetic, dynamic, and monistic conception of be- 
 
24 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 ings and things is right. And so it is in this case 
 concerning the nature and constitution of man 
 and his relations to his fellows and the rest of 
 the world. The statical, persistent, and plural- 
 istic conception of man as a separate, exclusive, 
 and private individual is unscientific, illusory, and 
 superstitious ; while the kinetic, dynamic, and 
 monistic conception of him as an ever-flowing por- 
 tion of an ever-flowing whole of being is scientific, 
 philosophic, reasonable, and true. The selfish- 
 ness of mankind, with all the sins and sufferings 
 it necessarily entails, can never be destroyed until 
 the existence of the static self has been completely 
 disproven and the belief in its existence has been 
 completely destroyed. And the crass and cor- 
 rupting individualism of society can never be de- 
 stroyed until the existence of the exclusive and 
 private individual has been thoroughly disproven 
 and the belief in its existence has been torn out 
 by the roots. But when, at last, this belief in the 
 private self has been utterly and scientifically 
 eradicated, then the blighting and accursed selfish- 
 ness of human life and conduct and the crass and 
 Corrupting individualism of society will have re- 
 ceived the final and fatal deathblow, and a revolu- 
 tion will have been accomplished in the moral and 
 spiritual life of mankind. 
 
 Man's last, greatest, and deadliest enemy on 
 this earth is himself. Man has conquered the 
 earth and the brutish creatures of the earth, and 
 the only enemy he has left to conquer is his own 
 
THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 25 
 
 blind, deluded, and self-divided self. Man is the 
 supreme arch-enemy of himself, and all the sins, 
 sufferings, and horrors of this world to-day are 
 almost entirely those which are inflicted upon hu- 
 manity by its own blind and deluded self. The 
 sins of mankind are the sins of the blind; and the 
 sufferings of mankind are all self-inflicted suffer- 
 ings ; and the lashes and scourges which draw the 
 tears, groans, and blood from the body and soul 
 of man are all wielded by his own hands and laid 
 upon his own back; and the poor, blind, deluded 
 fool and wretch, in his blindness of sense and 
 hardness of heart, always imagines (in his im- 
 aginary privacy and selfishness) that he, pri- 
 vately, is laying the lash upon some other private 
 fellow's back. But, thank heaven, he is utterly 
 and absolutely wrong in his imagination and illu- 
 sion, for there is, in the last analysis, but " one 
 Being without a second " ; and the substance and 
 spirit of that one and only Being is flowing, and 
 flowing, and flowing eternally and without rest, 
 through every form and shape of human and all 
 other life. Like the flame, the river, the cataract, 
 the wave, and the electric current, it passes 
 through all things and remains not an instant in 
 one. In the last analysis there is no other and 
 second being, no other and second fellow, upon 
 whose devoted back any lash can be laid or any 
 selfish, envious, angry, hateful, or malicious blow 
 can be struck. 
 
 The plurality and staticality of beings, like the 
 
26 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 duality of mind and body, is an utter phenomenal 
 illusion and a deception of the shallow, superficial 
 senses, impressions, and perceptions of the unsci- 
 entific and uncritical man. Every blow that is 
 struck in this world, thank God, is a veritable 
 boomerang, which with a perfect and divine justice 
 and retribution flies back and strikes the striker. 
 For there is but one Being to strike, and one Be- 
 ing, and the same, to be struck; and that Being 
 flows forever through all its own parts. The one 
 and ever-flowing Being can strike no one but itself. 
 This is the perfect and divine justice of the world 
 as it really and truly is, and not as it seems to be 
 to our purblind, shallow, and separating senses. 
 
 Man's supreme and final enemy is his own 
 " self," and the final cause of this enmity and war 
 of man upon himself is that selfishness which has 
 its final and fruitful spring in man's blind belief 
 and ignorant superstition that men have separate, 
 private souls and are exclusive individuals. But 
 no such souls or individuals exist except in his 
 own benighted imagination. It is all an illusion 
 and superstition, the supreme and most tragical 
 illusion of human life; and this illusion of the 
 private self, this superstition of the private per- 
 son, must be utterly and ruthlessly destroyed be- 
 fore selfishness and all the sins, crimes, sufferings, 
 and ugliness which flow from selfishness can be 
 banished from the earth, and a heaven of human 
 harmony and joy and beauty can be realized. 
 
 If men were genuine, private selves, they would 
 
THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 27 
 
 have a perfect right and a loyal duty to be selfish. 
 But ethics has always proclaimed with an insist- 
 ent, persistent, and unwavering voice that men 
 have no right to be selfish, private, and exclusive 
 in their lives and conduct. If men have no moral 
 and genuine right to be selfish, then, in the last 
 analysis, the only possible reason can be that they 
 are not in actual fact, and in the last resort, 
 genuine statical selves at all, but are only seeming, 
 dynamical, and phenomenal selves ; and this is the 
 actual truth, and the profound and significant 
 conclusion to which modern science and philoso- 
 phy are pointing to-day with an unerring and un- 
 wavering finger. Love is a delusion, ethics is 
 founded on a falsehood, and the imperative moral 
 law is a positive lie, unless as a final fact and 
 ultimate truth all being is really one, and only 
 one. 
 
 There does not exist to-day the slightest scien- 
 tific warrant or a single scrap of reliable scientific 
 evidence for the belief in the existence of any sepa- 
 rate selves whatever. Neither with the microscope, 
 or telescope, or the ordinary senses, or in any other 
 way whatever, has science yet discovered an indi- 
 vidual being or thing, or anything suggesting one. 
 The Daltonian atom once upon a time looked 
 like an individual thing, but that, too, has given 
 up its individual ghost, and has been resolved into 
 the electrical vortices of the pristine and universal 
 ether. 
 
 The separate individuality of every material 
 
28 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 thing and phenomenon has now been thoroughly 
 disproven. Every material thing that exists is 
 now proven to be, in the last analysis, a dynamic 
 differential of the pristine and common ether, or 
 of the one and only ultimate substance and being 
 of the world. And with this complete, scientific 
 disproof of all material individuality and privacy, 
 there also follows, necessarily, the disproof of all 
 spiritual individuality and privacy too. For con- 
 sciousness, or mind, or soul, — whatever you wish 
 to call it, — is not an " entity " at all, but only a 
 " state " or psychic condition of things, and as 
 such is a pure abstraction from concrete being; 
 and if there are no material individuals, then 
 there can be no spiritual individuals and no par- 
 tial, concrete individuals either. There remains 
 but one supreme, all-inclusive individual, the cos- 
 mic and social organism of the world ; the God of 
 modern science and philosophy, in whose divinity 
 every being democratically participates and 
 equally shares. There is but one integral indi- 
 vidual, person, and self in existence. There is 
 but one inhabitant of the universe, the cosmic-so- 
 cial organism of the world, which science calls 
 " nature," which philosophy calls the " infinite 
 and eternal reality," and which a scientific phi- 
 losophic religion can now, with historical and evo- 
 lutionary truth, call by the supreme and trans^ 
 cendent name of " God." And of this cosmic-so- 
 cial organism of the world, all men and creatures 
 and things are the ever-flowing, ever-changing dif- 
 
THE WORLD OF ILLUSION £9 
 
 ferentiations, the phenomenal and transient mani- 
 festations and appearances, and the organic parts 
 and members. 
 
 Science and philosophy have never yet discov- 
 ered a truly individual being or thing excepting 
 the individual cosmic organism itself. That is the 
 one and only true and integral individual that it 
 does discover or can conceive. But what it does 
 discover within the body of this universal and in- 
 tegral individual of the world, and the only things 
 it does discover, are the differential things, be- 
 ings, and persons which are the organic parts and 
 members of the indivisible cosmic organism. Sci- 
 ence discovers nothing but the dynamic differen- 
 tials of the cosmos as an organic, unitary, and 
 individual whole, and dynamic differentials are the 
 very antipodes of the static and private individ- 
 uals of the ignorant human imagination. A 
 dynamic differential is, of necessity, an organic 
 part and member and an ever-flowing portion of 
 an ever-flowing whole, like an ever-flowing cata- 
 ract of an ever-flowing stream ; and it never loses 
 its organic connection and fusion with the organic 
 whole of which it is a fraction and a part. 
 
 An individual thing or being, on the other hand, 
 would necessarily be a bona fide, complete, and in- 
 dependent whole, or organism in itself and by 
 itself; and any thing or being which is not in 
 some genuine sense a complete, perfect, intact, 
 and independent whole in itself, is no true indi- 
 vidual at all. And of such an individual thing as 
 
30 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 that, there is but one specimen in existence, viz., 
 the universe itself. 
 
 In every department of science and philosophy 
 to-day kinetic, dynamic, and monistic conceptions 
 are taking the place of the old statical, pluralistic, 
 and dualistic ones ; and they are doing this in re- 
 gard to the nature and constitution of man as well 
 as in regard to everything else. The kinetic con- 
 ception of man and his consciousness, will before 
 long supersede completely the old, pluralistic, and 
 statical one; and when it does, a revolution will 
 follow in human thought, human conduct, and hu- 
 man life. 
 
 " All forms that perish, other forms supply ; 
 By turns we catch the vital breath, and die; 
 Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne, 
 They rise, and break, and to that sea return. 
 Nothing is foreign; parts relate to Whole; 
 One all-extending, all-preserving soul 
 Connects each being, greatest with the least; 
 Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast; 
 All served and serving; nothing stands alone; 
 The chain holds on, and where it ends unknown." 8 
 
 s Pope. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF THE MANY OUT OF 
 THE ONE 
 
 According to the Hindu scriptures, Krishna, 
 the Indian God, said, " I am the One and I wish 
 to be the many " ; and in another place it says ; 
 " I am one, but by my power I appear to be 
 many." These are only poetical and religious ex- 
 pressions of the " law of cosmic evolution " as 
 discovered and expounded by Herbert Spencer, 
 and of the relationship between the Infinite and 
 Eternal Energy (or Being) from which all things 
 proceed, and the innumerable phenomenal and 
 finite things which evolve out of it. The process 
 of cosmic or solar evolution, as Herbert Spencer 
 has argued and shown, consists in the passage of 
 an original ocean of undifferentiated, undistin- 
 guished, formless, and nebulous ether, or primal 
 substance and being of the world, by evolutionary 
 steps and stages, to a form of being which con- 
 sists of a multitude of phenomenal parts and 
 forms which are highly differentiated and distin- 
 guished from each other and which, to our shallow, 
 penetrating senses, seem to be separate and ab- 
 solutely individual in character. The one ocean 
 
 31 
 
32 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 of ether or being thus becomes, through the dif- 
 ferentiating process of its morphological or 
 formal evolution, a cosmos of many highly differ- 
 entiated parts and forms. 
 
 The One, by way of the process of cosmic differ- 
 entiation and morphological transformation, thus 
 realizes its wish and will to be the many ; and thus 
 by its power of evolving and subdividing it ap- 
 pears, to our short-sighted senses, as many in one 
 great totalizing universe. Some one (Herbert 
 Spencer, I believe) has said, that " evolution is a 
 tendency to individuation," but this is distinctly 
 untrue, if by individuation is meant absolutely 
 separate and independent existence. 
 
 Evolution is not a process of individuation at 
 all, in the accurate and logical meaning of the 
 word; it is instead a process of organic and sys- 
 tematic differentiation. It is a differentiating 
 and not an individuating process, and therefore 
 the many products of evolution are not individual 
 beings and things, in the strict and logical sense 
 of the word, but merely differential beings and 
 things who never for an instant lose their organic 
 connection, dependence, and unity with the cosmic 
 whole of which they are the self-differentiated and 
 self-distinguished parts. The individuation is 
 only comparative, not absolute; seeming, but not 
 perfectly real. 
 
 That is how, via evolution and subdivision, the 
 One becomes the many, and that is the true rela- 
 tionship between the One and the many; that is 
 
EVOLUTION OF THE MANY 33 
 
 what the one means, — viz., the whole cosmic 
 organism or system; and that is what the many 
 means, viz., the numerous cosmic organs or sys- 
 tematic parts. The One was absolutely one at 
 the beginning of the evolutionary process and it 
 still remains absolutely one throughout that proc- 
 ess ; its unity is perfect and absolute at all times. 
 It begins in a state of undifferentiated, or rather 
 of least differentiated, oneness, and ends in a state 
 of highly differentiated and most differentiated 
 oneness ; but it never loses and can never lose its 
 original and perfect unity. The theory of evolu- 
 tion, therefore, is a perfect monistic theory ; it 
 explains perfectly how the many come into being 
 and appear to our superficial senses as individual 
 beings and things. The one and only Being of 
 the world is always, absolutely, and perfectly one. 
 The many partial and fractional beings and things 
 of the world are always only comparatively, phe- 
 nomenally, and superficially many; they are never 
 absolutely or really many except in this restricted, 
 evolutionary, and qualified sense. The theory of 
 evolution, therefore, completely discounts and dis- 
 credits the existence of any positive plurality of 
 beings and things whatever. 
 
 " The One remains, the many change and pass ; 
 Heaven's light forever shines, earth's shadow's fly." 
 
 One great reason why things and beings appear 
 to be many is because of the fact of our blindness 
 to the lower, smaller, and less differentiated forms 
 
U THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 of matter and energy. If we could only see with 
 our natural eyes the molecules, atoms, and ions 
 and the pristine ether, then without a question 
 we could see the perfect material oneness of all 
 the things and persons in the universe, and the 
 illusion of material multiplicity, except of differ- 
 entials, would disappear. But these lowest forms 
 of matter and energy are invisible to us, and 
 hence those higher forms that are visible appear 
 as absolutely separate and many, and seem to 
 stand and move around in empty space ; but there 
 is no empty space, there is only an empty or 
 blind spot and space in our eyes and natural 
 vision. The world appears, therefore, as a sort 
 of " bas relief " in which some things are raised 
 into prominence and view while others are de- 
 pressed into an unseen background, and in this 
 way the illusion of separateness and multiplicity 
 arises, and the perfect, underlying unity is un- 
 seen. The chain of beings and things is com- 
 posed of links all joined perfectly together 
 in one perfect whole; but while some of the 
 links are visible, others are invisible, and 
 hence the perfectly united chain, instead 
 of looking like a chain to us, looks like a series 
 of absolutely separate links. But science is 
 gradually discovering these invisible and missing 
 links in the unbroken and perfect chain of being, 
 and is putting them into their proper places and 
 connection; and as it does so, we are beginning 
 to see more and more clearly and surely that there 
 
EVOLUTION OF THE MANY 85 
 
 are no absolutely separate rings (or beings), that 
 separation and individuality are blind illusions, 
 and that the being of the world consists of one 
 perfect and unbroken chain of existence. Life, 
 instead of being a series of absolutely separate 
 rings OOOOOOOOO (like this) is, in fact, a per- 
 fectly unbroken chain and unit of being CBDGBBBBBB P 
 (like this). 
 
 The illusion of the many, the separate, and the 
 individual, is thus rapidly being destroyed by sci- 
 ence and scientific philosophy ; and before a great 
 many years they will take their proper place with 
 the exploded illusions of the flat earth and the 
 circling sun; and the cosmocentric theory of the 
 individual and the self will take the place of the 
 past and present egocentric one. As our astro- 
 nomical perspective and vision was once diamet- 
 rically wrong, so our ontological and spiritual 
 perspective and vision is still wrong (for the vast 
 majority) ; and as science corrected and contra- 
 dicted our astronomical perspective and vision, so 
 it is now beginning to correct and contradict our 
 ontological and spiritual perspective and vision; 
 and as science substituted the heliocentric theory 
 for the geocentric one, so it is beginning to sub- 
 stitute the cosmocentric theory of the individual 
 and the self for the egocentric theory of the same. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE UNIFYING TENDENCY OF SCIENCE 
 
 The whole tendency and effort of modern sci- 
 ence is a monistic and unifying one ; it is a tend- 
 ency and effort that is rapidly succeeding in 
 proving the unbroken oneness and perfect internal 
 unity of the entire all-inclusive being of the world, 
 although it is true, of course, that this world is 
 manifested to us in a multitude of infinitely vari- 
 ous and seemingly separate and individual forms. 
 The universe is a perfect organic unity (and hence 
 a perfect organism) in an infinite variety of 
 organic parts. It is not a mere pluralistic total- 
 ity or aggregation of many separate beings and 
 things ; it is not a mere external union, nor a mere 
 organization ; but it is instead an integrality, or 
 perfect whole, — a perfect internal unity, and an 
 indivisible organism of being. 
 
 The discovery of the law of gravitation by Sir 
 Isaac Newton, of the heliocentric astronomy by 
 Copernicus, of the laws of cosmic, solar, and bio- 
 logical evolution by Spencer and Darwin, and many 
 other discoveries by other men of science, all went 
 to prove the perfect internal unity of the world 
 
 and to show that it was in reality a true universe 
 
 36 
 
TENDENCY OF SCIENCE 37 
 
 and not a duiverse, pluriverse or multiverse of any 
 kind. And so it was named a universe, and the 
 name fitted the fact, and it has never been seri- 
 ously challenged since, even by so-called pluralists. 
 Thus, even Prof. James says his pluralistic world 
 is a real universe, partly, if not perfectly, con- 
 nected into a unitary whole. " Our ' multiverse ' 
 still makes a ' universe,' " he says. 1 The whole 
 tendency of science from the very beginning has 
 been to discover and to demonstrate the perfect 
 internal unities, continuities, and interconnexions 
 of things in place of their seeming and superficial 
 disunities, disconnexions and discontinuities; and 
 so persistent and unfailing has this tendency been, 
 and so far has this process of unification now gone, 
 that no honest, logical, and capable mind can now 
 for a moment doubt what the necessary and final 
 outcome of science will be. 
 
 Within the last few years a clinching and sig- 
 nificant discovery has been made by chemical and 
 physical scientists. It is that of the corpuscular, 
 electrical, and ethereal constitution of all matter 
 and energy. Up to within a few years ago it 
 had seemed as though there were about 80 or 
 more ultimate and basic chemical elements and 
 atoms of matter, for it had been impossible, here- 
 tofore, to break up and analyze these 80 differ- 
 ent atoms into smaller and more simple elements. 
 The world, so far as science could prove, seemed 
 to be made out of 80 different kinds of funda- 
 i"The Pluralistic Universe," Prof. Wm. James. 
 
38 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 mental matter, and that was a very pluralistic 
 situation indeed. Logical and philosophical 
 thinkers, however, had long ago believed that 
 there must be, in the last analysis, but one kind 
 of matter and but one body of matter, or, in 
 other words, but one kind of being and but one 
 body of being. In other words still, they believed 
 that there was but one kind of being and but one 
 being of the kind; that the universe, in fact, was 
 a Unibeing; that the Cosmos as a whole had but 
 one real inhabitant ; that there was but one family 
 and genus of being, but one species of that genus, 
 and but one specimen of that species. They be- 
 lieved that everything that exists was made up 
 out of various mathematical, numerical, and mor- 
 phological combinations of differentiated units, 
 or atoms of this one kind and body of substance 
 or being. 
 
 This idea was not new, but it was purely logi- 
 cal and metaphysical. It had never as yet been 
 scientifically and experimentally proven by exact 
 science. Some of the ancient thinkers of India 
 and Greece, and some modern thinkers like Spinoza 
 and Goethe, and the still more recent scientific 
 school of modern evolutionists, under the leader- 
 ship of men like Spencer and Haeckel, believed in 
 the absolute oneness of all matter, energy and 
 being. But up to within a few years it had never 
 been scientifically proven. Now it has been so 
 proven, and the logic and intuition of the monists 
 of the past and present has been grandly vindi- 
 
TENDENCY OF SCIENCE 39 
 
 cated. It is now known certainly that there are 
 not 80-odd different kinds of ultimate matter and 
 atoms and beings in the world, but that there is 
 one and only one. And so another pluralistic 
 notion has been destroyed, and that a most funda- 
 mental one, and the perfect oneness of the sub- 
 stance of the world has now been experimentally 
 proven. This amounts to nothing less than a 
 revolution in science, and, following that, in philos- 
 ophy, religion, and life. There is one and only 
 one kind of matter, energy, and being in the world, 
 and out of that one and only kind of matter and 
 energy everything that exists is made and dif- 
 ferentiated. Perfect oneness has now been proven 
 as regards the kind, quality, and nature of matter 
 or being. There is only one further question, if 
 question it be, which remains to be answered, and 
 that is this: Is there one and only one real body 
 of matter, and being in the world, or are there 
 many bona fide bodies of matter or many bona fide 
 beings in the world? 
 
 What is the answer which the physical and 
 chemical scientists of to-day are going to give 
 this question, if question it be? How do they 
 conceive that this one kind of matter and energy 
 exists, and under what form? The answer is this: 
 1. They know that all of the 80-odd different 
 kinds of atoms are composed of one kind of elec- 
 trical corpuscles, in combinations of from 1,000 
 to 200,000 or more. 2. They are also perfectly 
 well assured that these electrical corpuscles of 
 
40 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 which all matter is made are merely minute and 
 differentiated portions of one single, continuous 
 medium, ocean, or globe of the pristine ether or 
 " materia prima" which fills all space and endures 
 throughout all time. They also conceive that 
 these electrical corpuscles are little whirlpools, 
 vortices, and condensations of ethereal and elec- 
 trical energy which, as they circle and move 
 throughout this omnipresent ocean of the undif- 
 ferentiated ether, drag along with them, in pro- 
 portion to their velocity, a certain amount of 
 this ether; and it is this attached and bound up 
 ether which gives to these electrical whirlpools 
 their mass or mathematical quantity of matter. 
 Thus science is proclaiming to-day with practical 
 confidence and assurance, not only that there is 
 but one kind of matter or being in the world, but 
 also that there is numerically but one real body 
 of matter or being, of which single and unitary 
 body of being everything that exists is made and 
 is a more or less complex differentiation and mani- 
 festation. Science, therefore, has reduced all 
 substance and being to a complete oneness, both 
 numerical and qualitative, and it therefore de- 
 clares that the seeming plurality of beings and 
 things is a superficial illusion of the shallow 
 senses, feelings, and impressions of man. 
 
 As Prof. R. K. Duncan says, " The need felt 
 by men of science, of reducing the physical uni- 
 verse to a condition of oneness, of finding some 
 one thing out of whose properties or qualities 
 
TENDENCY OF SCIENCE 41 
 
 might proceed all that is," has at last been real- 
 ized. Thus scientists have come, via experiment 
 and objective observation, to the same conclu- 
 sions that the monistic thinkers had previously 
 reached. There is but one integral being in the 
 world (materially at least) and that being, dur- 
 ing its evolutionary and differentiating trans- 
 formations, combines its differentiated elements 
 into the infinite variety of superficial and phenom- 
 enal forms that we perceive with our imperfect 
 and half -blind eyes; and it does all this without 
 ever for an instant losing its absolute and perfect 
 organic oneness in this endless process of evolu- 
 tionary division and differentiation any more than 
 an egg in the shell loses its oneness when it divides, 
 differentiates, and distinguishes itself into limbs, 
 organs, and structures of many kinds. The egg 
 in the shell does not lose its unity in the process 
 of evolutionary differentiation and distinction; 
 neither, in the same way, does the all-inclusive 
 cosmic organism of the world lose its perfect or- 
 ganic oneness in the cosmic process of organic 
 division, differentiation, and distinguishment into 
 an infinite variety of organic structures and parts. 
 What happens to the cosmic organism during 
 the process of cosmic evolution is not a loss of 
 its original, ethereal oneness, but the gain of a 
 higher, nobler, and more organic oneness. It ex- 
 changes and transforms its simple, featureless, 
 and monotonous unity for a complex, featureful, 
 and infinitely rich and various unity. It ex- 
 
48 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 changes and transforms its sleepy, subconscious, 
 and dreamy state of being for its wide-awake, 
 self-conscious, and self-critical state, in which its 
 spiritual potentialities are expressed and mani- 
 fested in a multitude of highly individualized and 
 personalized forms, like the human beings of this 
 earth. 
 
 As the roses are to the rosebush, as the eyes, 
 ears, and brain are to the organism, so the human 
 intelligences on this earth and the other similar 
 intelligences on other planets are to the whole 
 cosmic organism of the world. They are its eyes 
 with which it sees itself, and they are its minds 
 with which it knows itself, — and knows itself 
 divine, or else nothing, no matter how great, 
 heroic, and tragic is divine. 
 
 In the analytical resolution of all matter into 
 the electrical elements and differentiations of the 
 primal ether, every form of absolute individuality 
 in the material world has been destroyed; there 
 are now no known or conceivable material individ- 
 uals in existence, and material individuality of 
 every kind has been once for all destroyed. 
 Would-be pluralists, therefore, have but one ref- 
 uge, — or imaginary and fallacious refuge, rather, 
 — left to them, and that lies in the assumption 
 that spiritual individuals may yet exist even 
 though material individuals do not, and cannot, 
 in the nature of things. But this refuge is a vain 
 one, for this assumption is utterly untrue. 
 
 The assumption is really this, that conscious- 
 
TENDENCY OF SCIENCE 48 
 
 ness is a " thing " in itself, by itself, and for it- 
 self, — that it is, in fact, an entity ; but this as- 
 sumption has not a logical leg to stand on. Con- 
 sciousness, as the very word implies, is not a 
 " thing " or " entity " at all, but simply the 
 psychic state and spiritual condition of some ex- 
 tra-psychic, extra-spiritual thing. It is not a 
 concrete entity at all, but a mere abstraction from 
 a concrete entity, possessing both psychical and 
 extra-psychical attributes. Whether these extra- 
 psychical attributes are really material, in the old 
 fashioned meaning of the word, or only quasi- 
 material, or pseudo-material, or not material at 
 all, makes no difference whatever. The only thing 
 a monistic ontologist and psychologist need insist 
 upon is that there are in the concrete being of 
 the world both psychical and extra-psychical at- 
 tributes and qualities, and that the psychical 
 attributes refer exclusively to the spiritual states 
 and conditions, while the extra-psychical and 
 seemingly material attributes refer to the entita- 
 tive, or seemingly substantial, qualities. The 
 monistic ontologist and psychologist protests 
 against the narrow, one-sided, and abstract defini- 
 tion of concrete being in terms of only one set of 
 its attributes, — viz., its state and condition at- 
 tributes, — throwing aside and ignoring altogether 
 its entitative attributes, which are just as real 
 and just as necessary to be included in a true 
 definition and conception of concrete being as the 
 state and condition attributes. 
 
44 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 There can be no states or conditions at all un- 
 less there is some real, entitative thing or being 
 in those states and conditions; and these states 
 and conditions cannot be the states and conditions 
 of nothing at all, — of a zero, a cipher, a nothing, 
 and non-entity; you cannot attach or attribute 
 states and conditions to nothings, — to zeros, 
 ciphers, and non-entities. They must be the 
 states and conditions of something or some entity 
 which is something more than its own states and 
 something besides them. Hence this concrete 
 soniething must have some extra-conscious at- 
 tributes ; in other words, it must have some defi- 
 nitely entitative attributes in addition to, and un- 
 derlying as a foundation, its conscious states and 
 conditions. 
 
 As there can be no motion apart from some- 
 thing entitative that moves, no action apart from 
 an agent, no function apart from some structure, 
 so there can be no conscious state or spiritual 
 condition apart from some entitative thing or be- 
 ing whose state and spiritual condition it is. 
 States cannot exist alone and hang like castles 
 in the air any more than motions or actions or 
 functions can exist alone and hang in the air, 
 apart from some real thing whose motions, activi- 
 ties, and functions they are. Just this is the fal- 
 lacious abstraction underlying all psychological 
 and ontological dualism ; the unwarranted assump- 
 tion that a state or condition of spirituality can 
 exist apart from some extra-spiritual entity 
 
TENDENCY OF SCIENCE 45 
 
 whose state and condition it is ; that spiritual in- 
 dividuals and spiritual individuality can exist 
 apart from extra-spiritual entities, which is evi- 
 dently untrue. No; spiritual individuals cannot 
 exist apart from extra-spiritual, or seemingly 
 material, beings ; and spiritual individuality can- 
 not exist apart from extra-spiritual individuality. 
 If there is no material, or extra-spiritual, individ- 
 uality, then there is and can be no abstract and 
 purely spiritual individuality. If there are (in 
 the nature of things as now known to us) no ma- 
 terial, or extra-spiritual individuals, then there 
 are and can be no purely spiritual individuals 
 because these so-called purely spiritual individuals 
 are nothing whatever but pure mental abstrac- 
 tions in the imagination of man. 
 
 Therefore, since recent science, in the resolu- 
 tion of all matter and energy into the primal ether, 
 has disproved conclusively the existence of all real 
 material individual beings whatever, then of logi- 
 cal necessity it has at the same time disproved 
 the existence of any abstract and purely spirit- 
 ual individuals also. Pure spirits are pure ab- 
 stractions and as such cannot exist, and the dis- 
 proof of material individuality is also the cor- 
 relative disproof of spiritual individuality. Mod- 
 ern science has disproved the existence of finite 
 or fractional individuality of every kind, both ma- 
 terial and spiritual. The individuals are dead, 
 long live The Individual. The many individuals 
 are banished, the One Individual remains. 
 
46 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 " The One remains, the many change and pass ; 
 Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadow's fly." 2 
 
 " God and I were in space alone, 
 
 And nobody else in view; 
 
 And God spake thus to me and said: 
 ' There were no people, living or dead, 
 
 There was no earth and no sky o'erhead, 
 
 There was only Myself in you. 
 
 There are no such things as fear and sin; 
 There is no You, you never have been; 
 There is nothing at all but Me.' " 8 
 
 a Shelley. 
 
 » Ella Wheeler Wileox. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE UNIFYING TENDENCY OF 
 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 The need which men of science felt, " of reduc- 
 ing the world to a condition of oneness," is a 
 need and an instinct which is felt by all thinking 
 beings, by philosophers especially. Philosophy is 
 essentially a unified system of all knowledge. 
 The world, as the contemplative and reflective 
 mind sees it, is always in some genuine sense a 
 single and unified whole; it is always the mind's 
 universe, never its duiverse, pluriverse, or multi- 
 verse. So it has been named, and time and prog- 
 ress are continually proving the correctness of 
 this name. 
 
 The world is always united in the human mind 
 and by the human mind, and undoubtedly, as Dr. 
 Paul Carus says, this unity of the world within the 
 mind simply represents the unity which exists in 
 the objective world without the mind, because 
 man's mind, as every monist must insist, is, in 
 reality, the mind of the world itself, which has 
 been developed in adaptation to the world as a 
 whole and in an essential correspondence and 
 harmony with it. 
 
 47 
 
48 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 The mind cannot really conceive of more worlds 
 or universes than one, of more integral beings 
 than one. The mind cannot conceive of two in- 
 tegral beings. It cannot conceive of two co- 
 existing volumes of space; all space is one limit- 
 less or self-limited volume of space. It can- 
 not conceive of two parallel eternities of time; all 
 time is one eternal stream of time. And every- 
 thing that exists is enclosed within this one volume 
 of space and endures within this one endless 
 stream of time. Hence the one volume of space 
 and the one stream of time unite all that exists 
 into one compact body of being. 
 
 The Infinite and Eternal cannot be two, but 
 must only be one. There cannot be two coexist- 
 ing infinities of space or two parallel eternities 
 of time. All time is one and all space is one, and 
 hence all being is one all-inclusive being. All be- 
 ings and things in space and time unite together 
 to make up one universal whole. Thus we are 
 forced by the constitution of our minds to con- 
 ceive of being as a whole, as absolutely and com- 
 pletely one, in some genuine sense. Thus we ar- 
 rive at the conception of an infinite and eternal 
 being, occupying an infinite or limitless space and 
 enduring throughout an infinite and limitless time. 
 
 And now, since the exact and experimental 
 scientists have practically proven the qualitative, 
 quantitative, and numerical oneness of all material 
 being as a whole, this logical and irresistible tend- 
 ency of the human mind to unify its world of be- 
 
TENDENCY OF PHILOSOPHY 49 
 
 ing has been practically and completely vindi- 
 cated. The human mind is a function not merely 
 of the so-called human organism and human 
 brain; it is, with equal and even greater truth, 
 a cosmic function of the whole cosmic organism 
 of the world; as man's brain and mind has been 
 developed out of his bodily and mental organism 
 as a whole, and in essential adaptation to and 
 correspondence with it, so, in the same way, man 
 as a whole and his mind have been developed out 
 of the body and mind of nature, and in essential 
 adaptation to and correspondence with it. 
 
 And this tendency of man's mind, which is also 
 the mind of nature, to unify the world of nature 
 is good evidence that the world of nature is ob- 
 jectively united, as it is subjectively unified in 
 man and nature's mind. The human mind of the 
 cosmic organism is in essential correspondence 
 and harmony with the cosmic organism whose 
 mind it really is. In man, the universe as a vast 
 cosmic organism becomes self-conscious and aware 
 of itself. Our human consciousness is nature's 
 cosmic consciousness; our human intelligence is 
 nature's cosmic intelligence, expressing and mani- 
 festing itself through us as through its brains 
 and minds. Our minds are not our minds only; 
 they are with equal and even greater truth the 
 minds of the cosmos, and as such they must be in 
 essential and developing harmony with it. Hence, 
 the tendency of the cosmic mind to unify the cos- 
 mic world may be taken as valid evidence for the 
 
50 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 objective unity of the cosmos. This unity of the 
 universe is not a mere external unity, but it is a 
 genuine internal unity, as modern science has al- 
 ready proven. It is not a mere totality and ag- 
 gregation, a mere external union, nor a mere ex- 
 terior organization of really separate persons and 
 things ; but it is, as modern science has now shown, 
 a perfect internal unity, organic and systematic 
 in character; a genuine unit, a perfect One. 
 
 The fallacious assumption on the part of 
 pluralist s (or rather pseudo-pluralists, for thor- 
 oughgoing, uncompromising pluralists don't seem 
 to exist) is that a number, — in fact, an infinite 
 number, — of absolutely separate and independent, 
 self-existing and self-sufficient beings and things 
 can unite or get together, and so constitute a uni- 
 verse or totality of being. While this assumption 
 perhaps cannot be directly disproven, its difficul- 
 ties are so many and its improbability so great 
 that it can obtain little if any standing among 
 unprejudiced thinkers. There is no reason in the 
 world to insure why these many separate little 
 universes in themselves should ever get together, 
 ever be known to each other, or have anything like 
 the same natures making union possible ; and even 
 if they did unite, there would be nothing to insure 
 their remaining united and not disbanding at any 
 time, thus making the continued existence of the 
 totality absolutely uncertain. There is no rea- 
 son whatever for assuming that such separate be- 
 ings and things could melt, merge, and run into 
 
TENDENCY OF PHILOSOPHY 51 
 
 each other as everything in this world actually 
 does. The perfectly intimate fusion of all mat- 
 ter and energy, the unobstructed, unrestricted 
 passage of all matter and energy from one form 
 into all the others, the mutual interchanges, the 
 reciprocal actions and influences, the perfectly 
 close interconnexions and interdependence of all 
 things upon all other things, negatives in the most 
 emphatic way any idea that these things and 
 beings of the world can be in any true sense sepa- 
 rate and entity- tight individuals. 
 
 It is perfectly evident that no plurality of 
 things could construct any such universe as this 
 one of ours, and it is not some other possible uni- 
 verse that we are discussing, but this one here in 
 which we exist; and that no plurality of beings 
 should create such a universe as this is certain. 
 Science has now proven positively that this uni- 
 verse is completely and perfectly one; one in the 
 kind of stuff it is made of, and one also in number. 
 
 " It would be self-contradictory to attribute ab- 
 solute independence to the elements of being while 
 accepting the reality of reciprocal action . . . 
 for isolated, entirely independent things could not 
 stand in a relation of reciprocal action to one 
 another. . . . There must, therefore, be a prin- 
 ciple of unity which renders reciprocal action and 
 orderly dependence possible. . . . For these rea- 
 sons monism, which takes as its basis this recipro- 
 cal action and interconnexion among things, and 
 finds in these a principle of unity will always 
 
m THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 ... be preferable to pluralism. Pluralism must 
 either deny interconnexion and reciprocal action 
 or regard them as illusory." 1 
 
 As Prof. Harald Hoffding says : " In the prin- 
 ciple of unity we have a thought which is con- 
 clusive for us. Philosophy accepts the unity as 
 a necessary presupposition of the interconnexion 
 of the manifold. The relation of reciprocal ac- 
 tion will always constrain us to assume the exist- 
 ence of a bond, a unity, which renders this recipro- 
 cal action possible ... a force or power, in vir- 
 tue of which everything ... is interconnected 
 and held together. The principle of unity is a 
 necessary presupposition, if we are to understand 
 being." 
 
 There can be no question, then, with the evi- 
 dence we have before us to-day, that the universe 
 is, as its name implies, a uni-being, an all-inclusive 
 cosmic organism; and that no other integral in- 
 dividual exists in this our world. As regards the 
 relation of this organic conception of the Cosmos 
 to the persistent and world-old idea of God as 
 the Supreme Being, Prof. Hoffding says, " If we 
 define God as the rational principle of being, and 
 also, therefore, as the principle of the unity of 
 being, it appears possible to arrive at a concept 
 of God capable of being harmonized with scientific 
 knowledge. 
 
 The ideal of knowledge would be attained if we 
 
 i"The Philosophy of Religion," Prof. Harald Hoffding. 
 
TENDENCY OF PHILOSOPHY 53 
 
 could unite . . . unity and multiplicity in one 
 concept." And it seems perfectly evident that 
 this ideal is attained in the organic conception of 
 the Cosmos; in the concept of the universe as a 
 genuine cosmic organism, of which the manifold 
 parts are the bona fide cosmic organs, structures, 
 and functions. And if we define God as the 
 supreme being of the world and as this genuine 
 cosmic organism of the world, then it seems to me 
 we have arrived at a conception of the world and 
 of God which is both perfectly scientific and 
 really religious. Nothing greater than the Uni- 
 verse can be known to man, and nothing less than 
 the greatest being known, or less than the Uni- 
 verse itself as an organic whole of being, should 
 be regarded or known by the name of God. As 
 Dr. Paul Carus says, " God and the Universe are 
 
 " What were a God who sat outside to scan 
 The spheres that neath His finger circling ran? 
 God dwells in all, and moves the world, and molds, 
 Himself and Nature in one form enfolds, 
 So that what in Him lives and moves and is, 
 Neither His spirit, nor His strength will miss." 3 
 
 2 Dr. Carus now says he believes we should only call the 
 laws of the universe, God, and not the universe itself, as 
 an all-inclusive whole of being. I cannot, on this point, 
 agree with him. The concrete whole is a greater and truer 
 God than any abstract part, however dignified or refined 
 it may be. 
 
 3 Goethe. 
 
54 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 " As wider skies break on man's view, 
 God greatens in his growing mind; 
 Each age he dreams his God anew, 
 And leaves his older God behind. 
 He sees the boundless scheme dilate 
 In star and blossom, sky and clod; 
 And as his universe grows great, 
 He dreams for it a greater God." * 
 
 * John W. Chachmck. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE DYNAMIC AND DIFFUSIVE 
 CHARACTER OF ALL BEING 
 
 "Nothing in the world is single, 
 All things by a law divine, 
 In one another's being mingle." 
 
 Another great and significant truth which mod- 
 ern science has securely established is that of the 
 kinetic and diffusive character and the ceaseless 
 circulatory movement of all the matter, energy, 
 and being in the universe. This great truth, — 
 which the philosophers of ancient Greece dimly 
 recognized and called " flux " or flow ; which 
 Herbert Spencer has characterized as " the con- 
 tinual redistribution of matter and motion " ; 
 which biologists call " metabolism " or vital meta- 
 morphosis ; and which the philosophers of ancient 
 India recognized, as shown by the doctrine of the 
 transmigration and reincarnation of souls, — has 
 now been practically and scientifically established 
 in harmony with the laws of the transformation, 
 equivalence, and conservation of energy. Mat- 
 ter is now defined in terms of electrical and ether- 
 ial energy, and energy is necessarily active, dif- 
 fusive, continuous, circulatory, and non-atomic in 
 structure. 
 
 55 
 
56 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 No such a thing as absolute rest and fixity ex- 
 ists. Every particle of matter and portion of 
 energy in the universe is on the move and on the 
 go. It is (either visibly or invisibly) ceaselessly 
 travelling and circulating, round and round, from 
 place to place, and from form to* form, or it is 
 continually revolving and rotating in some place 
 and form for a little while and then passing on 
 and out to some other place and form, its vacated 
 place and form being meanwhile taken by other 
 particles of matter or portions of energy just 
 like itself, as in the cases of whirlpools, whirl- 
 winds, and vortices of every kind. " Rest is no- 
 where." . . . The solidest body hides within it 
 inconceivable velocities. Even the molecules of 
 granite and iron have their orbits as do the stars, 
 and revolve as ceaselessly. No energy is ever 
 lost. It changes its form, it assumes Protean 
 disguises, but " it is everywhere a unit " ; it may 
 disappear from the earth, still — 
 
 " Somewhere, yet, that atom's force 
 Moves the light poised universe." 1 
 
 Under these diffusive and circulatory conditions 
 of all the matter and energy of the world, there 
 is not and never can be one single particle of mat- 
 ter and energy which is the private, exclusive, and 
 personal property and possession of any finite 
 form whatever. On the contrary, every atom of 
 matter and energy in the world is the common, 
 
 i Steele's "Physics." 
 
CHARACTER OF ALL BEING 57 
 
 public, and universal property and possession of 
 every thing that exists, has existed, and will ex- 
 ist. There is not one single atom of private mat- 
 ter and energy in this whole whirling and rest- 
 less world, and therefore there is not and never 
 can be one single, exclusive, and individual being 
 in the entire universe, excepting, of course, the 
 Universe itself. The entire body of the universal 
 being is common and public to all, without any 
 exclusions or exceptions. Every single particle 
 of it all has been the transient and temporary 
 property and possession of an infinite number and 
 variety of forms in the endless past and will be 
 again in the endless future. "All nature," says 
 Steele's " Chemistry," "is a torrent of ceaseless 
 change. We are but parts of a grand system, 
 and the elements we use are not our own; the 
 water we drink, the food we eat, the air we breathe, 
 to-day have been used a thousand times before, 
 and that by the vilest beggars, and the lowest 
 earth-worms. In nature all is common and no use 
 is base. Those particles of matter we so fondly 
 call our own and decorate so carefully, a few 
 months since may have dragged boats on the canal, 
 or waved in the meadows as grass and corn. 
 From us they will pass on their ceaseless round 
 to develop other forms of vegetation and of life, 
 whereby the same atoms may freeze on Arctic 
 snows, bleach on torrid plains, be beauty in the 
 poet's brain, strength in the blacksmith's arm, 
 or beef on the butcher's block. Hamlet must have 
 
58 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 been somewhat more of a chemist than a madman 
 when he gravely assured the king that " a man 
 may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king 
 and eat of the fish that hath fed of the worm." 
 Shakespeare expresses the same chemical thought 
 when he says : 
 
 " Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, 
 Might stop a hole to keep the wind away. 
 Oh ! that the earth which kept the world in awe 
 Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw." 
 
 This ceaseless circulation and endless trans- 
 formation of the being of the world renders ab- 
 solutely and forever impossible the existence of 
 any permanently individual forms whatever. 
 There is not a single being in the world, and es- 
 pecially a living one, which privately owns either 
 the matter or the spirit of which it is constituted. 
 Both its body and its soul are the common, public 
 property, and democratic and communistic pos- 
 session of every other thing that exists. The 
 existence of private, individual matter and mind, 
 or combinations of them, is absolutely and forever 
 impossible. There is not, therefore, and never can 
 be, one single private person in the universe ex- 
 cepting, of course, the Universe itself as the in- 
 tegral and individual organism of the world. 
 
 " It was his faith, perhaps is mine, 
 That life in all its forms is one 
 And that its unseen conduits run 
 
CHARACTER OF ALL BEING 59 
 
 Unseen, but in unbroken line, 
 
 From that great fountain head divine 
 
 Through man and beast, through grain and grass." 2 
 
 " Onward and on, the eternal Pan, 
 Who layeth the world's incessant plan, 
 Halteth never in one shape, 
 But forever doth escape, 
 Like wave or flame, into new forms 
 Of gem and air, of plants and worms ; 
 I that to-day am a pine, 
 Yesterday was a bundle of grass. 
 
 " The world is the ring of his spells, 
 And the play of his miracles, 
 The rushing metamorphosis, 
 Dissolving all that fixture is ; 
 Melts things that be to things that seem, 
 And solid nature to a dream. 
 All the forms are fugitive; 
 But the substances survive, 
 Ever fresh the broad creation, 
 A divine improvisation; 
 As the bee through the garden ranges, 
 From world to world the Godhead changes; 
 As the sheep go feeding through the waste, 
 From form to form He maketh haste; 
 Alike to Him the better, the worse, 
 The glowing angel, the outcast corse, 
 Thou asketh in fountains and in fires, 
 He is the essence that inquires, 
 He is the axis of the star, 
 He is the sparkle of the spar, 
 2 Longfellow. 
 
60 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 He is the heart of every creature, 
 He is the meaning of each feature, 
 And His mind it is the sky, 
 That all it holds more deep, more high, 
 
 " His servant, Death, with solving rite, 
 Pours finite into Infinite. 
 Wilt thou freeze love's tidal flow 
 Whose streams through nature circling go, 
 Nail the wild star to its track 
 On the half-climbed Zodiac? 
 Light is light which radiates, 
 Blood is blood which circulates, 
 Life is life which generates, 
 And many-seeming life is One, 
 Wilt thou transfix and make it none? 
 Built of furtherance and pursuing, 
 Not of spent deeds but of doing, 
 Silent rushes the swift Lord, 
 Through ruined systems still restored. 
 
 " Waters with tears of ancient sorrow, 
 Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow, 
 House and tenant go to ground, 
 Lost in God, in Godhead found." 3 
 
 3 Emerson. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL BODIES 
 
 The history of the perceptible world begins with 
 a nebula. The beginning or birth of a new world 
 follows the ending, death, and disintegration of 
 some old and preceding world. The worlds come 
 and go in procession just as all smaller bodies do, 
 only the procession is larger and lasts longer. 
 How do the old worlds end their existence, and 
 how do the new ones begin? A world, solar sys- 
 tem, or astronomic organism is old when it reaches 
 the cold, hard, rigid, and dead state of the moon. 
 A solar or starry system or stellar organism like 
 our own will be old when the sun, as well as the 
 planets and satellites, have reached this cold, hard, 
 rigid, and motionless state. What happens after 
 that? Either through collision or atomic disin- 
 tegration these old, dead, and lifeless worlds are 
 converted into a nebula, or incandescent gas, at 
 the highest attainable temperature. 
 
 Just in what ways this state of nebulosity and 
 
 incandescence is reached by these old and lifeless 
 
 worlds is not yet quite certain, but that they are 
 
 so converted into a vast volume of nebulous and 
 
 incandescent gas is Unquestioned, practically. 
 
 With the development of this incandescent gas and 
 
 61 
 
m THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 nebula the new world is born, and its future his- 
 tory and evolution follows on the gradual radia- 
 tion and loss of its internal heat to outer space 
 and distant bodies in other worlds. Incidental 
 to this cooling and contraction of the nebula it 
 is differentiated into a great central sun, with at- 
 tendant planets and satellites. A sort of 
 astronomic cooperation and division of labor, 
 functions, and structures takes place between the 
 sun and its planets. The sun furnishes the light, 
 active, and kinetic energies of life and motion, 
 while the planets furnish the field for their vital 
 and spiritual activities and operations, and also 
 the heavier and more substantial bases of life, the 
 result of this cooperation and division of labors 
 being the production, development, and differen- 
 tiation of a multiform and multitudinous world of 
 moving, living, and conscious beings and things 
 on the exterior surfaces of the planets. 
 
 The vast volume of incandescent gas in which 
 the world begins its visible and perceptible history 
 and evolution is composed of the lightest chemical 
 elements and atoms, and these chemical atoms, it 
 is now known, are composed of electrical cor- 
 puscles or sub-atoms, and these electrical 
 corpuscles are held to be little vortices, differen- 
 tiations, and condensations of the omnipresent 
 ocean of the primal Ether, or " materia prima," 
 which fills all space, is perfectly continuous and 
 indivisible, and of the most perfect elasticity and 
 extremest tenuity. 
 
EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL BODIES 68 
 
 The worlds begin, therefore, in the omnipresent, 
 indivisible, and unitary ether, through the differ- 
 entiation within its body and substance of little 
 electrical whirlpools, called corpuscles or electrons, 
 which move throughout its volume as little whirl- 
 pools in a river or as whirlwinds and cyclones in 
 the air. This condensation and differentiation of 
 the primary sub-atoms is due to the lowering of 
 the temperature of the ether as the nebulous gas 
 begins gradually to radiate and lose its internal 
 heat. As this radiation and loss of heat and 
 internal motion proceeds, these corpuscles tend 
 to cluster together into larger combinations, 
 which constitute the chemical atoms, and these, 
 in turn, cluster and combine into the still larger 
 physical molecules, and the molecules finally com- 
 bine into the crystals ; and here the evolution of 
 inorganic compounds and elements ends. 
 
 The next great step in the process of evolution 
 is the development of the large, complex, and col- 
 loid molecules of organic matter, and here organic 
 evolution and the development of life, sensation, 
 and mind in its visible and perceptible forms, be- 
 gins. The next step in organic evolution is the 
 development of protoplasm, or the otherwise form- 
 less and undifferentiated " matter of life," out 
 of the organic molecules. Then arises next the 
 living cell or micro-organism, the protophyte and 
 protozoon, with its definite form, cell membrane 
 and cell nucleus. Next follows the cell commun- 
 ity, or the multicellular organism, the cenobia, 
 
64 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 which is a more or less large cluster of single and 
 simple cells. 
 
 After this comes the tissue-forming organism, 
 the histon, and to this general and higher class 
 belong all the higher plants, animals, and men. 
 Here what is called organic evolution proper ends, 
 but this distinction, perhaps, ought not to be 
 made. Another very distinct step is now taken 
 in the upward progress of life and mind, and this, 
 perhaps, is the highest and last. The last and 
 highest stage in the evolutionary process is, so 
 far as known, the beginning and development of 
 the social organism, — the super-organic person, 
 the psycho-zoon, — a psycho-organism I would 
 call a society, because it (in the case of man at 
 least) is essentially an organization or organism 
 of minds and intelligences, and hence it is a 
 psycho-zoon, or psycho-organism, — a society of 
 minds, an organism of minds. It is essentially and 
 peculiarly a psychic individual, though like all 
 lower, smaller, and inferior individuals and organ- 
 isms it is a compound, synthetic, and social body. 
 
 Now, let us review this evolutionary process in 
 order to see what it signifies to us. 1. There is 
 the omnipresent and perfectly unitary body of the 
 primary ether. 2. There is the primary differ- 
 entiation of this ether into the electrons or cor- 
 puscles. 3. There is the secondary and synthetic' 
 differentiation which constitutes the atoms. 4. 
 The tertiary differentiation constitutes the mole- 
 cules. 5. The fourth degree of compound differ- 
 
EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL BODIES 65 
 
 entiation is the crystal in the inorganic world and 
 the cell in the organic world. 6. The fifth degree 
 of compound differentiation is the multicellular 
 organism. 7. The sixth degree of synthetic and 
 complex differentiation is the tissue-forming 
 organism. 8. And the seventh degree of syn- 
 thetic differentiation is the society or state. 
 
 Now, the things to be noted in this process are 
 these. First, evolution begins in and with a per- 
 fectly continuous and unitary being and body, a 
 true individual thing; and what is truly one and 
 individual cannot lose its unity and individuality, 
 but must always retain it. But this perfectly 
 unified body and being can and does differentiate 
 itself into seemingly separate and distinguishable 
 parts ; but these differentiations of the unitary 
 being are nothing more than differentials, — they 
 never become, and never can become, genuine in- 
 dividuals. Thus from the electrons up to a hu- 
 man society or state there are at least seven stages 
 and degrees of compound and synthetic differen- 
 tiation; the ions, atoms, molecules, crystals, cells, 
 cenobia, histona and psychozoa are all equally dif- 
 ferentiations of the original and unitary ether, 
 and not one of them is or can be a true, absolute 
 and positive individual. The only possible true 
 individual is the whole cosmic organism, which 
 includes all these various differentials as its own 
 structures, organs, and functions. 
 
 There are no true, bona fide individuals any- 
 where discoverable as developing during the proc- 
 
66 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 ess of evolution out of the original ether. The 
 theory of evolution, therefore, negatives emphati- 
 cally any assumption or assertion as to the ex- 
 istence and development of finite individuals of 
 any kind. The evolutionary process shows that 
 all the so-called individual beings and things in 
 the world are nothing more or less than differen- 
 tials. There is no room or place in the theory of 
 evolution for individuals at all; the only things 
 that evolution develops are differentials, which 
 are distinctly different things from individuals. 
 Evolution is a process and tendency towards dif- 
 ferentiation and differentially, and it is not, as 
 some one has said, " a tendency towards individ- 
 uation " and individuality unless we agree to re- 
 gard differentiation as comparative and practical 
 individuation, and differentially as the only kind 
 of comparative individuality that is possible in 
 nature and in the evolutionary process. 
 
 Another fact of great importance to be noted 
 in this evolutionary process is this, that every 
 synthetic and compound differential of the origi- 
 nal ether is a true association and society. Thus 
 the atoms, molecules, crystals, cells, cenobia, his- 
 tona, and psychozoa are all genuine societies and 
 collections of lower and smaller units, and this 
 fact alone negatives the notion that any of these 
 things can be true individuals, for an individual 
 must be regarded as something simple and not 
 compound in its nature. So that man, who is a 
 histozoon, is a compound, synthetic differential of 
 
EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL BODIES 67 
 
 the sixth degree of composition, and as such, of 
 course, he cannot be an individual being. Man, 
 as a histozoon, is also a society of the fifth degree 
 of composition, and as a society he cannot be an 
 individual. 
 
 Both as a compound differential and as a com- 
 pound society of cells, man is debarred from being 
 a true individual being. Once more we see that 
 the only possible individual being is the whole cos- 
 mic organism, and if that is not an individual, 
 then there is not a single true individual in ex- 
 istence. 
 
 Another important fact to be noted is this, — 
 a man is no less a society than a human society 
 or state is, and a state or human society is no less 
 a comparative individual and no less a compara- 
 tive organism than a single man is. In fact, since 
 a human society stands later and higher on the 
 ladder of the evolutionary process, so, for that 
 reason, it stands, as a comparative organism and 
 as a comparative individual, on a higher evolu- 
 tionary plane than the individual man. A man 
 is a lower and a society is a higher comparative 
 organism. A man is a lower and a society is a 
 higher comparative individual. This is not poetry 
 but hard, scientific, matter of fact. 
 
 Nature, in the process of evolution, therefore, 
 does not produce or develop positive individual 
 beings of any kind or grade. Neither does it pro- 
 duce or develop, we may say, positive organisms 
 of any kind or grade. What nature produces are 
 
68 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 positive differentials as parts, structures, organs, 
 and functions of itself; and nature, or the uni- 
 verse itself, is the only absolute and positive in- 
 dividual and organism there is. All finite and 
 fractional organisms and individuals (so-called) 
 are really only differentials, and can only be re- 
 garded as individuals and organisms in this re- 
 stricted and comparative sense and meaning of 
 being differentials of different kinds and grades, 
 from the simplest and lowest to the most complex 
 and highest. These differentials may be regarded 
 as comparative individuals and comparative or- 
 ganisms, and in this sense only we may speak of 
 them as such. 
 
 There are grades of differ en tiahty in Nature, 
 therefore, and grades of comparative individuality 
 and comparative organization in the living and 
 conscious world. The study of the process of 
 evolution shows us with perfect clearness that the 
 highest grades of comparative individuality and 
 organization are those which are the most highly 
 compounded, the most complex, and the most so- 
 cial in form. 
 
 Instead of looking in the direction of the great- 
 est simplicity, of the smallest size, of the least 
 collective and least complex composition, and of 
 the least social character for the truest individual- 
 ity and the truest organism, we should look in the 
 very opposite direction. In order to find the 
 truest, highest, and greatest individuals and or- 
 ganisms, we should look in the direction of the 
 
EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL BODIES 69 
 
 greatest complexity and composition, of the great- 
 est associations and societies, of the largest and 
 most extensive bodies. In other words, in order 
 to find the truest individuals and organisms we 
 must not look in the direction of the ions, atoms, 
 molecules, and cells, but in the opposite direction, 
 — in the direction of the cell-community, the man, 
 the human society, and finally in the direction of 
 the whole complex and collective organism of the 
 Universe. We must not look for individuality in 
 the direction of the most fractional and infinitesi- 
 mal elements of the world, but in the direction of 
 most integral and complete bodies and body of 
 the world. We must look for individuality in the 
 largest wholes, and not in the smallest parts and 
 fractions of being. We must look for it in so- 
 ciety, rather than in the isolated man ; and in the 
 universe as a living, conscious, and organic whole, 
 rather than in any smaller part of it. 
 
 Man is not a positive individual at all, since 
 he is a five times compounded complex of smaller 
 and lower units and differentials of the original 
 ether ; and when we recall the fact that this swarm 
 of ions, atoms, molecules, and cells which we call 
 an individual man is not even a fixed-for-life, per- 
 manent and stationary collection of lower units, 
 but is actually only a streaming, passing, and 
 transient swarm, in which the old, exhausted, and 
 inert units are continually rapidly passing on and 
 out of the swarm, while new ones are as rapidly and 
 continually taking their places so that it is never 
 
70 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 for any appreciable length of time made up of 
 same units or of a permanent body of units, and 
 that every little while a complete exchange of 
 units takes place and it is composed of an entirely 
 new body or swarm of units, then the utter impos- 
 sibility of such a streaming collection of units be- 
 ing a positively individual being is as plain and 
 Certain as anything can be. 
 
 No, the individual man, so-called, is no more a 
 positive individual than a society, state, or nation 
 is, for it is just like them, — an association of 
 lower and smaller units which come and go, and 
 flow in and out, are born, live, and die within the 
 social body. Nothing is comparatively perma- 
 nent except the form of the body; the substance 
 and the elementary units are completely transient 
 and ephemeral. And the individual man, instead 
 of being a truer individual and a truer organism 
 than a society or state, is not so true or high a 
 one in the evolutionary scale of development. 
 Men have been looking in the wrong direction for 
 the true individual; they have been looking down 
 in the direction of the little fractional and ele- 
 mentary subdivisions of the integral and unitary 
 whole of being instead of looking up in the direc- 
 tion of the integral and unitary organism itself. 
 They have been looking for it in the parts instead 
 of in the Whole ; in the fractions instead of in the 
 Integer of being; in the cosmic organs, instead 
 of in the cosmic Organism; in the human parts, 
 instead of in the divine Whole. In other words, 
 
EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL BODIES 71 
 
 they have been looking for it in man instead of in 
 God, the all-inclusive, cosmic-social Being of the 
 world. God is the one and only true individual 
 and organism there is. All other so-called indi- 
 viduals and organisms, like man, are merely 
 pseudo-individuals and pseudo-organisms. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MINDS 
 
 What is the nature and constitution of the 
 mind? By pluralistic, individualistic, and dual- 
 istic psychologists, on the one hand, mind is re- 
 garded as an entity, separate and distinct from the 
 body, which is another and opposite kind of an 
 entity. 
 
 By monistic psychologists, on the other hand, 
 both mind and body are regarded merely as the 
 subjective and objective, inner-appearing and 
 outer-appearing, aspects of one indivisible, con- 
 crete entity which possesses both subjective-ap- 
 pearing and objective-appearing attributes, or 
 mental and apparently material attributes. The 
 material-appearing attributes of concrete being 
 are what we may call its entitative attributes to 
 distinguish them from its purely psychical ones. 
 The entitative attributes of concrete being may 
 be material or physical in character, or they may 
 be in reality so different from what matter and 
 force seems to us that we may only call them 
 quasi-material or quasi-physical. But they are 
 at least something different from purely mental 
 
 attributes, and something extra and in addition 
 
 72 
 
EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MINDS 73 
 
 to mental attributes. Hence we may certainly 
 call them extra-mental attributes, even if we can- 
 not be sure yet of being right in calling them ma- 
 terial and energetic attributes. 
 
 Mind in itself and by itself is a non-entity, a 
 mere mental abstraction by the analyzing mind 
 from the concrete and whole reality ; and the same 
 criticism is equally true of matter. Pure mind 
 apart from any matter, and pure matter apart 
 from any mind are both equally pure abstractions 
 and hence non-entities. Neither the one nor the 
 other has any concrete existence. They exist 
 apart and separate nowhere except in the analyz- 
 ing and abstracting mind of man. Iron, for ex- 
 ample, is hard, and flesh is soft. Hardness and 
 softness, respectively, are attributes and qualities 
 of the concrete things, but hardness and softness 
 do not have a separate and entitative existence 
 apart from the things which are hard and soft. 
 Hardness and softness are not things in them- 
 selves and by themselves, but only the mentally 
 abstracted qualities of the things in themselves. 
 
 Hardness and softness are mere mental abstrac- 
 tions and products of mental analysis, and as 
 such they do not concretely exist. So, in like 
 manner, living beings are conscious, and conscious- 
 ness is a quality and attribute, or a state and 
 spiritual condition, of living beings. But as the 
 hardness does not and cannot exist apart from 
 the thing which is hard, so neither can the con- 
 sciousness exist apart from the concrete entity 
 
74 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 that is conscious and aware. Consciousness or 
 awareness, like hardness or softness, is a pure ab- 
 straction from the concrete being that is conscious 
 and aware. 
 
 A consciousness, as a supposed concrete entity, 
 does not exist any more than an entity or a thing 
 called a hardness or a softness exists. A con- 
 sciousness or a mind is a pure abstraction, and 
 as such it does not and cannot possibly exist. 
 Consciousness is a psychical condition in which 
 living, substantial, and entitative beings exist. 
 Mind is a state of awareness and not a thing in 
 itself, and has no existence apart from the entita- 
 tive and extra-mental being that is aware. 
 
 The expressions " a mind," " a consciousness," 
 " a soul," or " a spirit " are illogical and untrue, 
 because mind, consciousness, soul, and spirit are 
 nothing more or less than a peculiar state and 
 condition of a certain degree of intensity in which 
 living things exist. A consciousness apart from 
 something whose conscious state it is, a mind apart 
 from something whose mental state it is, is impos- 
 sible and logically inconceivable, and as a scien- 
 tific and experimental fact it is utterly unknown 
 and discounted by exact science. Mind, therefore, 
 is not a thing, but only a state and condition of a 
 thing, and a mind apart from some real and sub- 
 stantial being whose mental state and condition 
 it is, is an illogical and unscientific fallacy. No 
 real being can exist unless it exists in some state 
 or condition, and no state or condition can exist 
 
EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MINDS 75 
 
 unless it is the state and condition of some real 
 being. A state which was the state of nothing, — 
 of a non-entity, — or a non-entity which existed in 
 some state or condition, are both illogical and im- 
 possible. A concrete entity and being must be 
 something more than a mere state or a mere con- 
 dition. It must be something more than a mere 
 consciousness or a mere mind. It must have to 
 begin with some entitative, substantial, or extra- 
 mental attributes. It must be something first, be- 
 fore it can become conscious and aware. 
 
 There is another most important and comple- 
 mentary conclusion which must logically and 
 inevitably be drawn from the above conception of 
 mind and body. As science declares and demon- 
 strates that mind does not, and logically cannot, 
 exist apart from body, so, on the other hand, it is 
 logically forced and bound to declare that body 
 cannot exist apart from mind or some kind and 
 degree of a psychical state and condition, no mat- 
 ter how faint, low, and attenuated this state or 
 condition may be. As it declares that pure mind 
 apart from matter is a pure abstraction and il- 
 lusion, so it is logically forced to declare that pure 
 matter apart from some kind and degree of mental 
 condition, is a pure abstraction and a pure illu- 
 sion. Science, therefore, has been forced to the 
 conclusion that mind and matter coexist univer- 
 sally, and in indissoluble conjunction and unity, 
 in the entire concrete being of the world. There 
 is no mind (or mental state) apart from matter, 
 
76 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 and no matter (or real being) without mind of 
 some kind and degree. The two coexist every- 
 where in conjunction, and they actually cannot 
 be clearly conceived to exist apart. We cannot 
 conceive of a mental state apart from some real 
 entity whose state it is; and we cannot conceive 
 of any real entity without conceiving it to exist 
 in some state which is in some true sense more or 
 less psychical in nature, — a state which is not in 
 some true sense a psychical state, is, in fact, no 
 state at all. A purely material state is, in fact, 
 no state at all, and cannot be conceived of as a 
 state. It is the negation of all states, and we 
 cannot conceive a being or thing to exist in no 
 state at all, or in a state which is the negation of 
 all states. A state is necessarily a psychical con- 
 dition, or else it is no state at all. 1 
 
 Modern scientists as a rule were anxious to 
 prove that mind could not exist apart from brain, 
 body, and matter, and they have practically 
 proved it ; but the complementary conclusion that 
 matter could not exist apart from mind or some sort 
 of psychical condition was only gradually and 
 with difficulty realized by them. Gradually and 
 irresistibly, however, the logic of the proposition 
 
 i Further, pure matter is ' non est' and if there is no 
 pure matter there can be no purely material states, for 
 there are no purely material things. 1. A purely material 
 thing cannot be conceived, and, 2, a purely material state 
 cannot exist, for there are no purely material things to 
 exist in that state, or rather, negation of a state, — and 
 non-state, in fact. 
 
EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MINDS 77 
 
 and the evidence for its truth began to be ob- 
 served. Now the foremost scientists accept this 
 conclusion as inevitable and indisputable, and it 
 is now a generally accepted scientific truth. The 
 acceptance of the law of evolution forced the con- 
 clusion upon scientific men. The great working 
 principle of modern science is the principle of con- 
 servation, — the principle that " something cannot 
 come out of nothing " (" ex nihUo nihil fit "), and 
 that " something cannot go into nothing," but that 
 everything that exists or can exist must come out 
 of or go into something exactly and mathemati- 
 cally equivalent to itself; and if it disappears to 
 our eyes, it disappears into something exactly 
 equivalent to itself. 
 
 Science denies the possibility or conceivability 
 of either bona fide creation or annihilation. It 
 affirms and proves the infinite trans form ability of 
 everything into something exactly equivalent. 
 The law of evolution and devolution is not a law 
 of creation or destruction, either in a short period 
 of time or in a longer and infinite period of time. 
 It is not even a law of absolute and endless devel- 
 opment, as many people imagine, in the sense that 
 in the universe as a whole the universe as a whole 
 is eternally growing better and better and into 
 a higher and higher form. On the contrary, the 
 law of evolution, — since it is based entirely upon 
 the laws of causation and the transformation, 
 equivalence, and conservation of energy, — de- 
 clares, and is bound to declare, that the universe 
 
78 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 is an absolutely conservative system which, as a 
 whole and at any given time, is always equivalent 
 to itself as a whole at any other time throughout 
 all eternity. 
 
 The law of evolution is, in fact, a law of eternal 
 equivalence and conservation. The " status quo " 
 is always maintained. Thus while in a finite and 
 partial sense it is a law of endless change and trans- 
 formation, elevation and depression, in the finite 
 and partial forms of the cosmos, yet at the same 
 time, and as a logical necessity, it is, as regards 
 the infinite or limitless universe as a whole, a law 
 of eternal permanence and changelessness. While 
 every part of the universe is eternally changing, 
 the universe as a whole never changes. It is eter- 
 nally conservative and remains in " statu quo" 
 " It is the same to-day, yesterday, and forever. ,, 
 It neither grows larger nor smaller, higher nor 
 lower, better nor worse. It is good, we have sci- 
 entific reasons for believing, and does not need 
 to grow eternally better. 
 
 The problem of mind as it presented itself to 
 the evolutionary scientist and philosopher was 
 this. What is mind, how does it evolve, and what 
 does it evolve out of? Accepting as his unerring 
 principle of logic and truth that something cannot 
 come out of nothing or go into nothing, and that 
 something cannot come out of something else which 
 is not in the last analysis equivalent fundamentally 
 to itself, he was forced to assume and assert that 
 mind cannot come out of the essentially and totally 
 
EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MINDS 79 
 
 mindless, that something cannot come out of some- 
 thing intrinsically and totally different from, and 
 discordant with, itself. As you cannot get some- 
 thing out of nothing or something greater out of 
 something less, so with equal logic you cannot 
 get something out of something entirely and in- 
 trinsically different. The law of equivalence and 
 conservation vetoes the possibility of getting some- 
 thing different out of the utterly unequal, or ut- 
 terly unlike. Cause and effect imply basic 
 equivalence and basic likeness, both qualitative and 
 quantitative, between things which follow each 
 other in causal sequence. You can't draw water 
 out of an empty well, grow figs on thistles, or, like 
 a stage magician, pull yards of ribbons and live 
 pigeons out of an utterly empty hat. Science 
 knows nothing of miracles or sleight-of-hand per- 
 formances in nature. It demands an equivalent, a 
 "ipiid pro quo," for every transaction in the uni- 
 verse. It sees all nature's commerce as a perfect, 
 rational, and equitable exchange and barter, and 
 not as an irrational and inequitable game of bunco. 
 All the changes which science discovers in na- 
 ture are exchanges and interchanges of equivalent 
 energies. It is nothing but a commerce of ener- 
 gies and substances, wherein the imports and ex- 
 ports, incomes and outgoes, all balance each other 
 to an absolute perfection in the long and eternal 
 cosmic run. Therefore you cannot evolve mind 
 out of the mindless, or consciousness out of the 
 utterly unconscious. You cannot get more out 
 
80 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 of anything than that thing originally contained, 
 actually or potentially, in the beginning. You 
 could not extract mind out of utterly and intrinsi- 
 cally mindless matter, for if you could do that, 
 you could get something (mind) out of something 
 (pure matter) which did not in the least contain 
 it. Or you could get something (mind) out of 
 something (pure matter) which was utterly and 
 intrinsically unlike and unequal to it ; and neither 
 of these things is logically possible or conceivable. 
 Hence modern science was driven irresistibly and 
 inevitably to the conclusion that all the matter 
 in the universe is in a more or less conscious or 
 psychic state of some kind and degree, and that 
 no absolutely or potentially mindless matter, no 
 pure matter, no dead and brute matter, exists. 
 Such matter as that is a pure abstraction, and 
 concrete matter must all possess some faint and 
 attenuated psychic state at the least. 
 
 This is the doctrine or panpsychism, or all- 
 mindism, and many of the leading scientists and 
 philosophers have given it their endorsement and 
 accepted it as a necessary part of the monistic 
 philosophy. Prof. Ernst Haeckel is a foremost 
 champion of this theory, and no one would accuse 
 him of mystical, idealistic, or superstitious tend- 
 encies. Prof. Haeckel proposes a scale of twelve 
 (1£) stages of sensibility or sensation from the 
 atoms up to man, and he says: " It is better to 
 speak of the unconscious sensation of the atoms 
 as feeling (aesthesis), and their unconscious will 
 
EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MINDS 81 
 
 as inclination (tropesis)." But it seems to me 
 that while we are compelled, logically, and also 
 through accumulating scientific evidence, to affirm 
 the universality of psychic states in all matter, 
 yet it is impossible for us to conceive clearly what 
 these lowest forms of sensibility are like, because 
 they must be so greatly different from our own. 
 
 In the lowest forms of protoplasmic life the evi- 
 dence of sensibility is plain, while in speaking of 
 the atoms of chemistry which are far lower down, 
 Haeckel says that " every shade of inclination 
 from complete indifference to the fiercest passion 
 is exemplified in the chemical relations of the vari- 
 ous elements towards each other." Logic and the 
 law of evolution and accumulating evidence of 
 various kinds compel us to assume and assert the 
 universal existence of mind, — or of subjectivity, 
 rather, — in some form and degree, and also that 
 the highly developed, compounded, and intensified 
 mind of man has been gradually evolved and dif- 
 ferentiated out of the diffused, dispersed, attenu- 
 ated, and undifferentiated mind or subjectivity of 
 the ethereal matter or being of universe. It must 
 have been there originally, potentially, and in 
 germ, or it never could have arrived here in the 
 mind of man. 
 
 Now science assumes, and is compelled to as- 
 sume, that the ether is one single, continuous and 
 indivisible body or volume of matter or being. As 
 such it could have but one single, continuous 
 psychic state. It must have had one ethereal 
 
82 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 mind, so to speak, instead of an indefinite number 
 of minds. But with the gradual differentiation 
 of this one continuous body of ether (during the 
 process of its formal evolution) into ions, atoms, 
 molecules, cells, plants, animals, men, and socie- 
 ties, there took place an evolution of minds and 
 compounded minds, parallel and equivalent to the 
 evolution of bodies and compounded bodies. The 
 diffused, diluted, and attenuated sensibility of the 
 ethereal world was gradually differentiated, con- 
 centrated, and developed into higher, more com- 
 plex and compound forms of consciousness until, 
 after the lapse of millions of years, the present 
 stage of mental development was reached. 
 
 Every little corpuscle must have had its little 
 corpuscular mind, or psychic state, differentiated 
 out of the attenuated mind or psyche of the ether 
 and existing in a more concentrated and intensi- 
 fied form. Dr. Cams says they must be " little 
 whirls and centers of subjectivity." The cor- 
 puscles (and, in fact, all matter) are now known 
 to be electrical in nature; and we all know that 
 electricity displays attractive and repulsive incli- 
 nations of the most pronounced and even, we might 
 say, passionate character. Now, these passionate 
 impulses, tendencies, and inclinations of the sub- 
 microscopic electrical corpuscles must be consid- 
 ered as sufficient evidence for the existence of 
 psychical states and inclinations in these first and 
 lowest forms of the differentiated ether of the 
 world. These little corpuscular minds, so to 
 
EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MINDS 83 
 
 speak, could not be positively individual minds, 
 but simply differential portions of the universal 
 mind or psyche of the cosmic ether. These little 
 corpuscles contain and display the first differen- 
 tiated minds of the evolving world. At the next 
 stage of evolution these little corpuscular bodies, 
 with their little corpuscular minds, unite and clus- 
 ter together to form the chemical atoms which, in 
 their turn, in their manifestation of elective affinity 
 and repulsion, or selective appetencies, show 
 " every shade of inclination from complete indif- 
 ference to the fiercest passion." So they must be 
 credited with atomic minds of the simplest possible 
 character, which are the combined and social 
 minds of the electrical corpuscles of which they are 
 composed. So the atomic mind must be a com- 
 pound and social mind of the second degree of 
 differentiation and order. 
 
 At the next stage these atomic bodies with their 
 atomic and social minds unite and cluster to form 
 the molecular bodies and molecular minds. Then 
 the molecular bodies and souls unite to form the 
 crystalline bodies and minds. Prof. Haeckel says 
 of these that " we find in crystallization, as in 
 every chemical process, certain movements which 
 are unintelligible without sensation, unconscious 
 sensation of course." 
 
 Next comes the large organic molecules, com- 
 posed of many atomic bodies and souls. Then 
 comes the living protoplasm, composed of many 
 organic molecular bodies and minds, and in this 
 
84 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 primary matter of life we can visibly see the evi- 
 dences of sensibility and mind in its irritability. 
 " At the lowest stage of organic life," says Prof. 
 Haeckel, " we find in all the protists those elemen- 
 tary feelings of like and dislike, revealing them- 
 selves in what are called their tropisms " in 
 relation to light and darkness, warmth and cold, 
 attractive and repulsive electricity, etc. ; and Max 
 Verworn says, " The psychic phenomena of the 
 protista form the bridge which unites the chemical 
 processes of inorganic nature with the mental life 
 of the highest animals." These unicellular pro- 
 tozoa give proof of the possession of a highly 
 developed cell-soul." Then comes the multicellu- 
 lar organism, or metazoa, or cell-community, and 
 of these Haeckel says, " In all these cenobia (or 
 cell-colonies) we can easily distinguish two differ- 
 ent grades of psychic activity. (1) The cell-souls 
 of the individual cells, and (&) the communal soul 
 of the entire colony." He says further concerning 
 these primitive organisms, " In all the multicellular 
 tissue forming plants (metaphyta), and in the 
 lowest nerveless classes of tissue forming animals 
 (metazoa), we have to distinguish two distinct 
 forms of psychic activity, viz., (1) the psyche of 
 the individual cells which compose the tissues, and 
 (£) the psyche of the tissue itself, or of the cell- 
 state which is made up of the tissues. This tis- 
 sue-soul is the higher psychological function which 
 gives physiological individuality to the compound 
 multicellular organism, as a true cell-common- 
 
EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MINDS 85 
 
 wealth. It controls all the separate cell-souls of 
 the social cells, the mutually dependent citizens 
 which constitute the community. 
 
 " This two-fold and fundamental character of 
 the psyche of the metaphyta and of the nerveless 
 and lower metazoa is very important. It may be 
 verified by unprejudiced observation and suitable 
 experiment. In the first place, each single cell has 
 its own sensation and movement, and in addition 
 each tissue and each organ composed of a number 
 of homogeneous cells has its special irritability 
 and psychic unity." From these lower forms of 
 organic life, we pass on to the highest, including 
 man. The same principles hold true of the higher 
 animals and men as of the lower organisms. 
 " Man's body is a cell-state, composed of millions 
 of microscopic citizens, the individual cells, which 
 work more or less independently therein, and co- 
 operate for the common purpose of the entire 
 community " — the, so-called, individual man, or 
 person, or self. 
 
 Prof. J. T. Merz says : " Every living organ- 
 ism is a society of self-accommodating individual 
 units or cells." Concerning the psychic character 
 of these so-called individual persons Prof. Haeckel 
 says : " Every living cell has its own psychic 
 properties, and the psychic life of the multicellular 
 animals (and men) is merely the sum-total of the 
 psychic functions of the cells which build up their 
 structure. 
 
 " Just as we take the living cell to be the ele- 
 
86 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 mentary organism in anatomy and physiology, 
 and derive the whole system of the multicellular 
 animals or plants from it, so with equal right and 
 necessity we may consider the cell-soul to be the 
 psychological unit, and the complex psychic activ- 
 ity of the higher organism to be the result of the 
 combination of the psychic activities of the cells 
 which compose it." 
 
 Man's mind, therefore, is the compound, com- 
 plex, and representative mind of the millions of 
 cellular minds of which it is composed, and of 
 which it is the cooperative result. Neither in 
 body or in mind is man a single, simple, individual 
 being. His body is a compound and social body, 
 and his mind is a compound and social mind, re- 
 sulting from the combination and cooperation of 
 the millions of social and cellular minds possessed 
 by the millions of social and cellular bodies of which 
 his complex and compound body is composed. 
 Man's body is a six times compounded differential 
 of the body of the original ether, and his mind is 
 likewise a six times compounded differential of the 
 mind, or psychic state and condition, of the same. 
 And neither in one aspect or the other can we dis- 
 cover or discern the least trace or suggestion of 
 simple, undivided individuality about him. Man 
 is not, never was, and never will be, an absolute 
 individual. His so-called individuality is a sheer 
 illusion, and his selfhood is a blind and ignorant 
 superstition, and it is high time it took its place 
 in the museum of exploded fallacies with the flat 
 
EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MINDS 87 
 
 and motionless earth and the little, revolving sun. 
 There is but one whole, uncompounded mind in 
 the universe, and that is the mind of the Universe 
 itself. The one, single mind of the original cos- 
 mic ether is the only individual mind that exists ; 
 and this single, individual mind of the Cosmos 
 sub-divides and differentiates itself into the infinite 
 number of finite and partial minds possessed by 
 the infinite number of finite bodies and forms into 
 which the one, single body of the Cosmos subdi- 
 vides and differentiates itself. 
 
 So the single, individual mind of the Universe 
 becomes, through the process of its own self-evolu- 
 tion, transformed into a multiple, multiform, and 
 social mind, — into a society of minds, a society 
 of souls, a society of selves and persons. Thus 
 the Universe, which we have now called " God," 
 becomes a social universe, and God becomes (in- 
 stead of a solitary, lonely, and isolated being) a 
 multiple, multiform, and social being, — a society 
 of spirits, and a social God. 
 
 A God who hides Himself 
 Is never a God at all; 
 For Spirit is Social Being, 
 Or is not Spirit at all. 2 
 
 " Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, 
 And spirit with Spirit can meet; 
 Nearer is He than breathing, 
 And closer than hands and feet." 3 
 
 28 
 
 3 Tennyson. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE DYNAMIC NATURE OF THE MIND 
 
 "The stream of consciousness." 
 
 The scientific truth that man is not, and, in 
 the nature of things, cannot be, a true individual 
 in any real sense of the word is made still more 
 manifest when we reflect upon the fact that the 
 matter of which his body is composed at any given 
 time is not stationary and fixed matter which 
 comes into his bodily form and remains there per- 
 manently in that form throughout his life, or even 
 for any considerable time, but that it comes and 
 goes again, with the nature and rapidity of an 
 ever rushing and flowing stream; and that his 
 body is just like a stream, waterfall, or gas flame. 
 
 In all these cases the form of the body remains 
 the same, but the matter composing the form is 
 continually different. There is nothing individ- 
 ual, or identically the same, about the stream, 
 waterfall, or gas flame except its mere form and 
 the likeness of the matter composing it. So there 
 is nothing identically the same about a man's body 
 except its mere shape and the similarity of the 
 substances composing it. The substance comes 
 and goes like the water in the river and fall, or 
 
 the gas in the flame. 
 
 88 
 
DYNAMIC NATURE OF MIND 89 
 
 In fact, life is nothing chemically but a proc- 
 ess of combustion, and scientists can compare it 
 to nothing else so perfectly as to a flame. Thus 
 Prof. Haeckel says that " of all the phenomena 
 of inorganic nature with which the life process 
 may be compared, none is so much like it exter- 
 nally and internally as a flame. So Max Wer- 
 worn says : " The comparison of life to a flame 
 is particularly suitable for helping us to realize 
 the relation between form and metabolism," or the 
 biological movement, circulation, and metamor- 
 phosis of matter into, and through, and out of the 
 bodily form. " The study of the gas jet," he 
 says, " gives us, even in detail, the features we find 
 in the structure of the living cell," and of the liv- 
 ing body. 
 
 " The scientific soundness of this metaphor is 
 all the more notable as the phrase 'the flame of 
 life ' or ' the spark of life ' has long been famil- 
 iar both in poetry and in popular parlance." 
 Metabolism means the movement, the streaming, 
 the never ending circulation, of the atoms of liv- 
 ing matter into the body, and round and round 
 through it, and then out of it again when inert, 
 exhausted, and biologically dead and useless. 
 " The body is like a stove, a human furnace," 
 says " Steele's Chemistry," " in which fuel is 
 burned, and the chemical action is precisely like 
 that in any other stove. This combustion pro- 
 duces heat, and our bodies are kept warm by the 
 constant fire within us. We thus see why we for- 
 
90 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 tify ourselves against a cold day by a full meal. 
 When there is plenty of fuel in our human fur- 
 naces the oxygen, the great agent of all combus- 
 tion, burns that; but if there is a deficiency, the 
 destructive oxygen must still unite with something, 
 and so it combines with the flesh ; first the fat, and 
 the man grows poor and lean; then with the mus- 
 cle, and he grows weak ; finally with the brain, and 
 he becomes crazed. He has simply burned up as 
 a candle burns out to darkness. . . . We thus 
 dissolve and melt away in time, and only the 
 shadow of our bodies can be called our own. They 
 are like the flame of a lamp which appears for a 
 long time the same, since it is ' ceaselessly fed as it 
 ceaselessly melts away.' The rapidity of this 
 change in our bodies is remarkable. Let a man 
 abstain from food and water for only an hour, 
 and the balance will prove he has become lighter. 
 This activity of oxygen, so destructive and wast- 
 ing us away constantly from birth to death, is 
 yet essential to our very existence. And why is 
 this? Here is the glorious paradox of life. We 
 live only as we die." 
 
 And the faster we die, — the faster the fuel and 
 food of life is poured into our human furnaces, 
 and is burned up and consumed, and passes on and 
 out of our bodies into other forms of existence,- — 
 the faster and more do we live. The moment we 
 cease dying in this metabolic way, that moment 
 do we cease to live and be conscious. So death, 
 that is metabolic death, the death of the constitu- 
 
DYNAMIC NATURE OF MIND 91 
 
 ent cells and tissues of the body as a whole, is not 
 an event which takes place once in a lifetime; it 
 is a constant and ceaseless process, as constant as 
 life itself. Millions of the living cells, the citi- 
 zens of that social cell-organism we call our in- 
 dividual body, die every day. 
 
 " No act can be performed except by the wear- 
 ing away of muscle. No thought can be evolved 
 except at the expense of the brain." And this 
 brain of ours is the place of all places where the 
 flame of life burns away the fastest, and where 
 the light of life is the brightest. Here the stream 
 pours through in a very torrent, and our brains 
 and streams of consciousness are the least perma- 
 nent and most transient portions of our whole be- 
 ing. Our brain is a burning and consuming flame 
 of cerebral substances and energies. Our sensa- 
 tions, feelings, impulses, and thoughts flow like the 
 torrents of a mountain stream, and so true is this 
 fact that it has become an accepted commonplace 
 among psychologists to refer to the mind as " the 
 stream of consciousness." 
 
 " All nature is a torrent of ceaseless change," 
 says " Steele's Chemistry." " We are but parts 
 of a grand system, and the elements we use are 
 not our own," for these elements we now call our 
 own have been used and used over again an in- 
 finite number of times before, and will be used an 
 infinite number of times again. " From us they 
 will pass on their ceaseless round to develop new 
 forms " of the universal cosmic life of the one and 
 
92 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 only integral Being of the world. The living cells 
 stream through the human body, into it, round 
 about it, and then out of it again, as the atoms 
 of gas flow into and out of the gas flame ; and they 
 do this most rapidly in that highest and most per- 
 fect organ of the human body, viz., the brain; 
 There, while undergoing a process of rapid dis- 
 integration and of intense vibration and excita- 
 tion, they become conscious and aware; and 
 exhausting and spending themselves in this ef- 
 fort, they rapidly pass on and out, and a new 
 flood of cells take their vacated places and assume 
 their abandoned forms, and so become conscious 
 and aware in the selfsame ways and in the self- 
 same forms. 
 
 So it appears upon the surface of things and 
 to our uncritical impressions as though it was the 
 same identical brain and the same identical and 
 individual consciousness which was there in that 
 place and in that form of brain all the time, just 
 as it appears upon the surface and to our shallow 
 seeing eyes as though it was the same identical 
 and individual gas jet which was burning all the 
 time. But just as truly as it is not, in substance 
 and in actual fact, the same gas jet which is con- 
 tinually burning, but a different gas jet entirely 
 in every respect except form and likeness of sub- 
 stance, so it is not, in substance and in actual 
 fact, the same identical brain and the same iden- 
 tical mind which is permanently conscious and 
 aware in our bodies. It is, on the contrary, a 
 
DYNAMIC NATURE OF MIND 93 
 
 distinctly different brain and a distinctly different 
 mind every day, hour, and moment of our lives. 
 For mind, we must not forget, is not a separate 
 existence, thing in itself, or entity of any kind at 
 all, but only a certain peculiar state and char- 
 acteristic condition which the substance and cells 
 of the brain acquire as, streaming in and out of 
 the brain-form, or cerebral flame, as we may 
 justly call it, they momentarily undergo a process 
 of intense excitation and vibration. In fact, the 
 cerebral cells burn up and explode, and in this 
 momentary act of combustion, explosion, and dis- 
 integration, they become conscious and aware, and 
 then pass on and out, while others, just exactly 
 like themselves in substance and shape, take their 
 vacated places and assume their abandoned forms ; 
 and so on, till sleep or death puts a temporary 
 or complete end to this dynamic process, and the 
 consciousness or mind goes out in darkness just 
 as the light does, and for the same reason. 
 
 The mind of to-day is not at all the one of yes- 
 terday any more than the flame or waterfall of 
 to-day is the one of yesterday. The one is just 
 as new and different as the others. The mind of 
 to-day, like the flame of to-day, is simply the di- 
 rect heir and successor, and the lineal descendant 
 and child, of the mind of yesterday. It simply 
 inherits the shape, character, and qualities of its 
 parent mind and predecessor with all its records, 
 or so-called memories, which make it appear and 
 feel as though it was the selfsame mind all the 
 
94 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 time, whereas it is nothing of the kind. It is an 
 entirely different mind, although, through its in- 
 heritance of the same form and character, and the 
 past records, or so-called memories, of its pre- 
 decessor, it acquires the impression that it is the 
 same. We have the impression that the earth is 
 flat and motionless, and men for thousands of 
 years believed it was so. So we have the impres- 
 sion that our minds and ourselves are the same 
 minds and " selves " we were born with ; but this 
 latter impression in regard to our " selves " is 
 just as untrue and unscientific as the former im- 
 pression in regard to the shape and movement of 
 the earth. And just as science has destroyed 
 the first illusion, so it will before long destroy the 
 last. 
 
 Man has no permanent mind or " self " what- 
 ever. Our minds and our " selves " are born 
 anew every moment of our lives, and our so-called 
 personality at any given moment is simply the 
 heir and successor to an indefinite number of simi- 
 lar personalities, equally transient in character, 
 which have gone before us in our particular form 
 and character. Birth in its metabolic meaning, 
 like death in the same sense, is not an event which 
 occurs once in a lifetime. On the contrary, it 
 is a continual and endless process. It is a cease- 
 less event and is taking place at all times, and 
 most rapidly when we are most alive and most 
 conscious. Both bodily and mentally, both in 
 substance and in states of substance, we are be- 
 
DYNAMIC NATURE OF MIND 95 
 
 ing born anew at every passing moment of time. 
 Metabolic birth and death are the incoming and 
 outgoing aspects of the selfsame and ceaseless 
 process which is going on everywhere throughout 
 all nature and throughout all space and time. We, 
 in a true sense, were not born once and only once, 
 neither will we die once and only once. We are 
 being born anew with every breath we draw, and 
 dying anew with every breath we exhale. Birth 
 and death is an unbroken and continuous process, 
 and not, in reality, a solitary event. We are al- 
 ways dying and always being born at every 
 microscopic movement of time. The mind or 
 " self " is the momentarily illuminated portion of 
 a rapidly rushing stream of universal being which 
 comes silently and invisibly out of the darkness 
 before, and passes silently and invisibly into the 
 darkness behind. But something is permanent, 
 and what is it if it is not the flowing ego of the 
 present moment? The answer is, — it is that uni- 
 versal and unitary body and ocean of being which 
 flows throughout all space and endures throughout 
 all time; which flows here and there and every- 
 where, through all things, all beings, and all cos- 
 mic forms ; which, " without haste and without 
 rest," stops and remains nowhere permanently, 
 in any place, or any being, or any form. 
 
 It is the universal Ego, the cosmic Mind which 
 alone is permanent, which alone is identical, and 
 which alone is a permanent and immortal self, 
 individual, and person. It passes and repasses 
 
96 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 like an electric stream of energy ; and through the 
 perfect, unbroken, and indivisible unity of its own 
 cosmic Body and Soul, it binds and holds all its 
 transitory and ephemeral forms into a perfect cos- 
 mic and organic oneness. Our minds are its 
 minds as our bodies are its bodies, and our joys 
 and pains are its very own. Our memories, too, 
 as we call them, are, in reality, its memories, and 
 not at all our personal own. In the partial and 
 personal meaning of the word, the " I " of to-day 
 is a distinctly different " I " from the " I " of 
 yesterday; but in the integral and cosmic sense 
 of the word, the " I " of to-day is the selfsame 
 and continuous " I " as the " I " of yesterday ; 
 for all " I's " are its " I's." 
 
 The man or fractional being of to-day is not 
 the man or partial being of yesterday; but the 
 God or whole Being of to-day is the God or whole 
 Being of yesterday, and of eternity. And so we 
 regain the fractional ego we have humanly lost 
 in the integral and cosmic Ego we have divinely 
 won. But in this integral and universal sense 
 our one, whole, and divine Ego is not our own 
 exclusively, but it is ours only in common and 
 publicly with all other men, and all other crea- 
 tures, and all other things. In God, all things, 
 and creatures, and men are One. Here, in the 
 little circumscribed light of the human conscious- 
 ness, " I " seem to be " I," and " you " seem to 
 be " you " ; but out there in the surrounding dark, 
 where only the powerful light of science and 
 
DYNAMIC NATURE OF MIND 97 
 
 philosophy can penetrate, you and I and God are 
 one. It is only in this whole, universal, and di- 
 vine sense that anything whatever is true and real. 
 In the partial, local, and human sense everything 
 is false and illusory. Thus in the partial and 
 human sense the man and mind of to-day is not 
 the man and mind of yesterday ; but in the whole 
 and divine sense, which, in the last resort, is the 
 only true sense, the man of to-day is the same 
 as the man of yesterday, but only because they 
 were both the passing portions of the one and uni- 
 versal Whole. 
 
 It is only in God, and through God, that the 
 man of to-day is the man of yesterday and the 
 man of to-morrow. In any private and exclusive 
 sense he is not the same man at all. We retain 
 our human individuality only through the univer- 
 sal and divine individuality of God. It is the con- 
 tinuous, indivisible unity and wholeness of God 
 which gives us all the finite and human individual- 
 ity we possess. The world in reality has but one 
 whole inhabitant, and the entire population of 
 the universe is One. The apparent multiplicity 
 of beings and things is a shallow illusion, for these 
 multitudinous forms are merely its myriads of 
 members and minds. The life of the universe is 
 one life, and it is all of it the life of God. Its 
 struggles, and battles, defeats and victories, are 
 God's. Its sins and sorrows, its joys and pains 
 are His. It is God's life, every atom of it, and 
 not our little own merely. 
 
98 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 " The long passion of our humanity," says 
 Prof. Carpenter, " is borne in all its multitudinous 
 variety by Him." " God's life is simply all life," 
 says Prof. Royce. " What is this life indeed but 
 the pastime of the divine Life itself? " The life 
 on this earth of ours is only one of the divine 
 dramas which God himself is playing on all the 
 planetary stages of the universe. He, too, is play- 
 ing all the parts at the same time, from the mean- 
 est and most ignoble to the proudest and most 
 sublime, — from the worm to the man, from the 
 murderer to the saint, from the long-suffering 
 poor to the pleasure-chasing rich. 
 
 The suffering masses of humanity are the 
 masses and bulk of God's own body and God's 
 own soul. Man's inhumanity to man is man's 
 inhumanity to God and not to any other being 
 or beings, for there is no other being and there 
 are no other beings. It is God himself, therefore, 
 who is made to weep and mourn. " It is just 
 this thought of the suffering God," says Prof. 
 Royce, " who is just our own true self, who actu- 
 ally and in our flesh bears the sins of the world 
 and whose natural body is pierced by the capri- 
 cious wounds which hateful fools inflict upon him. 
 God is not," he says, " in his ultimate essence 
 another being than yourself. He is the absolute 
 being. You are truly one with God and part of 
 his life. He is the very soul of your soul." Bone 
 of your bone, and flesh of your flesh. " When 
 you suffer, your sufferings are God's sufferings. 
 
DYNAMIC NATURE OF MIND 99 
 
 In you God himself suffers precisely as you do. 
 There is in the universe but one perfectly real 
 being." 
 
 " Know thyself," was the profoundest injunc- 
 tion of the philosophers of Greece, and when you 
 know yourself, says the monistic philosopher of 
 to-day, you shall know that you are God. 
 
 " One undivided Soul of many a soul, 
 Whose nature is its own divine control, 
 Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the 
 sea." 
 
 So the philosophy of monism becomes a doc- 
 trine of a divine universe, a divine humanity, and 
 a human Divinity; and the religion of monism 
 preaches an " enthusiasm of humanity " which is 
 also, at the same time, an enthusiasm of Divinity, 
 an enthusiasm of God, as the one, all-inclusive, and 
 only real Being in the world. 
 
 ..." For I have learned 
 To look on Nature, not as in the hour 
 Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes 
 The still, sad music of humanity, 
 Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power 
 To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
 A Presence that disturbs me with a joy 
 Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime 
 Of something far more subtly interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 
100 THE GOB WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 And the blue sky, and, in the mind of man, 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts, 
 And rolls through all things." x 
 
 i Wordsworth. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE ILLUSION OF MEMORY 
 
 One of the peculiar and universal powers pos- 
 sessed by all living organisms is that of taking in 
 outside matter and building it up into a form pre- 
 cisely like that of the living organism itself. Thus 
 the organism consumes food, which is digested, or 
 rendered fit for conversion into tissues ; it is taken 
 up into the circulating blood, carried to all the 
 wasting cells and tissues of the body, and each 
 cell and tissue seizes this converted food and molds 
 it into a form precisely like itself. So the old, 
 wasted, and inert cell and tissue is repaired, re- 
 produced, and reduplicated by the newly formed 
 cell and tissue under this formative and repro- 
 ductive power possessed by all living matter. 
 
 " All biological repair," says Herbert Spencer, 
 " is carried on by the old cells of tissues forming 
 out of raw organic matter new cells just like them- 
 selves." This power of assimilating (or making 
 similar), of reproducing and reduplicating the 
 old cells in the formation of new ones is a power 
 possessed by all living and organic matter. It is 
 manifested in many wonderful and mysterious 
 
 ways, and is called " physiological polarity " or 
 
 101 
 
102 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 the " repetition of predecessors " by Herbert 
 Spencer. This power is possessed, in the last 
 analysis, by the ultimate vital elements, or 
 " physiological units," of which every living organ- 
 ism is composed. Each living organism is com- 
 posed of ultimate vital elements, or " units," 
 peculiar to its own individual organism, and all 
 such individual and specific units have the power 
 of molding the fit raw materials of organic life 
 with which they come in contact into individual 
 and specific units precisely like themselves, making 
 due allowance here, however, for the action of the 
 laws of variation, which are due undoubtedly to 
 some change in the environing condition. 
 
 Living cells of all kinds take in fit organic 
 matter from without, mold this matter into a form 
 and character like themselves, grow and expand, 
 then divide into % or 4 parts or new cells, which 
 each repeat this process indefinitely. This is 
 called reproduction by cleavage. This reproduc- 
 tive power is displayed in many curious and won- 
 derful ways among the lower and most primitive 
 organisms. Thus in the Hydrozoa any part of 
 the body, if cut off from the rest, will reproduce 
 a whole new body if furnished with the raw ma- 
 terials. In the Actinozoa a half of a body will 
 reproduce a new and whole one. An annelid may 
 be cut into 30 or 40 pieces, and each piece will 
 grow and reproduce a whole one. Lobsters and 
 crabs will restore lost claws which have been torn 
 off in battle. Lizards can restore and reproduce 
 
THE ILLUSION OF MEMORY 103 
 
 lost limbs or lost tails. Fifty polypes were re- 
 produced from one which was cut up into that 
 many pieces. A piece of begonia leaf will repro- 
 duce 100 new plants. 
 
 In the function of sexual reproduction the same 
 principle is an action. A little cell, or rather two 
 of them, a male and female in conjunction, con- 
 taining within themselves a number of these specific 
 physiological units of which all organisms are 
 composed, begin to take in outside matter, to grow 
 and develop into the completed form of the dual 
 parental organism through the continual molding 
 of this matter into units like themselves, and with 
 the same organic polarities, — polarities which can 
 only find their equilibrium and satisfy their in- 
 trinsic qualities and impulses in the construction 
 and reproduction of an organic form just, or very 
 nearly, like the originals of the parents. In sex- 
 ual reproduction there is considerable variation, 
 and that is the very reason, perhaps, why sexual 
 reproduction exists. In the other, or the merely 
 restorative and reparative, forms of reproduction, 
 there is very little or no variation whatever. In 
 sexual reproduction a microscopic part of ex- 
 truded cell from the organism reproduces the whole 
 organism in duplicate. In restorative reproduc- 
 tion, as where a lobster reproduces a lost claw, the 
 whole organism reproduces a part. In reparative 
 reproduction, as where worn-out cells or tissues 
 reproduce new ones, a whole reproduces a whole 
 or a part reproduces a part. But these are all 
 
104 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 simply different manifestations of the action of one 
 common principle and power of reproduction pos- 
 sessed by all living matter. 
 
 Now, this power of reproduction, repetition, 
 imitation, and heredity possessed by all living mat- 
 ter has a most vital bearing on the question of 
 the finite individuality of man. We have already 
 seen that the organism is nothing but a rapidly 
 flowing stream of cells, and the only way in which 
 the organism can possibly maintain the same kind 
 of a form from one day to another is through this 
 universal organic power it has of taking in new 
 raw material and of molding it into a form pre- 
 cisely like the old one, so that when the old, worn- 
 out, and exhausted cells and tissues pass on and 
 out of the body, as they are continually doing, the 
 new ones take their vacated places and step, so to 
 speak, into their shoes. 
 
 The form, character, and qualities of the new 
 body and organism, composed and constituted of 
 the new cells and tissues, will be precisely (or al- 
 most precisely) like the old one. It will be in 
 every respect a practically perfect copy and re- 
 production of the old body, so much so that to all 
 superficial observation and knowledge it will ap- 
 pear and seem to be the same ; which, of course, in 
 this flowing reproducing nature of things it can- 
 not be. 
 
 The new body is merely a perfect duplicate of 
 the old one and is its immediate successor, direct 
 descendant, and lineal heir. The organism of to- 
 
THE ILLUSION OF MEMORY 105 
 
 day, both as regards its body and its mind, is sim- 
 ply the heir and successor to the organism of 
 yesterday, or a very short time ago. The body 
 of to-day is nothing but the heir and successor 
 to the body of yesterday, and the mind of to-day 
 is likewise nothing but the heir and successor to 
 the mind of yesterday in spite of any feelings, 
 impressions, and memories to the contrary. 
 There is no part of the organism where the stream 
 of life and blood, of substance and energy, flows 
 so fast as it does through the brain; where the 
 old cells flow out and the new cells flow in as fast 
 as they do here; nor where the reproduction of 
 new cells by the old cells takes place so rapidly 
 as it does in the brain, so that a brand-new brain 
 is constantly taking the place of the old and ex- 
 hausted one. And not only does the new brain 
 take the place of the old one, but it also takes 
 the precise form and character of the old in 
 accordance with the universal biological law of 
 reproduction, repetition, and heredity. And as 
 a brand-new brain is continually taking the place 
 and the precise form and character of the old one, 
 so, of necessity, a brand new brain state of con- 
 sciousness is continually taking the place, precise 
 form, and character of the old one that has now 
 passed into history as a bygone memory. 
 
 So the brain state of to-day is an entirely new 
 and different one from that of yesterday, and is 
 nothing but its immediate successor, direct heir, 
 and lineal descendant. In other words, the indi- 
 
106 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 vidual of to-day is merely the heir and successor 
 to the individual of yesterday ; and no living being 
 has any private and exclusive personality at all, 
 either as regards his body or his soul, his sub- 
 stance or his spirit. But surely we remember to 
 have lived in the past, and surely our memory is 
 a proof of our continued and permanent existence. 
 No, we are completely mistaken in this regard ; our 
 memory does not tell us the truth in this matter, 
 any more than our eyes tell us the truth in regard 
 to the roundness, rotation, and revolution of the 
 earth. Our memories and personal impressions 
 deceive us completely in regard to ourselves. The 
 truth in regard to ourselves is the very reverse of 
 what our memories and impressions seem to tell 
 us. Our so-called memories are not, in fact, 
 " our " memories at all. They are the recorded 
 memories of our predecessors, in the " form " we 
 now exist in. We have simply stepped into " dead 
 men's shoes," inherited their psychological remains 
 and mental accumulations ; and having done this, 
 we fondly imagine that we are them ; but they have 
 gone, and we are merely their psychical succes- 
 sors. 
 
 The impression of a permanent personality is 
 derived entirely from the function of memory. If 
 we could not remember from one moment to an- 
 other what had happened in the preceding moment, 
 we could never acquire the sense or impression of 
 a permanent something or person which persisted 
 from moment to moment and whose consecutive 
 
THE ILLUSION OF MEMORY 107 
 
 experiences these momentary states were. While 
 being conscious of the present moment, we must 
 also retain a consciousness of some kind of the 
 past or preceding moments, and this consciousness 
 of the past and preceding moments must depend 
 upon some more or less lasting impression and 
 record being made upon the consciousness, and 
 this in turn means that some more or less lasting 
 impression and record must have been made upon 
 the cells of the brain. It is the consciousness of 
 these lasting impressions and records made upon 
 the brain cells, which constitutes memory. 
 
 Now, how is memory for any considerable length 
 of time made possible, if, as we have shown, there 
 is a constant and rapid procession of old brain- 
 cells going out and new ones coming in? The 
 answer is that this memory, or lasting impression 
 and record of past and preceding experiences, is 
 made possible through the constant reproduction 
 of new brain-cells and tissues (in accordance with 
 the universal biological law of reproduction and 
 " repetition of predecessors "), having perfect re- 
 productions, duplicates, and copies of the impres- 
 sions and records made originally upon the old 
 brain-cells and experienced originally by them, 
 and not by their heirs and immediate or remote 
 successors in the brain. The new brain-cells ac- 
 quire (through this law of reproduction and repe- 
 tition, of duplication and reduplication) the same 
 memorial impressions and records as the old and 
 original ones. And so it appears upon the surface 
 
108 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 that they remember, recollect, or recall those past 
 experiences in consciousness which as an actual, 
 literal fact happened, not to them at all, but to 
 their old, dead, and now departed predecessors in 
 that particular brain-form. 
 
 The brain, in fact, is like a photographic, 
 phonographic, and psychographic machine in 
 which impressions and records are made in the old 
 cells and then copied and duplicated in the new 
 ones, the new cells taking the places and " step- 
 ping into the shoes " of the old cells after they 
 are worn out and passed out of the brain. " Con- 
 sciousness," says Prof. Jacques Loeb, " is the func- 
 tion of a machine which we will call the associative 
 memory, and which is like a phonograph repro- 
 ducing impressions in a chronological order." So 
 Dr. Paul Carus says, " The preservation and 
 transmission of form is the physiological condition 
 of memory. If certain changes which take place 
 in living substance are accompanied by sensation, 
 the preservation of certain physiological forms 
 produced by such changes will preserve the corre- 
 sponding sensations also. They are registered in 
 the protoplasm similarly as speech is recorded in 
 the trefoil of the phonograph. 
 
 " If the physiological forms of sentient matter 
 are called into activity by some stimulus, it will 
 reproduce in weaker form the corresponding sen- 
 sation just as a phonograph will reproduce 
 speech.* 9 
 
 In this reproductive and restimulative way the 
 
THE ILLUSION OF MEMORY 109 
 
 new brain appears to be the old brain, the new 
 consciousness appears to be the old consciousness, 
 and the new person and self seems to be the same 
 old person and the same old self; but in each and 
 every instance this appearance is most false and 
 illusory. As a photographer takes one picture 
 and from that reproduces and copies many others 
 like it; and as a phonographer takes one master 
 record of a piece of music and from that repro- 
 duces many others precisely like it, so the brain, 
 which is an automatic psycho-graphic machine, 
 takes, in the present cells of the brain, records 
 and impressions of the various sights, sounds, and 
 experiences of life and from these original rec- 
 ords and impressions, in the original brain-cells 
 which experienced and made them, it reproduces, 
 in time, many new ones to take the places of the 
 old and worn out ones of the old, worn out and 
 departed cells of the old, worn out and departed 
 brain. 
 
 So in this reproductive and metabolic way the 
 new and present consciousness is made to appear 
 upon the surface of things as though it was really 
 the old and departed consciousness ; and the new 
 and present individual is made to seem like the 
 old, departed, and vanished individual. But as a 
 matter of scientific fact this impression and ap- 
 pearance of a permanent individual is all an illu- 
 sion. Like the photographic and phonographic 
 duplicates and copies, a man is merely a psycho- 
 graphic copy and duplicate of an old, past, and 
 
110 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 vanished man. This is how behind the scenes, and 
 in the psychographic laboratory of the brain, the 
 impression and appearance of a permanent human 
 ego is produced; and this is how we are cheated 
 and deceived into the belief and conviction of a 
 permanent consciousness and personality. 
 
 This is the way in which we acquire the illusion 
 of individuality and the superstition of the pri- 
 vate and exclusive self. This process might truly 
 be characterized as the process of psychic repro- 
 duction and heredity, for in this process the mind 
 is reproduced continually in a permanent and un- 
 broken series until death puts an end to the proc- 
 ess. There is thus, we see, no permanent smgle 
 self or soul, but there is instead a continuous and 
 permanent series of souls in every living and hu- 
 man form. And this series of souls is a part and 
 fraction of the entire cosmic soul of the one and 
 only Being of the world. 
 
 Psychologists characterize the mind as " the 
 stream of consciousness " and as a series of con- 
 scious states ; and this agrees with this view of the 
 mind as a series of minds. The stream of mind is 
 not perfectly continuous; it is broken nightly by 
 sleep, and occasionally by this and other events, 
 the stream of consciousness becomes discon- 
 tinuous. Hence we may regard, if we will, the 
 " stream of mind " as a stream of minds, more or 
 less separated and distinct in space and time and 
 in substantial bases from each other. The indi- 
 vidual streams of mind are infinitely numerous, 
 
THE ILLUSION OF MEMORY 111 
 
 and they are all the streams and currents of one 
 all-inclusive ocean of mind which fills all space and 
 endures throughout all time; and this infinite and 
 eternal ocean of mind we have the right to call the 
 mind of God. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE COSMIC EGO 
 
 " What I call God, 
 And fools call Nature." 
 
 Browning. 
 
 Is man's original and naive belief in a permanent 
 individual and self a complete and unqualified il- 
 lusion in every possible sense of the word? Is it 
 not true in some sense and in some way? Have 
 we human beings no individuality and selfhood 
 whatever and of any kind? That is not neces- 
 sarily the conclusion to be drawn from the pre- 
 ceding argument, I believe. What that argument 
 and evidence proves is that we have no truly pri- 
 vate and exclusive individuality and selfhood, and 
 that such individuality and selfhood does not ex- 
 ist. It asserts that such individuality is an 
 illusion and a superstition ; but as a complementary 
 proposition it necessarily implies that there is an 
 infinite and eternal, a universal and all-inclusive, 
 Individual and Self, in whose perfect and complete 
 individuality and selfhood we all equally partici- 
 pate and democratically share in common. 
 
 From the narrower, partial, and pluralistic 
 
 point of view it is not the same stream which flows 
 
 112 
 
THE COSMIC EGO 113 
 
 by our doors every day and every hour, but from 
 the broader, integral, organic, and monistic point 
 of view it may be regarded as the same, because 
 all being is one continuous, individual, cosmic, and 
 divine organism. 
 
 So from the fractional and pluralistic point of 
 view, it is not the same identical individual who 
 appears in our human form from day to day and 
 from year to year, because of this universal fact 
 of the ceaseless flow of matter and its mental 
 states. But from the integral, monistic, and or- 
 ganic point of view it is always the selfsame, con- 
 tinuous, indivisible, and universal being which is 
 conscious in us to-day, and yesterday, and to- 
 morrow, and which flows through us at all times. 
 We retain or regain our individuality, therefore, 
 because of the fact that the whole world of being 
 is absolutely indivisible and perfectly continuous. 
 It cannot lose its perfect, absolute, and funda- 
 mental unity under any circumstances and vicis- 
 situdes whatever. 
 
 But this individuality which we so retain is a 
 universal, infinite, and eternal individuality, in 
 which we participate and share in common and 
 publicly with all other men and creatures and 
 things equally. It is an infinite, universal, and 
 all-inclusive individuality, not a finite, all-exclu- 
 sive, and positively private one. We are individ- 
 uals and selves because we are bona fide portions, 
 inseparable and continuous, with the indivisible 
 Body and Soul of the world. We are the genuine 
 
114 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 members of God's own body, the bona fide organs 
 of God's own organism, and the necessary func- 
 tions of God's own mind. It is God who in his 
 indivisible unity and organic wholeness is conscious 
 in us to-day, yesterday, and to-morrow. We are 
 Him and He is us. He is permanent and eternal, 
 and we, as bona fide portions and functions of his 
 eternal body and mind, participate and share in 
 his permanence and eternity. He is a perfect 
 and absolute Individual, and in his perfect and 
 absolute individuality we have a genuine and equal 
 share. He is, as the poet says: 
 
 " One undivided Soul, of many a soul ' 
 
 Whose nature is its own divine Control, 
 Where all things flow to All, as rivers to the sea." 
 
 " Constantly picture the universe as a living organ- 
 ism, controlling a single substance and a single soul, 
 and note how all things are assimilated to a single 
 world-sense. All act together by a single impulse, 
 and all cooperate towards all that comes to pass." 1 
 
 i Marcus Aurelws. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 THE SOCIAL EGO 
 
 A solitary conscious being without conscious 
 companions like itself, if such a being were log- 
 ically and naturally possible, would be a most for- 
 lorn, unhappy, and accursed being. Consciousness 
 in an absolutely solitary form would be a curse 
 instead of a blessing to its possessor, if such a 
 thing were actually possible or conceivable, which 
 I do not believe. 
 
 Some one has spoken of " the awful loneliness of 
 God," God being imagined as a single, " sui gen- 
 eris," conscious being, existing all alone by himself 
 prior to his imagined creation of the world, and 
 still so far above and removed from it that he 
 must exist in a state of transcendent and awful 
 loneliness. In the same way it is sometimes as- 
 sumed that men of exalted genius, who stand high 
 above their ordinary fellowmen, suffer from a feel- 
 ing of great loneliness because they cannot be on 
 terms of the fullest fellowship and companionship 
 with them. 
 
 We get further proof of the undesirability and 
 
 abnormality of consciousness in a solitary form 
 
 in the insanity and melancholy which so uniformly 
 
 116 
 
116 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 besets prisoners in solitary confinement, the keep- 
 ers of lonely and isolated lighthouses, and the 
 isolated wives of farmers on sparsely settled prai- 
 ries. The Bible says, " It is not good for man to 
 be alone," and if we take this to mean a conscious 
 being of any kind, then it expresses a profound 
 psychological and spiritual truth. It is not good, 
 or natural, for any conscious being to exist in 
 solitude, separation, or independent of conscious 
 companions like itself. It is not good, desirable, 
 or normal for conscious beings to be unsocial or 
 unsociable. The conscious being is essentially a 
 social and sociable being, and deprived of all con- 
 scious companions like itself, its existence would 
 be most miserable and unblest. Think of the im- 
 aginary God of dualistic and supernatural the- 
 ology existing all alone from all eternity prior to 
 his assumed creation of the world and man. Think 
 of the " Ancient Mariner," 
 
 " Alone, alone, all, all, alone ; 
 Alone on a wide, wide sea. 
 And never a saint took pity on 
 My soul in agony." x 
 
 Think of Crusoe, marooned upon his island in 
 the sea, if he had not found a single human, ani- 
 mal, and conscious companion, and then we can 
 easily realize how abnormal, impossible, and un- 
 desirable it would be for a conscious being to exist 
 in solitary separation and independence of fellow 
 minds like its own. 
 i Coleridge. 
 
THE SOCIAL EGO 117 
 
 A conscious being apart from other conscious 
 beings would be out of its natural element and 
 normal environment just as surely as a fish would 
 be out of water. A single mind apart from a so- 
 ciety of minds would be an abnormality and im- 
 possibility. A mind always implies a society of 
 minds, and cannot be conceived to exist in isolation 
 and independence. It is never a whole and self- 
 sufficient thing in itself alone, but is always a part 
 of a larger and truer whole of which it is a func- 
 tion. A mind always implies mmds, always im- 
 plies a plurality and multiplicity of conscious 
 beings. That is, it always implies a spiritual or 
 psychic organism, a society of minds of which 
 psychic organism the single, individual mind is an 
 organ, function, and member. A single mind is 
 never a psychic organism in itself alone, but is 
 merely an atomic element and constituent of a 
 compound psychic organism, — a social mind or 
 society of minds. Mind is made and adapted for 
 mind, for a mental and social environment; and 
 this mental and social environment of the single 
 mind constitutes the true psychic organism of 
 which the single mind is an atomic element and 
 constituent. 
 
 Consciousness existing under a single, solitary, 
 separate, and independent form, would be con- 
 sciousness existing (if it could so exist) under its 
 most undesirable, repulsive, and unideal form. 
 But consciousness existing under a multiple, mul- 
 tiform, and social form would be consciousness 
 
118 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 existing under its most desirable, attractive, nat- 
 ural, and ideal form; and that is the form under 
 which we do find that the consciousness of the uni- 
 verse exists. The consciousness of the world ought 
 not to be a single, solitary, separate, or individual 
 consciousness. It ought to be, on the contrary, a 
 multiple, multiform, collective, and social con- 
 sciousness ; and that is what we find it to be. The 
 conscious life of the universe is, as it ought to be, 
 a social life. The consciousness of the world is, 
 as it ought to be, a social and collective conscious- 
 ness. The mind of the cosmos is, as it ought to 
 be, a universal and social mind. The spirit of the 
 world is not, as it ought not to be, a solitary and 
 unsocial spirit. It is, as it ought to be, a social 
 spirit, a society of spirits, a society of minds, a 
 society of selves ; and it is this society of minds 
 which constitutes the spiritual and psychic organ- 
 ism of the world, — the psycho-zoon, the world- 
 spirit, of which each single, individual mind is an 
 atomic constituent and element. So the Person- 
 ality of the world is not a solitary personality, 
 but a social personality and a world-personality. 
 So the true self of the world is not a solitary self, 
 but a social self and a world-self; and the God of 
 the world is not a solitary god, but a social god; 
 — a world-deity, a divine society. 
 
 We thus see that the conscious and spiritual 
 being of the world ought not to exist, and does 
 not exist, except under a multiple, multiform, sub- 
 divided, and social form. It now remains to be 
 
THE SOCIAL EGO 119 
 
 shown that, in the very nature of consciousness 
 and intelligence itself, it cannot exist except under 
 just such a form. 
 
 The conscious life of the world as a whole is its 
 own internal life. It can live only within itself 
 and for itself. It cannot live in relation to any- 
 thing or any being external to itself or for the 
 sake of any being external to itself, for there is 
 no being external to itself. It cannot, therefore, 
 have a consciousness of anything external to it- 
 self, or need any intelligence of any kind or degree, 
 in order to adapt and adjust itself to anything 
 or to any being outside. It can have no use or 
 application for any external consciousness or any 
 external intelligence. If it has any consciousness 
 or intelligence at all, it must be a consciousness of 
 its own internal world of being and an intelligence 
 enabling its conscious portions to adapt and ad- 
 just themselves to the unconscious or less con- 
 scious portions, and to each other, to the best of 
 their ability. Consciousness and intelligence, 
 therefore, if they exist at all within the being of 
 the world, must be internal in character and func- 
 tion. It must be an internal or inner conscious- 
 ness, an interior and inner intelligence, an inner 
 light, an immanent reason, exclusively for internal 
 use, illumination, and adjustment. 
 
 The only kind of consciousness, intelligence, or 
 knowledge the world can have is internal self-con- 
 sciousness, interior self -intelligence, and immanent 
 self-knowledge. But there can be no conscious- 
 
120 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 ness unless some subject is conscious of some ob- 
 ject which is relatively and comparatively exterior 
 to itself. Hence there can be no consciousness un- 
 less the Being of the world as a whole divides itself 
 phenomenally and superficially into subjective 
 parts and organs that know, and into objective 
 parts and structures that are known. The Being 
 of the world, if it would be conscious and self- 
 conscious, must perform an act of phenomenal 
 and superficial self-division, self-partition, and 
 self-cleavage. It must mother itself as a parent 
 body and mind into filial parts. It must set itself 
 up over against and opposite itself, '* vis-a-vis," 
 in order that it may see and know itself, appear to 
 itself, or manifest itself to itself ; and in order that 
 it may do anything or realize any object. It must 
 divide and separate a part of itself from another 
 part of itself. It must distinguish this part from 
 that in order that it may know and recognize it. 
 It must differentiate one part from another in 
 order that each separate part may perform its 
 own function and play its own appointed part. 
 
 It must perform the acts of self-cleavage, self- 
 distinguishment, and self-differentiation. It must 
 transform its undivided, undifferentiated, and un- 
 distinguished body into a divided, distinguished, 
 and differentiated world of knowing subjects, and 
 knowable and known objects. It must set brother 
 part against brother part of itself, in opposition, 
 competition, and complementation. It must 
 transform itself into a world of acting and react- 
 
THE SOCIAL EGO 121 
 
 ing, attracting and repelling, energies and bodies. 
 It must disorganize and divide itself into atomic 
 multiplicity in order that it may later on reorgan- 
 ize and reunite itself on a higher and nobler plane 
 of existence. It must fall into material diversity 
 and discord in order that it may later on rise to 
 a spiritual and social unity and harmony. 
 
 It must do all of these things if it would be 
 conscious and self-conscious. An absolutely sim- 
 ple, undivided, undifferentiated, undistinguished, 
 uncomplicated unit of being cannot by any pos- 
 sibility be conscious and self-conscious. Only a 
 complicated, self-divided, self -differentiated, self- 
 distinguished unit of being can ever be, or can 
 ever become, via evolution, a conscious and self- 
 conscious being. Only a perfect unit of being 
 which has transformed its undivided, undifferen- 
 tiated, and undistinguished body and self into a 
 much divided, much differentiated, and much 
 distinguished body and self, can ever be, or can 
 ever become, via evolution, a conscious and self- 
 conscious being. Only a perfect unit of being 
 which has transformed itself into a world of many 
 social subjects and many material objects, which 
 has transformed its perfect simplicity and uni- 
 formity into a multiform, multiple, and associated 
 world of beings and things, can ever be, or can 
 ever become, conscious and self-conscious. 
 
 Only in such a complicated, multiform, and as- 
 sociated world of beings and things can conscious- 
 ness originate and be preserved and further 
 
im THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 developed to higher and ever higher and more self- 
 conscious forms. Consciousness cannot exist or 
 be evolved in an absolutely simple, uniform, and 
 uncomplicated world of being; it can only exist 
 and be evolved in a highly complicate, multiform, 
 and much divided world of being. And as con- 
 sciousness cannot exist in a simple, undivided 
 world, neither can it exist itself in a simple and 
 undivided form. 
 
 As it can only exist in a complicated, multiform, 
 and associated world of being, so it can only ex- 
 ist itself in a multiple, multiform, and social form. 
 A simple, single, and solitary consciousness of any 
 kind is an utter impossibility in the nature of 
 things. Only a multiform, multiple, and social 
 consciousness is either possible or conceivable. 
 The only possible or conceivable form of conscious- 
 ness is the social form. The only possible mind 
 that can exist or be evolved is the social Mind. 
 An individual mind by itself is an utter impossibil- 
 ity. So, therefore, an individual soul or self is an 
 utter impossibility. These forms can only exist 
 as the atomic elements and constituents of the so- 
 cial Soul, the social Self, and the social God. 
 
 In order that it may be conscious and self-con- 
 scious, the Being of the world must divide itself 
 within itself, into two dualistic portions ; manifest 
 itself to itself in two dualistic ways; and appear 
 to itself under two dualistic aspects, — the sub- 
 jective and the objective. But this dualistic di- 
 vision of the world of being is not sufficient for the 
 
THE SOCIAL EGO 123 
 
 origination, preservation, and evolution of con- 
 sciousness. A single subject with a single object 
 is impossible in the nature of consciousness. Con- 
 sciousness is always, of necessity, a consciousness 
 of changes in the objective environment, and these 
 changes must be continually taking place, or else 
 consciousness cannot be maintained or developed. 
 " To be conscious of the same thing continu- 
 ally," says one high authority in psychology, 
 " would mean to be conscious of nothing at all." 
 And another says, " that a completely uniform 
 condition of consciousness would prevent or arrest 
 consciousness altogether." Consciousness cannot 
 exist apart from changes in the objective environ- 
 ment, and a single object could furnish no true or 
 sufficient environment, or objective world, for a 
 conscious being. Consciousness cannot exist, 
 originate, be maintained, or be evolved unless there 
 exists for the conscious subject a large and varied 
 field, a world of many and various objects, and a 
 multiplicity and multiformity of things for the 
 exercise of discrimination, recognition, assimila- 
 tion, etc., — in short, for the orderly organization 
 within consciousness itself of a continually chang- 
 ing experience. Unless there exist the conditions 
 of continual objective changes, of continual dif- 
 ferences and agreements, of likeness and unlike- 
 ness, — not between a few objects, but between 
 many and various ones, — consciousness cannot 
 originate, be maintained, or be evolved into higher 
 forms. The mind must have, in order to exist at 
 
124 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 all, not one object, nor a few objects, but a world 
 of many and various objects; and the possibilities 
 of consciousness, intelligence, and knowledge in- 
 crease in proportion to the multiplicity and multi- 
 formity of objects in the environment. 
 
 The more highly the objective world is divided 
 and differentiated into a multitude of multiform 
 parts, the more highly may the mind and intelli- 
 gence be developed, and the more easily may be it 
 be originated and maintained. An undivided, un- 
 differentiated world of being cannot be conscious 
 or self-conscious at all; neither can a little divided 
 and differentiated world of being; only a much 
 divided and highly differentiated world of being 
 can originate, preserve, and evolve conscious and 
 self-conscious forms of life. 
 
 We have now seen the necessity for a multiplic- 
 ity of objects in order that consciousness and self- 
 consciousness may exist. We must now show the 
 equal necessity for a multiplicity of subjects, for 
 a world of fellow-minds, for a community and so- 
 ciety of intelligences, if consciousness and self-con- 
 sciousness are to exist within the Being of the 
 world. 
 
 The mind needs to receive impressions and 
 stimuli from the world of objects in order that 
 it may become awake and aware. It equally needs 
 to give expression, utterance, and voice to the 
 thoughts, feelings, emotions and impulses which 
 the outer world of objects arouses within it. The 
 mind is not and cannot be a purely passive, pas- 
 
THE SOCIAL EGO 125 
 
 sionless, and disinterested thing, — a mere recipi- 
 ent, like a piece of passive, sensitive wax, to 
 receive impressions and make passive records of 
 events and things in the outer world. 
 
 On the contrary, it is and must be an active and 
 reactive thing, a responsive agency, an outgoing 
 will, an instrument for responding to and reacting 
 upon the outer world. Its function is to respond 
 and react -fitly to the impressions and stimuli it 
 receives from without, and to give full, voluntary, 
 and forcible expression to itself, — to the burning 
 thoughts, the ardent desires, the passionate im- 
 pulses, which the things and events of the world 
 arouse and inspire within it. The mind is and can 
 be no passive and passionless spectator of things ; 
 on the contrary, it is and must be an intensely 
 interested, passionate, and impulsive actor and 
 aggressive will in the world's drama, and must have 
 full opportunity to give adequate vent, utterance, 
 voice, and expression to its thoughts and feelings, 
 its passions and emotions, its desires and dreads, 
 its loves and hates, its hopes and fears. And how 
 could it give voice and vent, expression and utter- 
 ance, to itself if it had no fellow-minds and com- 
 panion spirits to whom it could express and utter 
 itself; who could furnish an adequate and normal 
 outlet and vent for the outflowing and overflow- 
 ing mental and emotional energies with which 
 the world had endowed it; with whom it could 
 commune and have spiritual commerce and ex- 
 change? 
 
126 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 Suppose it was shut completely off from all such 
 expression, voice, and vent ; from all possible com- 
 merce and communion with fellow-minds of any 
 kind. What would be the result? Surely a mind 
 so isolated and deprived of the exercises of an im- 
 perious natural need for expression and outlet 
 would degenerate and eventually disappear from 
 the world. No such isolated mind could perma- 
 nently maintain its existence in any conceivable 
 world. The need for voluntary mental and spir- 
 itual expression is just as great and certain as the 
 need for mental impression and stimulus; and a 
 mind deprived of all opportunity for expression, 
 volition, and voice would be a mind deprived of the 
 opportunity to exercise one-half of its normal func- 
 tions. No, the mind needs to utter and express 
 itself, to expend and send forth the mental ener- 
 gies it has received from the world around. It is 
 not a mere wax record, nor a mere stagnant res- 
 ervoir for the collection of idle mental energies. 
 
 Its true function, on the contrary, is that of a 
 transmitter of energies, and it could never ade- 
 quately and naturally transmit these spiritual 
 energies except to a world of its own fellow-minds, 
 to a social world of companion minds. Man has 
 a passion to know, but equally strong is the pas- 
 sion to tell, and express what he knows. The 
 impulse to give voice to knowledge is as strong as 
 the impulse to acquire it. The impulse to express 
 is as strong as the impulse to experience. And 
 the mind can never realize these impulses and pas- 
 
THE SOCIAL EGO 127 
 
 sions of its being, and, therefore, it can never fully 
 and adequately realize itself and its own nature, 
 except in a community of minds like its own. The 
 mind, therefore, as an active, energetic, willing, 
 and dynamic being, demands as one of the essential 
 conditions of its existence, maintenance, and de- 
 velopment, that it be embosomed in a body of 
 minds ; that it be a citizen in a society of minds ; 
 that it be incorporated into a spiritual organism, 
 — the psycho-organism, the psycho-zoon, or the 
 social mind. 
 
 It is, therefore, evident from a study of the na- 
 ture of mind that it cannot exist except in a multi- 
 ple and social form, in the form of a society of 
 minds, a society of selves, and a society of souls. 
 It cannot possibly exist in the single, solitary 
 form in which the God of dualistic supernaturalism 
 was and is supposed to exist; and it cannot exist 
 either in that private, individual, and separate 
 form in which the souls of men are still largely 
 supposed to exist. The only possible conscious- 
 ness is a social consciousness ; the only possible 
 mind is a social mind; the only possible self is a 
 social self; the only possible soul and spirit is a 
 social soul and spirit ; and the only possible God is 
 a social God. The individual mind and conscious- 
 ness, the individual soul and self, and the individ- 
 ual divinity and God, are mere illusions and 
 superstitions, and have no existence whatever in 
 the true nature of things. 
 
 We have previously seen, in discussing the prob- 
 
128 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 lem of mind and body, or spirit and matter, that 
 monism repudiates and disproves the doctrine that 
 these things are separate entities, or things in 
 themselves. Monism asserts and proves that mind 
 and body, or spirit and matter, are simply the 
 inner-appearing and outer-appearing aspects of 
 the selfsame, identical, and concrete entity, — the 
 concrete reality and being of the world. Pure 
 mind and pure matter, or pure spirit and pure 
 body, are pure abstractions, pure illusions, and 
 pure superstitions ; and they have in themselves no 
 concrete existence and reality whatever. 
 
 Now, if this is true as regards mind and matter, 
 spirit and body, it is equally true as regards sub- 
 jects and objects, for subject and object is only 
 another name for mind and matter. By subjects, 
 as such, we simply mean minds or spirits ; and by 
 objects, as such, we simply mean bodies or material 
 things. Consequently, if pure mind and pure mat- 
 ter are pure abstractions, then, of course, pure 
 objects and pure subjects are also the same. And 
 this is the truth; a subject which is not also an 
 actual or possible object; or an object which is not 
 also, to some extent and to some degree, a subject, 
 which has not some core and center of subjectivity, 
 no matter how faint and microscopic, does not 
 concretely and really exist. 
 
 As we saw when discussing the evolution of minds, 
 from that of the corpuscle up to that of society, 
 scientific philosophers have been logically and ex- 
 perimentally driven to the doctrine of panpsychism 
 
THE SOCIAL EGO 129 
 
 or all-mindism, which means the universal coexist- 
 ence of mind and matter, or of subjective states 
 of some kind and degree, in all the matter (so 
 called) that exists, from the lowest possible to the 
 highest. Every ion and atom of matter must 
 logically and in some sense have its little sub- 
 microscopic center and core of subjectivity. Con- 
 sequently, subjectivity or mind, of some kind and 
 degree, is as universal and omnipresent as is ob- 
 jectivity or matter. Both pure subjects and pure 
 objects, or pure subjectivity and pure objectivity, 
 are pure abstractions and pure illusions, just as 
 pure mind and pure matter is ; in fact, this is only 
 another way of stating the same facts. There- 
 fore, subjects of some kind and degree, no matter 
 how low, are just as numerous, omnipresent, and 
 universal as objects. They, as the dual aspects 
 of all concrete reality, coexist, conjunct and par- 
 allel to each other. Every object that exists is 
 also a subject or has some core and center of 
 subjectivity, 2 just as every known and acknowl- 
 edged subject that exists in this natural and known 
 world, such as men and animals in general, is also 
 an object and material thing. Subject and ob- 
 ject coexist universally in perfect and indissoluble 
 conjunction in the concrete reality of the world; 
 there are just as many subjects in the world as 
 there are objects. They are united together in 
 nature and cannot be separated or completely and 
 
 2 Every object is also a shareowner in all the subjectiv- 
 ity that exists, since it is an organic part of an organic 
 whole. 
 
130 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 utterly divorced, no matter how much the analyz- 
 ing and abstracting mind of man, with its inor- 
 ganic views of things, may separate and divorce 
 them in thought. Therefore the necessary multi- 
 plicity and multiformity of the objective world 
 of being, in order that consciousness and self-con- 
 sciousness may exist, necessarily implies the equal 
 and parallel multiplicity and multiformity of the 
 subjective world of being. In other words, the ob- 
 jective aspects of the concrete reality of the world 
 must be paralleled by the subjective aspects of the 
 same. 
 
 We have seen that the nature of the mind de- 
 mands that its world of objects and subjects both 
 be a multiple and multiform world; and now we 
 see that the nature of the concrete reality also 
 demands that the world of objects and subjects 
 shall be equally multiple and multiform. A per- 
 fect parallelism must exist between the number of 
 bodies and the number of minds of every possible 
 kind and degree, or between the objective and sub- 
 jective aspects of the concrete and real being of 
 the world. The necessary plurality of objects 
 demands an equal plurality of subjects of every 
 kind and degree of subjectivity that is possible. 
 
 The necessary plurality of objects and bodies 
 implies and demands the parallel plurality of sub- 
 jects and minds. Therefore it is true that because 
 of the nature of consciousness and mind itself, 
 which demands the multiplicity of objects and 
 subjects, and because of the nature of concrete 
 
THE SOCIAL EGO 131 
 
 reality, which demands the parallel and conjoined 
 coexistence of subjects and objects, the conscious- 
 ness and mind of the world cannot possibly exist 
 except under a social, multiple, and multiform 
 form. Mind cannot exist, or be logically con- 
 ceived to exist, in a single and solitary form such 
 as the God of dualistic theology was supposed to 
 exist in, nor in the private and separate forms in 
 which men have almost universally been supposed 
 to exist. No, the mind is not and cannot be a 
 single, solitary, or separate thing. The only pos- 
 sible form consistent with the nature of the mind 
 and of concrete reality is the multiple, multiform, 
 and social form. The only possible or conceivable 
 mind is the plural and social mind; the single, in- 
 dividual mind by itself cannot exist. It is a bald 
 abstraction and a pure illusion. It can only ex- 
 ist as a fractional element and organic constituent 
 of the integral, plural, and social mind. The in- 
 dividual mind (so-called) is not a mind at all, — 
 that is, it is not an integer of mind; it is only a 
 fraction, part, and organ of a mind. The in- 
 tegral mind, the integer of consciousness, is, first, 
 the social mind, the society of minds, and, second 
 and finally, the cosmic mind, the mind of all frac- 
 tional and partial minds, the mind of God. 
 
 Mind can only exist in the plural number, that 
 is, as minds; and it can only exist in the social 
 form, i. e. as a society of minds. Mmd in the 
 singular number and in the individual form is im- 
 po8Stble. 
 
182 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 There are no pure subjects and no pure objects 
 in existence, but everything that exists is a sub- 
 jective-objective being or thing. Nevertheless it 
 is true that the subjectivity of one being or thing, 
 — inorganically, abstractly, and separately con- 
 sidered, — may be immensely higher and greater 
 than that of another being or thing. They may, 
 as separate parts, differ immensely in degree, 
 though not in ultimate kind. Those beings that 
 are visibly conscious to us are called and regarded 
 as subjective beings, or subjects and minds, while 
 those whose subjectivity is invisible to us are called 
 objective things, or objects and bodies. But here 
 originates a certain fallacy and illusion resulting 
 from abstraction, mental analysis, and a very nar- 
 row area of human vision. It is the fallacy and 
 vice of an abstract, inorganic, pluralistic, and 
 separatist conception and view-point of the world 
 of being. The true conception of the world is 
 the organic conception, — the conception of the 
 world as a bona fide, integral, cosmic organism, a 
 world-being, world-spirit, and world-mind; not as 
 a mere collection and congeries of many bona fide, 
 separate beings and things. And the parts of the 
 world must be conceived as the cosmic organs, 
 structures, and functions of the bona fide cosmic 
 Organism. 
 
 Thus the subjectivity that we see displayed in 
 men, and animals, and plants, is the segregated 
 subjectivity of the one cosmic organism of being 
 into certain specialized and differentiated organs 
 
THE SOCIAL EGO 133 
 
 of that world-organism. Through this process of 
 segregation, differentiation, and specialization, 
 some specialized organs and parts of the cosmic 
 organism as a whole secure and display an immense 
 amount of the subjectivity of the world, while 
 other equally specialized parts of another kind 
 obtain and manifest but little or none (as far as 
 we can perceive). Yet both these large amounts 
 and these small amounts of subjectivity displayed 
 by the different specialized organs of the cosmic 
 organism belong to the organic unit of being as 
 a whole, and hence it justly belongs to all the 
 parts equally, as cooperative participants in the 
 attributes of the whole organism. They are all 
 joint and equal owners and possessors, sharehold- 
 ers and partners in it. Just as in the human body 
 and organism, so in the cosmic body and organ- 
 ism the subjectivity belongs to the unit and the 
 whole, and, therefore, to all the organs and parts. 
 Just as in the human body the differentiated 
 and specialized brain monopolizes almost wholly 
 the subjectivity of the whole cooperative organism, 
 while the skull and skeleton seem to be as dead as 
 stones, so in the cosmic organism the subjectivity 
 is segregated into specialized planets, to the spe- 
 cialized surfaces of these planets, to the specialized 
 organic life, to the specialized human body, and 
 finally to the specialized human brain. So that, 
 in fact, man's brain is not his brain merely, ex- 
 clusively, and privately, but, on the contrary, it 
 is also the terrestrial brain, and then again, the 
 
134 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 solar brain, and, finally and most truly of all, it is 
 the brain of the universe, and world-organism ; the 
 cosmic brain of the cosmic body, and the terrestrial 
 consciousness of the cosmic mind. 
 
 And the consciousness and subjectivity is not 
 merely the consciousness of the little specialized 
 parts and organs which immediately display it ; on 
 the contrary, the consciousness belongs most truly 
 of all to the cosmic organism as a perfect, unitary, 
 and cooperative whole. It is the cosmic conscious- 
 ness of the cosmic brain. Just as in the human 
 body the consciousness belongs, in justice and in 
 truth, to the whole organism as a cooperative unit, 
 and, therefore, to each and every part and organ 
 of the body, so in the cosmic body and world-or- 
 ganism the consciousness belongs, in justice and 
 in truth, to the whole organism and unit and to 
 each and every part of it as equal creators of this 
 consciousness, as equal owners and possessors of 
 it, and as equal shareholders and participants in 
 it. No parts are, or in justice and truth can be, 
 shut out and excluded in the least. They can 
 all say, " It is not exclusively mine or thine, but 
 it is ail-inclusively ' ours,' " for we are all " It," 
 and we are all one, — one vast, perfectly cooper- 
 ative and united whole and organism. The con- 
 sciousness of the world belongs to the world as a 
 unit-whole; it does not belong, in truth, to any 
 part exclusively, and it does belong, in truth and 
 justice, to every part equally ; so that, organically 
 conceived, no parts of the world are unconscious 
 
 
THE SOCIAL EGO 135 
 
 and mindless, but all are equally conscious and 
 mindful, for the mind is a j oint, cooperative prod- 
 uct and attribute, and a joint, cooperative pos- 
 session. 
 
 Every part and organ of the human body is 
 necessary to, and cooperates in, the production of 
 the consciousness which is localized and focalized 
 in the specialized organ, the brain. Without the 
 skull, the brain could not exist ; and without the 
 skeleton and other organs, it could not be a hu- 
 man body. The consciousness of the brain is the 
 joint and cooperative product of every organ of 
 the body, and it is, therefore, not the property 
 and possession and the attribute and quality of 
 the brain only, exclusively, and privately; it is, 
 first, the property and possession, attribute and 
 quality, of the whole organism as a unit ; and then, 
 secondly, of each and every cooperative organ and 
 structure of the body which was necessary to its 
 existence. The mind is, in truth and justice, the 
 property of the skull and skeleton, just as much as 
 it is of the cerebrum and cerebellum. The per- 
 fume and beauty of the rose belongs to the whole 
 rosebush and to every leaf and branch and rootlet 
 of it just a*s surely as it does to the rose blossom 
 itself. It is a joint, cooperative, and organic 
 product and attribute, and a joint, cooperative, 
 and organic property and possession. The bril- 
 liant lights of the incandescent lamps belong to 
 the whole electric lighting system and to every piece 
 of wire and mechanism in it just as surely as they 
 
136 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 do to the little carbon filaments. So in the vast 
 cosmic organism of the world, the mind and con- 
 sciousness is, first, the mind of the whole universal 
 and organic body, and then, secondly, it is the 
 joint and equal property and possession, product 
 and attribute, of every part, organ, and member 
 of it. The consciousness which is segregated in 
 the brain of man belongs in common to the stones 
 under his feet and the stars above his head. It 
 is not his any more than it is theirs, — not one 
 single particle of it. 
 
 Assuming the necessary truth of panpsychism, 
 then, if we suppose the primal ether to be in an 
 absolutely undivided and undifferentiated form 
 and state; we would be forced logically to assume 
 that the spiritual or subjective condition of the 
 ether was a sub-subjective state, — a state of 
 potential, but not of actual, subjectivity, even of 
 the faintest and lowest kind. But this notion of 
 the potential which is not also the actual is, I be- 
 lieve, fallacious and needless. I am unable to 
 conceive of any kind of potentiality which is not 
 really actuality, as far as it is really anything 
 at all. 
 
 I believe and conceive that a simple, undivided, 
 undifferentiated unit of being is impossible, that 
 such a unit could not be anything, or do anything, 
 — it could not move, or act, or live, or be con- 
 scious, or anything else; in fact, it could have no 
 attributes of real being at all. So I cannot be- 
 lieve in mere potential being, nor in mere potential 
 
THE SOCIAL EGO 187 
 
 states of subjective being. I believe that real be- 
 ing is necessarily actual, and that real being is 
 necessarily in actual subjective states and never 
 in merely potential states. Hence I believe that 
 the real being of the world never exists in an ab- 
 solutely simple, undivided, and undifferentiated 
 form or state, and that such a form and state of 
 real being is impossible. 
 
 Being cannot actually exist in an absolutely 
 simple, undivided, and undifferentiated form and 
 state, but must always exist in a complex, divided, 
 and differentiated form and state. Hence the 
 primal ether can never be in an absolutely undi- 
 vided form and state, but must always be in a 
 divided form and state of some kind and degree; 
 and during its evolution it advances from its low- 
 est and smallest divided forms and states to its 
 highest and largest divided forms and states. 
 
 The primary evolutionary divisions of the ether 
 will be of the smallest fractional form and char- 
 acter; and the primary subjective states will be 
 of the lowest and faintest possible character. The 
 evolution of subjectivity will result from the union 
 and clustering of these primary subdivisions of 
 the primal ether into ever larger and higher forms 
 until the highest we know is eventually reached 
 in the body and mind of man and human society. 
 The evolution of mind then will be from the small- 
 est and lowest divisions and fractions of being to 
 the largest and highest, and will not be from no 
 divisions and fractions at all to the largest and 
 
188 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 highest, nor from a potential form and state of 
 being to an actual form and state, and from thence 
 onward to the largest and the highest. 
 
 The first or primary subdivisions of the ether, 
 so far as we now know, are the electrical cor- 
 puscles or ions. These smallest of the fractional 
 subdivisions of the unitary ether, with their lowest 
 and faintest of subjective states, unite and cluster 
 together to form the corpuscular society of bodies 
 and minds, which is called the atom. The primal 
 ether, constituted and formed as it is of an in- 
 finite number of electrical corpuscles in funda- 
 mental and perfect unity, must be considered as 
 the primal and original society of being. The 
 primal ether is a society of ions or electrical cor- 
 puscles. It is the first and the original society of 
 finite beings ; and Being, moreover, as this analysis 
 proves, cannot be conceived to exist except under 
 a plural and social form. The primal ether is a 
 corporal and psychical society of the first order 
 and degree of composition. 
 
 The atom, which is a closer and more compact 
 society of ions, or corpuscles, is a corporal and 
 psychical society of the second order and degree 
 of composition. At the second stage of evolu- 
 tionary composition and integration, the atoms 
 unite and cluster to form the molecule, which is, 
 therefore, a corporal and psychical society of 
 atoms. It is a society of the third order and de- 
 gree of composition. The third stage in the evo- 
 lutionary process is the union and clustering of 
 
THE SOCIAL EGO 139 
 
 the molecules into the cell, which is, therefore, a 
 corporal and psychical society of molecules, and 
 a society of the fourth order and degree of com- 
 position. It is a cellular society of bodies, and a 
 cellular society of minds. 
 
 At the next and fourth stage of the evolutionary 
 process of integration and differentiation, the 
 single cells unite and cluster together to form the 
 organism, which is, therefore, a corporal and 
 psychical society of cells, and a society of the fifth 
 order and degree of composition. It is an organic 
 society of cellular bodies and cellular minds. 
 
 At the fifth and last stage, so far as we know, 
 of the evolutionary process, the single, individual 
 human organisms unite and congregate together to 
 form the state or community, which is thus a cor- 
 poral and psychical society of organisms, and a 
 society of the sixth order and degree of composi- 
 tion. It is a communal society of organic bodies 
 and organic minds, and is the last and highest 
 evolutionary form of body and mind of which we 
 have, so far, any definite knowledge. 
 
 Thus from the beginning to the end of life and 
 evolution we find nothing but societies of bodies 
 and societies of minds ; we nowhere and at no time 
 find any simple, individual bodies or simple, indi- 
 vidual minds. Neither mind nor body, in a simple, 
 individual, and single form, either exists or can be 
 conceived to exist. Every mind that exists, from 
 that of the primal and least differentiated ether 
 to that of the state or most differentiated form of 
 
140 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 being, is a society of minds, and is always plural 
 and social in form. The mind is always and 
 everywhere a plural and a social thing. It is never 
 a single, simple, and individual thing. The mind 
 of the primal ether is a plural and social mind, and 
 so is every succeeding evolutionary development 
 of it. The minds of the atoms, molecules, cells, 
 organisms, and states are all plural and social 
 minds. In no instance are they purely individual 
 minds, not even in the case of the so-called indi- 
 vidual man. 
 
 Thus we are shown once more, and in a most 
 conclusive manner, that the plurality and sociality 
 of the mind of the world is a necessary and in- 
 evitable fact in the nature of the Being of the 
 world. The Being of the world is necessarily 
 a social being; the life of the world is necessarily 
 a social life; the mind of the world is necessarily 
 a social mind, a multiple and multiform society of 
 minds. The Personality of the world is necessa- 
 rily a social Personality, and the Divinity 
 and Deity of the world is necessarily a social di- 
 vinity, and a social god, — a divine society. 
 
 The mind is a cosmic function of the cosmic 
 organism. The mind is not a thing in itself or 
 by itself ; it is merely the function of a larger and 
 truer thing. It is like the eye of the body; the 
 eye is not a thing by itself, it is merely the organ 
 of a larger and truer thing, and its function of 
 seeing is merely the delegated function of this 
 larger, and truer whole. An eye could not exist 
 
THE SOCIAL EGO 141 
 
 by itself and apart from a larger body ; it can only 
 exist as a specialized part of a cooperative and 
 organic whole. And it is fitted for and delegated 
 to perform a specific function for this larger, 
 cooperative, and organic whole. The eye is the 
 eye of the whole body, and of each and every 
 part of it. It does not belong to itself alone; it 
 belongs to the feet and the hands, the heart and 
 the lungs, as much and as surely as it does to 
 itself. The eye does not see for itself; it sees for 
 the whole body. It is delegated to do the seeing 
 for the whole body, and for each and every other 
 part. It sees for the feet and the hands, the heart 
 and the lungs; and they in return perform their 
 specific functions for the eye and all the other 
 parts of the body. 
 
 There is a division of labors and of functions 
 in the cooperative body of the organism, and no 
 part functions for itself alone. The feet can see 
 and the hands can see, but they see through the 
 eye, which they have delegated to do their seeing 
 for them and for the rest of the body. Every 
 part of the body has an eye and every part of it 
 has sight, for the eye belongs to it and the sight 
 belongs to it as the common property and pos- 
 session, the public attribute and power, of the 
 whole cooperative organism. No organ of an or- 
 ganism belongs to itself alone, nor functions for 
 itself alone. It belongs to the whole and to each 
 and every part ; and it functions for the whole and 
 for each and every part. Hence every function 
 
148 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 and attribute of the whole cooperative organism 
 belongs to each and every part of the cooperative 
 and organic whole; and not one of these parts 
 can, in truth and in justice, be excluded from par- 
 ticipation in them all. 
 
 As the eye is to the human body, so the mind 
 is to the same. The mind, like the eye, is the mind 
 and consciousness of the whole human body and 
 of each and every part of it. It is not simply the 
 mind and consciousness of the brain ; it is the mind 
 of the skull and the skeleton, of the feet and the 
 hands, the heart and the lungs. It is their mind 
 and consciousness just as surely and just as much 
 as it is that of the head and the brain, the cere- 
 brum and cerebellum. They have delegated the 
 brain to do their thinking, while they are per- 
 forming some other specific function for the or- 
 ganism as a whole and for the brain as a part. 
 The consciousness of the brain is the consciousness 
 of the feet, and the feet are no more mindless 
 things than the brain itself is a mindless thing. 
 We have no right whatever to say that the brain 
 is a conscious being and that the feet are uncon- 
 scious things, for the consciousness displayed by 
 the brain is the common, joint, organic property, 
 attribute, and creation of the whole organic and 
 cooperative body, and of its each and every part. 
 They have simply divided their common organic 
 labors and functions so that the concentrated and 
 segregated consciousness of the whole cooperative 
 
THE SOCIAL EGO 143 
 
 body will be displayed " en masse " by that par- 
 ticular organ and in that particular place instead 
 of being diffused and dispersed uniformly through- 
 out the whole unorganized mass. They have 
 cooperated together to make this common con- 
 sciousness appear in that particular organ and 
 in that particular place ; but it is still the common 
 consciousness and belongs equally to all, and is not 
 the private property and exclusive attribute and 
 possession of the little delegated organ that hap- 
 pens to display it. And so the mind of man is not 
 the mind of the little human brain, but of the whole 
 human body, and of every single part of it. 
 
 But as we clearly see that the brain is but the 
 organ of a larger cooperative and organic whole, 
 so we can clearly see that man himself is but the 
 organ of that vast cooperative and truly organic 
 whole which we call the Universe, Nature, or God. 
 For man is not a true or whole organism or thing 
 any more than a brain is; he is merely a sub-or- 
 ganism, a partial and incomplete organism; in 
 fact, like his own brain, he is merely a larger and 
 more complicated organ of Nature as a whole. 
 As the brain does not function for itself, but for 
 the whole organic body of man, so man himself 
 does not think and function for himself only, but 
 for the whole of Nature. Man does not think and 
 know for himself alone; he has simply been dele- 
 gated, so to speak, to do the thinking and the 
 knowing for the universe at large, in company, 
 
144 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 without doubt, of other thinking and knowing be- 
 ings on other planets and in other systems through- 
 out the cosmos as a whole. 
 
 As man thinks through the little organ of his 
 brain, so Nature thinks through man, and through 
 other beings like him in other worlds than this. 
 Man is one of Nature's brains and one of Nature's 
 minds; and when man thinks, it is the Universe 
 that thinks in him and through him. When man 
 knows, the Universe knows, in him and through 
 him; for man is the eye with which the Universe 
 sees, and the mind with which the Universe knows. 
 
 " I am the eye with which the Universe 
 Beholds itself and knows itself divine." 
 
 I am the mind with which the Universe thinks 
 its inmost thoughts and finds its inmost soul. And 
 when man shall really discover himself, it will sig- 
 nify the self-discovery of God. 
 
 " Far more than himself is the man we see, 
 For a mind in the body of God is he." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 THE ETHICS OF MONISM 
 
 The ethics of an unqualified monism are self- 
 evident. If there is really but one true integer of 
 being in the world, but one true organism, but one 
 true individual and person ; if the universe has but 
 one real inhabitant, and the entire population of 
 the cosmos is one and only one ; if the individuality 
 and separateness of men and things is a sheer il- 
 lusion and a blind and barbarous superstition; 
 then the ethical conclusions are plain and self-evi- 
 dent. If there is but one and only one Being, 
 then there can be but one and only one real interest 
 to be cared for and subserved in this world, and 
 that, of course, is the supreme ancj all-inclusive 
 interest of the one and only Being of which every 
 so-called individual being is merely a flowing, 
 stream-like fraction and part. Hence the primal 
 principle of a monistic ethic will be a law of di- 
 vine egoism and godlike selfishness, which, trans- 
 lated into human language and practise, means, 
 humanly speaking, an otherwise unqualified human 
 altruism and unselfishness. 
 
 Human altruism and so-called unselfishness has 
 always been, in fact, a divine egoism and a godlike 
 
 145 
 
146 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 selfishness, for the interests of all beings as one. 
 The highest and truest ethics have always taught 
 mankind to act just as though all beings were 
 really one ; and what a monistic ethic will now teach 
 them is that all beings are really and truly one, 
 and that separateness and multiplicity of real be- 
 ings is an illusion and shallow superstition. It 
 shows how true the ethical instincts of the best of 
 men were in the past. For they felt and could 
 vaguely see, as " through a glass darkly," that 
 somehow and in some sense all men were as one. 
 But this ethical insight was dim, uncertain, mys- 
 tical, and occasional. There was nothing clear, 
 certain, scientific, or logical about it. But in the 
 course of human evolution it has now, in due time, 
 become the latter. 
 
 Monism corroborates and endorses the highest, 
 noblest, and finest instincts and sympathies of 
 mankind; and with scientific precision and logical 
 exactitude it shows to man, at last, that all beings 
 are really one; that what has, humanly speaking, 
 always been called human altruism and unselfish- 
 ness, is in reality a divine egoism and a godlike 
 prudence and selfishness, for all being is really one. 
 Human sympathy is, in fact, the natural sympathy 
 which one member and organ of God's own body 
 and organism feels for another; and human love, 
 in the last analysis, is, as Spinoza said, " the love 
 wherewith God loves himself." 
 
 There can be no divine altruism or godlike un- 
 selfishness, for there is but one Being, without a 
 
THE ETHICS OF MONISM 147 
 
 second or another in the world. Only two moral 
 policies are possible. First, a divine prudence 
 and profound egoism which, with a perfect and 
 godlike vision, sees all beings that exist as the 
 members of one divine and godlike body and as the 
 organs of one divine and godlike organism; and, 
 on the other hand, a shallow, superficial pluralism 
 which imagines that all beings, so-called, are really 
 as separate as they seem ; and would coax and ca- 
 jole men against their real natures and their real 
 interests to be kind to the others outside them- 
 selves. 
 
 As Benjamin Kidd said, men cannot act morally 
 unless they act unselfishly; and they cannot act 
 unselfishly unless they act irrationally and against 
 their own real and selfish interests. That is the 
 logical position of a genuine pluralism. But a 
 genuine monism doesn't have to tell men to act 
 irrationally, unselfishly, and against their real in- 
 terests, and then have to coax and cajole them to 
 do so, but it proves to them that their separate 
 selfhood is a blind illusion, that their true inter- 
 ests are universal, that the center of their moral 
 universe is out there in the heart and bosom of all 
 things, and not in here, in the little ego of the 
 streaming and current self. And it urges them to 
 seek their highest and truest self-interests, to act 
 with perfect rationality and prudence; for it 
 proves to them that the true law is one of a divine 
 and all-inclusive prudence and egoism, and a god- 
 like and universal selfishness. Monism, like plu- 
 
148 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 ralism, tells men to be, humanly speaking, unselfish 
 and loving; but it gives them a different reason, 
 and that reason has a tremendous force and fer- 
 vor which the motives of pluralism could never ac- 
 quire. 
 
 Pluralism tells men to be unselfish and loving 
 because, it says, these other separate beings are 
 quite similar to ourselves and we ought to have a 
 fellow-feeling with them. But monism does not 
 have to coax and urge men to be loving and sym- 
 pathetic. It simply draws aside the curtains of 
 ignorance and blindness, and permits men to see 
 in the broad, bright light of day the perfect, un- 
 qualified oneness, the absolute, indissoluble identity 
 of all apparently separate beings and things. 
 And it says to them, " Now that your eyes have 
 been opened and you see things as they really are 
 and not as they formerly seemed, your own intelli- 
 gence and self-interests will tell you what to do 
 and why to do it." " And they shall know the 
 truth, and the truth shall make them free." Free 
 forever after from all deliberate, human, and per- 
 sonal selfishness, hate, and anger; from all delib- 
 erate injustice, oppression, and cruelty; and as 
 free to love and sympathize with all other men and 
 creatures as they are free to love themselves; for 
 these fellowmen, in fact, are really themselves, — 
 bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh, and soul of 
 their soul, — in the indivisible, indissoluble unity of 
 God's own body and of God's own soul. There 
 is no absolute line or mark that separates one be- 
 
THE ETHICS OF MONISM 149 
 
 ing from another, for they are all really one, 
 though to man's purblind eyes and impressions 
 they appear to be many. 
 
 It is impossible to believe that human selfishness 
 and hate, with all the sins and miseries that flow 
 from them, can permanently exist in the world when 
 once it becomes thoroughly and universally con- 
 vinced and certain of the absolute and perfect 
 oneness and identity of all the Being that exists, 
 as monism proves and teaches. 
 
 Practically the whole of ethics almost is the 
 warfare against selfishness and the hate that comes 
 from it; and when the very existence of the sepa- 
 rate human self has been completely disproven, 
 and the belief in its existence has been utterly de- 
 stroyed and torn out by the roots, then how 
 can selfishness remain a force or a factor in 
 human life? In totally destroying all belief in 
 the separate individual self, monism must destroy, 
 in time, all selfishness itself. The function of 
 ethics has always been to unify, enlighten and in- 
 spire man's moral interests. This pluralism can 
 never do, and only a true monism can. 
 
 Monism places the center of man's moral uni- 
 verse out there, in the whole and godlike self. 
 Pluralism and dualism place it in here, in the little 
 human ego, the flowing and current phenomenon 
 of the present moment. Selfishness and hate are 
 not only sinful; they are really idiotic when the 
 truth is known. Shall I, like a fool, hate my own 
 true self? Shall my right hand, like a fool, hate 
 
150 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 my left, and strike it down in hate and anger? 
 Shall God hate himself and curse his own very 
 life in malice? Shall the members of God's own 
 body hate and war upon each other? No, not if 
 they have reason, and can see their perfect unity 
 and identity. No, not if God knows himself, and 
 not if man knows himself. For all being is one 
 Being, and all hate is self-hate, and all injury is 
 self-injury, just as all love is self-love, and all 
 blessing is self-blessing. All sin is due either to 
 blindness, ignorance, or weakness. A blind God 
 may hate himself and make war upon himself be- 
 cause in his blindness he cannot see or know him- 
 self; but when he comes to see and know himself, 
 will not this self-hatred and war upon himself 
 cease? 
 
 The Swami Vivekananda said : " Hatred pro- 
 ceeds from imperfect knowledge, which makes us 
 perceive objects as separate from one another. 
 But when we see our true ' self ' in others, how 
 can we hate another without hating our * self ' ? 
 It would be impossible for ' self ' to hate * self.' 
 Where self-knowledge is, there can remain no feel- 
 ing of hatred. He who realizes all beings in the 
 ' self ' never hates anything or any being. When 
 hatred is gone, jealousy and all selfish feelings 
 which we call wicked disappear. What remains? 
 The ordinary love which stands in opposition to 
 hatred vanishes, but divine love begins to reign 
 in the heart of the seer. True love means the ex- 
 pression of Oneness. If we see our true c self ' in 
 
THE ETHICS OF MONISM 151 
 
 others, we cannot help loving them as we love our 
 self. Now, we understand the meaning of ' Love 
 thy neighbor as thyself.' " Vedanta has always 
 taught this truth : " When all beings appear as 
 parts of one universal self, there is neither delu- 
 sion, nor fear, nor sorrow. . . . Sorrow and fear 
 arise so long as there is the sense of duality and 
 multiplicity. In absolute oneness, however, there 
 cannot remain fear, sorrow, suffering, separation, 
 or self-delusion." This is another result of self- 
 knowledge. " Know thyself." The lower self 
 vanishes and all selfishness is destroyed. The 
 higher self emerges and all unselfishness is at- 
 tained. The higher self is called " Atman." It 
 is pure, spotless, sinless. Vedanta teaches that 
 we are not born in sin and iniquity, but that our 
 " Atman," our true self, is sinless. The word 
 " kavi " means poet and also the seer of things. 
 Self is described as the greatest poet of the uni- 
 verse. This is one of the most beautiful expres- 
 sions and attributes that can be given to Divin- 
 ity. 
 
 " He is the Poet, the universe is his poetry. 
 He is the greatest artist. His art we see in the 
 sunrise and sunset. The sun, moon and stars are 
 nothing but the paintings on infinite space by the 
 hands of the almighty Artist. Monism alone ex- 
 plains morality; the others teach it, but cannot 
 give you its reason." Christianity says, " Love 
 thy neighbor as thyself " ; but monism says, 
 " Your neighbor is yourself." " He who sees 
 
152 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 every one in himself, and himself in every one, 
 thus seeing the same God living in all in the same 
 manner, he no more kills the self by the self. And 
 he realizes at last the beautiful and inspiring truth 
 that love, lover, and beloved are one. For him 
 illusion disappears and all suffering is gone." 
 
 " The Traveller and the road seem one, 
 With the errand to be done, 
 For love, lover and beloved are One." x 
 
 " Self-love thus pushed to social, to divine, 
 Gives thee to make thy neighbor's blessing thine. 
 
 Grasp the whole world of reason, life, and sense, 
 In one close system of benevolence: 
 
 God loves from whole to parts; but human soul 
 Must rise from individual to the whole. 
 Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake, 
 As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake; 
 The center moved, a circle straight succeeds, 
 Another still, and still another spreads ; — 
 Friend, parent, neighbor, first it will embrace; 
 His country next, and next all human race; 
 Wide, and more wide, the o'er-flowings of the mind 
 Take every creature in, of every kind; 
 Earth smiles around, with boundless bounty blest, 
 And Heaven beholds its image in man's breast." 2 
 
 " Never will I enter Paradise until every atom of 
 the universe has passed in before me; never will I 
 
 i Vivekananda. 
 
 2 Pope, "Essay on Man." 
 
THE ETHICS OF MONISM 153 
 
 seek private, individual salvation; never will I enter 
 eternal peace alone." 3 
 
 The ethics of monism, it must not be overlooked, 
 is an evolutionary ethics ; and the ethics of evolu- 
 tion is one of self-development and self-realization 
 for being in general. The ethics of an evolution- 
 ary monism, therefore, is not only one of altruism 
 and self-surrender for the individual, in so far as 
 that policy may be necessary and wise in the para- 
 mount interest of all as one, but it is also one of 
 the utmost possible self-development and self-re- 
 alization for all beings as one, which thus includes 
 the individual as a necessary and constituent part 
 of the whole. 
 
 The frequent collision of interests, immediately 
 and apparently at least, between part and part, 
 and part and whole renders the introduction into 
 social life of the policy of a partial self-surrender 
 on the part of the individual absolutely necessary 
 in the interests of all as one. The positive and 
 final principle of ethics, however, is self-realiza- 
 tion for being in general. 
 
 The moral law, therefore, has a distinctly dual- 
 istic aspect. Ego and alter, individual and so- 
 ciety, part and whole, face each other in mutual 
 opposition, apparently at least. This two-faced 
 situation demands the combination and concilia- 
 tion of two apparently opposite principles. As 
 the ethical principle of evolution and of existence 
 3 Hindu Sage. 
 
154 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 in general, the moral law commands the utmost 
 possible self-development, self-perfection, and self- 
 realization for all being. As the ethical principle 
 of monism, in relation to social and individual life, 
 the moral law demands self-surrender and sacrifice 
 on the part of the individual in so far as that 
 moral policy is necessary in the paramount inter- 
 est of the social unit and whole. 
 
 In a word, the moral law commands both a posi- 
 tive and divine self-assertion and a negative and 
 humane self-denial in so far as the latter is abso- 
 lutely necessary and wise. It commands, on the 
 one hand, a godlike egoism, self-assertion, self- 
 perfection, and self-realization; and, on the other 
 hand, it demands a humane altruism, self-surren- 
 der, and self-sacrifice in so far as this is necessary. 
 Thus the moral law has a positive and negative 
 side, a positive principle and a negative policy, — 
 or, we may say, a positive and negative pole. The 
 positive, primary, and supreme principle of ethics 
 is the utmost possible self-development, self-reali- 
 zation, self-perfection, and self-idealization for 
 each and all as one. Altruism, self-denial, and 
 self-sacrifice is merely the negative, secondary, 
 and subordinate principle, or policy rather, of a 
 social ethics. Self-realization and self-perfection, 
 in fact, is the only real and final principle of 
 ethics. It is, we may say, the teleological, or end 
 and purpose, principle of ethics, since it has 
 reference and regard to the positive end and pur- 
 
THE ETHICS OF MONISM 155 
 
 pose of all ethics and all life. Self-sacrifice is 
 merely a methodological, or means and ways, prin- 
 ciple, since it has reference and regard only to the 
 means and ways whereby self-realization may best 
 be attained in social and individual life combined. 
 Self-realization is the final, ultimate, and only real 
 principle of ethics. Self-surrender is merely an 
 instrumental and penultimate ethical policy. 
 
 That a state of the utmost possible self-realiza- 
 tion and self-fulfillment will be one of the utmost 
 possible spiritual satisfaction, happiness, and 
 beauty is assumed at the start by an evolutionary 
 theory of ethics and of life. Modern evolutionism 
 faces the world and the problem of life in a 
 melioristic (if not an optimistic) attitude, and with 
 a cheerful and hopeful outlook. In this respect 
 it differs diametrically from the monism and evolu- 
 tionism of ancient India, which was poisoned by 
 a bitter pessimism and clouded by the darkest de- 
 spair. Modern evolutionism assumes that life is 
 better than death, existence than non-existence, 
 creation than annihilation, and so it faces the 
 world and life with an inherited occidental courage 
 instead of an oriental and Indian despair, and it 
 seeks life, realization, and immortality instead of 
 death, annihilation, and a Nirvana of oblivion and 
 nothingness. 
 
 " 'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, 
 More life and fuller that we want." 
 
156 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 Life is not a failure and death a success in itself, 
 as the pessimistic, world-weary Hindu said, but 
 life on the whole is a success, and death is but a 
 gateway to a larger and a fuller life. 
 
CHAPTER Xin 
 THE GOD WHO FINDS HIMSELF 
 
 "If the king goes mad, and goes about to find the king 
 in his own country, he will not find him, because he is the 
 king himself. It is better that we know we are the king 
 and give up this fool's search after the king.'* 
 
 Vivekananda. 
 
 Is it not about time that our mad humanity 
 gave up this " fool's search " after an " unknown," 
 or " unknowable," or imaginary, unsociable, and 
 impossible God? Is it not about time to realize 
 that the only possible God is that real and actual 
 Being which confronts and stares us in the face 
 every day of our lives; which has openly faced 
 and confronted humanity from the beginning of 
 man's rational existence until now ; and which will 
 continue to do so until the end, and until humanity 
 shall finally realize clearly and completely that 
 this real, open, frank, and persistent Being is the 
 real God, or else there is no God at all. 
 
 In ancient Greece men raised an altar to an 
 " unknown God," and in recent days the agnostics 
 have raised another to an " unknowable God " ; 
 while for thousands of years past the dualistic, 
 pluralistic, and supernatural religions of the world 
 have dotted the face of the earth with the altars 
 
 157 
 
158 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 and sanctuaries of an imaginary, unsociable, and 
 impossible God. 
 
 The age-long effort to find some conjectural be- 
 ing behind the real being that persistently and 
 eternally confronts us, to find some God behind 
 the world, has ended in utter failure. There is 
 not one single scrap or shred of reliable and trust- 
 worthy evidence that this other, second, and con- 
 jectural being, this unsociable God behind the 
 world, exists, or has ever been seen, heard, or per- 
 ceived in any way by man. Its existence is a pure 
 conjecture and a bald assumption. Many are the 
 assertions, and legion are the legends and myths 
 concerning it, but of real evidence there is none. 
 And now, at this conjuncture, modern science and 
 philosophy have practically proven a conclusive 
 thing: viz., that but one real Being exists; that 
 two or more real integers of being are impossible, 
 superfluous, 1 and inconceivable in the nature of 
 things ; and that this one Being is a living, self- 
 conscious cosmic organism, composed of many 
 cooperating organs and functions ; that man is one 
 of those organs and functions, — viz., one of the 
 heads and brains and seats of its self-conscious- 
 ness ; and this cosmic organism comes to self-con- 
 sciousness, self-knowledge, and self-discovery in its 
 earthly heads and brains ; and now, at last, it has 
 
 i Pluralism and dualism are condemned by the logical law 
 of parsimony, or economy of thought. One differentiated 
 unit of being is sufficient for all cosmic purposes ; two would 
 be superfluous; and many would be unthinkable. 
 
THE GOD WHO FINDS HIMSELF 159 
 
 found itself, or at least is beginning to find itself, 
 in man and on this earth. 
 
 It has found that there is no other and second 
 being than its whole, unitary self and organism. 
 It finds that it is alone, all-embracing and supreme. 
 Hence it finds itself as God, and as divine, or else 
 there is no God or divinity in existence. Thus 
 through man, as through his own head and brain, 
 has God found himself at last. Thus through 
 man and in man is God learning more and more to 
 know himself. Thus through man, as through 
 his human eye, is God — the cosmic Organism — 
 beginning to see himself as he really and truly is ; 
 as a complex, cooperative organism of being, per- 
 fect in its organic unity, infinitely rich in its 
 organic variety of structure and function, infinitely 
 rich in its variety of experience and life. The 
 Being of the world has been finding itself from the 
 beginning; it has found itself definitely at last in 
 some few minds at least, and it will go on finding 
 more and more about itself till the end of its self- 
 conscious, self-intelligent and self-critical exist- 
 ence. 
 
 Then when this earthly drama of the divine self- 
 discovery, self-understanding, and self-realization 
 is over, the earthly curtain may be rung down, and 
 a similar drama begin again in some other planet, 
 or some other stellar organism. We never grow 
 tired of reading good stories, of seeing good 
 plays, or having good times, of living good lives, 
 
160 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 of enjoying good things, or seeing beautiful ob- 
 jects. And if these dramas of God's planetary 
 lives are really good and desirable, when all is said 
 and done, why should they not receive divine ap- 
 plause and approval, and be repeated with infinite 
 variations through all eternity? 
 
 " God is the perfect poet, 
 Who in his person acts his own creations." 2 
 
 Modern science and philosophy have now ban- 
 ished all beings but one from the world, and if that 
 one and only Being that remains is not God, or 
 is not worthy of that supreme name and title, then, 
 of course, there is no God. 
 
 Those who object to regarding the Universe as 
 God, do so because they fail to see clearly and 
 surely that it is a vast, sublime, and genuine or- 
 ganism. They fail to see that man is not a true 
 and genuine, but only a pseudo-organism, — in 
 fact, a mere organ of the Cosmic Organism, dele- 
 gated to display in his earthly and human way the 
 consciousness and mind of the Cosmic Organism 
 itself, just as man's brain is delegated to display 
 the mind and reason of his human organism; just 
 as a rose or lily is delegated to display the per- 
 fume, color, and beauty of the plant; and just as 
 a little carbon filament is selected and delegated 
 to display the light vibrations of the electric sys- 
 tem. A man is not a thing in himself and by him- 
 self any more than his brain is a thing in itself, 
 
 2 Browning. 
 
THE GOD WHO FINDS HIMSELF 161 
 
 or a flower and blossom is a thing in itself, or a 
 carbon filament is a thing in itself. A man, or 
 blossom, or carbon filament, is only a part, an 
 organ, and a function of a larger and truer thing, 
 a higher, a more integral organism. Just like the 
 head on the body, or the flower on the plant, man 
 is only the head on the body of the Universe, the 
 blossom on the stem of the cosmic Plant ; the brain 
 of the cosmic Organism, and the mind of the cos- 
 mic Spirit. Man is not one thing and the universe 
 another and separate thing any more than man's 
 brain is one thing and his body is another and 
 separate thing, or a blossom is one thing and a 
 plant is another and separate thing. 
 
 Man and the universe are as truly and organ- 
 ically one as man's brain and body, or the blossom 
 and the plant, are one. There is no duality of 
 beings and things here, but, on the contrary, a 
 perfect organic unity, cooperation, and division 
 of labors and of functions. Man is the head on 
 nature's shoulders, the brain in nature's head, the 
 mind in nature's universal organism. 
 
 Those who object to regarding the Universe as 
 God fail to see it concretely, as it is in reality, — 
 one indivisible, cosmic Organism composed of many 
 cooperating organs; and being the victims of the 
 mental vice of abstraction, they view it inorgan- 
 ically, pluralistically, in dismemberment, disjunc- 
 tion, and decapitation. They, in the process of 
 mental analysis, abstractly dismember, disjoin 
 and decapitate the cosmic Organism; and having 
 
162 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 performed this act of mental dissection, they view 
 the remains of the universe in separation and dis- 
 organization ; compare and contrast the dismem- 
 bered and decapitated organs of the cosmic body 
 to the great disadvantage and indignity of the lat- 
 ter. Man is the head on the shoulders of the cos- 
 mic body, and we have no right to mentally 
 decapitate this human head from the cosmic body, 
 and then, having performed this vicious and mur- 
 derous mental act, to view the two dissevered parts 
 of the cosmic body separately, and to compare 
 and contrast them with each other to the unjust 
 flattery of the human head and the still more un- 
 just contempt of the cosmic body. The human 
 head, brain, and consciousness, is the head, brain, 
 and consciousness of the whole cosmic body; and 
 it is our duty to put the human head back upon 
 the body of nature, to put the human brain back 
 within the cosmic skull, so to speak, and to put 
 the human mind and intelligence back within the 
 spirit of the cosmic organism where it truly, 
 justly, and originally belongs. Dualists, in 
 their viciously abstract ways, first behead the uni- 
 verse, then abstract its human brains and mentally 
 banish its human intelligence and personality, and 
 then call upon us to behold what a dead, brainless, 
 mindless, and impersonal thing it is. 
 
 But this dead, brainless, mindless, and imper- 
 sonal universe of the dualists and pluralists is not 
 the real, concrete universe at all, but a mere crea- 
 ture of their mentally abstracting imagination; 
 
THE GOD WHO FINDS HIMSELF 168 
 
 and 9uch a false and abstract universe, of course, 
 could never be regarded as God by any sane be- 
 ing. The real concrete universe, however, is a 
 living, breathing, pulsing, thinking, striving, and 
 straining organism, full of an irresistible and inde- 
 structible life and consciousness; composed of an 
 infinite number of organs and cooperative parts; 
 with numberless minds, human on this planet, and 
 human-like on others ; and all this life and activity, 
 all this consciousness and thought, all these aims 
 and ideals, and all this personality and spirituality 
 are its very own. And if this complete, true and 
 perfect organism of the Being of the world is not 
 a person, then it must be because it is infinitely 
 more than a person, and is a sublimely super-per- 
 sonal being, an organism whose constituent units 
 and atoms are persons, and which is thus consti- 
 tuted into a sublime and universal society of per- 
 sons, which, as we have shown before, is the only 
 possible form under which consciousness and per- 
 sonality can exist. If the Universe, as a whole 
 and perfect organism, is not a personal being, then 
 it must be because it is a super-personal being; 
 and if it is not an individual mind, then it must be 
 because it is something vastly higher than an in- 
 dividual mind, — viz., a terrestrial and celestial 
 society of minds, a society of spirits, and a society 
 of persons, individuals and selves. It is a true 
 spiritual organism existing under the only form 
 in which a spiritual organism can exist, — viz., 
 the social, multiple, and multiform form. 
 
164 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 Those who object to regarding the universe as 
 God because as they claim it is not a " person," 
 but only an " it," must be thoroughly taught and 
 reminded of the fact that consciousness and per- 
 sonality cannot possibly exist in the singular num- 
 ber and solitary form, but that by its very nature 
 and constitution it must necessarily exist in the 
 plural number and social form. 
 
 There is and can be no integral person what- 
 ever in the singular number. An integral conscious 
 being or person cannot exist except in the plural 
 form of a society of persons. If you cannot be 
 satisfied with personality in a multiple and social 
 form, then you will have to do without personality 
 altogether. 
 
 The only possible or conceivable (integral) per- 
 son is a society of persons; and a society of per- 
 sons is an ideal person. A society of persons is 
 the highest possible and conceivable form of per- 
 sonality, and a social God is the only true God 
 that can exist. You must be satisfied with this 
 kind of a God or go without a true God alto- 
 gether. 
 
 The people who want a personal God, and not, 
 as they say, a mere " it," really want a spiritual 
 king, a divine monarch, and are not sufficiently 
 democratic in spirit and instinct to be satisfied to 
 exist in a spiritual republic or divine democracy. 
 They want a spiritual monarch, a divine king; 
 they want to live in a spiritual monarchy, a divine 
 kingdom; and they desire to be the humble, spir- 
 
THE GOD WHO FINDS HIMSELF 165 
 
 itual subjects of this spiritual monarchy and this 
 divine king. They have not got king-worship and 
 the monarchical spirit out of their spiritual sys- 
 tem and blood as yet. Their conception of the 
 world is a monarchical, dualistic, and aristocratic 
 conception. They believe (or pretend to believe, 
 a great many of them) that the constitution of the 
 universe is a monarchical, dualistic, and aristo- 
 cratic constitution, with a spiritual monarch and 
 divine king at the head of it, ruling in absolute 
 authority and power over the world and man, who 
 are his mere creatures and humble, servile spiritual 
 subjects. 
 
 But this dualistic, monarchical conception of the 
 universe is untrue, as monism has shown; and the 
 monarchical and dualistic theories of God and 
 the world and man which are drawn from it are 
 equally false. As monism has clearly shown, the 
 democratic conception of the universe is the true 
 one, and the democratic constitution of the uni- 
 verse is its true constitution. This world is not 
 dualistically and monarchically constituted; it is, 
 instead, monistically and democratically consti- 
 tuted. This universe is not a spiritual monarchy 
 and divine kingdom; it is a spiritual republic and 
 a divine democracy. It is not ruled, governed, 
 and guided from above and outside by a spiritual 
 king and divine monarch. It is self-governing and 
 self-guiding from within. It is a sovereign, self- 
 sufficient, and divine democracy in itself. And 
 this divine democracy of the Being of the world is 
 
166 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 the spiritual republic of the universe ; and this di- 
 vine democracy and spiritual republic of the uni- 
 verse is the God of monism, while dualism worships 
 the imaginary king of an imaginary spiritual mon- 
 archy. In this divine democracy and spiritual re- 
 public of the universe every man and every being 
 is an equal, spiritual, divine, and sovereign citizen. 
 
 We men are not the servile, spiritual subjects 
 of a spiritual monarchy and a spiritual king; we 
 are the sovereign, spiritual citizens of a divine 
 democracy and a spiritual republic of all being as 
 one. Dualism declares that God is the personal 
 king of a spiritual monarchy, in whose kingdom 
 men are merely servile subjects. Monism declares 
 that God is the divine democracy, the spiritual 
 commonwealth of the world as a perfect, organic, 
 and unitary whole, and that in this spiritual re- 
 public of all being, all men and creatures and things 
 are equal, sovereign, divine, and spiritual citizens. 
 
 For this dualistic theory of the world as a spir- 
 itual monarchy, of God as a spiritual monarch, 
 and of men as his spiritual subjects; there is not 
 one particle of reliable evidence to-day. For the 
 monistic theory of the world, however, as a spir- 
 itual and divine democracy, of God as this spiritual 
 and divine democracy itself, and of all men and 
 things as the equal, sovereign, divine, and spiritual 
 citizens, the evidence is overwhelming in its favor, 
 and is growing every day. 
 
 We can speak of a king or president as " per- 
 sonal," but of a country, nation, or people, only 
 
THE GOD WHO FINDS HIMSELF 167 
 
 as impersonal; but as a matter of scientific and 
 philosophic truth we ought to speak of the latter 
 as super-personal. Unity precedes multiplicity 
 and the One precedes the many in the order of 
 evolutionary development. The One and the unity 
 was first and original; the many and the multiple 
 are secondary and came from the One through its 
 subdivision and fractionalization. The One did 
 not lose its absolute and fundamental unity when 
 it divided, or rather differentiated, itself into many. 
 
 The many are never anything more than the 
 mere fractions of the integral One. Personality 
 and individuality is only another name for frac- 
 tionally, and the unitary whole which is consti- 
 tuted of such personal and individual fractions is 
 always something higher in the scale of being than 
 such fractionals are themselves. 
 
 If a citizen is a " person," then a " state " is 
 a super-person; and if men are persons and indi- 
 viduals, which really means that they are "frac- 
 tionals," then the universal whole is a supreme and 
 sublimely super-personal being because it is the 
 integral, original, and parental whole. We speak 
 of a king or president as " he," but of our vastly 
 greater " country," " nation," or " people," we 
 say " it." But as a nation is greater than any 
 of its citizens, even the highest; as a whole is 
 greater than any of its parts, as an organism is 
 greater than any of its organs ; — so the universe, 
 the infinite, eternal and all-embracing organism of 
 the world, is supremely, sublimely, and infinitely 
 
J> 
 
 168 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 higher and diviner than any possible part, either 
 real or imaginary, that can exist within it. And 
 its inconceivable dignity and divinity is not in the 
 least diminished because our imperfect instru- 
 ments of language compel us to speak of " it 
 " it," instead of as " he " or " she." 
 
 " A firemist and a planet, 
 A crystal and a cell, 
 A jellyfish and a saurian, 
 And caves where the cave men dwell; 
 Then a sense of law and beauty, 
 And a face turned from the clod, — 
 Some call it evolution, 
 And others call it God. 
 
 A haze on the far horizon, 
 The infinite tender sky. 
 The rich, ripe tint of the cornfields, 
 And the wild geese sailing high; 
 And all over upland and lowland 
 The charm of the golden-rod, — 
 Some of us call it Autumn, 
 And others call it God. 
 
 Like tides on the crescent sea-beach 
 When the moon is new and thin, 
 Into our hearts high yearnings 
 Come welling and surging in, — 
 Come from the mystic ocean 
 Whose rim no foot has trod, — 
 Some of us call it longing, 
 And others call it God. 
 
THE GOD WHO FINDS HIMSELF 169 
 
 A picket frozen on duty, 
 
 A mother starved for her brood, 
 
 Socrates drinking the hemlock, 
 
 And Jesus on the rood; 
 
 And millions who, humble and nameless, 
 
 The straight hard pathway trod, — 
 
 Some call it consecration, 
 
 And others call it God." 3 
 
 3 W. H. Carruth, " Each in his own Tongue." 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE GOD WHO REALIZES AND PER- 
 FECTS HIMSELF 
 
 The philosophy of evolution is, in reality, a 
 philosophy of self-evolution. It is a theory of the 
 self-development and self-fulfillment of the one and 
 only Being of the world. It is, therefore, a phi- 
 losophy of self-realization and self-completion. 
 That is its most significant characteristic, and its 
 profoundest law and truth. It is for this reason 
 that the ethics of evolution is an ethics of self-re- 
 alization, that the religion of evolution is a reli- 
 gion of self-revelation, that the politics of 
 evolution is a politics of self-government and de- 
 mocracy, and that the economics of evolution is 
 one of self-management and cooperation. 
 
 For the same scientific and evolutionary reason 
 the theology of evolution (or, as Dr. Paul Carus 
 would call it, the " theonomy " of evolution) * is a 
 theology and theonomy of self-realization and self- 
 idealization, of self-fulfillment and self-perfection. 
 The God of science and evolution must be a God 
 who completely realizes and perfectly fulfills him- 
 
 i By theology we may mean the theory and knowledge of 
 God; and by theonomy we can mean the practise and reali- 
 zation of God in human life and experience. 
 
 170 
 
GOD WHO REALIZES HIMSELF 171 
 
 self in the world and man ; who successfully ideal- 
 izes and perfects himself in the temporal process 
 of his own evolution. The God of science and of 
 evolution is the self-realizing and idealizing God 
 of the self-realizing and idealizing man. It may 
 be said that this conception of the nature of God 
 is anthropomorphic. We acknowledge without 
 hesitation that it is, and affirm, moreover, that 
 every conception of God is, must be, and ought to 
 be, anthropomorphic, or else it is a mere abstrac- 
 tion. The fact that this conception of God is 
 natural and more or less human in character is 
 not an evidence that it is false or fallacious, but 
 is rather an evidence of its truth. For, as we 
 have said before, God and man are not two sepa- 
 rate beings, but they are one, as whole and part, 
 organism and organ, or unitary being and its high- 
 est, most characteristic and distinguishing func- 
 tion are one. The nature and character of any 
 being is determined by what it does and by its es- 
 sential and intrinsic function. A being is what it 
 does, a structure is what it functions, for the 
 function is the essential end and purpose of its ex- 
 istence, while the structure is a mere means and 
 instrumentality only. The charactristic and su- 
 preme function of any being determines the essen- 
 tial nature of that being. The nature of man is 
 determined by his highest and most characteristic 
 organ and function, — viz., by his brain and his 
 function of thought. He is the brainy animal and 
 the thinker. So for a similar reason the nature 
 
172 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 and character of the universe as a vast world-or- 
 ganism is determined by its highest and most char- 
 acteristic organs and its profoundest and most 
 significant functions. And these are precisely the 
 ones which belong to and characterize man, and 
 other rational beings like him in other worlds, no 
 doubt. For man, it is perfectly plain to see, is 
 not an independent, isolated, and autonomous part 
 of the universe any more than is a little blossom 
 at the top of a tall and mighty tree. As the little 
 flower at the top of the tall and stately tree is 
 merely an efflorescent organ and function of the 
 whole great tree, so man (or any other being like 
 him in other worlds) is merely a spiritual efflores- 
 cence and function of the whole universe as a uni- 
 tary, organic, and indivisible whole. As man's 
 brain and thought characterizes him as the brainy 
 and thinking animal, so in like manner man him- 
 self, and other beings like him, characterize the 
 universe as a humane, anthropomorphic intelli- 
 gence, and as the rational and spiritual being of 
 all existence. The whole takes its character and 
 its designation from its highest, profoundest, most 
 significant and characteristic part. As we call a 
 plant a flower, a manual worker a hand, and a 
 directing manager a head, so in this supreme in- 
 stance we bestow the name and characteristics of 
 humanity upon the Universe as a divine and god- 
 like, yet humane and manlike, whole; and we are 
 perfectly justified in doing so. God is the hu- 
 mane, anthropomorphic, and rational spirit of the 
 
GOD WHO REALIZES HIMSELF 173 
 
 universe, of which man is the highest and most 
 characteristic organ and function. The Bible 
 says that God made man in his own image and 
 likeness, and this is practically true, but the con- 
 verse proposition is equally true, — viz., that man 
 has always made God in his own image and like- 
 ness, and is perfectly justified in doing so, for he is 
 the highest, most characteristic and distinguishing 
 function of the divine and universal whole. As 
 there is not one law and principle of action for 
 man's brain, and another and different one for his 
 whole body; as there is not one law of action for 
 the earth and another and different one for the 
 solar system; and as there cannot be one law of 
 action for the solar system and another and differ- 
 ent one for the sidereal system or universe at large ; 
 so there cannot be one law of action and evolu- 
 tionary procedure for man, the human organ and 
 function of the universe, and another and a differ- 
 ent one for God, the divine organism and universal 
 whole of being. As the evolutionary law of man's 
 life is self-realization, self-fulfillment and self- 
 idealization, so the evolutionary law of God's life, 
 as a universal and unitary whole, must be self- 
 realization and idealization, self-fulfillment and 
 perfection. The God of evolution must be a God 
 who realizes, idealizes, fulfills, and perfects himself 
 to the uppermost of his nature and the utter- 
 most of his powers, in the life of the universe 
 and the consciousness of man. The theology of 
 evolution is a theology of self-revelation, self- 
 
174. THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 discovery, self-knowledge, and self-understand- 
 ing ; and the theonomy of evolution is a theonomy 
 of the self-realization and idealization of the one, 
 only, and divine Being of the world. 
 
 Shall the universal Spirit of the world ever suc- 
 cessfully, happily, and fully realize and perfect 
 itself in the world and man? In the drama of 
 God's universal life shall the cosmic curtain fall 
 on a cosmic denouement which spells the absolute 
 failure of all rational ends and the frustration of 
 all legitimate human hopes? Shall the cosmic 
 curtain fall on a bitter cosmic tragedy or upon a 
 heroic and godlike, but victorious and glorious, 
 cosmic romance? The philosophy of evolution, 
 with its " struggle for existence " and its laws of 
 war and strife, has produced a revolution in the 
 life-ideals of man. It has destroyed forever the 
 puerile and effeminate ideal of the traditional 
 heaven, and has compelled the adoption of more 
 manly and godlike ideals of existence. It has 
 compelled man to ask himself the question : " If 
 tragedy is the highest form of art, is it also the 
 highest form, and spiritual ideal, of life ? " It 
 has put iron and flint and rich red blood into man's 
 spiritual ideals of existence, and from this time 
 forward man must have a strenuous and heroic 
 ideal of life at the very least, with the possibility 
 of being compelled to adopt a really tragic one. 
 The struggle for existence, the strife for suprem- 
 acy, and the striving for spiritual satisfaction and 
 fulfillment are eternal facts which must henceforth 
 
GOD WHO REALIZES HIMSELF 175 
 
 be included in any true ideal of existence. It 
 seems impossible to conceive of tragedy, in the 
 sense of the genuine failure and defeat of the spirit, 
 as a possible or real ideal of life. It seems as 
 though we must draw the line on a real cosmic 
 tragedy. But short of actual tragedy we may 
 have a heroic and strenuous ideal of existence, 
 which would test and try the souls of gods and 
 men. Let it be anything but the actual failure, 
 defeat, and discomfiture of the innermost soul of 
 God and man, and we may cheerfully accept it. 
 The question arises, — what would constitute a 
 spiritual tragedy in the life of the universe? 
 What would constitute the defeat, failure, and dis- 
 comfiture of God and man? Opinions may differ, 
 but it seems as though one of the greatest spiritual 
 tragedies to a being who has the capacity and the 
 burning passion to know, and above all things to 
 know himself, would be the signal and bitter fail- 
 ure to discover and understand who and what he 
 is, and why and how he really exists. Shall the 
 eye that sees all things never see itself? Shall the 
 spirit that knows all things never know itself? 
 Shall the veil of ignorance and mystery never be 
 lifted from the soul of man? Shall it live and die 
 forever, with an unanswered question on its lips 
 and an unsatisfied longing eating out its heart? 
 This would be a spiritual tragedy indeed. Has 
 the capacity to know and the passion to know been 
 developed in man, only to be frustrated and de- 
 feated at last; and is man, as a knowing being, 
 
176 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 
 
 never to fully realize, complete, and fulfill himself 
 as such? Is the self-realization of the knower 
 never to be perfectly achieved? In the light of 
 the law of evolution I think we can give a hopeful 
 answer to this question. If the Being of the 
 world is essentially a self-reajizing and self-ful- 
 filling being, as the philosophy of evolution teaches 
 us, then we have good and sufficient reasons for 
 hoping and believing that this self-knowing and 
 self-knowable Being of the world will finally know 
 itself essentially at last. " And we shall know as 
 we are known." " Know thyself " was one of the 
 profoundest injunctions of ancient philosophy, 
 and it was also, we believe, a profound prophecy, 
 which the evolutionary process in due season will 
 fulfill; and man shall some day know himself and 
 know his God. But there is no royal road to this 
 divine consummation except the right royal road 
 of manly and godlike struggle and endeavor. 
 " And they shall know the truth and the truth 
 shall make them free," — free from ignorance and 
 blindness, uncertainty and doubt; and man, the 
 knower, shall realize and know himself at last ; and 
 God, the Knower shall realize and know himself in 
 man. 
 
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