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— 
 
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