Class '.: - Book COPYRIGHT DEPOSITV Happiness and Continuous Personality OR Life's Purposive Appearance By S. F.'SHOREY Author of "The Greater Men and Women, as Factors of Human Progress" "Human Harmonies and the Art of Making Them" "Injustice and National Decay" "Human Progress and Party Functions" "What Life Seems to Me, or Continuous Personality and Social Evolution" Published by S. F. SHOREY, Seattle, Wash. January, 1919 Copyrighted January, 1919 By S. F. Shorey m 20 f319 CALVERT-CALHOUN PRINTING CO. SEATTLE ©a.A5L1604 -^^^^ 6 THE PROMISE KEPT An Introduction nAPPINESS and Continuous Personality, or Life's Purposive Appearance/' is offered in fulfillment of the promise made to the readers of *'What Life Seems to Me/' at the end of that little volume; and is, as a matter of fact, a con- tinuation — as a second half — of the subject matter of the first published booklet, which was more than half completed when the first was published. Had the second part been included in the first, however, the book could not have been kept down to convenient pocket size if printed in large, read- able type, and sold for twenty-five cents in paper covers. Comparatively few, even when they have the means, buy high priced books; nor, when secured, do many find time to wade through them; hence most of our deluge of ponderous volumes, even in cases where the thought matter is high and the expression most excellent, has but a small percent- age of educational value. The bringing out . of this continuation has been very greatly encouraged by the liberal response with which "What Life Seems to Me" has met —3— from the purchasing and reading public^ as well as the satisfaction expressed, combined with the call for the second part as promised. Since the publication of the first — now more than a year — the second has been in process of revision and addition with a trifle of attention each day. For in his daily contact with commenting readers of the first the writer learned much of what was further needed. As^ also^ in "What Life Seems to Me/' effort has herein been made to offer some rational and prac- tical philosophy of life^ without dogma. In the following table of contents effort^ also, has been made to convey to the reader some idea of the subject matter^ a few hints or suggestions. Conse- quently the table of contents had better be read before going on with the reading of the book. >-4-_- CONTENTS Evolution, or the Way of Progress The awakening consciousness. The evolution of the unfolding concept among men. The progress of inductive reasoning — or think- ing from effect to cause. Climaxes of growth; or^ epoch-posts of progress. Spencer and Darwin among the great interpret- ers. Suffering an indispensable factor of involuntary progress. Education an indispensable factor of voluntary progress. Progress; Its Cause — Change or Life.^ Inaccuracy of knowledge and expression. Figurative language, indefiniteness in cause as- signing. Progress ; is it due to change or to the cause of change ? Cause — to what form of agency due, inert or active, static or dynamic.^ A practical philosophy of life. How much of the unknown is knowable? Our invasions of the unknown, by admittance, invitation and compulsion. —5 — The Educational Value of Destruction and Suffering Struggle the central requirement of survival. The animal or brute plane of struggle. The human plane and moral evolution. Spurs to human betterment enumerated. Rebuilding change and the meaning of today s tumult. Brutal factors of human progress. Schools and honest political economy. Education^ perpetual peace and youthful civiliza- tion. **Equal rights to all and special privileges to none^'* its moral effect. The Unfinished Job of Things Science and its interpretations of life. Philosophy and its interpretations of life. Anticipation and enjoyment of possession. Wane of interest and the awakening of new desires. Experience and the segregation of conduct into good and bad. The unknown and its gradual invasion. The conduct of life, within range of human will and beyond. A review of the onward move, with its unfinished job of things. —6— Nature^s Interpreters Our arrival in life and gradual awakening. Understanding of things seen and felt. The best interpretations confined to the most awakened. Many see but few catch the meaning. The keenest of sight and the dullest of under- standing. The evidence of continuous personality in life's process. The why of many things and movements — an inquiry. The great interpretations of science but little of its possibility. An inference — life's move in response to some purpose. The passing show considered; its meaning? Matter, Energy, and Personality Matter, its embodying and re-embodying possi- bilities. Matter and energy in the light of science. The many planes of matter. Has our sense limit any purpose to serve? If so, what? Other planes of matter, what their purpose? Prejudice and the meaning of change to new opportunities. —7— Progress Casting Off Its Dead Social evolution, subserving individual evolution. Present human conduct, largely determined be- hind the scenes. Free will and voluntary conduct in progress. Breaking up static conditions — casting off the dead. The destructive half of progress and the devil. Our lures and compulsions, their meaning. Old age a concretion or form of prejudice. The change called death a breaking away from foolishness. Human evolution when observed from the lowest to the highest. What, Then, Matters Destruction.^ Strength gained through the difficulty of the way. Life a laboratory or industrial school. For all this struggle, what remains as a product ? Man, building of himself, a higher product than that which he builds in other lines. This view and the better understanding of war. A view that makes life somewhat understandable. The mobilized experiences of men, its value. War, its purposes. The avowed and human, the cosmic and real. The evolutionary activity of the cosmic mind. Human blindness in this ferment of progress. —8— EVOLUTION, OR THE WAY OF PROGRESS ^Y^^RESENT conditions and events are the ef-^ ls^<r fects of causes, many of which were set up in the long ago, and the steps leading up to some of these may be traced back through history. Without having gone back to primitive human conditions and traced individual and social unfold- ment through much of the available means of know- ing, including history, little or no understanding of present day conditions and happenings can be had. To read the history of civilization is but to follow the pathway of unfolding ideas. Contempla- tive persons alone in thinking of an event give much thought to the evolving preparation, or idea- awakening process, reaching back as it usually does through the centuries by which most discov- eries, most inventions, most revolutions, most wars, most improvement in living, as well as most of the originalities of men are in the preparatory sense preceded. All improving changes are made by men as the sphere of their consciousness expands to include an ever greater number of facts, a larger knowl- edge of life's kinships, and a consciousness of its continuous move into forms better fitted to serve its progressive needs. —9— This expanding consciousness appears as im- provement in matters of the every day life^ also in art^ and particularly so in science^ in invention^ in discovery and a better interpretation of the meaning of facts as they are discovered. It ap- pears as increase of power and means to construct^ to re-construct^ and to do so with ever greater ease and accuracy^ and gradually to a realization among men of the fact of the inclusiveness of this change^ in that it extends to all human expression. Mental unfoldment proceeds in a series of dis- coveries and inventions made up for the most part of items common to all minds^ and for the less part of the z^wcommon^ among which are found the more conspicuous; the expressions of men standing out among the common in contrasts so well marked as to name periods of progress. This is the part of accomplishment commonly seen^ the resultant, the culmination, the striking effect reached by the action of the process, the epoch-stone that marks a period of human unfold- ment. In thinking of the discovery of America com- paratively few ever go far back in history and trace the unfolding concept down to the culminated fact or executive expression which took place through the efforts of the one man, Columbus. — 10— From one viewpoint Columbus came and cap- tured great credit for reaping the harvest of cen- turies of the preparatory process^ herein acting instrumentally or as an effect. From this view- point we are inclined to ask^ would he have been able to walk away with the spoils of credit had he arrived sooner or later? Was his arrival an oppor- tune one? Did he reach the scene of his victory at precisely the right time — a time when the pre- paratory process had ripened the opportunity to the point of plucking? Anyhow^ we must admit the preparatory process ; and all leaders of thought and of action may be recognized as those who appear upon the scene of their accomplishments as the right men at the right time; as the ones who come with sufficient 'Spins'' of will and intelligence to climax the pre- paratory process. But each appears evidently as a cause as well as an effect^ as that which acts as well as that which is acted upon^ as the man^ but not necessarily the only man. We know that the era-posts of progress are set up by leaders at what seems to be about the right time and place and they appear to act as effects to the extent that they lack initiative, and as causes in so far as they have initiative. The fact of the unfolding process, if philosoph- —11— ically^ scientifically^ and historically traced^ is found to have dawned upon the minds of men but slowly — came through the evolving process of an idea — was discovered in fragments^ as the horizon of consciousness^ through the occasional man^ at wide apart intervals of time^ rose and receded into broader vistas of life. Human personality unfolds through three dy- namic phases or divisions^ appearing in consecutive order and may be loosely defined as follows: The first of the three is made up of the proclivity or natural tendency^ the aspiration^ with which we all appear in life; the second is gained by experience^ apart from education^ properly so called; the third phase^ the educational or cultivat- ed tendency^ the latest to appear in the upward- climb series and but fairly well begun^ is by far the most important for present consideration. For in its latency is concealed the power that is to transform the world of men and their appur- tenances ; the means by which they are to change, and be changed^ from greedy^ ^J^^E? dishonest, thieving, fighting savages into reliable, civilized, happy human beings. Education is a process evolving into ever greater voluntary control — a higher line of naturalness. —12— The move increases in rapidity as fast as men awaken to its possibilities. Could the means, now wasted and destroyed by ignorance in two generations of time, be educa- tionally applied, it would abolish warfare and establish so large a measure of justice in the world as to bring the happiness of which men have long been dreaming. The process of building up the inheritance factor of man through the experiences w^hich brought him to the beginning of a rational being, must have taken, humanly speaking, an incalculable length of time; and, following that beginning, the ages upon ages consumed in evolving our product of thought, as embodied in our present equipment of semi-civil life is equally inconceivable. To the awakening person present human prog- ress seems a slow process, but the impatience hereat may be due, not so much to its being a fact as to the imperfections revealed to the unfolding mind, combined with the failure to grasp the tremendous- ness of duration. For, the present move of the improving process is, evidently, when compared with the move during former ages, a very rapid one. Progress seems now to be hurrying men forward from the involuntary stage of life to the voluntary, by injecting ever greater action and suffering into —13— the process. The time of a thousand years^ which seems to us a space so very long, could not have been more than a very small part of the time taken by Nature to bring man up to this beginning of voluntary control of movement. Consequently improvement arrives through a process seemingly slow in its movement, and it will continue to do so to the extent that it is allowed to loiter through educational neglect — the seeming slowness is, in itself, a forward urge. Free action of the human will, so far, is but a trifle more than a theory. All along the way, down through the ages, men have acted with but little actual consciousness of what they were doing. The discovery of the lam — not the cause — of progress is of too recent a date to find its way into general understanding with sufficient clearness to become educationally practical. The discovery, however, marks the beginning of a new era, ushers in an age of the evolution of voluntary improvement along all lines of life. The law of unfolding life was not discovered all at once and in a day! neither was it discovered wholly by any one man or any two men, and during the time of a single century or less. It has been a matter of unfolding growth. In fact, the majority of men have not even yet made the discovery. —14— The concept as it exists in the minds of the best understanding of today has been gradually dawning upon men^ or evolving in the minds of men during ages; and through the expansion of human con- sciousness in response to material contacts — for^ consciousness appears to gradually feel its way out as the light of facts feels its way in. The growing consciousness of the fact of unfold- ing life has been a slowly working process ; the truth must have been glimpsed just a little at a time^ and had its rise much father back than is now ordinarily realized. Some man, by being better equipped mentally than most men, caught a glimpse of the truth and was then followed at a distance of time more or less remote thereafter by another, who saw and added a trifle more to the concept. In time there came another and still another, trail- ing down the ages; each seeing a few more of the facts in the case and interpreting a little more of their meaning. The ascending line of the expanding concept leading up to our present place of arrival in under- standing has been gradual; a pioneering process, resulting in a cumulation of discovery and interpre- tation made by a series of thinking men, each of whom began practically where his predecessor left off. —15— The concept is still expanding and reaching out into the practical lives of men. But recently has it come to be understood that its pathway can be traced through the history of civilization in the evolution of human intelligence. Great discoveries^ and of the meaning of life and form^ great interpretations, may be much more common than we realize^ but credit herefor can be gained by those alone who are able to appreciate what they discover^ express and place it on record for others. They must^ also since most new ideas meet with general disapproval^ have the courage to announce what they learn to be true. In this upward struggle of life the great maj ority seem to be for the most part fated to act — that is, they act instrumentally, and, for the reason, it may be believed, that they are not yet unfoldingly equipped with sufficient knowledge, will, and cour- age to set up much selective or initiative action. If, for instance, our Great World Drama of the present time be taken as a case in point: It seems to be a tragedy of pre-determination ; a play of life, the cause of which, men who should have seen, we think, did not see with sufficient clearness to remove. So far, as a matter of fact, men have not gained sufficient knowledge and power of united action to prevent these world tragedies. —16— The ideal of antagonistic interests still holds sway and determines the conduct of life, from the individual on up through groups of men to the nation; the opposite ideal, the one of mutual in- terests, is in the incipient stage of its development. The gain of will power to act with ever greater freedom and in larger ways — as by assisting in the process of bettering change — follows in the path- way of increasing knowledge. Consequently, the line which divides what men are driven to do from what they select to do, is forever in motion and cannot be definitely located. In this brief consideration of the evolution of the evolving concept we come down to a time just before the middle of the last century to find Her- bert Spencer giving to the matter a tremendous impetus. Spencer discovered change to be acting in obedi- ence to a constructive law constituting a process that began organizing forms with simple unorgan- ized matter — a process that for untold ages has been unfolding and that is still unfolding the forms of life into ever greater complexity of structure, and his formulated expression of the action of the process stands, ''From the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, or from the simple to the complex." That which others had seen but dimly and in a fragmentary way Spencer saw to be a working —17— process so all-embracing in its scope as to cover, not alone the field of organic evolution, including man with all below man, but the entire field of visible expression. No one previous to the time of Spencer had achieved so broad a generalization; none before Spencer's time had discovered that the action of the process which brought the animal and man into existence is the one now used by man to effect his growing complexity of expression, voluntary and involuntary. Charles Darwin, a contemporary of Spencer, gave to the world, but a few years later, a more specific installment of evolution — a form then very much needed, and that is still much needed by the world. By confining himself to organic evolution, Dar- win covered a far narrower field than the one cov- ered by Herbert Spencer, by being more specific his work came to be better and more quickly under- stood; by including man, it at once aroused human interest; and, from those whose distinctly different theory of human origin had intrenched in defense of both their prejudices and selfish interests, it aroused also strong opposition, and sank through the feelings much more quickly, deeply and last- ingly into the human mind. —18— Darwin's theory of human origin was considered by most men at the time of its announcement to be, and is still believed by many to be, no more than a theory; and, felt to be an insult to their forefathers. In consequence of their hurt feelings they can not come quickly to learn what Darwin taught. Education hurts when forced on man; it is, also, expensive when thus taken; for the involuntary process involves the breaking up of old forms, cus- toms and prejudices too long retained. Darwin came as a thought-compelling, prejudice-breaking educator ; and, of course, his great gift to men hurt and still hurts in the taking. It began at once, however, to create an impres- sion among men as being true in the main; and is still engaged in this convincing process. Though too evidently true to be logically and easily denied, it hurt too much to be quickly acknowledged by the prejudice-embalmed unread, fear-impressed many. Consequently, it was at first accepted by few, the best thinkers only. The awakening shock, however, which it gave the world is still in operation, hurting and angering men, who can be made to think in no other way. Practically speaking, what matters it whether man has evolved as a higher branch of the lower —19— animals^ or up through lower forms of separate or human form of creation ? Why^ then^ not defer the fight until more has been learned? This evolutionary process which the researcher finds now at work to produce ever higher forms of life and action^ he finds to have been doing the same thing as far back as he has been able to wend his way in evidence. This fact some are yet unable to understand^ through no faulty so far as we can see^ of their own ; others remain among the old order of men because of their inertia^ fear^ and prejudice; particularly are they held back by prejudices of religion; and^ so firmly is the latter implanted in the minds of men and women during the plastic years of childhood^ that it holds^ through the feel- ings^ the mental fort against the invasion of proof in the hands of reason. Men are not prevented from learning because they lack calibre so much as because they lack de- sire^ energy^ courage^ will and reason to break the bondage of prejudice and use what calibre they have. We have not yet progressed beyond the place where our most rapid improvement takes place at times when we are hurt most; the most active ele- ment in the evolution of good road building is the shock of the accident. —20— If ignorance brought no inconvenience, no dis- aster^ educational institutions would never arise. Prejudice^ fixed habits^ safeguard ignorance or the **stand-pat" in life; nearly perfect examples of which are the lower animals. As the animal man merges into the thinking man his habits and prejudices become less fixed^ are increasingly broken and changed as the increase in strength of will^ knowledge and ability to reason takes place. Here^ through a higher form of nat- ural selection — the voluntary form — control sets in^ till in time mastery and use of habit will be achieved^ with prejudice left behind among the things unfitted to survive. It is very evident that neither individual nor social improvement can be initiated by and insti- tuted among men faster than they awaken to its possibilities and importance. To bring this awakening to the beginning of initiative action must have taken ages^ during which time but little more voluntary effort was exercised on the part of man than we now find taking place in the lives of the lower animals ; and even today the awakening process moves on through a seem- ingly endles series of shocks and sufferings^ most of which will not take place when^ through the evolutionary rise in the average of human intelli- —21— gence^ men have learned to use as much money in educational awakening as in fighting. Education^ however^ is slowly moving into recog- nized importance — is evolving toward (though far from having reached) a full-fledged^ voluntary stage of action. So far^ but Utile use of voluntary effort has been learned; consequently^ in most human acts the process takes the initiative and leads — ^in other words^ men are made to act^ not so much through their intelligence as through their feelings. The lower animals are guided by their feelings alone^ or instinctively — they have no alternative, but man is being driven out of the fenced-in spaces, or pastures of life. When to the above reason, why men do not think more and improve more rapidly, are added the ones of a struggle for subsistence and the com- mon dislike of effort, or laziness, the why of the back-number, and its blood-spilling resultant, be- comes plain. Self-evident truths, even, are long in finding their way into the practical lives of men. Since the conduct of life is determined, not by reason, but by the feelings, and the feelings are due to prejudice. Nature has implanted form de- struction in the unfolding process as a means of release from the old slaveries of life. Being driven out of prejudice-ruts in order to —22— go on progressively, explains life's equipment of shocks, destruction and suffering; explains the hero and the villain in the play of life; the devil and the angel in religion; the need of hills and valleys, of lights and shadows, the variety of form and movement vrith which life has been equipped. The evolution of the unfolding concept in the minds of men is still in process, expanding, enlarg- ing, and invading more attenuated fields of matter ; but the battle between its full acceptance and the laziness, prejudices and greed of men; the battle which all practical acceptance of truth, even of its discovery, is obliged to fight is on, and very much in evidence. The idea of evolution, as extended by Herbert Spencer, covers a far broader field than the one of organic evolution — that to which Darwin gave expression. As extended and defined by Spencer, unfoldment "from the simple to the complex,'' it covers the entire field of material and mental change; not only all life below man, but the one covered by man with all his multiform expression; it includes the alphabet, words, language, books, writing, eco- nomics, politics, social forms, machinery, farming, education; in fact, everything in which we find change and rebuilding change. —23— Before us may be seen innumerable living and acting forms; the difference in these forms^ evi- dently^ is due to the difference in the ways by which consciousness arrives^ comes to awaken as it feels its way into matter; or to the way^ it may be said^ the form-building takes place^ as contact calls consciousness into action. If human variation takes place through consciousness awakened by contacts, it takes place also through the difference in the wuys different individuals meet and respond to their contacts. That is, the elements of impulse, instinct, per- sonal deviation, — in a word, the element of human life, comes in for consideration, manifesting as intelligence and will. Out of this action of mind on matter and the reaction of matter on mind, variety of life and form come into visibility, innumerable grades of consciousness appear upon the stage, create and take part in a turmoil of life. Many of these participants are found to be con- scious of few facts ; others, few in number, are equipped with a larger consciousness of both facts and of the relationships existing among these facts — men having a very great power of generalization and, in consequence hereof, act as educational —24— creators, as leaders of thought and of men, or men but little awakened, feeble generalizers. While the matter of education is the stored fruit- age of human progress, and its use the shortest road we know to greater awareness and larger con- cepts of life and living, comparatively few, in any high sense, are herewith equipped, for the art of its application is in process of evolution. The way most men view life is due much less to a rational examination of the facts of life than to their educationally imposed psychology. Await- ing then the arrival of a better art of education, the majority will be found working by recipes rather than by principles ; living, lying, shirking, and fighting, in the world of specifics. In awakening to a consciousness of the fact of unfolding life, the many follow in the wake of their advance guards — the ideal-givers, the few who succeed in reaching a more complex and therefore larger and higher form of consciousness and of expression than the many by whom they are sur- rounded. Consequently, it is well for impatient reformers to realize that from the rise or incep- tion of an ideal to the time of its practice among men, ages may pass away. Nature works her unfolding change with abundance of time and end- less persistence. —25— So far does this slowness of learning underyling principles (individual and social) hold true^ that with all the countless forms of effort made bj Nature to this end^ with specific repetitions in end- less succession emphasized by suffering, to teach a few plain and simple fundamentals; so slow do we find the move to be, that even yet to the significance hereof, to the full educational import of this moving picture of ascending change, we are but fragmentarily awakened; in fact, the awaken- ing seems to be but well begun. And so does it hold true of life and all of its pertainings; men, women, and things; human beings are unfolding, but so far nobody has more than a vague understanding of anybody or of anything. Life seems to be engaged in the effort of unfold- ing specific cases, carving out individuals in the human form having greater wisdom and greater power of executive will. The occasional man awakens to some of the deeper meaning of life that lies back of appear- ances, and finds himself able to explain it with a fair amount of satisfaction to others. Consequently, the few have a very practical understanding of the many, while the many have little or no understand- ing of the few. —26— The animating principles in this great evolving d ama of Life are two in number^ corresponding io the hero and the villain in the play ; and the greater the contrast or difference that lies between them^ the more expensive and animated does the action that takes place become^ the greater the din set up and the faster do men move along the upward way. Even though we may believe to the contrary, progress presents with each staging a radical change of scenery and character; consequently, it is an error to suppose that "history repeats itself.*' At no time within historical ages has the con- trast between the hero and the villain in the play of Life been so great as in the one of our present staging; consequently, never before one in which the move was so animated, the noise and the cost so great ; and one, we may well believe, from which so great a resultant will be realized. It seems, however, one with which men have little to do, one in which the drama is improving men far more than men are improving the drama; one which is being produced at far too great an expense of life, treasure, and suffering. For it is impossible to reflect hereon without concluding that, had the average intelligence and honesty of the world been sufiiciently high in the —27— year 1885 to have raised and expended in honest education one-half of the money wasted in the Great War^ the war would not have taken place. What but war could have happened to stimulate the raising of this amount? Will war^ then^ be necessary as an awakener when men have learned to awaken themselves with education — will it then be possible? Even when so simple a thing as an honest political economy is taught in all our public schools^ and as a conse- quence^ an honest banking and land system set up and operated^ will it be possible? Buty evidently^ men are not yet deservingly ready^ the laziness and greed which prevent them from making ready must be thrown off by suffering. —28- PROGRESS— ITS CAUSE: CHANGE OR LIFE? XN MUCH of our everyday communications listeners are obliged to guess what the speaker means to say by what he aims to say. Inaccuracy of knowledge makes accuracy of ex- pression difficult. For convenience we are obliged to use figurative speech in a large part of our efforts to convey understanding; this is legitimate when legitimately used; but we pay too little attention to accuracy of thought and of expression in any form. In assigning cause, to speak of a boulder on a railroad track as the cause of the accident which took place instead of the force of gravity which pulled the boulder from the mountain side^ is legitimate by reason of its convenience. But to speak of "change'' as the cause of progress does not seem to be equally so; for in this use we have stepped out into the field of philosophy^ where more care should be taken. In the matter of change and progress, progress appears as change takes place, but does this fact make it legitimate to conclude that change is the cause and progress the effect? Philosophically and scientifically, is it legiti- —29— mate to speak or write of any appearance, of any- thing having sense tangibility, as a cause of any- thing ? For only to the extent that the visible holds within itself invisible power, dynamic, vital or in- telligent, can it act, and by acting, become the visible instrumentality of some cause within or back of its visible form. We are made aware of "progress' by the appear- ance of a bettering change. This change accompa- nies all progress, but even though as an immediate antecedent, is it, for this reason, necessarily the cause of progress? Are we not impelled by our own dissatisfaction to look for the cause of change? Does not the cause factor of change reside with- in, or back of that in which we see change taking place, and is not this factor the cause of the change we call progress? Is not the cause of progress some form of power; an active, initiative, introductive, inaugura- tive factor ? And is it too much to assume it to be life, evolving life, life moving into ever more intel- ligently acting forms of life, and improving change? Is not change merely the evidence of the existence of that which produces change; evidence of a con- cealed but active factor? To assume, even, that change is the cause of progress and life a property of matter, does not —80— in the light of modern research, seem to be a highly rational proceeding. But since most science and philosophy are obliged to rest their conclusions upon inferential foundations, can one go much farther astray in giving to life the credit of being the cause of prog- ress, and Cosmic life the cause of terrestial life, as well as of universal change? For is not life quite as evident a fact as the more tangible matter through which it becomes obvious? If asked what is life, v/e reply by asking what is matter? It seems more rational to think of the cause of progress as a self-acting, consciously-producing, volitional agency, than as an inert one; unless one happens to be blinded by a stubbornly implanted belief that any cause, philosophically and scientifi- cally speaking, must be, or that it can be, even, found in matter as the cause of the action in itself. The cause world, very evidently, lies back in the world of energies, and our sense tangibilities are limited to the effects hereby produced. Consequently, in his search for some rational explanation of life and form as we find them, their cause and purpose, the pioneer delver finds one cause only to find it to be but an effect back of —31— which^ in close proximity, lies the cause of the first mentioned. Every change is produced or caused by that which becomes evident to the senses through that alone which it sets in motion; yet, of the existence of this unseen agency we feel as certain, in most cases, as of that which it moves. In the case of a steam engine we know demonstratively that the engine is not the most fundamental cause of the motion. Nor in biology can that which moves and organizes the matter of its forms, the vital energy we call life, be much more safely asserted to be a property of that which it moves than can that v/hich moves the engine be said to be a property of the engine. In our search for the cause of progress, many are found in the immediate vicinity contributing thereto; even war and peace, fire and famine, act- ing as spurs to effort. But the real factor, the power, the creative, constructive, factor is life; and is that from which springs intelligence, ideas and ideals, social change as well as biological change. Nothing further, however, do we know concern- ing life than what we have learned from what it does — as of electricity — of its cause we know nothing. —32— It appears to emanate from what may be legiti- mately^ we think, called the Cosmic Intelligence. Judging then of this Intelligence by what we have learned by observation, It seems to be the cause of life; and It appears to possess a power and an intelligence so stupendous, so infinitely tran- scending the human comprehension as to elude absolutely the grasp of the human mind. A practical phisolophy of life, then, must be managed inductively, research can best be pursued from static effect to dynamic cause. In our every- day life and in matters of education, we need only to work from the basis of the fact that progress comes in response to awakening ideals, an awaken- ing that can be voluntarily hastened, set in motion, and this motion accelerated by a freely acting will, able to intiate cause at any point within the field of its information. The best modern typewriter is but the to-date effect of mental cause piled on mental cause, back through the preceding ages; is not the cause here, as of all other appearances, events, happenings, ac- complishments, an active factor, a something con- structively animating, a property found in life, in- telligence, mind, not in change, per se ? Camped at the termini of pioneering way sta- —33— tions^ where^ on our arrival, we are left, privileged to gaze out upon the wilderness of splendid hope and possibilities, we find scientists and philosophers still engaged in eager pursuit of an explanation of the meaning of life. Here, as in all other fields of human endeavor, the desire among them is to know and to do more. Material scientists and philosophers have accom- plished great results, in both the theoretical and the practical field, but many refuse to accept of all their interpreation, much of which must be viewed as a tentative holding. Investigators are simply men. Herbert Spencer's law of "change" can not be accepted as the cause of progress with much satisfaction in the sense of being a cause beyond which lies no other discoverable cause. And as to his unknowable, just how much of the uhnown is unhnomahle we do not know. This much, however, is known: the unknown is a field into which human beings are not only ad- mitted, but one which they are invited to invade; nor does the matter end with admittance and invita- tion; unless invitation is heeded more urgent means are used, something further in the move than mere selfish living seems to be sought; for it is a field into which human beings are being driven by the needs as well as drawn by the attractions of life, —34— driven by circumstances over which they have no control ; driven through destruction, blood, carnage, and its accompaniment of sufferings to invade. —35— DESTRUCTION AND SUFFERING ITS EDUCATIONAL VALUE HIFE on the animal plane is instinctive, a sur- vival through a fitness that is largely phy- sical, remorseless, and brutal. And on the human plane those who have not reached in their unfoldment the stage of conscious control, of rationality and moral-awake-ness, give to evolution about the same practical interpretation. All life appears in an environment in which struggle is a requirement of existence; self-preser- vation — fitness to survive — depends on the effec^ tiveness with which the material means to survive is used. The survival and unfoldment of the animal has been possible through its power to change its action sufficiently to meet the requirements of the changes that took place in its surroundings; the increasing complexity of form, admitting of a higher power of functioning was preceded, evidently, by a change to greater variety in its environment. The highest type of the lower animal, in its unfoldment, paused, evidently, at the budding or beginning of intelligence and free or individual will — paused at the place of a slight tendency to —36— ureak away and to mold^ where it began to act feebly in turn upon its surroundings. But on reaching man a marked change is found to have taken place ; not a change of physical struc- ture alone — which when compared with the highest organisms existing among the lower animals^ proves to be of a very superior order — but a change to very great improvement in functioning, to actions infinitely more varied and higher in power. Some- where among the missing links, changes that show great improvement took place. For a marked rebellion against the coercions of environment is here seen to be in operation — a strik- ing exercise of will and reason, a self-assertiveness that goes on evolving into ever greater freedom of action, and of better action. What we call Progress is made up of improve- ment in thought followed by improved conduct and improved appurtenances of life. All the improvements made in the conduct and surroundings of men first appear in thought, as ideas or ideals. To the extent that the individual fails to respond to the requirements of this improving move or pro- gressive survival, shirks the lessons of life needed to serve this end, does he find himself in trouble. —37— Keeping comfortable and fit to survive involves an improving mastery. This understood, the struggle of life, instead of being as it appears to religion makers and venders to be, a curse, a punishment, or the work of an evil spirit called the "devil/* is seen on further awaken- ing, or by scientists, to be the action on, through, and by men of a natural process which either im^ proves and fits them to survive or destroys them. Those it cannot make understand, in whom it cannot awaken sufficient will and intelligence to meet and assist the efforts of this improving change, it kills ; thus rendering to progress an indispensable service. Acting, then, as spurs, serving as awakeners to improvement in thought and conduct, we find in life destructive agencies at work, the instrumental per- formers of what appears to be — to use a familiar term — a Satanic-service, such as injustice in its many forms, burglars, hunger, rats, bed-bugs, fleas, snakes, poverty, taxes, grafters, quacks, fakirs, plutocrats, tyrants, flood and fire, heat and cold, earthquake and famine, liars, bacteria, microbes, monarchs, and other ignorant bullies; and, to the extent that he who, on meeting any of these, fails to master their destructive influence, thereby learn- ing the lessons which these evidently come to teach, is he placed by this failure among the unfitted to survive. —38 — There seems to be in life the move of an unfold- ing purpose^ that takes place through a change to better building which men are enticed and driven to make^ and the destruction of old forms gives the freedom^ the material^ and the room to construct anew. This liberating service of wholesale destruction rendered to men will cease to operate as fast as it can teach them to liberate themselves with the idea^ the active and actual cause factor of progress 5 that is^ as fast as it can teach them to install education proper — voluntary education to take the place of involuntary education^ and thus to meet the requirements of progress through continuous reconstructive change — change of law^ religions^ customs ; and as fast as seen to be necessary in the interest of an increasing measure of justice and harmony. Intensive education will bring wisdom^ in the train of which will follow increasing honesty of conduct^ inexpensive^ comfortable, and continuous improvement. Upon this unmoral, semi-animal, and semi-intelli- gent plane of life, across which the great majority of men are yet fighting their way, is, evidently, being prepared by the struggle a higher life, a more intelligently conducted system, a moral life; hence, —39— a more harmonious, better fitted to survive and hap- pier life. As shown above^ the historical pathway of the ages reveal a slowly moving^ upward rising, prep- aration for this better life, or a process of moral evolution. The human family finds itself in an environment from which it is compelled to wrest a subsistence and in which action it is driven and enticed to think. The pleasure experienced in sense satisfaction is one reward of conforming to the requirements of the unfolding law. That is, specific or individual reward in the form of a passing enjoyment is naturally allowed as one of the fruits of endeavor. But since there are others to consider, there is, also, a requirement of group-action that has no meaning in animal evolution. One of the best marked demands of human evolution is the moral one. Emerging through the effort of a natural process and acting largely be- yond human will and knowledge, driving men, each to respect the rights of others. We are led to infer from the evidence before us that the rights of all must ultimately come to be respected; for the individual slowly learns that tiouble ensues when, in satisfying his own desires, — 40 — he offends by invading the rights of others; while on the other hand^ he finds these troubles avoided and happiness secured in the proportion that he pleases^ by acting within his own rights ; and^ not only allowing^ but co-operating with others to do the same. This is the way the moral evolves from the unmoral to reach mutual service, and is a slow process. It is evident that men and women cannot play this community game of life **on the square" with- out having educated into their feelings through suffering the natural consequences of injustice. This feat, very evidently, cannot be accomplished by most men in one lifetime, lived on this plane of our present crossing. The first stage of the human life to be crossed in the unfolding order is the unmoral; the second in order is the immoral stage; which when crossed the moral stage is reached. We are now, while crossing the second, making ready for the third. Progress in coming through the ages behind us presents us with gradually improving individuals and social forms, with an ever greater freedom of exchange, with an increase of democracy, justice, harmony of action, decrease of poverty, envy, jeal- ousy and hatred. The program of human life is one of action that —41— unfolds from wwintelligence to intelligence^ from action that is desire-led and need-driven to action that is well thought out and predetermined. We appear upon this stage of life equipped with needs that demand atention^ and with desires that call for attention. In the midst of this tremendous variety made up of countless items upon which we are invited to act to satisfy the desire to act^ and but few of which can be used, power of decision is gained, intelli- gence, and an ever greater strength of will. By being compelled to discriminate, to sort, to segregate, to decide what to use, what to do, where to go, and how long to remain, increase of mental calibre is gained. In particular do men gain in happiness by being driven to learn to respect and guard the rights of others. To the failure of negative and lazy men and women to respond to life's unfolding requirements, as noted above, and as found on the one hand, and of the predatory type on the other hand, the latter led by their utter disregard for the natural rights of others, can be traced most of the turmoils of the human life. These are, evidently, two becoming-unfit-to-sur- vive classes; two classes being tempted toward ex- —42— tinction; the one by its desire for ease^ comfort, leasure, play, the effort to get something for noth- ings the use of unearned wealth, and the tendency to shirk — a tendency which, in no very great length of time, either kills or lands its victims in slavery to others — and the predatory type, on the other hand, self-destructive through the hatred which it creates against itself by invading the natural rights of others. Individual control of more than the amount of comfortable use is a present wrong rapidly in the passing. Were it not, however, for the failure of the private holder to act as an honest trustee or property manager, and to exact for the service but a legitimate wage (and the wage might be large) community property might remain in private hands quite indefinitely. But in the interest of individual freedom, jus- tice, and progress on the one hand, and the pass- ing of the agressor on the other, the destruction of monopoly is set up in the use. The negative philosophy of India destroyed her independence and placed her under a protectorate. Germany became the victim of her effort to monop- olize or dominate individual rights and direct the conduct of the world. Instrumentally she has become the strengthener —43— of that more highly evolved form in which by not understanding she did not believe. One of the very evident aims of this stubborn plane of ours is to evolve strength of personality. Thus^ in the overcoming of that which assails and its accompaniment of sufferings men become larger in personality^ learn to feel — to define per- sonal rights, to practice moral conduct, and also to use the will intelligently. The failure to construct and protect by resisting invasion is condemned by its fruits; for, if carried to its logical conclusion, it would mean the triumph of mosquitos, bed-bugs, fleas, other vermin, rats and snakes, over the hu- man family — a thing which actually happens to lazy men and women. The legitimacy of self-defense is made self-evi- dent by being established as, not only a condition of survival, but of ethical unfoldment. For moral values, it may be noted, are evidently understood by those alone who have experienced much more than an average amount of struggle and suffering. Men who live most successfully among other men do so with the understanding of what constitutes personal rights; in that invasion must be resisted, but at its best without the spirit of revenge, with- out, as a rule, invasion in turn — that the "other —44— cheek'' can be turned to a growing, moral man^ but not to a tiger, that the pig should be fed on what it can eat, and pearls marketed to those willing to pay the price. Men who have evolved to the love of action and to some power of discrimination can see that there is nothing wrong with life but ignorance; that hu- manity is young rather than particularly diseased, and therefore must, for some time yet, have spells of colic. These warfare pangs, they can see, are the pains of growth; the way men take — that they seem obliged to take — to learn of better things and ways. The evolution of right feeling is brought about through struggle, through pessimism, foreboding, despair, lying and fretting, stealing, robbing and killing. Nor, it is evident, can we safely stop if we would; the lure of desire and compulsion of condi- tions are ever with us; the move of life unless forward, turns to one of retracing the way. It is possible to slow up for a time, individually and socially, to rest in response to the ancestral call within us when too much tired with the onward push into the new to keep up the pace, but after a short rest, we must up and on again. Were it possible to turn back continuously and —45— as a whole the race would move slowly back to the primitive condition of unmoral^ warring tribes, a social form in which a whole continent would serve merely to keep up the precarious existence of a few hundred thousand skin-clad, dirty, bookless, jealous, hating, revengeful, sullen, sulking, fighting barbarians, housed among vermin. Life is moving into ever greater complexity of expression. To use this complexity with greater justice, helpfully instead of aggressively, that it may hereby bring greater harmony of action and comfort can be and must be learned. This seems to be the purpose of compulsory action and of suf- fering. To return to the simple in social structure and conduct, then, would mean a reversal of the unfolding process. It is possible to live the simple life of greater wisdom, a life, sane, wholesome, just and moral, without returning to the simplicity of foolishness advocated by many — a life which if followed would return the race to the forested American continent. This forest, if left untouched, would tend to make warring cannibals of the civilized. There are few things — nothing, perhaps, except church music — that depress the human mind more, that fill it with greater gloom and foreboding than a vast, sombre forest. The gloom-filled mind of the American —46— Indian, a forest product, evolved and fixed in the shade of the trees and by ages of time, is almost immovable. This accounts for his morbidity and for the difficulty he finds in adopting our education and civil life. He has failed to unfold in the shadows and apart from large personal contact. In the matter of its unfoldment the world of to- day has passed out of and taken many steps beyond the tribal condition; but were it not for the fact that some tribes and men have remained primitive, we could never have learned from whence we came. To see this, and also to see that the printing press, the railroad and other labor-saving inven- tions have set men to thinking, to traveling and in other ways to acting, is to have reached a partial understanding of present day tumult. It means that progress demands a more rapid pace of forward move, it has been and is generating energy with which to make improving changes; it demands economic, financial, and governing changes for the better; in nearly all cases, new forms of government. Rebuilding change or reform has been neglected; consequently, the energy which should have been used for this purpose has been cumulating for many years, and of late has sought release in a —47— destructive form^ in explosion. ''Equal rights to all and special privileges to none'* not having been educationally instituted^ progress was obliged to initiate the forward move. And^ in order to obtain material and room for this purpose^ dishonestly working old structures of government^ of religion^ and of ideals had to be largely destroyed to make way for new forms^ forms having a larger amount of working honesty. Static forms — rigid structures — must always give way to forms that are more dynamic in practice. Thus^ the cause of present day tumult can be seen to be a disturbance caused by Nature's discard of dead forms — forms too long retained by men; the natural removal of monuments of selfishness, ad- vantages held by the few over the many, and of jelousy, hatred and sabotage of the many against the fev/. And, unless in the reconstruction, more far more plastic forms, are instituted, even greater destruction looms in the not distant future. To catch a larger view of life is to see that co-operation, in the interest of justice, democracy and harmony, are on the increase, and because knowledge, will power, and sympathy are on the increase. Once more, injustice is self-destructive through the enemies which it creates. To this end our most infamous banking and —48— land holding systems must go, and even now^ they are in the first throes of the passing. For some reason^ we are long in awakening to the fact that the chief value of what we call prog- ress is found in the ever better^ practical definition of personal rights^ the moral part of unfolding change^ and that all opposition must finally suc- cumb to this requirement. The first step gained by the awakening individual is consciousness and a big appetite; which, to the extent that he remains on the animal plane, he can use with ruthlessness, while being held to a proportional moral accountability only. This, very largely, is the plane on which the majority of men, down through all the civilizations of the ages have lived in their practices, and is what explains the downfall of nations. In each succeeding civilization, however, an additional few reach and teach the form of conduct required for the next higher plane and prevent race suicide. To the extent that men fail in practice to under- stand progress, progress slays ; or, beter to say, it is in the law of unfoldment to make all such grad- ually slay themselves through the abuse of the power and the means with which life entrusts them. For thousands of years they have been wading — *9 — through the destruction of their old forms and ex- periencing its attendant suffering to learn to re- construct in the interest of making honest use of their powers and means. And at no time within the past history of the world has this move been so rapid and wholesale in its destruction of static conditions of dishonesty in its efforts to awaken men, as today. At the beginning of the coming reconstructive period^ a better understanding of the meaning of what this law of progress is trying to teach will have been gained — a keener insight into the import- ance of reliability, trustworthiness, honest use, co- operation, fellow-feeling; but the gain will be much less than the most hopeful are looking for. It takes time to evolve into practice the wise and honest use of any power — including knowledge — even after once being obtained. An honest political economy, though many years since written, has not yet found its way into the minds of men through the public schools ; and in order to do so it must break its way through the barriers of privilege, of ignorance, of dishonesty, and timidity. It takes time. The purchase of a machine does not equip the purchaser with a knowledge of its use ; each item of control and repair requires a sepa- —50— rate knowledge^ perhaps a strenuous effort, and the learning may give the owner much trouble and involve considerable expense. This same thing holds true of conduct, of infor- mation, and of freedom; men experience, in all cases, much difficulty in the learning of wise and honest use. In a very particular way does this hold true of words, sentences and money. Since the invention of printing knowledge gain- ing has been a rapidly working process, w^hile the gain of use has been a comparatively slow one; and particularly slow has been the educational and moral use of this gain. Had a sufficient number of men, in the right place, understood twenty years before the Great War started, to what the world was being led through wrong education and educational neglect, this war never would have resulted. This war seems to be an effort of the great unfolding process to bring that which is now working beyond and independently of human will and knowledge within the reach of human understanding and control ; and to drive men to institute in the world honest use of what they learn. Education, in its larger than school sense, as a factor of progress, though evolving into use much more rapidly than at any previous age of the world, —51— is yet too slow to meet the requirements of the moral and the democratic aim of the movement. The passing show would make it appear that the world is not yet old enough to reach a high and rapid pace of unfoldment through education^ for in retracing the pathway of moral evolution the amount of inertia and dishonesty is found to be large in the proportion that the tribal level is ap- proached; consequently^ in the same larger pro- portion is found the need of the spur service of suffering to effect movement — to keep men in un- folding motion the tribal condition is one of con- tinuous warfare and famine. In the nation^ or enlarged tribe^ a change of spur has taken place; longer intervals of peace^ alternating with more intense and expensive warfare. Here^ as in all cases of cause and effect^ many effects follow a single cause^ and the impact of a cause is great in proportion to the initial power^ the point of vantage from which the cause is set in motion and the lack of resistance which it en- counters in its passage to the points of effect. If^ in the case of human beings^ the power of the one by whom the cause is set in motion is great^ his point of vantage high^ his moral restraint or fel- low-feeling of a low or tribal grade, the resistance encountered by the blow in its passage small} the —52— impact and its spur effect will be tremendous — as in the case of the German blow in the war just closed. Hence^ there may not be^ at any time^ so large a percentage of the human family engaged in this Satanic service as appearances lead us to believe. For one breach of faith^ one dishonest act, one repudiation may break up the most happy family; the same may throw an entire neighborhood or city into a turmoil. And in the case of nations^ so intimately today are international relations entwined that mistaken ideals and their entail of unreliable conduct set in motion from high points of vantage^ and by a low grade of moral feelings have resulted in a v/ar in which millions of lives have been sacrificed. The failure of a large percentage of persons to yet realize that in the move of progress there is a moral aim greatly retards^ but cannot stop^ the movement; for herein^ evidently^ resides a determi- nation and the power to destroy and triumph over all opposition. The history of progress^ when read understand- ingly^ enables one to observe that in each succeedr ing civilization a certain percentage of increase in general knowledge has taken place^ and that the same holds true of moral conduct and of democracy ; —53— that with each new opportunity there has also been made by each a certain percentage of dynamic gain in the move ; but it is^ also^ to see the evidence that during the time in which this unfolding gain was taking place it has been understood but vaguely^ and by the occasional man — the law of the process has but recently been discovered^ and even now^ after more than fifty years since the discovery and formulation^ its working is clearly seen by comparatively few. However^ through each civilization^ in successive order, it may be observed, has run the evolving activity of intelligence; and of the three leading social ideas or correlative concepts, mentioned above. Why it is not commonly recognized that all along the way, after a large percentage of failure in the practice, these three have come back into power, with a perceptible gain of recognition and activity in the practical lives of men, is due to the fact that the average man has insufficient knowledge of evo- lution and of the history of civilizations, to see the former working through the latter. The world conflict just closed is the latest and most intense evolutionary eifort; and, while having gone far, evidently, to burn these three ideals into use, will not, it is probable, make the world ex- '— 54 — tremely wise; not for all future time, safe for the best education, for moral conduct, or for democracy. For in the matter of the above three, the unfold- ing process, it may be reasonably inferred, is yet young; the unevolved, unreliable, bully impulsed man, though gradually becoming extinct, is slow in the passing, too slow to be realized by more than a few — he is still well represented in the world and for some time yet will be making trouble in all nations. But the evidence that a long eliminating step on the way has just been taken, is encouraging; and to the extent that this new opportunity to build larger and better fails to secure and protect ** Equal rights to all and to allow the granting of special privileges to none,'* will the next opportu- nity to do so — at the end of a thousand years, per- haps — be appreciated and used. Failure to understand this determination of the unfolding law to drive men into a more complete practice of what they know — a better definition of personal rights or moral conduct, in particular — seems to explain our despairing declarations and sentimental weepings over the present tumult of life. This old world is not going to the devil; it is —55— simply unfolding^ growings and possibly ripening ; the passing tumult is the agony of growth. This multiform dishonesty that runs through all life meets at intervals along the way destruction of its equipment of operation^ in decisive battles of defeat. In each of these periodic battles great suffering is experienced by all concerned; but each time some awakening takes place; a certain percentage of knowledge^ a little more honesty^ some further power of united action and democracy is gained; more individuality^ more self-reliance^ more inde- pendent judgment may be observed in action among the masses. The cause in action^ of these periodic battles^ however^ that is^ during the time of its preparation, is but dimly seen^ and by few. That the effect of dishonesty is cumulative^ they do not see; that dis- honest men and dishonest institutions are prepar- ing a great upheaval^ few know and few care. But the battle is inevitable; for dishonesty grad- ually unfits the dishonest type to survive^ its cumulation of results reaches at certain intervals of time a rigidity of structure^ requiring extraordinary efforts of battle on the part of the reconstructive element to break up and remove — for progress must move on. —56— Some day the above will be sufficiently well un- derstood by men to prevent educationally the crea- tion^ cumulation^ and battle culmination — in both the individual and the social sense of meaning. For in proportion to his gain of knowledge does one find himself able to anticipate and circumvent the primitive tendencies of his life that tend to make for himself trouble ; also^ to do the same thing with the surrounding attractions and coercions of his life; to anticipate and circumvent the tendency of customs^ of conventions^ of foolish and unjust laws, of temptations, politics and religion to engage him in this spur service of life to others by making him dishonest, unjust, tyrannical, false, and crim- inal. For he is gradually taught by experience that he gains but a fleeting pleasure for which he must pay in the end a round price in suffering. Results, both good and had, follow in the wake of a great war; good results in the improvements of form and conduct it compels men to make, and bad results in the wanton destruction of life and property and bad moral effects left in its wake. And so do we find it to be in the case of typhoid fever as well as in other forms of sickness. By seeing but one side of the shield, the benefits to men that follow in the wake of a great war, and overlooking the ill effects that take place — destruc- —57— tian^ corruption, etc.^ — certain types of mind are led to believe war to be the best^ perhaps the only way to human betterment. If we admit that all great epochal changes for the better have been made at times of wholesale slaughter and destruction, are we obliged to believe that it must always be so, that the process is an unchangeable one, that there is no other way? Are men the puppets of fate? Man did not always remain a monkey; must he always remain a fool and a barbarian? May we not believe that the same good can be obtained, the same progress be made, larger in quantity and higher in quality, minus the bad, and with comparatively little expense; made by an intelligently, honestly conducted process of grad- ually improving change — change of both form and conduct? Are we not nearing the time when a system of this sort can be set up and operated, and instead of the universal military training the back-number bully would have set up at the end of the present conflict? Men are learning to remove the cause of typhoid fever as well as the causes of many other forms of disease. In the evolution of transportion, the process is better evolved into practice, more voluntary effort —58— and sanity is here used. Here^ in making the change from the horse-drawn to the self-propelling vehicle^ the horse and the wagon were not first destroyed and most of the children of the country killed as a preparation for the installation of the new. Why^ then^ in making the change from monarchy, the already unfitted type of government to survive, to the more highly evolved one of democracy, need there be such destruction of life and property — why in making the change from a less justice to a greater justice.^ Why, in the change of religion, the forms of superstition, to the forms determined by science and philosophy, forms of more rational structure, do men wade through blood .'^ If it be a necessity, is it not made so by mass ignorance, in allowing a few selfish interests to control and wield the instruments of destruction and slaughter.^ But why, you may ask, this consent to ignorance ? Is it not because men have not evolved to the point of consenting to be wise? The drama of life is an unfolding one, in the facts of which observing and thinking men behold the existence of some purpose. The why of this particular form of the drama — unfoldment through —59— working, fighting and suffering — and for which, humanly speaking, it would seem possible to estab- lish a process much better fitted to secure the same end, no one seems able to very clearly show. There are few things in life in which we get beyond the seeming. Dogmatic assertions lead us into fighting posi- tions which we are seldom able to successfully defend; and in the effort to do so time is used, it would seem, that could be better employed, and in the end we become martyrs, with a credit for this becoming of honesty of purpose alone. There is always a better and an easier way to secure what the martyr would have than the one he takes. Why, then, the martyr? Must he not, at his stage, become the victim of what he does not know, in order to learn what he needs to know; that is, that the best progressive process is one of such gradual educational reconstruction as will admit of no dishonest cumulation taking place? In gaining control of progress the tendency will be to use ever less the wholesale method of destroy- ing old forms first; men are gradually learning not to wait till it is too late to reform without this destruction. They are gradually learning to anticipate social and individual needs in the interest of justice; —60— gradually learning that each item of advantage gained by falsity^ lyings injustice^ each item of power of any sort gained to take advantage of others, whether of money, of a following as a leader of men in matters of religion or of politics, has a price to be paid by the one who enjoys the advantage, a compensation to be made up, as though a penalty; and the payment, as a rule, comes in some wholesale form of destruction and suffering. This Satanic service of falsity, however, consist- ing of educating others with false instruction, and, also, by making them suffer by robbing them — finds no difficulty in securing volunteers ; men and women select the fleeting enjoyment of dishonest gain only because they are not yet sufficiently awakened to realize that they are living on capital borrowed from Nature at a high rate of compound interest, and that the payment cannot be shirked. —61- THE UNFINISHED JOB OF THINGS QHILOSOPHY not only pioneers the way for Science, but follows Science — gives to its findings larger interpretations and estimates its practical value. Science, in its efforts to interpret the meaning of life and form, acts in specific fields more than holds true of philosophy; philosophy undertakes the inclusive or general interpretation and in a way that is more speculative or inferential than demon- strative, it is more of a pioneering process, con- ferring hereby greater freedom of mentation. The well balanced mental calibre, though not common, is made up of the two combined in one. The best philosopher must be, in the true sense, a scientist and the scientist cannot be of the best without being at the same time a philosopher. From the facts of life many philosophical or thoughtfully inclined persons are led to infer, with- out attempting that more extended inference called scientific demonstration, that this life was not set up merely to gain and use the things of this every- day life. For, in the first place — ^to repeat a thought already placed before the reader in a dif- ferent form of expression and in another setting, but that should be here recalled — this transient use —62 — of things does not seem to pay for the fierce struggle necessary to obtain them ; though each item of effort usually renders some service and gives some pleasure^ neither the length of time given to enjoy nor the intensity of the enjoyment during the time seems sufficient compensation for the ef- fort; even if we admit that the possession and use give anticipated keenness of relish^ it is not for long. Furthermore^ we are taught by experience that in the majority of life's possessions wane of in- terest accompanies use; often^ not only departing altogether^ but goes leaving behind it a feeling of nausea. What does all this mean unless to move on — to learn new things^ and find new interests, or be made to do so } That what we are able to see as the fruits of effort is far from being all there is to be gained or lost by effort^ there seems abundance of ever-pres- ent evidence to show; though but fractionally in- terpreted, and by science even. The conduct of life is yet largely a matter of feeling the way. At the time of most of our acts we are still obliged to guess at the consequences. On the other hand, in the art of feeling the way back from effects, either good or bad, to their causes, few have learned much. —63— Few have learned to overhaul in the mind and consider the matter of their observations^ to think either scientifically or philosophically^ to wend their way back to the cause or causes of present dis- turbances and suffering ; consequently^ the maj ority learn but little faster from their experiences than does the young boy from eating green apples. Particularly true does this hold of cases in which considerable time intervenes between cause and ef- fect; in cases^ also^ where^ in tracing the way back, much intricacy and complexity is encountered on the way, as in cases of search for the causes of bad effects manifesting politically, economically, so- cially, and religiously — causes set up in ignorance. Every experience of life, however, whether one into which men are enticed or urged, has a possi- bility of improving conduct. Experience, wisely conducted, entices men com- fortably forward into improvement; foolishly con- ducted, it urges, uncomfortably forward; in stub- born cases it drives into either improvement or de- struction. Through many long terms of experience the effect of human conduct segregates it into good and bad, places it in one or the other of the two categories. By living, acting, and suffering, men awaken in —64— time to the importance and^ also^ to the possibility of making better conduct a matter of cultivation. In the fact of free human will^ within certain limits^ and to the possibility and the opportunity to gain in the action an ever larger freedom^ so slowly is awakening achieved that but a very small part of human conduct has been brought under voluntary control. Evolutionary unfoldment, therefore^ could never have come about and would not now be further possible had there not been naturally instituted in the process a means back of human knowledge and will to construct and conserve building effects as expressed in individuality. Why we are thrust into this environment^ enticed and driven into action, left to feel our way more definitely forward, ever hoping for and but slowly finding something better, puzzles us all and keeps us guessing. But there is evidence herein that we are at work on what may be called the unfinished job of things — that we are on the way somewhere and for some purpose. Though compelled in this life to perform in the treadmill of a process, we do not seem, as a rule, to accomplish very large results. It gradually appears, however, that this process is a bettering one, that it is evolving an increasing number of —65— wise men and improved conditions; we are, there- fore, in consequeence, gradually led to infer that it conceals a friendly wisdom in its working and far more than we can yet understand* Why we are obliged to pass through so much suffering and over so long a period of time to learn that the central purpose of this life is to awaken an ever larger intelligence and honesty, we do not know. It gradually breaks in upon the mind of the close observer, fearless reader and thinker, broad gen- eralizer, and wise interpreter of ever present facts, however, that life is unfolding, and, evidently, in response to some purpose — a purpose that in the nature of things man can come to understand, but only so fast and so far as he arrives at understand- ing through experience and education — ^it is certain that the ultimate lies beyond present human com- prehension. In this move there seems to be guidance to next steps. Plain to be seen is an effort to improve human beings — one that works beyond, and even in spite of human effort in many cases to prevent improvement. But our future we do not know, except by in- ference; looking over the pathway of race unfold- ment, as well as the one of our own individual —66— coming there is much to inspire hope in the im- provement made and more in what might have been done had we known more. To the extent that at the age of ten I was able to conceive^ my present self^ I have not become larger and better. To date I seem to have conquered around myself a certain area of consciousness^ gained a certain power of will and of reason, a certain amount of rationality; but to the extent that I am able to conceive my future self, in so far as what all the above combined and increased in quantity and qual- ity will be like, what other powers will appear to make up the new man, as to how I am to change, as to what my likes and dislikes will unfold to be, what will constitute for me as a larger being either heaven or hell, I do not know, nor am I able to conceive. For, evidently I am to change and be changed; I know that today I do not care for a little red wagon. It does not necessarily follow that because one finds his life unsatisfactory he must be classed among the disgruntled; his feelings may be due to the fact of his satisfaction being but a tentative holding. He may have a vision of a life potential tied up in himself, and that refuses to be dismissed ; a vision of a life transcending this life in value, —67— even as, or even to a greater extent than, the light of our day transcends the one of our night. And while this vision presents to his view a great contrast to his present life, it need not destroy present life value; in fact, it should enhance its value, for in his actuality he beholds a potentiality in which he also sees a possibility, even a proba- bility of realizing; and he finds great happiness in this life in building toward this future attainment. In other words, his present enjoyment of life makes him desire more life, and leads him by investigation to see the probability of its realiza- tion. Life is often called hell. Hell, however, is but the birth-pangs of an emerging heaven. When the idea becomes sufficiently active in hell, hell becomes heaven. To us the working process seems to be a slow one. Along the driven way each learns to exercise an ever greater freedom of will and to direct his acts in an increasingly effective way to self-better- ing ends; while also finding entangled with his voluntary acts ,a large percentage of his conduct determined by causes over which he has no control. This latter part he slowly and painfully learns to invade and bring under control. He finds himself here spurred into action by the struggle for subsistence ^and submits to the require- ments with a growl — lured on by objects of ambi- tion^ he achieves and enjoys the fruits hereof to the extent that^ in the brief time allowxd^ he learns how to use them. But can this be all? Do not nearly all men resent the shortness of life^ do they not feel that the compensation for the effort here received is far from adequate? Do not the facts of life succeed in making some men reason^ and, reasonings to infer that there should be more to follow^ a greater compensation somehow and somewhere stored away for future use^ fruits of effort not intended for immediate reaping^ and consisting largely of increased effi- ciency^ capacity for far greater enjoyment than any yet reached? Do we not seem to be at work on the unfinished job of things^ or the but well-begun job of things? In the move of life that is ever passing before us we behold a continuous but unsuccessful effort to perfect expression^ to finish structure. Has this trying for somethings this unfinished job of things^ in which is included all human effort^ any meaning — is there^ herein^ any evidence of per- sonal continuity beyond the borderline of this life ? Are we not obliged to infer that herein concealed —69— is a strong argument for ijiore personal gain than we can see; does not each human vehicle seem to be a storage battery and life's action a storing process ; is there not in this program of lif e^ though as yet but dimly seen and but vaguely interpreted^ considerable forecast of coming and larger per- sonalities^ events^ and conditions? The majority are allowed^ by the laws of life, to enjoy the products of their honest toil in a somewhat vegetative way, with that feeling of semi- satisfaction which usually follows work well per- formed. But many (by being born in the midst of surroundings from which they can neither extricate themselves nor see any way to control; many, also, with diseased conditions of body and destructive proclivities they cannot manage, seem unable to enj oy the fruits of their efforts with even this semi- satis faction, and appear to get but little from life. These cases, if our theory is a sound one and the law of compensation a fact, can be accounted for. In consequence of a one-life theory failing to render this accounting, however, we are obliged either to drop our belief in justice and the law of compensation, or to postulate continuous person- ality, a rational supplement to which is an evolving personality, a personality reaching not only for- ward into a gleaming future of consciousness and —70— happiness^ but back along a diminishing line of lives toward the beginning of personality. Why^ then^ it may be asked^ do we fail to remem- ber? Why, it may be asked in turn, should we remember? Would not memory retain prejudice, prevent change and defeat progress, the very pur- pose for which change was instituted? May we not suspect that intervals of forgetfulness, in the in- terest of a new start, may be the most important feature of change till such time as sufficient mental calibre, or soul capacity, has been gained to volun- tarily lay aside prejudice? Of what value would it be, in the way of expe- rience, to a monk of the middle ages to return today with the memory of his former personality full upon him, steeped in the religious insanity of that day? Even in this life we are greatly trammeled by our imaginary dignity and greatness ; our fam- ily, our money, our college, our church, our politics, our race, our country, our society — are we not obliged to die to get rid of the memory of these ? As noted above few objects of pursuit when se- cured give the satisfaction which anticipation, while the pursuit is on, leads us to look for; following this failure of possession to meet looked for results of enjoyment, we find the one of a waning satisfac- —71— tion with the use, a satisfaction that in no great length of time departs altogether. Why? If as anticipated "a new broom at first sweeps clean/' this clean sweeping can be seen to be greatly assisted by the new interest created as well as by the new or unworn condition of the broom, for the efficiency of the work often departs faster than the wear takes place, or with the departure of the interest. Especially does the parallel hold true in the cases of young people comparatively free from prejudice. Their rapid growth seems to require frequent change, much variety of life and action to meet the requirements of a rapidly working character-storing process which makes them suffer tremendously. The broom in these cases is not cast aside because its usefulness has been exhausted, but because something to give a new experience is needed; they cannot take time to wear out the broom. These objects of our desires, pursuits, captures, and use, passed rapidly through, one after another, seem to be necessary instrumentalities of our un- foldment; and, of course, each in its turn must be desired with sufficient intensity of anticipated pleas- ure in the use to make us act to secure it. If, however, each item when secured were for- ever after at hand to serve, gave and continued to —72— give anticipated or preconceived pleasure, there could be no change; and without change not only would improvement be impossible^ but both the in- dividual and society would soon collapse under the load of dead forms, or of items gained and held. Hence, in the fact that realization fails to quite meet anticipation, we find established the first item of the means to bring about the formation of the new with which progress is forever replacing the old. To make this change more certain, note once more the second item; this further decline of in- terest in experiences and things of use till it has departed altogether, and in cases where refusal to change continues, a third item, nausea, steps in, followed by suffering. In the move through life, sufficient reward for effort is, as a rule, given in the form of enjoyment, to keep up courage, to make us feel that life is not quite the bunko game that it would otherwise seem — though in all cases this does not succeed: there are many suicides. It is in the law of life and growth, however, not to leave us disconsolate, never without some new interest, something to inspire hope, never without a lure, without some tangible idea-attachment — some pursuit, if we seek it; a stone pile, a boulder, a totem-pole, some fad, a gold mine, a book, an —73— idol of some sort to keep us on the way. In case we fail in the seeking we have a kick coming. And while each pursuit^ each idol, is in its turn serving a passing need, it is viewed by those whom it serves with the eye of faith as a permanent reality; viewed by its devotees so much as an end in itself as to cause them agitation, discomfort, and suffering whenever their faith encounters the least discredit or opposition. All this suffering, through which is evolved kindlier feelings, is indispensable and inevitable; consequently, each idol must be smashed in turn, and in the interest of new carvings, revisions, or entirely new idols and new madnesses. Thus men move onward and upward in consciousness, improve in their concepts; from the stone-pile worship to the totem-pole; on they come through animal-wor- ship, sex-worship; on into Christianity; this they drop and go scooting across the plane of material- ism; once more they change and move into this later-day hope of immortal youth and perpetual happiness as embodied in Christian Science, New Thought, and other current awakenings, awakeners and inspirations of the present time. Some of the above mentioned, as race unfolders, have come and gone, others now in operation, in spite of efforts to perpetually retain them, will —74— serve their, turn^ and gradually, through loss of interest and by making men suffer, fade away, and give place to newly formulated God concepts, through the power of the rare individual to initiate a new concept, one better fitted to serve the next larger phase of growth in the order of its coming. But it would seem that, in so far as any of these forms inspire the hope of something for nothing, of big reaping for little sowing, of short cuts to perpetual youth and continuous happiness, are we obliged to suspect their primitiveness ; so far do they seem to declare their youthfulness as to be structures of a hope inspired by a lack of knowl- edge. Through the pleasures of life and the fact of an improving growth there is kept alive in us hope and action ; through the evidences of a natural com- pensation there is sustained in us the belief that for this action there is a greater compensation conserved to follow; we are hereby treated as we treat children — rewarded for action with things that please our feelings, that gradually we may come to better understand them and their larger purpose. When, however, we become too well satis- fied and lazy, and refuse to change for the better, we are spanked and made to go ahead with this unfinished job of things. —75— NATURE'S INTERPRETERS HOR ALL practical purposes^ what matters it whether we as personal entities have sought this present physical embodiment consciously, or have been thrust herein by what may fitly be called the Cosmic Intelligence? This much is certain, we arrive with a desire to eat and to otherwise act, hereby seeming to assist in a process that soon builds a physical body, while printing pictures upon the blank memory tablets brought along. The moment the individual awakens in life he begins opening up around himself an area of consciousness, and if he reaches the age of reason he finds himself in the midst of a re-adjust- ing and re-constructive process in which he is en- ticed and driven to take part with but little under- standing. For before his body is fairly matured his propa- gation instinct awakens and calls for recognition with an overwhelming insistence ; this provided for, he finds it entailing innumerable other desires; necessities, and troubles, but from each of these items to which he must give his attention he finds himself learning all along the way. What can be the meaning of this process that keeps him so busy and for so short a time? Does —76— there seem to be any meaning herein? If it is building a permanent individuality^ why do we find so few equipped with sufficient consciousness and proof of the fact to stand the test of reason when given to others? Consciousness of a fact becomes possible through the existence of the fact in contact with a conscious instrumentality — brain and mind^ the man^ or con- scious entity. As shown above, men have become aware of the evolutionary process but slowly, down through the ages; in the same way does the individual come to see the same thing taking place in himself, usually by having his attention called to the facts in proof hereof by some book or friend. Not all men can be thus awakened, however, and, so far as the evi- dence goes, no living entity below man. The lower animals sense most of the objects sensed by man, but they do not, and evidently can not, awaken to much of the meaning hereby conveyed. In proportion to the means and opportunities, always spread before us for making great discov- eries and great inventions, and the men to make them, comparatively few are made in any age; few catch the deeper or interpreting meaning of the things and acts of life. At any date, but one man, as a rule, among —77— millions is able to see and to express understand- ingly any strikingly new meaning of that which all behold in common. Most men see and feel much with no high understanding of its import. The facts of life refuse to give up their meaning without effort^ to the careless observer of facts ; the unthinking observer can not be a successful in- terpreter. The task of invention^ origination, and discovery, that is, successful initiative action, is naturally left to a type comparatively few in number, the an- alytic, and, more particularly, to the synthetic type of mind. The average mind has reached but little power of either analysis or synthesis, of separating the elements of structure and recombining them in a new whole; little power, therefore, to interpret the larger meaning of life. Interpretation is a service to men that has always been performed by the scientifically and philosophi- cally equipped types of mind, two less common or reflective types. The interpreter of meanings is one who can see some plan in the show, detect in structures the ele- ments of structure — ferret them out in the different disguises which they are obliged to assume in each combination. Nor does this hold true of chemical —78— combinations alone; it holds true of life forms, biological structures^ social and religious forms, word elements, language, machinery, and mental operations. If others in the day of Columbus saw what Co- lumbus saw, they failed to so express their vision as to make it understood — failed to furnish the proof that gives men credit for their findings; if they saw, they did not catch the vision of meaning with sufficient clearness to respond in revealing it to others. Men who have no power to give to their dis- coveries visible expression obtain neither values for others nor values or credit for themselves. If Lief Erickson discovered the American conti- nent, he failed to gain credit for so doing, as he should, for not making it known to the world. The negative or unexpressive person meets with the same fate as the secretive, the lazy, and the miserly person; they all lose out in the race for fame; and also, we may well believe, lose much in the matter of personal attainment and happiness. He who would monopolize his good finds, fails to share them with others, ''hides his light under a bushel,'* because of his greed, of his secretiveness, or through his lack of the energy of expression, loses the benefit a generous spread would bring to himself. — 79 — There is in the world plenty from which to learn, for all, abundance to acquire and to use, if we can learn not to monopolize, to waste or to hoard. But lack of energy is largely what prevents men from rapid increase in outlook, is what destroys the lifting of the horizon to broadening views from the foothills of life. The failure of most persons to see the evidence that the process of life is constructing permanent personality by storing its building results seems to be due to the above mentioned fact ; resulting in a failure to collect, to examine, and to so interpret the proof by which we are all surrounded in abundance as to understand it to be proof. A blind man who had never heard of an automobile could learn noth- ing of its entire structure, power and use by all he could learn unaided from the examination of one of its wheels. The keenest of sight may be, often are usually, perhaps the dullest of observers in the sense of understanding what they see; therfore, the dullest interpreters of meaning. In a vague way, during all the historical ages, a few have been able to foretell coming events, a fact attributed to inspiration. If there is such an attribute of mind as inspirational prevision, to what is it due.*^ Is it not due more than to anything —80— else to the ability to sense understandingly , and thus to detect the elements of structure in their many disguised combinations ; to the ability to col- lect and so group the facts of life as to catch here- from their general meaning ; to draw from the facts by inference and with great rapidity far-reaching conclusions^ having a large measure of correctness- For this means capacity that comes of expanded consciousness and is due^ as a first step^ to having the mind well stored with facts^ general and spe- cific, and as a second step, to the interpreting power of the generalizer. That toward which the world is moving is always outlined in the move of today, as may be seen by a study of the pathway of the ages. In every civilization the cause factors are at work on future events; to the extent of the clear- ness of vision with which these can be seen does prophecy become possible. But in this prophetic estimate the modifying power of the human ele- ment, and particularly the psychological element must be considered; the haziness of past prophe- sies are due to the fact that psychology has never been well understood; little power gained to say what men are to do from what they have done and what they are now doing. It is evident, however, that man is being driven —81— and enticed to learn to use established laws to build of himself and his surroundings what he would be and have as rapidly as he can see what these are. It is this factor of the unfolding problem that embarrasses the prophet^ this guessing what men can and will do to mold future events into some- thing different from what they would be if man with his will to do were left out of the problem. The length of any particular national life and the heighth to which it is to rise in civilizing achieve- ment depends on the ability of its people to change improvingly in the interest of justice^ or we may say on the rapidity of change toward^ and the near- ness of approach to^ securing * 'equal rights to all/* and to eliminating the granting of ^'Special Privi- leges'* to any; by establishing what they learn in education. Reliability^ trustworthiness^ honesty^ though among all the factors of the human life in its growth and action by far the most stabilizing and harmonizing^ are^ nevertheless^ the most difficult to evolve into the practices of men. The aver- age reliability of a people may also be taken as that with which to measure the probable length of their national life and harmony of action during the period of their stay. —82— All inharmony of life^ small or great^ individual, social, national or international, is an exact meas- ure of the average ignorance of men and therefore of their dishonesty. To the extent that dishonesty as an effect of ignorance, and acting in turn as a cause to set up killing strife among men, and the action herein of the human will, become clearly outlined in the mind of the individual, can he become a prophet. All idealists and philosophers worth mentioning during the ages ; all seers, sages and reformers, see- ing herein the cause of strife, have been unanimous in their efforts to aweken men to the importance of reliable conduct. And may not the well known smallness of their success be due to the fact that men have not yet unfolded to where any possession can be appreci- ated; that does not come by the toilsome way; as a product of work, enduring, suffering; else why the small success of education and the total failure and destructive influence of unearned money or property } It is evident to the best thinkers that individual lives are unfolding. And, since the tendency can be seen to be up- ward, they infer the purpose to be a beneficient one. —83— What man will ultimately become^ what he and his surroundings will be like^ they do not know, nor do they feel able to infer^ even. They come to realize the necessity of proceeding beyond the known by short steps of demonstration^ the import- ance of careful inference^ and of using the faculty of guessing as a will-directed scout. The human mind has not yet unfolded to where it can with specific certainty reach far with single efforts; nor in matters of religion do wise minds attempt to do so; for^ once the religious childhood of men with all its simple^ foolish dogma is left behind^ they can see the absurdity of great claims. Though the efforts of scientific men have brought results of great value^ both theoretical and practi- cal, it becomes ever more evident that comparatively little of what Nature has to teach has yet been learned. Enough has been gained, however, to establish the certainty of an orderly constructive and re-con- structive change, through which life builds for itself forms of continuously increasing complexity and correspondingly higher powers and qualities of functioning. Many, therefore, very largely in consequence hereof, are led to infer that life is moving in re- —84— sponse to some purpose; the culmination, the spe- cific form in which this purpose is to manifest, thinking and honest men realize that they do not know and they leave the claim of such knowledge to men who feel willing to claim to know. All life^ it has been discovered, constructs of mat- ter the transient forms of its unfolding functioning; it has, also, been demonstrated by actual measure- ment that matter, instead of being confined to this plane of sense tangibility, extends indefinitely beyond the realm of human consciousness. With present understanding of appearances, with what we know today, we guess or infer the purpose of life; but tomorrow we should — by having col- lected and interpreted the meaning of more facts, know more demonstratively , and then be able to make further inference, to advance with our knowl- edge of facts and our guesses one step farther into interpretation. Divine revelation, as conceived by men, cannot be refuted, but it may well be ques- tioned; when rationally viewed, revelation seems to come by a gradually awakening process, through human capacity to understand, acquired by effort. Most of the present forms of religion bear evi- dence of being guesses at the purpose of human life and destiny, guesses made during the childhood of the race, and are but feeble structures, serving —65— poorly — except to a mentally primitive few — the expanding needs of today. So much^ evidently, are they the holdings of fear, of prejudice, and of selfish professional interests, as to be considered by intelligent persons too puerile to combat even were it not for the fact that their dead forms block the way to the adoption of alive and improved varieties. The true and honest revelation seems to be that through perception, reflection, will, conjecture, and inference — add intuition, if you please — a continu- ously larger measure of truth is obtained. This lure of curiosity, of desire to know, com- bined with the ability to build and hold tentatively, to form theories and to pursue ideals in an effort to satisfy the mental call, is what keeps men in- terested and filled with hope, while fighting, suf- fering, and learning. Saviors of men — and there have been many — are, evidently, in so far as they differ from other men, the more highly specialized of experience. In their special or divine mission capacity they remain in the memories of men after they have died, and act as ideal concepts, serving as figures on the race totem-pole. This struggle of life awakens intelligence; men gradually learn to improve their structures and —86— their conduct. The evolutionary changes that take place in the individual find their way into the social organism^ here in turn to serve individual needs, and as causes to effect in turn further changes in the individual. Since, however, the individual soon dies and passes beyond sense tangibility, comparatively few can see the possibility of personal continuity. Since, also, the secondary feature of evolution, the social, approaches nearer to a visibly continuous improve- ment, it can be so readily seen, through the pages of history, to be retained as to appear to many to be the only purpose for which the individual exists and acts. If the student has cultivated the capacity to understand what science has to teach, it equips him with some knowledge of the unfolding scheme of life; that is, with a knowledge of evolution. With this equipment in hand, he soon comes to realize that science does not follow evolution into all of that to which it leads by inference; for inference logically followed herefrom leads him to think, and, thinking, to suspect, and to look for the proof that the social organism is an instrumentality evolved merely to serve, and but transiently, individual ends. Is he not, then, led from here to the further —87— inference that personal life cumulates personal ex- perience ; that each builds and holds personality for permanent use and enjoyment; that^ in justice, acquisitions must be carried forward with improve- ment and cumulated; from incarnation to reincar- nation^ or from one form of embodiment to another ? Evolution^ if logically followed to where it leads, makes the above appear to be a strong probability. This following requires some departure from cur- rent beliefs, but current beliefs often prove when examined to have but little value. To question Nature is one thing, and to obtain a correct or truly scientific answer is quite another thing — the difficulties of science are not found in the questions it asks Nature, but in understanding Her replies. The meaning of the subject matter of science has not all been interpreted; it admits of continuously new and larger interpretations. A knowledge of what the science of today has to give equips the student with the means of new interpretations; so firm a grasp of matter beyond present sense contact does it give that he cannot easily question the possibility it holds of furnishing human personality with a new instrument of ex- pression (a new body) as well as the fashioning material with which to gain new and extended self- building experiences, and, the environment of a life —88— in which the character gained through the experi- ences and education of this life can be used to fur- ther and enlarging ends. Of the probability of the persistence of human personality, and its operation within this realm beyond our present sense contact, there is abund- ance of more than inferential evidence for those who, by investigation, deserve to know. But since a firm refusal is a specialty of unwise stubbornness, many will hold aloof and remain unenlightened. Except on the theory that nearly all persons do sense and believe in this more of life, in the reten- tion of personality, this one thing of war, of which men seem guilty, can in no sense be rationally ex- plained. There is absolutely no way of explaining why men consent to be frequently caught in a war trap of their own setting, without postulating either a future life in the interest of which warfare ex- perience cultivates great educational value, or that men have far less practical common sense than the animals by which they are surrounded. —89— MATTER, ENERGY AND PERSONALITY "^F=^ERE, then, it seems legitimate to briefly can- JLJJ sider the embodying possibilities of matter: If — as believed by the majority — soul, in the sense of retained personality apart from present physical form, be a fact; and escapes from the physical at what we call death, how does it, on escaping, man- age to exist and function? Of what is it composed? Does it exist and function as some form of organ- ized energy or through the instrumentality of some form of matter existing beyond our present sense limit? Does matter seem to furnish any means by which present gain of personality can be retained, the matter of another embodiment, different, yet simi- lar; and, also, the means of a correspondingly con- stituted environment in which to continue this well- begun process of personal building? As observed above, it has been demonstrated that the unaided senses do not reach the limit of matter ; in fact, they teach us but little of the actual in regard to matter. The limit and destruction of matter is in the seeming, in the human consciousness, not in matter. Through instrumental measurements, matter has been proven to exist and extend indefinitely beyond —90— the human senses ; far beyond the power of nistru- mental measurement^ even. Science took a long step in advance when it suc- ceeded in proving that matter is neither destroyed nor diminished in amount by combustion^ or by increasing its vibration with heat till it passes be- yond sense contact. The consistency of matter is determined by its vibration; that is^ the rate of its vibratory speed or molecular motion is determined by the amount of heat energy absorbed; the greater the amount of heat taken_, the more widely separated become these smallest divisions^ the less densely is it packed and the more space does it occupy. While^ on the other hand, as the heat — the cause of vibration — departs, vibration slows down, shrink- age takes place, the particles approach each other, and the matter becomes proportionately dense and occupies less space. Matter, in taking heat energy into latency, be- comes expanded; when a certain amount has been absorbed it reaches the fusion point — that is, it melts ; if this absorption continues the matter con- tinues expanding, and when a certain further amount has been taken it has so far expanded with vibration as to reach the point of vaporization, and has then passed beyond human sight or sense grasp. —91— Water absorbs sufficient heat from the sun to effect its evaporation; in this expanded invisible form it then rises and may be carried along by a warm current of air to where^ by meeting a cold current^ the extraction of the heat takes place ; it then shrinks and becomes visible in cloud or in a fall of rain or snow. The heating of matter^ then^ means the absorp- tion of heat and expansion ; the cooling means heat extraction and contraction. This fact of expansion and contraction (caused by a difference in temperature) is one of the great problems of human structure^ including machinery. Concerning the cause of this action^ the unaided senses tell us but little. The human senses take note of matter^ — as ob- served above — in but a narrow space of vibratory motion^ while science (through the instrumental measurements of vibration) demonstrates the con- tinuous extension of matter beyond sense contact, matter having a rate of oscillation too rapid for the grasp of present consciousness. Sound waves must reach a certain rate of vibratory speed before they become audible and they do not greatly increase in motion before they pass beyond the reach of the ear or auditory nerve. The pulsation, however, goes on out into infinity, —92— so far as we know^ of matter, instead of becoming extinguished, as taught by our common sense or ordinary sense contact. But so it is with light; when light reaches a cer- tain rate of vibration, objects bathed herein become and remain visible for a limited space, beyond which, and at a higher rate of vibration, all be- comes darkness to the human eye, passing on, as does sound, into an infinity of matter; so far as human instruments can measure, no stopping place can be found in either case. What does this realm, into which pasesses matter in motion, hold — what is its purpose.^ Why and how are we excluded by sense limit.'* This space of our own functioning is occupied by matter of which we are not conscious ; may there not be herein many planes of such, the substance of each plane having an independence of action, nearly or quite perfect, through its own particular rate of vibration, and having, therefore, a difference in consistency.^ Is it not conceivable that each of these planes could be occupied by intelligences, amply equipped with the means of personal expression, bodily in- struments, composed of the same material and hav- ing the same rate of vibration, as the plane; and if so, would not each group be conscious of the —93— vibrations and^ therefore^ of the facts on its own plane, while being perfectly unconscious of any- thing not of its own plane? Is not, then, much of the possibility — if not the probability — of a future life found in the sciences of physics and chemistry, in which, evidently, the greatest discoveries are yet to be made? In conformity with the above reasoning, then: If that which science claims to have already demon- strated of matter and of energy is a correct in- terpretation of the meaning of its collected facts, it is not difficult to see that you, reader, might today pass through the change called death, awakening on the "other side,'* as Spiritualists say, and by having passed into a medium having a diiferent rate of vibration, you would, nevertheless, have little immediate consciousness of what had taken place. For your new instrument of expression (your body) by being composed of the same material, and by having the same rate of vibration as the plane of matter into which you had passed, would, there- fore, have, to you, about the same appearance of substantiality as the one you had just left. But if this passing be a fact, there may be as- sumed to be a purposive difference; and one for which this change was made. The new field and the new body — it may be fur- —94— ther and legitimately assumed^ we think — would furnish the instrumentalities through which to gain further personality-building experience. May not^ then^ this change called death be con- sidered as a part of all change — a part of evolution^ the purpose of which is the release of the human soul from the bondage of its prejudices^ its creeds, its dogmas, and its ossifications ; to give it, through a new and more plastic medium, and a new instru- ment of expression, a new chance to expand in mentality, power of will, and personality, to grow larger in consciousness and happier?' Even in this life men became very greatly changed for the better by a change of thought, of ideals and of environ- ment. Once more, is it not legitimate to suppose this renewing change to be possible here the moment the law of change is sufficiently well understood to be used intelligently; cannot the purpose served by death be achieved without death? But when one has passed into a new medium of vibration, we may well suspect that the difficulty of sensing back into the one just left behind is quite as great as the one here encountered of sensing ahead. May we not suspect that each plane is a field of vibratory imprisonment for the purpose of protec- —95— tion during each educational term^ or period of soul growth? Are we not functioning in this present limited^ hard^ unyielding environment for unfold- ing purposes ? And when the limit of learinng has herein been reached^ may not a further purpose be served by departure^ by escaping from this trou- blesome^ prejudice^loading school-room^ through the gateway of what we call death? And may it not, if true, be necessary that we be kicked out, and when out, well to keep us for a time, at least, out of the foolish, soul-retarding, attachments that we have not learned of ourselves to drop in this life? Is it not established as a necessity in the law of our unfoldment, this release from the bond- age of our present and less selves, in the interest of our coming and larger selves followed by a closing and locking of the door behind us on our old environment? May it not, also, be further inferred, and legiti- mately that when the art of casting off retarding and burdensome attachments — that is, the art of dying daily, of laying aside a poorer thing for a better thing — has been learned, the art of passing at will from plane to plane will also have been learned ? Anyhow, without advancing more of what may appear, is quite certain to appear to most readers —96— to be foolish speculation^ it is not difficult to see that matter more attenuated than this must^ by reason of its attenuation and mobility, admit of a greater rapidity of change. And, if personality persisits, if the ego stores the educational results of its experiences and goes on cumulating these results through many lives, the dynamics of its move may be assumed to increase with the increase of knowledge rather than to di- minish, and would not, it seems probable, be les- sened by the change called death, if matter is one thing, energy another, and personality still another. This next plane of matter, yielding by reason of its greater plasticity much more readily to intelli- gent manipulation, may be assumed to offer to the personality equipped with undiminished dynamics of action the means of learning much more rapidly,, of expressing a higher degree of intelligence, and reaching a greater amount of happiness than in this one of our present occupancy and functioning. Of course, there is this to be said in favor of life upon the present plane of stubborn material, where building, rebuilding, and education is a laborious process: the individual is here obliged to cultivate a strength of will to overcome, and he also, through suffering, cultivates a feeling of appreciation and sympathy that, no doubt, would be impossible in —97— a medium of more easily yielded matter. But in no ease does he leave this plane of matter as what we conceive to be a finished product^ an ideal man or master; he seems to be taking his departure for a higher institution of learning. May not the belief^ then^ that this present life produces any finished job, and in the human case is the beginning and end of human personality, be due to a meagre supply of information, and to that which of necessity must follow — ^to a limited power of consciousness and of reasoning .f* In other words, may not such belief be due to having in mind but few of the countless number of facts ever before us; or, having the facts in mind, then due to the inability to see them in their elements, or to trace their relationships and interpret their meaning rationally.^ This ability constitutes the scientific type of >^ind : many can collect facts, but the scientific type \f mma can not only collect facts, it can see the elements of structure; it can sort and classify, arrange in groups, and trace relationships with a close approach to correctness; and, finally, reach a tentative, though highly probable, demonstration. It is difficult for one without this ability to realize that there are others who can see in the common s very day facts of life what he fails to see. —98— This scientific insight requires such knowledge of the laws of evolution or of unfolding life as is possessed by few. Few have insight that comes of having a broad knowledge and the power to use it^ the power to generalize, which gives the ability to trace the pathway of effects back to their imme- diate causes; and from here on to causes having considerable remoteness. For only the few keep up with the march of the best in human progress, the successful researches of science. Many have not yet awakened to the importance of, and the advantage to be gained by self-improvement; some lack opportunity, others fail through inertness, still others lack the courage to break through the barriers of convention, ignor- ance, and prejudice, and catch the message of environment. —99— PROGRESS CASTING OFF ITS DEAD ^^^/HE process of human evolution is largely, as V. V yet^ an involuntary one; while engaged in a ceaseless eifort to improve human society, it is also, evidently, making a greater effort, even, to improve the individuals whom it appears to be unfolding society to serve. A practical observer of men and events is led to believe that at present the larger part of human conduct is determined behind the scenes of life, that most of what men now do is prompted by that which determines the flow of circumstance, acting beyond and over human intelligence and will. But he observes, also, that we are all hereby learning that these circumstances of life, acting in a compulsory manner upon us, do so in response to the demand of what appears to be an unfolding law: that they, by bringing continuously more of the hidden into view and within the sphere of our understanding, bring it also under our control. For the process is such that man, in pioneering his way forward, is obliged not only to overcome the resistence we know to be common to all new lines of effort, but in doing so, in his ignorance, he makes wrong moves, which trouble herefrom always tends to drive him to correct. —100— He also dislikes to change and move on^ conse- quently he forms prejudices, habits, dogmas, con- ventions, dignities, aristorcracies ; builds a calcined body, and other static forms or shells, for a passing service, but within which he would imprison himself eternally, were it not for this law of a larger wis- dom working within, beyond, and over his will and knowledge, driving him with suffering to break up, cast aside, while forming new and better to serve. Thus continuously released, to some extent, for the onward and upward move, he in time learns to do this for himself. Socially speaking, then, what we find happening may be shown, by some thoughts paraphrased from a former booklet of mine: At times when social progress has somewhat slowed down by the increasing number and tighten- ing grip of these fixing forms of iniquities, and progressive thought energy keeps on generating within the group, there springs up an unrest among the people. Could all books at such times be destroyed — as just previous to the Middle Ages — followed later on by the masses of men and women being pre- vented from printing and speaking their thoughts — progress would stop and the stand-pat element would in its ignorance soon destroy both itself and —101— all governing and regulating groups with its monop- olistic and bullying injustice. For the law of life is a law of progressive change, a move toward ever greater justice and freedom of action, which means a higher life. It is the freely acting oppositions of life, the competitive conflicts, that set men to thinking; and the more they think, the more do they write and print, aspire to better things and set others to doing the same thing. Whenever through the printing press, then, a larger amount than usual of thought energy that makes for progress has been generated and set in motion within any given group, or when many new ideals have become active, there comes an increase of desire for greater freedom of expression; a desire which, if repressed by conservative forms and forces, manifests as unrest that may spring up within nations, or as hostilities between nations. With increase of repression the resentment and bitterness becomes ever greater, till such time as but a trifle of added provocation is needed to start up some form of turmoil, such as strikes, rebellion, revolution — some form of warfare. The suffering, then, that accompanies the human life, through economic injustice, famine, war, monopoly, domestic inharmony, sickness and crime, —102— they see to be the means by which men are aroused into a larger consciousness and independent action; that only so fast as suffering can awaken understanding and strengthen the will to replace old forms with new, to reform, can the service of suffering be dispensed with. It must be so; the natural action of the law of progress being suppressed by fixed and non-pro- gressive forms, the effort of imprisoned energy seeking expression is causing tension and distress, by manifesting in jealousies, injustice, wrong use, selfishness, lies, falsity that creep into and as is now manifesting in every department of life. It is in the law of progress not to allow this to continue; these old forms of injustice must be broken up, the static condition destroyed, impris- oned energy released, new ideas and ideals allowed expression, and progress, not only allowed but helped to move onward. This move can be retarded; but since it is the action of natural law, it can no more be perma- nently suppressed than can the move of the planets. Progress is yet more the product of a Cosmic urge than of human determination. When the above fact has been sufficiently well learned to become practical great joy will begin appearing among men. —103— This same law of unfolding demand is always in action between and among individuals and in every family^ as well as within the life of every per- sonality. Men act up to the size of their calibre. If the aim of life is chiefly educational, it follows that neither the prodigal nor the miserly under- standing of life is the correct one. Thrift becomes legitimate in the interest of moral growth, also, for the reason that men must learn by building and conserving, and particularly so by using; the second or more rapidly building half of the dual process, the educational. For a single book may enlighten a thousand minds; a dollar, if allowed to circulate, may give access to countless meals; it is a mistake to hoard, either as a miser or a banker, but also a mistake to waste things of use on those who cannot use them rationally. It is, therefore, a part of this naturally estab- lished program of life that unless we give expres- sion to our new ideas, unless, when the educational possibility of a given experience has been ex- hausted, we find another; unless we keep carving new figures on our totem-poles, we stop growing and become something uncomfortable to ourselves as well as to others, often a social menace, as seen in the boy of undirected energy who, by having nothing else to do, breaks the neighbors' windows. —104— Whenever any uncomfortable feeling sets in, therefore, it means that the natural action of some law of progress has been obstructed or repressed and with continued holding suffering sets in; if suffering fails to arouse understanding and con- forming action, death, or the destruction of the form, takes place. The operation of the law of progress is accom- panied by much suffering only because men, women, families, religious teachers, societies, social groups, and nations have not yet learned to use the law instead of remaining as they do, the puppets of the law; that is, they become enslaved and suffer only because they have not learned to release life for the onward and upward move by breaking up its equipment of old shells, while at the same time forming new — for work requires tools, and better work, better tools ; and men are ultimately to reach, earnest, honest pursuit of better governments, with- out the accompaniment of warfare and suffering. The growing process is now painful only because it is compulsory, like all unfolding growth which men will some day learn to understand and make painless with co-operation. Ever greater interest in, better management, use and enjoyment of the things of life, is reached through the consciousness awakened by effort. —105— We have trouble with our religions^ our bodies^ our business^ and our neighbors^ only to the extent that we do not know enough to so adjust ourselves to our surroundings as to meet the requirements of continuous growth and its accompanying reve- lation. Trouble is due to the action of the iconoclastic feature of the progress-making principle in Nature in its effort to compel moves and right moves. The suffering hereby caused led men to infer an evil spirit as the explanation — the devil personification of primitive man. Without this devil or evil spirit — the iconoclastic principle — however, progress would be impossible. IngersoU inquired ''Why don't God kill the Devil.'*" This devil, of man was made by man in an effort to explain the destructive action of the law of progress, an action that will cease to mani- fest as fast as the necessity for its operation terminates. Men form devils and hells to explain and to fit their needs, their deeds, and their greeds ; men make devils and hells to fit their own concept; and ignorant men keep declaring their existence. New experiences are required continuously — ex- periences fitted, it would seem, to lure and drive us onward in the interest of upward growth. These compulsory demands of life should be viewed when —106— met^ and used as friends in disguise, and the desire for further expression should meet and use its op- portunities ; for without these compulsions, without this inner impetus of desire we could not improve; could not leave behind us old clothes, old thoughts, old prejudices, old politics, old religions, and old creeds. In fact, this cumulating burden of old shells and foolish notions could not be discarded without this desire for change, followed by smash- ing and suffering in cases of greed or habit-fixing refusal to meet its demand. In the social form of its manifestation there is every evidence that human beings are moving to- ward universal freedom of expression, toward de- mocracy, and that in consequence every man takes upon himself a responsibility to society of right use in the interest of this move; and, in proportion to his power of mind, of wealth, or of position to meet this requirement. The above, not being generally understood, re- sults in a failure to conform to its requirements, and explains the great trouble that often accompanies the suppression of ideals, the holding of immense wealth from use and the coercive exercise of power: trouble is the effort of the natural law to teach use, and, right use. When everybody has learned to live in the world —107— honestly^ without greed or f ear^ to allow and to help others to do the same ; learned to live^ instead of in the United States^ or Japan^ or Europe, or Great Britain, or India, or any other country, exclu- sively, the great peace problem will have been solved — the Millenium will have arrived. Speaking again of persons, then, have not those who have learned to cast off their own dead ; that is, to awaken themselves with new ideas, to watch, wait, listen and act with the wide open eyes of will and intelligence, in the interest of this onward move toward a better day, reached a very important place in their personal unfoldment? What more is old age than a concretion of preju- dices ? Does it not mean a soul imprisoned with the dead of beliefs, of habits, and of ignorance, by a fixity or calcined physical structure, as well as of thought and action ? Do we not die because we fail to learn how to cast off the dead gradually and keep plastic? Is there not considerable evidence that death solves human paradoxes, takes men out of their physical and mental ruts, pulls them out of the blind pockets, caves and cellars, into which they have run and from which they are not yet wise enough to find some way of escape, by breaking —108— down the walls^ scaling the heights^ or by retracing their way? Is not the change called deaths then^ a breaking away^ a wholesale smashing of the shells of ignor- ance^ the purpose of which is to unload and release, whenever the victim becomes too helpless with his load of foolish fixities to effect his own release? If not, why do we find this call for change, this decrease of interest in anything and everything accompanied by the awakening of a new interest that lures onward to some new pursuit. Why, in case of refusal to comply or failure to understand and comply, does trouble follow? May we not rationally view death as a part of the great law of change, working in response to latent possibilities seeking unfolding release, and beyond human knowledge and will? Why is it ever thus? Why are we pulled and driven onward continuously into these new ex- periences? Why do we soon tire of monotony and find ourselves invited, nay, almost forced by our feelings to seek the variety that breaks up this monotony? Why are we continually enticed and driven to advance unless there is something to go for? And may we not reasonably infer that the thing gained through pursuit of these objects is stored, and is a product ever increasing and always —109— much greater in amount than we are now able to see ? If the onward move of life is to continue on a rapidly ascending plane^ it must be furnished with, it must be free to use and volunteer to use, that variety of expression demanded by environing con- ditions and the pressure of life from within. Even to one who is but fairly able to interpret the meaning of external facts and of human im- pulse, acts and thoughts, the evidence of this is plainly seen in nearly all lives. A panoramic view illustrating this onward move can be had by beginning with the less evolved among men whom we know, and ascending in ob- servation from this monotonous life of small desire and weak expression, going onward and upward through the many intervening grades to that of the most highly evolved men and women, who, in spite of immense obstacles, fight their way to pinnacles of greatness. But it may be observed that though each achieve- ment adds one more item to the aspirant's capacity, this addition fails to make him feel that there is any less ahead to accomplish ; for in the meanwhile new and larger ideals have arisen and call for ex- pression. So at the end of each accomplishment, though —110— finding himself beyond where he started, it is be- cause the number, the intensity, and the extent of his desires and ambitions increase with each achievement — instead of growing less — that he never finds himself nearing the end. He will ob- serve, however, increase in his own power; he will be able to see that he can, with each achievement, do more and better work and enjoy the fruits with a keener relish. Herein is much evidence of an evolving per- sonality and the chief of the two inducements to keep on doing and improving. So it follows that from the least to the greatest no one seems ever quite satisfied with what he is doing or with what he has, however advantageous and enjoyable it may be, no one, perhaps, who does not want something else, and to achieve some- thing further. These small, immediate, tangible and conscious motives do not account for all of human action; in that realm beyond his will and knowledge man was set in motion by an intelligence far transcending his own; and we have at hand abundance of means from which to infer, and with a reasonable amount of certainty, that in the more inclusive acts of his life he is hereby still kept in motion, driven and enticed to cultivate for himself ever greater capac- —111— ity to know and to will^ that he may volunteer to do more and be able to enjoy more. What man has accomplished opens to him a wide vista^ and what he is now accomplishing will widen his view to other opportunities and larger possi- bilities. What he already knows of what he can do — the scope of his freedom to act — compels him to infer that his future accomplishments may^ nay, must, transcend our present dreams. From now on, socially speaking, it may mean for a time a greater turmoil because of the rapid pace; a move which, at every step of the way, is breaking up a cumulation of dead forms and, therefore, of long standing wrong; but when the wreckage is cleared away it means for man greater knowledge and increase of power over his environment. He is, evidently, destined to secure an increase of con- trol over himself, mentally, morally, and physical- ly, such an increase that at no very distant day disease, even, will be a thing of the past. Present achievement opens the eyes of the thoughtful to vistas compelling the belief that a much longer human life lies directly before us through the gradual discovery of the means of physical renewal. Men need, and through the evolution of morality and wisdom will earn, the right — through honest use — to have; they will de- —112— serve a longer life in which to grow character to achieve a larger fulfillment and higher expression of human desire. The evidence that we are moving in the direction of and gradually into a life that far transcends the present life is everywhere around us. This emer- gence^ having for its products ever higher forms of expression and greater individual happiness^ is one in which the speed is being continuously ac- celerated^ even though doubted by the superficial observer. Once more: Like the individual^ and by means of the same law^ human society is unfolding. But the process is spasmodic because it is in both cases largely an involuntary move; the growth is not de- liberate^ not planned in co-operation with the law — a thing which must take place before the life of any single individual or nation can continue for any great length of time without a break of form extinction. Before the life of either can be very long, men must not only learn deliberately, but they must use deliberately and intelligently as well, what they learn; there can be no dishonesty involved, no shirking the practice of what they know, without paying what has all the appearance of a penalty; and which inexorably follows. —113— How many civilizations must yet be wrecked by the dishonesty of ignorance^ how much suffering must be endured^ before men can see that the law of progress is a moral law with an automatic attach- ment of costs to pay for acts even of the least dishonesty? How long before men can see that they cannot afford to pay the price of dishonesty^ that the most rapid growth^ individual as well as social^ requires us to act up to our best every day, that gain of wisdom brings gain of freedom, that honest use of freedom brings increasing wisdom and increasing freedom? But in order to learn not to abuse freedom men must have freedom to abuse. They learn not to lie by being free to lie and suffer from its consequences, until in time even the illusion of the justifiable lie will vanish. Our greatest lie of today, and our most harmful form of dishonesty, is our failure to educate the rising generation as well as we know. The masses are not reached with our vast accumulation of edu- cational matter; in fact, they are denied access to the best of this matter by our infernal land and banking systems. The dead must be cast off and left behind. Whether believed or not, all this dishonesty is cumulating and is an indebtedness automatically —114 — charged up to the expense account of progress^ ultimately to be paid by the social units of indi- viduals. Most great political^ economic and religious changes for the better are made possible through human slaughter and destruction. But since pro- gress has been made without either^ it seems safe to infer that the program can thus be enlarged upon^ and further^ that it is due to dense mass ignorance that a single drop of blood comes to be spilled. Progressive changes are held back and they can be held back for a time by stupidity^ but at a fearful cost. They can not, however, be forever prevented from taking place. Nor does the mere setting up of a democratic or republican form of government solve the problem of bloodless change for the better, it simply gives the opportunity , the instrumentality through which to make the change. Rapid progress can take place only when sixty per cent of those who use the ballot have come to understand, in their unfolding aspects, history, economics, religions ; that they may understand the same thing in the move of today. Specifically, they must understand the economic bearing of our pres- ent land holding and banking systems ; before blood-letting progress will be no longer necessary, —115— learn to cast off the dead or to leave behind the no longer fitted to survive. Not being enlightened^ the many do not know how to secure for themselves justice; they fail to obtain a just proportion of the products of industry because they are unenlightened^ and by reason of their being deprived of the natural funds of their education. They know that something is wrong; they know that somehow they fail to obtain justice; and the most intelligent men know how and whi/j they know^ also^ that injustice breeds anarchists and that growing anarchy always has and always will destroy civilization. Men must, however, to a very large extent, effect their own freedom, and through a gain of intelligence learn to cast off the dead. The cause of the dishonesty that inflicts injustice is ignorance. It must not be forgotten that pro- gress, so far, has been largely an involuntary pro- cess; consequently, increase of wise conduct is but gradual; only slowly do men come to realize the responsibility which attaches to the use of power — political, economic, productive, distributive, re- ligious. When, in the exercise of the power of leadership, the nature of the responsibility involved can be realized, in that a trusting constituency cannot be —116— betrayed and robbed without entailing dire conse- quences^ that honest leadership is of equal value to leader and led^ the time will have arrived of a new day. The lies^ the falsities^ and the dishonesties of life are due to ignorance^ and the decay and extinction of civilizations have been due^ in all ages^ to the injustice hereby entailed. Had there during the past ages^ been nothing to save progress but what men knew^ each step of gain would have died with the nation which pro- duced it. And if the preservation of present gain of progress depended on the wisdom and honesty of conduct among men, it, too, would meet with the same fate. Were there no innate principle of cumulation and preservation of results back of the knowledge and acts of men^ progress, the soul of civilization^ would in each case die and pass into oblivion with the breaking up of its form. But the retention of progressive gain does not. evidently altogether depend on what men know, though the shells are left behind; that which con- tributes to the purpose toward which life is im- pulsed to move, the ideals which make for a larger and happier humanity, are automatically preserved ; and, in spite of human folly and stupidity, are —117— passed on beyond the death of its form by each civilization to its successor. And, may it not be possible, that this gain has been, in part at least, brought on down through the instrumentality of the individuals who took part in the building of former civilizations, that return- ing with the stored results in themselves they are able to unconsciously contribute their gain to suc- ceeding civilizations personally? Anyhow — though the fact is not commonly rec- ognized — each national form on becoming extinct, hds been succeeded by one slightly higher in kind, and each appears and is animated, very largely by that which somehow has been automatically re- tained, that gain which the natural law does not allow the dishonesty and ignorance of men to de- stroy. When enough has been learned to keep the forms through which life manifests sufficiently plastic with change of parts to meet the requirements of progressive growth, may not progress continue without break .^ This, however, requires intelli- gence of a far higher order than has yet been reached and operated in any civilization of the past. All social and national turmoils and upheavals, like the recently closed war in Europe, mean the —118— destruction of old forms, but this safety valve of periodic destruction failed to save the civiliza- tion of past ages from final destruction. Has progress so far advanced as to produce men suflS- ciently wise and free from selfish interests to save present gain by replacing old forms with new? That they did not in past ages learn to do so explains the decay of empires and extinct civiliza- tions. Does not about the same thing happen to the individual when he casts off the form which can no longer serve the requirements of his growth? In the case of both — of the individual and of his society — will not the time of life be lengthened to the extent that, through gradual increase of in- telligence, the way to preserve the plasticity of the form with rebuilding change is learned? For each civilization buils for itself a specific form that, once destroyed, never again, so far as we can see, appears — one that very evidently never repeats itself — each, in its turn, is particular, is another civilization, one in which there is more personal freedom, more democracy, more wise men, more of mutual understanding, more honesty; each is found to be better equipped for action. But, does not the same thing hold true of the individual? Nature seems to be driving and coaxing us through —119— schools of lower grades into schools of higher grades. We are all^ evidently, merely children, and these things of life with which we have to do and over which we work so seriously are but our toys, by the means of which we are drawn and driven into the experieneces which, if properly used, will carry us onward to a larger measure and higher quality of individual attainment and expression, and sequentially, into rewards of merit that, out in the distance, are far too great for our present under- standing. Life furnishes an abundance of toys, material for today's practice — much more than can be either used or understood — to cultivate in us the larger understanding and use that will be ours on the morrow; tomorrow a new supply from which to select, will be found, to continue the building; and in the onward move a new supply will always be available for the building of our stairways. At present, we nearly all seem to be at work on the basement of our structure of personality. It is here, evidently, in this work on founda- tions that we are driven to cultivate knowledge and will, to evolve judgment, to learn to reason, to discriminate, to sort, to select objective things for classification and, for the increase of the con- —120— sciousness it gives. But we are led by much to suspect that we fail to realize all we accomplish, that a large part, if not the larger part of our building, takes place behind the scenes, and here becomes automatically conserved — stored in that realm, the things of which, to our present senses, have no tangibility. Whatever the purpose may be, it is plain to be seen that all life is being enticed and driven to improve and build for itself ever higher forms of material expression. Human beings are included in this process. At first enticed and driven onward and upward like the lower animals, they gradually learn the art of voluntary conduct, then the har- mony-making of honest conduct, of bringing an ever greater sphere of life's expression within the un- derstanding and under the control of the will. Men learn their possibilities through experience and to embody this knowledge in education, thus shorten- ing the road to learning. In this move forward there is an evident purpose, and the natural inference is, from the abundance of evidence at hand, that it is moving, not only the human family, but the individual, forward, and, equipped with continuous and continuously improv- ing personality, onward and upward into a life of higher expression and enjoyment. —121— One of the great lessons of life^ probably the greatest^ is the one of easting off the dead in the interest of a rebuilding and progressive change. —122— WHAT, THEN, MATTERS DESTRUCTION? XN THE activities, then, which make up the programs of human life and progress, many mistakes are inevitable; so, also, does it hold of deliberate wrong. For we find ourselves in an en- vironment and a state of ignorance in which we are compelled to guess out things for ourselves. And if the object of making the way difficult is not to make men larger and stronger it is the result. Hence, gradually strengthened by the struggle, we grow correspondingly better able also to discrimi- nate and to discard the becoming unfitted to serve at the right time, and, with the change, to destroy less of that which is still of value. How much, then, does destruction matter, how fast can men learn ? The facts of life as they pass on before us seem to show that life is a term of practice, a term of school, if you prefer; the world a laboratory, a place to make mistakes and then to correct them, a place to make things, to use them for a while, then to break them up and make better things. To what extent, then, does it matter that in being driven by desires and needs to act, and by torture to think and to act ever more deliberately, men perform with a great deal of foolishness.^ —123— What if in passing through their educational grind much that now seems to us of value comes to be destroyed; what if farms are overrun^ build- ings and cities battered down; how in the present stage of progress^ in which can be seen so much human ignorance^ can it be otherwise; how else can man learn? And what if^ in that realm beyond human control^ the purpose of which we know not^ even continents, worlds, and systems are crum- bled to dust in the evolving grind? Is it not evident that all the appurtenances with- in reach of the human senses are merely external forms, the visible expressions of life and intelli- gence in matter — simply training school appurte- nances? Is there anything permanent herein? Very evidently not. But that the life manifesting through these forms escapes destruction, and with its gain of personality and intelligence continues, seems more than a mere assumption, for it rests upon a foundation of ra- tionality, plus the discoveries of investigators that add to its firmness. Living is one eternal mutability; destruction as well as construction is legitimate; all this material is practice material and is worked over by life (a part of which is human life) countless millions of times. —124— Man is evidently here to act, to fashion as best he may, to then see the imperfection of his work, feel dissatisfied, break it up and refashion. It be- comes legitimate, then, to cut, to hew, to mutilate, and destroy, as well as to build. This matter worked over by man again and again is, evidently, the material of his education, his kindergarten equipment — that with which, in the practice, he builds of himself a higher product of Nature than that with which he works. Those who fail to see the working of the law look upon this tremendous ferment of growth as a disease, and the term they use to describe it is "rotten.** 7* it rotten? Why not view this great turmoil now on and before us as due to the breaking up of old forms — forms of government, society and church, the slufEng off of shells, the discarding of the obsolete, or unfitted longer to serve; and, also, as a preparation for the building of the new } Progress is co?istructive, but it is, also constructive. Must not Nature have, to build her new forms, the material of the disintegrated old; and must she not, also, have room for the fashioning of the new? Is not the accelerated motion of change entirely a product of ideas widely distributed through the printing press? Does it not mean a mental awak- ening in the mass — a new birth? —125— Life^ when thus viewed^ better enables us to un- derstand and account for war. How are you ex- plaining this fact of war? Through what set of cause- factors does war become possible? Why do men allow themselves to be persuaded by a few leaders, who actually know but little, to take sides, to be enticed and coerced into great opposing armies, then to meet and slaughter each other, when they, as units of these opposed masses, have noth- ing whatever against each other ? To say that they are not united is no explanation; why are they not united? Why do they allow systems to exist and persist in which such things are possible? Persons of much feeling view war as a terrible mistake, a great foolishness; and does it not seem that they are right? But another view of this matter may be taken; is it not, also, the way men take to learn better, the way out of their foolishness? There must be some way of explaining why they do this when the facts are before us showing the educational way of improvement to be so much the better. Can there be any explanation, other than that man is more than a body, and that this more needs a drastic, educational experience which it would not voluntarily take, and could not take singly? Can —126— this body, judging by the way men are driven into its reckless sacrifice, be of so very much more importance than the clothing with which it is covered ? If the product of the individual's life action, con- stituting his enlarged intelligeence, what he learns in life, be taken forward from one embodiment to another — briefly stated, if personality be re-em- bodied as claimed by Theosophists and some others — is not this product of experience, constituting personality, not only of more importance than this present visible form, but that for which this form exists and acts ? Only when this visible form, then, has served its school term of experience, or the pur- pose for which it was taken on, by having added to the unfoldment of the personality all it can, does it die, disintegrate, and pass from view. If this be not true, will you, reader, give to these facts, ever before us, a more rational explanation? Can it be other than that the thing for which men declare war — the avoxved human purpose — is but an illusion through which they are made to act in order to gain a product from the experienece of this action that is much greater than the avowed pur- pose, greater than what they can yet see and know? If this be true, then, a fact, there is no such —127 — thing in Nature as sacrifice; except in the seeming; all this that seems like sacrifice is but the laying aside of a poorer thing for a better thing — the sacrifice^ if you prefer^ of growth^ of a continuous rebirth. This life^ therefore^ that we^ as a rule^ view so pessimistically^ for the reason that it seems to a short sight unjust and orderless term of strife is not what to us it seems. With the above rea- sonings life takes on order^ has an evident purpose^ is a thing that gives to the individual a larger justice than we have been giving it credit for doings a justice that is even greater than we have yet been able to dream. When we take this life to be the evolutionary, activity of the Cosmic mind^ invisibly behind and working through visible forms^ pushing life on up into conscious action and man into both conscious and intelligent action^ and doing this on a plan that lies so infinitely beyond the finite or human comprehension that it cannot be imagined, it is an inference having, in the facts of life, the support of a very strong line of evidence. If we look into this matter of life — through the sciences in par- ticular — view it dispassionately, with earnestness and honesty, we can see that this Cosmic mind is evidently large enough to be trusted. —128— To drop once more^ then, into this every day life : there must be in the work that a man does to earn his wages more than wages, though while he is earning them the wages are all that he can see. Nor is he, naturally, ever satisfied with his wages and what they will bring; he is not yet far enough up the ladder of consciousness to see the more that he is getting than his wages. If man is to progress he must never become quite comfortable — this is difficult to see. Smallness of concept is the thing that in differing degrees trammels the outlook of all; we are yet living down on the plane where our eyes are filled with tears and dust, and our senses dulled with the sewer gasses of life. In other words, we are immersed in, annoyed and blinded by selfishness and this ferment of progress. Life means to many a place to get all of selfish sense indulgence they can with as little effort as possible, without any great amount of scrupulousness as to the means used. Life means to a far less number an opportunity for experience, the product of which cumulates and persits for many experiences ; it means the set- ting up of causes the effects of which are not lost, but somehow stored and taken along from life to life. —129 — This friction of life^ this social turmoil^ they take to be but the activity of growth — a growth that is carrying us all onward and upward into a larger, a higher, and a brighter life of expression. Men and women are limited much less in their possibilities and opportunities than by their lack of knowledge and energy — he can do more and know more who will. We are limited by our stub- born prejudices and our foolish beliefs, by a small sphere of consciousness, a sphere that can be and should be enlarged with effort, step by step with work; there are greater possibilities in voluntary education than we yet know. ''The price of a better thing is the sacrifice of a poorer thing,'* the com- pensation for suffering is the lesson hereby learned. Dissatisfaction is not a matter of human perver- sity; most men are altogether to well satisfied; dis- satisfaction with existing conditions increases with awakening and is what keeps men from stopping entirely. Why not listen? There is, implanted within each, a desire to know more and to do more ; a desire to act with ever greater accuracy, with greater ease and comfort and to enj oy more. Justice to man from his Creator who implanted this desire demands that this desire-prophecy be fulfilled. In fact. Nature seems to be awakening man to understand that every legitimate desire of —130— his shall be personally gratified as fast as he can gain the knowledge and will to act, to earn the means and cultivate the capacity to receive. Nor shall the portion of the individual's work that goes to the race be taken at the expense of the individual — there is much evidence that the great plan neither eliminates nor neglects the individual. Why, in justice, should we reap the harvest of the seed sowing of the ages behind us, unless we took part in that sowing.'^ Any philosophy of life founded on the theory that Nature uses and sacrifices the individual to build a higher race cannot be a sound one ; this can- not be the fact of the great plan; for, if the evi- dence before us has any value, a race or a society is merely an instrumentality evolved by, made up of, and for the use of, the personalities of which it is composed. If it be but a theory that the individual is des- tined to survive beyond physical death and to be what he hopes and strives to be, and that his society shall unfold to this end, and keep meeting the expectation of his ideals, it is a theory strongly fortified by evidence — it certainly is a rational view and the only way we can now see to give justice. There should be no sacrifice in this great Cosmic plan except in the seeming, only as it ap- —131— pears so to a short sight; and this appearance is inevitable — how could it be otherwise? If there be^ herein^ a sacrifice^ can the power which planned it and set up human hope be either omnipotent or as wise and as just as man? What^ then, seems to be a sacrifice on the part of the individual is, evidently, merely the destruc- tion of forms necessitated by the law of progressive change; and, the accompanying action, the working of a process engaged in putting away an invisible product for the individual's future use. Must not this be the conclusion of any sound or well rounded and completed philosophy of life? It has been demonstrated that many different grades or planes of matter do exist but one of which is tangible to the human senses. We know that this present experience gives to the individual a product of enlarged intelligence. What becomes of this product ? Is it not sane to infer from what we know that the ego or personality passes out with the cumulated product of its work into another environment of action; and, here in its next stage of unfoldment takes on an embodiment fitted to serve a higher work and larger growth. If, then, the above be true, life becomes some- what understandable. What other hypothesis can be established by which honesty of creative purpose —132— can be claimed^ and the facts of life be explained with any considerable degree of satisfaction? The variety and the change of this life entertains and thus keeps up human interest; this law of change that resides in life^ in force^ and in matter^ builds into ever greater complexity of structure higher instruments of life's expression in every- thing; and this moves cumulatively on from one plane of experience to another in a series of graduations. If this be not true, what is the use of learning anything? And, tell us, what can be the meaning of life? If many, as they undoubtedly do, fail to see that the individual life emerges from the death of this body, is it not because they are not suffi- ciently awakened to make an effort to secure the available information in proof of such emergence? And does not this go far to explain why so many are found engaged in the self-destruction of trying to crowd the sensual pleasures of a thousand lives into this one short existence? Does not this suggest the why of our hurried and uncomfortable condi- tion, our selfishness and dishonesty ? THE END. —133— f Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: Oct. 2004 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESER\MTION 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township. PA 16066 (724)779-2111