THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 ERNEST CARROLL MOORE
 
 Sources of Faith and Hope 
 
 A Study of the Soul 
 
 BY 
 
 HERBERT H. MOTT 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION 
 25 BEACON STREET
 
 Copyright, 1916, by 
 AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 5T 
 
 To 
 MARY E. HUNT 
 
 and 
 ELIZABETH R. BROWN 
 
 This book is gratefully inscribed 
 
 1545979
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 "THE most effective and certain deliverance of men 
 from their self inflicted calamities, and from the most 
 dreadful of all calamities, war, is attainable not by 
 any external general measures, but by that simple 
 appeal to the consciousness of each separate individ- 
 ual, proposed by Jesus nineteen hundred years ago, 
 that every man bethink himself, and ask himself who 
 he is, why he lives, and what he should and should 
 not do." 
 
 TOLSTOY.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter 
 
 1. THE SOUL 
 
 2. THE SOUL AND THE BODY ...... 6 
 
 3. THE SOUL AND THE WORLD . . . . . 17 
 
 4. THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL AND THE WORLD 23 
 
 5. SOUL AND OVERSOUL 64 
 
 6. THE CONDUCT OF THE SOUL 81 
 
 I. The Soul's Quest. 
 
 II. The Soul's Dilemma. 
 
 III. The Easier Way. 
 
 IV. Practical Consequences. 
 
 7. THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 94
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE SOUL 
 
 A BRAHMIN, seated by the sacred waters of the 
 Ganges, called to his disciple. ''Bring me fruit from 
 yonder tree." The disciple obeyed. 
 
 "Cut it in two, what do you find?" 
 
 "Some small seeds, O Master." 
 
 "Break open one of them, what is there?" 
 
 "Nothing," replied the youth. 
 
 "Where you see nothing," said the Brahmin, 
 "there dwells a mighty tree." 
 
 As within the seed dwells the tree, so, within my 
 body dwells a consciousness, a self, an "I". This is 
 no delusion, no fancy. While I keep my reason, I 
 am unable, even if I would, to doubt this feeling of 
 selfhood. Of its actuality there is no question. 
 Every one is aware of it. 
 
 Here then, is something that cannot be otherwise, 
 a fragment of reality, of truth, on which we may 
 plant firmly our feet. This selfhood, this "I", is 
 what we mean by the soul. 
 
 Since it is neither to be seen, touched, weighed, 
 nor measured, how can we know anything about the
 
 2 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 soul? I know of it whatsoever I know of myself, for 
 my soul is myself. About myself, there are some 
 things which I know at first hand. The knowledge is 
 not of my seeking, but is given to me, and is con- 
 firmed, corroborated, and made clearer, by experience. 
 
 I know of myself, and therefore of my soul, that 
 I am alive. "What shall we do with you when you 
 are dead?" asked the friends of Socrates just before 
 the hemlock was handed to him. His answer was, 
 "Anything you like, provided you can catch me." 
 
 When a man dies, something escapes. The body 
 lies inert and motionless. Speak to it, there is no 
 answer. Touch it, there is no response. That which 
 was alive, is gone. Never in the history of the race 
 has a human body been known to retain its life after 
 it had lost its soul. The soul is a principal and power 
 of life. 
 
 I know of myself, and therefore of my soul, that I 
 think, feel, act. The body which loses its soul, loses, 
 together with its life, its power to think, feel, act. 
 
 Through nave and transept, and along the vaulted 
 roof of the cathedral, the organ music rolls. Pipes, 
 keys, stops, pedals, are all at work, yet they are no 
 musicians. They are mute and dead. By them- 
 selves, they can do nothing. They are merely ma- 
 chinery. It is the organist who makes the music, it 
 is he who thinks, feels, acts, and by means of the 
 mechanism of his organ conveys his thoughts, feel- 
 ings, acts, to the listening congregation. 
 t^What the organist is to the organ, the soul is to 
 the body. Of itself, the body can do nothing. It is 
 no more than a beautiful piece of mechanism. The 
 thinker, feeler, doer, is the mind, the living person, 
 the soul. 
 
 I know of myself, and therefore of my soul, that
 
 THE SOUL 3 
 
 through all bodily changes I continue, and remain at 
 heart unchanged. 
 
 I feel as if I existed continuously. As far back as 
 memory goes I had this feeling. I cannot recollect 
 all the way back. I existed before I remember that I 
 existed. Of this unremembered existence I learn 
 through the memory of other people. 
 
 At the beginning of infancy, my soul lay in its 
 envelope of flesh, as a seed lies in the soil. Then at 
 some moment in the infant's career, a point was 
 reached when memory awoke. The soul-embryo, 
 germinated, and put forth, so to speak, the first green 
 shoots of consciousness. 
 
 Since that fateful moment I have possessed always, 
 the sense of continuousness. Periods of unconscious- 
 ness have intervened, but never have such periods 
 broken the thread of my being. I awake from a 
 night's sleep, or from the effects of an anesthetic, the 
 same identical individual I was before. 
 
 Now, if there were no soul, if there were nothing 
 more within than a succession of separate states of 
 consciousness, a series of mental moods, each mood 
 divided from the one going before and from the one 
 coming after, how could a sense of continuousness 
 ever arise? Is it not absurd to suppose that a con- 
 tinuous state could be obtained out of states that 
 were not continuous? 
 
 This feeling of retained identity, is itself the best 
 of evidence that behind our separate sensations is a 
 feeler, a thinker, feeling and thinking continuously, 
 a continuously existing soul. 
 
 We are not left merely to infer this from the weight 
 of evidence. In addition to feeling as if I existed 
 continuously, I know it, with a knowledge I cannot
 
 4 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 even if I would deny, for it is a knowledge impressed 
 upon me by my sense of moral responsibility. 
 
 Twenty years ago I did a mean thing. Today 
 when I think of it I feel ashamed. I should like to be 
 able to believe I am not the one who did that mean 
 thing, but however hard I try I cannot get rid of the 
 consciousness that I am today actually the same 
 person I was then. Since then I have learned much, 
 experienced much, my outward appearance has changed 
 much, but I am inwardly the same person I was then. 
 My sense of moral responsibility will not let me off. 
 
 The soundness of this self-knowledge of mine is 
 borne out by what is called "character." In a man 
 of character we have an irrefutable witness to the 
 truth that through every fluctuation of mental mood 
 and outward condition, the soul remains at heart the 
 same. A man of character stands steadfast, un- 
 swerving from high principle, whatever be the changes 
 of outward circumstance through which he passes. 
 
 Here is an example. About the year 1891 a well 
 known New York business man failed, owing his 
 creditors a million dollars. 
 
 "Gentlemen," he said to them, "I will pay you 
 with interest when I get on my feet again." 
 
 Such was their confidence in his character that they 
 gave him a full release then and there, asking for no 
 written acknowledgment, and he was immediately 
 reelected a member of the Stock Exchange. 
 
 No shrewder set of people exists than the mer- 
 chants and brokers doing business on Wall Street, 
 New York, yet they were willing to risk a million 
 dollars on the security of character. 
 
 We may be quite sure they would not have done so, 
 had they not been convinced of their debtor's ability 
 to remain firm and true to honorable principles; that
 
 THE SOUL 5 
 
 is, to maintain an identical attitude of mind toward 
 those principles no matter what changes of fortune 
 he might experience. It is evident that a man cannot 
 maintain an identical attitude of mind unless he him- 
 self, as a soul, remains identical, at heart the same, 
 through all fluctuations of mental moods and out- 
 ward conditions. 
 
 I know then, that I am alive, think, feel, act, and 
 remain through all bodily changes, and through the 
 changes of my own growth, essentially the same. 
 These things I know also of my soul, for my soul is 
 my inward self. 
 
 Further knowledge of my soul I may acquire by 
 observation and comparison, by reason and experi- 
 ence, but this first hand knowledge I do not gain by 
 my own efforts. It is bestowed upon me, more even 
 than that, it is imposed. It is a gift I am not permitted 
 to decline, I cannot continue to exist without becom- 
 ing aware of these things. Experience arouses in me 
 a consciousness of their truth. That I am alive, 
 think, feel, act, and retain through all changes, my 
 personal identity, are for me inexpugnable realities, 
 and they are realities of the soul.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE SOUL AND THE BODY 
 
 As the tree dwells in the seed, so the inward self, the 
 soul, dwells in the outward self, the body. Neverthe- 
 less, while inhabiting a tenement of clay the Thinker, 
 the Feeler, does not consist of clay. Inner and outer 
 are of distinct orders. Soul and body are made of 
 different stuff. 
 
 This corresponds with my personal sensations. 
 As a result of these I find myself assuming that soul 
 and body are in their respective natures poles assun- 
 der. 
 
 Often my soul has desired to achieve some hard 
 task, but my muscles have proved unequal to the 
 strain. The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. 
 
 It is with difficulty that my limbs move at more 
 than four or five miles an hour, while my soul has no 
 difficulty at all in sending its thoughts to the ends of 
 the earth in the fraction of a second. 
 
 My body loses a leg, but my soul loses nothing. 
 After a period of years my corporeal frame ceases 
 to grow. Not so with the soul, the mind, the growth 
 of that, continues as steadily as ever. 
 
 If judgment is to depend on the conclusion drawn 
 from my own sensations, undoubtedly, the verdict 
 will be, soul and body possess natures radically at 
 variance. 
 
 6
 
 THE SOUL AND THE BODY 7 
 
 Soul and body are made of different stuff, because while 
 the latter appeals to the senses, the former is inaccess- 
 ible to sense. 
 
 All things composed of material substance affect us 
 through our five senses. The body affects us in 
 this way. We see, hear, touch, taste, or smell it. 
 If the soul were made of material substance, we should 
 be able, in like manner, either to see, hear, touch, 
 taste, or smell it. We can do neither the one nor the 
 other. Our knowledge of it comes through no avenue 
 of sense, but from within. 
 
 Between the soul and the body there is thus a fun- 
 damental contrast. The chasm which yawns be- 
 tween mental and physical is less easily bridged by 
 the mind than any interval we know. 
 
 Soul and body are made of different stuff for the reason 
 that the soul does not possess the qualities character- 
 istic of bodily substance. 
 
 Men of science agree that the materials of which our 
 bodies are formed are at bottom alike. These mater- 
 ials, solids, liquids, gases, are all constructed after a 
 common pattern to which has been given the name 
 Molecular. This means that when solids, liquids, 
 gases, are analysed, they are found to consist of minute 
 clusters of atoms called molecules. 
 
 All these molecular substances, of which our bodies 
 are composed, are distinguished by two peculiarities, 
 weight, and volume. They are all more or less heavy, 
 and take up more or less room. Each particle of 
 flesh, nerve, muscle and bone, even a particle so small 
 as to be detected only by a microscope, is stamped 
 with these two essential marks of bodily substance, 
 weight and volume.
 
 8 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 Now a dead body, a body from which the soul has 
 departed, weighs as much as a living body. Since 
 the presence or absence of the soul makes no differ- 
 ence to the body's weight, evidently the soul does 
 not possess the quality of weight. Nor does its 
 presence or absence make any difference in the size 
 of the body. Consequently the soul does not possess 
 the quality of size or volume. It takes up no room, 
 it occupies no space. 
 
 Did the soul possess these attributes they would be 
 likely to make themselves felt during the various 
 changes through which the soul passes. 
 
 For instance, there are times when it is empty and 
 vacant of ideas; there are periods again when the 
 soul expands and the mind is filled to overflowing. 
 At such moments we should expect a decided decrease 
 or increase in bulk and weight were the soul made of 
 bodily material. As a matter of fact not the slightest 
 shadow of decrease or increase is discernible. The 
 orator requires no larger size of hat, nor does he 
 weigh any more, when in the midst of a perfervid 
 peroration than when asleep. Yet assuredly he would 
 do so if the torrent of thoughts that crowd and jostle 
 through his brain filled even the minutest section of 
 space. The seething mass would be apt to swell and 
 split his skull. Were thoughts even in the smallest 
 degree subject to the influence of gravitation the 
 sudden addition to the orator's weight at moments of 
 rhetorical excitement would endanger the stability 
 of the platform. 
 
 Thoughts occupy no space nor can they be meas- 
 ured in a balance. They do not possess, nor does the 
 mind or soul, of which they are the manifestations, 
 possess, either volume or weight. 
 
 Since neither of the qualities characteristic of bodily
 
 THE SOUL AND THE BODY 9 
 
 substance is found in the soul, therefore, it does not 
 consist of bodily substance, but of something else. 
 
 Soul and body are made of different stuff because the 
 soul possesses special attributes not found in bodily 
 substance. 
 
 All organic material, the kind of which our bodies 
 are composed, is constantly changing so that there is 
 nothing permanent about it. 
 
 Not only do changes take place in the substance of 
 the brain, this substance is passing away continually 
 and to such an extent that the brain of the man of 
 twenty is not the same as that of the boy of twelve, 
 and that of the man of thirty, is not the same as that 
 of the man of twenty. By the time he reaches forty, 
 his brain has been again renewed, and so on periodi- 
 cally until the end. Each of us is furnished not with 
 one brain lasting a life time, but with a series of 
 brains. 
 
 Yet a man of sixty, although every particle of his 
 previous brain has been destroyed, is able to think 
 over again the thoughts he had when he was forty or 
 even when he was twenty. He has only to make a 
 mental effort and the past stands up ghost-like before 
 him. The brain material of thirty or forty years ago 
 has long since passed away, ceased to exist. How then 
 could the thoughts of this extinct brain have survived? 
 
 The brain of the man of sixty with which he is 
 supposed to think about the past, is a new one, com- 
 posed of wholly new material. It is inconceivable 
 that this new organ can think thoughts produced by 
 another organ that ceased to exist thirty or forty 
 years previously. 
 
 Perhaps it may be said that the act of memory by the
 
 10 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 man of sixty is not really a thinking of old thoughts 
 over again but merely the shadow or reflection of 
 those old thoughts cast by the dying brain onto the 
 surface of its successor, and again recast by this 
 successor, and so on through the series down to the 
 present. 
 
 But in order that a dying brain should cast a 
 reflection on its successor that successor must be 
 already in existence, and this would imply the pres- 
 ence within the skull of two brains at the same time, 
 which is clearly absurd. Evidently the thinking is 
 done not by the substance, not by the gray matter of 
 the brain but by something else, something made of 
 quite different elements, of elements that do not 
 change as the brain changes, but possess a quality of 
 permanence enabling identity to be retained through 
 all changes. 
 
 It is equally evident that the something else pos- 
 sessing the quality of permanent identity, which the 
 bodily substance of the brain does not possess, is 
 what is meant when we speak of the soul. By reason 
 of this extraordinary attribute of retained identity, 
 the soul is able to think over again now, the thoughts 
 which it thought in the far past of its youth. 
 
 It recognizes between itself thinking now, and it- 
 self thinking in the years gone by, a real connection. 
 
 In this there is no self deception. The matter is 
 not left for us to settle. We cannot help being sure 
 that the thinker thinking now, is the same thinker 
 who thought in the long vanished days. 
 
 When right and wrong are in question, I may 
 desire, perhaps passionately desire, to avoid the 
 recognition, but it cannot be avoided. I know in 
 my heart of hearts that the connection is real, and 
 that although my head is hoary and my back bent
 
 THE SOUL AND THE BODY 11 
 
 with the burden of years, I am essentially the same 
 person as the guilty or innocent individual of thirty 
 years ago. 
 
 The soul has other qualities not possessed by bodily 
 substance, but this one attribute of permanent 
 identity, alone suffices to demonstrate that however 
 closely associated, the materials of which soul and 
 body are respectively composed are of distinct and 
 widely divergent kinds. 
 
 Because the soul is inaccessible to sense, because 
 it is destitute of the characteristic qualities of material 
 substance, because it possesses other attributes not 
 possessed by material substance, therefore, soul and 
 body belong to different orders. 
 
 Thus, whatever their relationship be, it cannot be 
 a relationship of cause and effect. The one is not a 
 product of the other. 
 
 From time to time various writers have insisted 
 that mind is a secretion of the brain in the sense for 
 instance, that milk is a secretion of the lacteal glands 
 of the cow, or tears of the lachrymal glands of the 
 eye. 
 To this motion there are two fatal objections. 
 
 1. A secretion is a product of that by which it is 
 secreted. Milk and tears are products respectively, of 
 the lacteal and lachrymal glands, and being products, 
 milk and tears are composed essentially of the same 
 materials as the glands by which they are produced. 
 But it has been shown that mind, thought, soul, is 
 not a product of brain substance, and is not made of 
 the same material, consequently, it cannot be a secre- 
 tion of brain substance. 
 
 2. Mind cannot be a secretion of brain substance as 
 tears are a secretion of the substance of the lachrymal 
 glands, because the brain is not a gland. It does not
 
 12 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 even resemble a gland. Cerebral tissue is not in the 
 least like glandular tissue. The brain is no more a 
 gland, than is a hand or foot, and never secretes 
 anything. 
 
 There are some, however, who still cling to the 
 opposite theory, and maintain that the soul must be 
 produced by the body. The reason generally given is, 
 that thought is a function of the brain substance, just 
 as steam is a function of the boiling tea kettle, or 
 light of the electric circuit, or power of the moving 
 water fall. This functional relationship, it is argued, 
 is causal, and implies production. 
 
 Our answer is, that the exercise of function is not 
 necessarily causal. In the physical world, says 
 William James, we have also permissive or releasing, 
 and we have transmissive function. 
 
 The keys of an organ have transmissive function. 
 They open successively the various pipes, and let the 
 wind in the air chest escape in various ways. The 
 voices of the pipes are constituted by the columns of 
 air trembling as they emerge. But the air is not 
 engendered in, or produced by, the organ. When 
 therefore, we say thought is a function of brain sub- 
 stance, it does not follow that the brain substance 
 produced the thought, the connection may have 
 been one of transmitting, or releasing. The functional 
 relation may be like that of the lens and the light as 
 suggested by Huxley. [Life and Letters, vol. 2. p. 299.] 
 
 He writes " Consider a parallel sided piece of glass 
 through which light passes. It forms no picture. 
 Shape it so as to be bi-convex and a picture appears 
 in its focus. Is not the formation of this picture a 
 function of the piece of glass so shaped? Neverthe- 
 less the piece of glass produces neither the picture nor 
 the picture making power. These reside in the light.
 
 THE SOUL AND THE BODY 13 
 
 All the lens does is to modify the action of the light 
 and so to cause its powers to be apparent to our 
 senses." 
 
 Suppose soul and brain are related roughly speaking 
 as the light to the lens. If it be that only through the 
 brain lens the soul can throw thought pictures onto the 
 receiving network of the nervous system, and so cause 
 the muscles to move and things to be done and said, 
 then the thoughts of the soul would appear to be 
 functions of the brain lens. Still the thoughts would 
 not be produced by the brain lens any more than the 
 light was produced by the lens of glass. 
 
 In some such way as this, the closest association 
 might exist between thought and brain substance, 
 without the one being the product of the other. A 
 writer in the Contemporary Review [F.R.C.S.] states 
 the position thus. 
 
 "To watch day by day a case of profound uncon- 
 sciousness, the body a mere log fed through a tube, a 
 physiological machine, a thing with no more thought 
 in it than a dummy figure, and to see men and women 
 brought to a like state in a few minutes by chloroform 
 or ether, and kept there just as part of a day's work, 
 and to see the process reversed, and the lost owner 
 of a body spirited back into it by an operation to his 
 brain, here are the arguments ready-made for mater- 
 ialism to use with effect." 
 
 Impressive as such cases are, they do not prove that 
 the mind or soul is a product of the body. The 
 phenomena may be explained equally well by a differ- 
 ent theory. 
 
 Theory number one, assumes that consciousness is 
 related to the body much as the flame is related to the 
 wick and oil of the lamp. An anesthetic turns down the 
 wick and so extinguishes the flame.
 
 14 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 Theory number two, supposes that consciousness is 
 related to the body roughly speaking as the lamp to 
 the room which it illuminates. Consciousness the 
 lamp, the body the room. According to this second 
 theory, what the anesthetic does, is not to turn down 
 the wick and so extinguish the flame, but to lower an 
 opaque shade over the lamp and so extinguish its 
 illuminating power as regards the room. 
 
 On both theories darkness is produced, the darkness 
 of unconsciousness, but according to the first, the 
 result is achieved by destroying consciousness, (ex- 
 tinguishing the flame). According to the second by 
 cutting off the connection of consciousness with its 
 bodily surroundings, (by interposing an opaque barrier 
 between the lamp and the room) . 
 
 Is there any evidence to show which of these two 
 theories is the more nearly correct? 
 
 There is evidence at any rate to show that the first 
 is not correct. If the effect of the anesthetic were to 
 extinguish the flame, to destroy consciousness, then 
 when consciousness is restored, on the withdrawal of 
 the anesthetic, it would involve the creation of a new 
 consciousness. Whereas in actual fact, what is restored 
 is a consciousness recognizing its responsibility for 
 obligations, (the doctor's fee, for instance,) incurred 
 previous to the administration of the anesthetic. Con- 
 sequently it is the same old consciousness, that illum- 
 inated its tenement of clay before the opaque shade of 
 anesthesia was dropped over it. 
 
 The deathlike condition of the physical frame did 
 not mean the extinction of consciousness, as would be 
 the case were consciousness a product of the brain sub- 
 stance, as the flame of the wick and oil, but that con- 
 nection with its environment was cut off temporarily. 
 Probably then, the function of the gray matter of the
 
 THE SOUL AND THE BODY 15 
 
 brain is of the transmitting order. It is certainly not 
 productive, and implies no causal connection between 
 brain and mind. 
 
 If their connection is not causal, what is the 
 relationship? Soul and body are very closely associa- 
 ted. The state of the body affects more or less the 
 state of the soul, or at least the conditions of its 
 intercourse with the material world. A state of 
 bodily health promotes mental activity, a congested 
 liver, mental torpor. The pressure of a splinter of 
 bone may result in idiocy. There are records of 
 persons who, while retaining their mental faculties 
 to the full, were unable to communicate by sign or 
 sound with those about them, because, in conse- 
 quence of some sudden shock, their nervous system 
 had been paralyzed. Conversely, the state of the 
 soul affects the state of the body. Cheerful thoughts 
 promote digestion, joyful anticipation quickens the 
 pulse, anxiety depresses the nervous system, fear 
 may produce death. 
 
 In such ways do soul and body act and react on one 
 another. So far as this earthly career is concerned, 
 the welfare of the one depends on the welfare of the 
 other. Intimate and profound as their mutual influ- 
 ence is, may it not be adequately explained on the 
 assumption of a working partnership? Are not the 
 facts accounted for on the hypothesis of cooperation? 
 
 Were this the relationship, we should expect that 
 to happen which does happen. With the physical 
 machinery thrown out of order by injury or disease, 
 it would become difficult for the soul to exercise 
 control. Under these circumstances the familiar 
 phenomena of disease, weakness, periods of uncon- 
 sciousness, delirium, or the eccentricities of insanity, 
 would be the natural results.
 
 16 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 Not even a Paderewski can get music from a piano 
 that is out of tune, so not even the most vigorous 
 soul can get normal action from a diseased brain or 
 body. 
 
 The operator may be there fully alive, but if the 
 wires are down no message can be sent. 
 
 On the other hand, if soul and body be in coopera- 
 tive association it is conceivable that the body may 
 be carried triumphantly through the strain and stress 
 of trying vicissitudes by the supporting energy of the 
 soul, and that by this same soul energy, minor physical 
 injuries and defects may be healed and overcome. 
 
 The question is often asked, in what part of the 
 physical frame does the soul reside? There is no 
 answer. It can be said only that when certain 
 portions of the physical frame are destroyed, the 
 brain for instance, the connection comes to an end. 
 The tenant is turned out of doors. 
 
 Of the relations between the inward self or soul 
 and the outward or bodily self, we learn then, that 
 they are not those of product and producer, but of 
 partner and partner. 
 
 Finally it may be added, the soul is the senior 
 member of the firm, the more important element in 
 us, the thing that counts and makes us what we are.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SOUL AND THE WORLD 
 
 WITHIN is the soul, without, is the world. Just as 
 it is impossible to think of left apart from right, or 
 right apart from left, so is it impossible to think of 
 the soul apart from the world, or the world apart 
 from the soul. The two are inseparable. Com- 
 munication between them is carried on through sight, 
 sound, touch, taste, smell. These sensations are, as 
 it were, the fingers of the world playing upon the 
 strings of the soul, and bringing therefrom chords 
 and melodies. The world is the teacher of the soul. 
 
 About what it sees, hears, touches, tastes, smells, 
 the soul thinks, reflects, reasons, compares, judges, 
 and thus learns in a twofold way, by the world's 
 action, and by its own action. In these two ways the 
 soul acquires knowledge of the world without, and 
 knowledge also concerning itself, its own capacities 
 and powers. 
 
 One of the chief lessons learned about the world 
 is that all things therein, are related. 
 
 Step by step, the knowledge is gathered, that 
 even where to the ordinary observer there seems 
 absolutely nothing in common, more careful examina- 
 tion shows always that relationships exist. 
 
 At first glance no one would suspect any connection 
 between a thrush and a sprig of mistletoe, a song bird 
 palpitating with energetic life, and a dull vegetable 
 growth with scarcely a life of its own at all. In out- 
 
 17
 
 18 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 ward appearance very different, there is between 
 these two nevertheless an intimate relationship. 
 
 To secure the survival of the mistletoe its seeds 
 must be planted in the bark of trees. The seeds are 
 enclosed in berries which ripen in midwinter. At 
 this season when the trees around are bare, the 
 mistletoe is bright and fresh and can be seen through 
 the leafless forest from a long way off. Now the 
 berries, the presence of which is signalled so con- 
 spicuously, are especially suited to the taste of 
 thrushes and by them are sought after with avidity. 
 Having eaten the delicious pulp the bird finds the 
 seeds adhering to its bill, for they are coated with a 
 sticky gum. To get rid of the nuisance he rubs his 
 bill against the bark and thus becomes the instrument 
 by which the seeds are planted in the kind of soil, 
 exactly suited to their needs. 
 
 [W. Marshall Pop. Sc. Rev. March 1887]. 
 
 In a similar way all living creatures are linked 
 together. The several hundred thousand species are 
 grouped into two families, one with backbones and 
 the other without, while countless intermediate forms 
 link vertebrate with invertebrate, the elephant with 
 the oyster, man with the amaeba. 
 
 Among vegetable products, unbroken lines of con- 
 nection can be established between objects outwardly 
 as different as the blue mold on an old boot, and the 
 giant redwood trees of California, or the rose outside 
 your window, and the microscopic seaweed flourish- 
 ing miles deep in mid Atlantic. 
 
 Nor does any gulf divide plants from animals. 
 "They are identical in internal structure and in the 
 discharge of the mysterious processes of reproduction 
 and nutrition."
 
 THE SOUL AND THE WORLD 19 
 
 In the mineral kingdom solids, liquids, gases, unlike 
 as they are in appearance and in quality, are all 
 made out of the same atomic material. 
 
 Furthermore the living is related to the non-living. 
 Animal, vegetable, mineral, dovetail into one another 
 as it were. They are but different forms of the same 
 substance, variations of the same theme. 
 
 What is true of animal, plant, and mineral, is true 
 also of the forces of nature. They seem erratic and 
 independent, in reality they work together. The 
 expansive power of steam, the shock of electricity, the 
 explosion of gunpowder, these, in the words of Pro- 
 fessor Atwater, "can be shown to be merely different 
 forms of the same energy which vibrates in the notes 
 of a song, or expands in the growth of flowers, and is 
 in the cyclone which devastates the land, as in the 
 cooling zephyr of a summer's evening, in the awful 
 rolling of the thunder, and in the lightning's flash, as 
 in the rustle of the leaves, and the gentle cooing of 
 the doves, in the tramping of armed hosts, the roar 
 of artillery, and the carnage of battle, as in the soft 
 caress and tender lullaby with which the mother 
 sings and soothes her babe to sleep." 
 
 The life that pulsates in the African savage, in the 
 brain of a Plato, in the muscles of a prize fighter, in 
 the worm slowly crawling across the garden path, 
 and the eagle swooping to his prey, in the bee hum- 
 ming from flower to flower, in the microbe, and in 
 the bird of paradise, is a manifestation and expression 
 of the same life. 
 
 It would seem that all things and all souls are en- 
 meshed in a network of relationships. 
 
 Scientific research confirms this idea. Men of 
 science explore the realm of nature in many different 
 ways. Darwin patiently records tens of thousands of
 
 20 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 subtle changes in insect, bird and beast. Pasteur 
 spends half a life time in studying millions of minute 
 vegetable and animal forms. Edison probes labor- 
 iously the properties of electricity and light. These 
 men investigated various departments of nature, and 
 they carried on their investigations for many years, 
 and over vast areas, but they never reached a border 
 line at which the relationship of things came to an 
 end. 
 
 "Astronomers are able to predict eclipses, to 
 calculate to within twenty-four hours the return of 
 a comet, to measure the rate at w^hich distant planets 
 far beyond the margin of our solar system are revolv- 
 ing round their suns, because precisely the same laws 
 prevail in the remotest spaces of the starry heavens, 
 as exist here on earth." 
 
 Nothing is isolated and apart. Everything is 
 connected with everything else. Relationship is uni- 
 versal. 
 
 Professor G. Stanley Hall tells of a student whose 
 teacher set him to study experimentally one of the 
 seventeen muscles of a frog's leg. At first he was 
 disposed to resent having such an insignificant sub- 
 ject assigned to him, but as he progressed, he found 
 that in order to understand this one tiny tendon he 
 must understand in a more minute and practical way 
 than before, in a way that made previous knowledge 
 unreal, questions in electricity, chemistry, mechanics, 
 physiology, questions of complex relation in every 
 direction. As the winter proceeded the history of 
 previous views was traced and still other and broader 
 biological relations were perceived, and as the sum- 
 mer waned and a second year was begun in the study 
 of this single muscle, it was seen that the laws of life 
 are the same in frogs and men, and that contractile
 
 THE SOUL AND THE WORLD 21 
 
 tissue of the same kind had done all that man had 
 accomplished in the world, and that muscles are the 
 only organs of the will. As the work went on, it 
 seemed as though the great mysteries of the universe 
 were centred round the student's theme. 
 
 In the investigation of this minute object he passed 
 gradually from the attitude of Peter Bell, up to 
 the standpoint of the Seer who plucked a flower from 
 the crannied wall, and realised that could he but 
 understand what it was, "root and all and all in 
 all," he would ''know what God and man is." 
 
 "All things by immortal power 
 Near or far 
 
 Hiddenly 
 
 To each other linked are, 
 And thou canst not stir a flower 
 Without troubling a star." 
 
 When we ask what this universal relationship 
 means, the answer is, it means organization. It 
 signifies that instead of being a chaos of contending 
 powers, the universe is a kosmos of co-operating 
 powers, part working with part, force with force, as 
 a connected whole, fitted and framed together, all of 
 a piece, an organization. 
 
 Like a fly in the spider's web, like a child wandering 
 in the streets of London, like a small star encircled 
 by the measureless labyrinths of the milky way, the 
 soul is encircled by the vast and strong organization 
 of the universe. There is no escape. 
 
 "We in some unknown power's employ 
 
 Move in a rigorous line 
 We cannot when we will enjoy, 
 Nor when we will decline."
 
 22 THE SOUL AND THE WORLD 
 
 It is the part of wisdom therefore, for the soul to 
 endeavor to learn what it can of the nature of this 
 encompassing universe, that it may know what its 
 own fate is likely to be, and what it ought to do under 
 the circumstances.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL AND THE WORLD 
 
 Behind all things is one thing, and that one thing is a 
 power of life. 
 
 WHERE then, shall we find the key to the inter- 
 pretation of the world problem? As we have seen, 
 the outstanding fact is organization. How was the 
 organizing done? Did the universe organize itself? 
 
 Since the universe is an organization, it consists, as 
 all organizations consist, of parts, few or many, great 
 or small. When we speak of the universe as organiz- 
 ing itself, we say, in effect, that the operation was 
 performed by these component parts, by one or more, 
 or by all of them together. The peculiar nature of 
 an organization makes such an idea irrational. 
 
 On the beach is a heap of stones washed up by the 
 sea. Men arrive, cart them away, and they are built 
 into a house. So long as they lay upon the beach, 
 they were just stones. Now, they are constituents of 
 a structure. Now, they are associated for the pro- 
 duction of a definite result. Together with all the 
 other constituents they have now been made to con- 
 tribute to the existence of a house. They have thus 
 become subordinate to a power working toward an 
 end or purpose beyond themselves, the power, namely, 
 of the builder's will, working toward the end or pur- 
 pose of an organization called a house. The builder's 
 will, to which, as parts of the house organization they 
 are now subordinate, is something other than, and 
 
 23
 
 24 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 different from, themselves, and it is to this something 
 other than and different from themselves, that the 
 organization is due. Consequently, the stones have 
 ceased to be mere stones and have become constitu- 
 ent parts of an organization, through subjection to an 
 organizing influence other than, and different from, 
 themselves. 
 
 This will be found true in every case. The parts of 
 which an organization is composed, are where they are, 
 and fulfill their respective functions, by reason of 
 being subject to an organizing influence, other than, 
 and different from, any of the parts it influences. 
 
 Since its existence is due to an influence other 
 than, and different from, any of its parts, an organiza- 
 tion cannot be self organized. 
 
 The same argument may be stated in different 
 words, as follows: 
 
 An organization cannot be organized by its own 
 parts, because, the part is conditional to the organiza- 
 tion. That which is conditional, follows that which 
 conditions. Therefore, the part, (that which is con- 
 ditional), cannot be the origin of the organization, 
 (that which conditions), for that which is subsequent, 
 cannot be the origin of that which is antecedent. 
 Again, suppose we have the three parts of an egg, 
 yolk, white, shell, entirely separate, lying, let us 
 imagine, on three separate tables. The yolk possesses 
 the qualities of yolk, the white, the qualities of white, 
 the shell, the qualities of shell. 
 
 Now, if we add these three qualities together, we 
 shall get, yolk, + white, +shell, but we shall not get 
 anything else. If we want anything else, we must 
 add other qualities. If we want an egg, for instance, 
 we must add to the qualities belonging to yolk, and 
 white, and shell, the qualities belonging to an egg.
 
 THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 25 
 
 Since yolk, and white and shell, possess only the 
 qualities of yolk, and white, and shell, this egg 
 quality, which is to unite them into the organic whole- 
 ness of an egg, must be sought elsewhere. An addi- 
 tional agency must be brought into play, that, 
 namely, of the laying hen. 
 
 It is the same in all cases. The influence which 
 brings the several parts into organic relations, must 
 have its sources elsewhere than in the several parts. 
 In other words, an organization cannot, by its very 
 nature, organize itself. 
 
 Are not exceptions to be found in human institu- 
 tions such as clubs, baseball teams, etc.? Do we not 
 often speak of these as organizing themselves? 
 
 The exception is apparent only. Before either club 
 or baseball team can come into existence, the idea of 
 them must arise in the mind of some organizer, and 
 although that individual may subsequently join the 
 association he has devised, he must devise it first, 
 and plan out its general scheme, before it can have 
 its birth, or he himself be counted among its members. 
 
 To the plain man it is self evident that a similar 
 explanation is required for the world organization. 
 There must be an organizing influence having its 
 source elsewhere than in the parts of the world which 
 it welds together and brings into organic relationship. 
 
 Behind and beyond the universal organization 
 there must be a universal organizer. 
 
 Was the universe organized by chance? 
 
 Did a flurry of minute particles by accident get 
 jostled into such relations as to bring forth a world? 
 The universe could not have been produced in any 
 such vague, haphazard way.
 
 26 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 Organization implies a look ahead, in the case of 
 the universe, a very long look ahead. The whole 
 existing order of things must have been foreseen from 
 the first. 
 
 The chief requisite for enterprise of this kind is 
 that you should have clearly in mind what you in- 
 tend to do. If it be your aim to lay out a garden, or 
 to build a house, or to arrange a public meeting, 
 success will depend on the extent to which you have 
 worked out your ideas beforehand, on the clearness 
 of your forethought, and on the thoroughness with 
 which you subordinate every detail to the main 
 object in view. 
 
 If this applies to the comparatively simple achieve- 
 ments of the human intellect, how much more to the 
 inconceivably vast and complex universe! Whatever 
 may have been the particular method by which the 
 universe was brought forth, most certainly it was 
 not brought forth by chance. 
 
 Is evolution the organizer? 
 
 Evolution is merely a descriptive term. When we 
 say the various species of animals and vegetables 
 have been produced by evolution, we mean they have 
 been produced by certain natural processes operating 
 according to evolutionary principles. These natural 
 processes do the business. The term evolution simply 
 describes, and so far as it goes truly describes, the 
 general manner in which they work. It affirms that 
 they brought forth the world organization by acting 
 along developmental lines. Not evolution, then, but 
 that which was behind evolution, accomplished the 
 organizing.
 
 THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 27 
 
 The universe has been organized by some kind of power. 
 
 Thorough analysis of any object brings us at last 
 always to two primal constituents, matter and 
 motion. The objects may vary but the result to which 
 the examination leads never varies. In the end, we 
 arrive always at matter and motion. May we not 
 say, then, that here in matter and motion we have the 
 final organizing influences of the universe? 
 
 No, for these things are not final. They are them- 
 selves subject to organization. 
 
 This must be the case, for out of them has sprung 
 the universe, had they been left to themselves they 
 could not have given birth to a universe. Had motion 
 and matter been left to themselves, the whole of 
 matter would have moved toward a common centre 
 of gravity round which it would have congealed in a 
 uniform spherical mass. 
 
 Instead, matter has been drawn into millions of 
 different centres of gravity, from the combinations 
 and recombinations of which, the universe has been 
 constructed. 
 
 Something, therefore, it is evident, must have 
 directed motion and arranged matter. This some- 
 thing, it is equally evident, must have been some kind 
 of power. 
 
 The ultimate organizing power is ONE and not many. 
 
 The laws of thought themselves oblige us to assume 
 a single power. It is the ultimate idea, " the deepest, 
 widest, most certain of all facts." Were there several 
 powers behind the primal motion and matter, they 
 would be either independent, or interdependent. If 
 the former, the activities of each would be wholly 
 unaffected by the activities of the rest, with the result
 
 98 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 of a number of universes absolutely unrelated. In 
 which case, as we should never be able to learn of 
 their existence, they would be, so far as we were con- 
 cerned, non-existent. We should be left in our own 
 universe with a single independent power as its source. 
 
 If, on the other hand, the several powers behind the 
 frame of things were interdependent, that is depend- 
 ing on one another, one and all of them would be parts 
 of a common organization, and as a consequence, 
 subject to the control of the organization. The ulti- 
 mate source, therefore, would be not in the several 
 forces, but in the organization to which they belonged. 
 Instead of a number of powers we are thus led back 
 to a single power. 
 
 Behind all things is one thing, and that one thing 
 is a power. 
 
 Out of this issue two consequences. 
 
 1. Since all things are controlled by a single power, 
 there is nothing beyond its control, either in space, 
 or time, and that beyond which there is nothing in 
 space or time, is both infinite and eternal. 
 
 2. Since all things in space and time are controlled 
 by this power, the beginnings of all things are under 
 its control. It is therefore, not only the ruler, but the 
 source, the creator, the cause, of all things. 
 
 By a single infinite and eternal energy or power, 
 the universe has been created, and is controlled. 
 
 This creator and controller of all things, is a power of 
 LIFE. 
 
 Many have held that the world force is machine 
 force, that the universe is a vast engine, a complicated 
 piece of mechanism, running automatically.
 
 THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 29 
 
 By a machine, we mean "a number of individual 
 particles associated together in producing some 
 definite result." 
 
 In order to do its work, to produce its definite 
 result, the machine must move, and no matter what the 
 motive power applied, whether steam, water, wind, 
 electricity, or a man's hand or foot, the motions 
 resulting are always either rotary, vibratory, rectil- 
 inear, or a combination of these. Such movements 
 are taking place at every instant, in every part of 
 the known world, and so far they mark the world as a 
 machine. There is, however, something more in the 
 world than mechanical movements of repetition. 
 Everywhere there is development, evolution, growth. 
 Combine all forms of mechanical motion, rotary, vibra- 
 tory, rectilinear, as intimately and as skilfully as you 
 may, still you will not get growth out of them. Yet 
 growth pervades the universe, and as it is a movement 
 neither produced, nor producible by, any known 
 mechanical law, it indicates that the universe is 
 something more than a piece of mechanism. 
 
 Growth is a sign of life. Things that grow are liv- 
 ing things. The universe contains living things, vast 
 numbers of living things, from which it would seem 
 to follow that the universe producing power must be 
 itself alive, for it is inconceivable that a power not 
 itself alive, could produce a universe teeming with life. 
 
 Furthermore, there is in the universe not life merely, 
 but conscious, intelligent life. Consequently the life of 
 the universe producing power must be conscious and 
 intelligent. 
 
 At the back of everything is one thing, and that 
 one thing is a power of conscious intelligent life. 
 
 This is the primal truth the soul discovers about 
 the universe in which it dwells.
 
 30 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 Goodness Rules. 
 
 The infinite and eternal power of conscious intelli- 
 gent life is a power of goodness. Goodness rules. 
 
 First. Because there is more good than evil in the 
 world. 
 
 Observation discloses that in the mingled mass of 
 the world's good and ill, there is a predominance of 
 good. 
 
 A study of the newspapers might lead to the oppo- 
 site conclusion. The exigencies of modern journalism 
 require that the story of a crime should be" displayed," 
 while a deed of kindness is relegated to an obscure 
 paragraph. Pessimism is fashionable, and the pessi- 
 mist has been described as one who, having a choice of 
 two evils, takes both. Distinguished authors support 
 this attitude. The world of a Hardy, or a Wells, is a 
 place in which righteousness occupies a back seat. 
 
 Undoubtedly they have ground for gloom. A stag- 
 gering amount of misery meets the eye in every direc- 
 tion. The total of evil bulks large, still, an impartial 
 survey of the actual state of things will convince us, 
 that the total of good bulks larger. 
 
 We must bear in mind, that appearances to the 
 contrary notwithstanding, there is no such thing as 
 unmixed evil. 
 
 Black though the following examples be, their 
 blackness is not wholly unrelieved. 
 
 "An ignorant mother puts her baby into a cooling 
 cookstove to keep the infant warm while she leaves 
 the house. The father comes home unacquainted 
 with the circumstances, lights the fire, and roasts the 
 child. 
 
 "Afireman, heroic to save life, is trapped at the top 
 of a burning building, the roof hydrant of which he
 
 THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 31 
 
 has climbed to open, seeks escape by the nearest 
 electric cable, and is dashed eight stories to the 
 frozen ground. 
 
 "A healthy, happy, young creature on a gala day 
 takes the train that is foredoomed to collision, and 
 for thirty, forty, fifty years, an invalid upon a mat- 
 trass grave, lies staring at the walls of a coffin room 
 and mutters, 'Why?' 
 
 "A motherless girl, too young for the knowledge of 
 the tree of good and evil, errs for love, and her 
 broken life sinks into a nameless, unforgiven, irre- 
 claimable shame, which finds no respite till it finds 
 the grave. 
 
 "A child born without eyesight, speech, or hearing, 
 lives to be a very old person and patiently passes 
 out of existence." [North Am. Rev. May, 1893.] 
 
 While evils such as these are among the realities 
 of life, they are not the only realities. 
 
 Death by suffocation in the cookstove was not the 
 only incident in the baby's short career. Contact with 
 warm surfaces, the absorption of nourishment, the 
 free movements of legs and arms, had thrilled the 
 tiny frame countless times with sensations of content. 
 
 Nor were the mental anguish they endured, and 
 the sickening manner of their loss, the only experiences 
 of the mother and father. What they had lost, they 
 had previously possessed, and they had known the 
 satisfaction of possession. Unnumbered hours of 
 happiness had been spent together in watching over 
 and caring for their offspring. Every evening as the 
 father drew near his cottage, a sense of pleasure came 
 over him, and more pleasure awaited him on arrival. 
 How much complacency he had felt in being master of 
 a house, in slowly accumulating the fittings and the 
 furniture, and what a triumph was his when finally he
 
 32 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 brought home the pretty girl who had become his 
 wife! 
 
 During the half hour preceding his death, the fire- 
 man was experiencing probably, one of the keenest 
 joys possible to human nature, the successful, vic- 
 torious, exercise of physical and mental faculties, the 
 exhilaration of being first in his place as the fire 
 wagon tore out of the station and down the street, 
 the excitement of anticipation, the exaltation of the 
 hero who faces danger and realizes that he is con- 
 quering, subduing, overcoming, all before him. At 
 such moments the breath of heaven is on his brow. 
 
 At each instant of her existence up to the time of 
 the collision, the "healthy, happy, young creature" 
 was enjoying health, happiness, and youth. Even in 
 the long subsequent years no day passed without 
 some gleam of sunshine. A welcome visitor, a sym- 
 pathetic friend, a fragrant cup of tea, a new and 
 fascinating story, the lighting of the lamps, and 
 blessed intervals when pain was stilled. 
 
 All the after sufferings of the motherless girl grew 
 out of an ecstasy, out of an excess of unregulated joy, 
 and among the bitter after-sufferings there were the 
 delights of adornment, and of dress, devoted friend- 
 ships with others as unfortunate as herself, friend- 
 ships which lasted till the end, mutual charities, the 
 pleasures of a good meal, and later on, the solace of 
 drink. Even in the hospital, in the final weeks of 
 gathering feebleness, there was the sense of being 
 the centre of attention, and the comfort of long 
 unaccustomed cleanliness, renewed. 
 
 To the child born blind, and deaf, and dumb, mere 
 existence means not only blindness, deafness, and the 
 inability to speak, but also the daily repeated satis- 
 faction of assimilation, of digestion, and of appetite
 
 THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 33 
 
 appeased. Pleasure came as well, from the harmoni- 
 ous sensation of things soft and smooth, the con- 
 sciousness of perfume and of taste. Never having 
 known sight, or hearing, it is difficult to understand 
 how they could be missed, or how the want of them 
 could be felt as an evil. That when age came, he 
 passed patiently away, is evidence of experiences 
 which at least made life endurable. 
 
 Here then is a second class of actualities, and this 
 class has one quality in common. All these things, 
 namely appetite appeased, freedom, content, affec- 
 tion, pride in achievement, exultation, successful 
 activity, health, youth, friendship, delightful tastes 
 and smells, are good. 
 
 Furthermore, not only is all evil mingled with good, 
 but in certain circumstances the evil appears greater 
 than it is. While all is not gold that glitters, neither 
 is all that looks like suffering wholly painful. 
 
 C. A. Benson tells of a man who in his mature 
 years lost his sight. To outward seeming his state 
 was one of unrelieved misery, yet a closer acquaint- 
 ance disclosed an existence of extraordinary richness, 
 and undreamed of joy. 
 
 Most people can multiply such instances out of 
 their own experiences. 
 
 One would think there would be little to mitigate 
 the situation in which a man finds himself when in 
 the power of a fierce and savage animal. Yet such 
 evidence as we possess indicates that the situation 
 is not quite so bad as it looks. 
 
 "It is curious," writes Lord Playfair [Memoirs 
 p. 374] "that there are two people here, the Turkish 
 Ambassador Rustem Pasha, and Sir Edward Brad- 
 ford, who have been maimed by wild beasts. The 
 latter had the whole of his left arm up to the elbow
 
 34 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 joint munched by a tiger, and the Turkish Ambassa- 
 dor has half the right hand and part of his left, torn 
 away by a bear. Both tell me that they felt no pain 
 during the mutilation, and they suppose that their 
 intense desire to defend themselves prevented them 
 from feeling pain. Livingstone, the African traveller, 
 told me the same thing, that when his arm was 
 munched by a lion he could not recollect suffering 
 any pain." 
 
 What in appearance could be more agonizing and 
 utterly miserable, than the situation of a wounded 
 soldier left without medical aid on the battle field? 
 Lieut.' Sakurai of the Japanese army, had his right 
 leg broken and both arms shot through, at one of the 
 assaults on Fort Arthur, and remained on the sun 
 scorched slopes for two days and nights. Yet so long 
 as he continued under nature's kindly care he suffered 
 little. The pain began, he writes, only when human 
 methods were brought to bear. 
 
 " I did not feel any pain at all during the two days 
 I was lying on the field, but oh! the pain I began to 
 feel when I was taken to first aid, and bandaged, the 
 agony I then felt was so great that I wished I had 
 died on the field." 
 
 Mrs. Oliphant thus describes the Putney hospital 
 for incurables. 
 
 "Someone has called this place the palace of pain. 
 I do not doubt the truth of the title. Yet I have 
 gone through the greater part of these rooms filled 
 with indescribable aches and sufferings, that are with- 
 out hope in this world, and I have found nothing but 
 a patient quietness, a great tranquility, a peace, that 
 fills the careless spectator coming in out of the fresh 
 air, out of the sunshiny world where everything is 
 rejoicing in life and strength and the radiance of the
 
 THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 35 
 
 morning, with awe and respectful reverence. Some 
 of these poor people are never free from pain, some are 
 subject to periodic paroxysms of anguish, one scarce 
 over before another begins, many are helpless and 
 cannot move at all even by the nurse's aid, and yet 
 there is peace breathing all around us, a composed 
 and mild endurance often accompanied with smiles, 
 scarcely ever with a countenance of gloom. An 
 atmosphere of cheerfulness fills like sunshine the 
 quiet chambers. What struggles there may be in 
 lonely hearts and tortured bodies, it is not ours to 
 enquire. Such struggles there must be, or the suf- 
 ferers would be more than human. But we can see 
 only patience and peace. This is more wonderful 
 than the pain and far less comprehensible. Our 
 hearts cry out for them as we pass from one bed of 
 anguish ,to another, but from these beds there rise 
 no cries. 
 
 All is tranquility, patience, a great quietness. The 
 palace of pain is also the House of Peace." 
 
 See the accounts of the Messina earthquake, by 
 Professor Lombroso and Mr. Robert Hichins (too 
 long for quotation here). They relate instance after 
 instance in which, although the outward circumstance 
 indicated terrible agonies, no agonies were felt. 
 
 Let any one inclined to the view that misery out- 
 balances happiness, read the letters of R. L. Stevenson, 
 himself a life long invalid; especially vol. 1, pp. 437- 
 442. 
 
 The foregoing considerations bring home to us, that 
 in attempting to arrive at a just estimate of their 
 relative proportions, we should bear in mind, that 
 while it may be possible to exaggerate the amount 
 of good in any situation, it is also possible to exag- 
 gerate the amount of evil. Moreover, a considerable
 
 36 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 amount of the pain we encounter makes for our wel- 
 fare. 
 
 a. The agonies of the operating theater, the hos- 
 pital, and the dental chair, excruciating as these in 
 themselves may be, tend to conditions of comfort 
 and freedom from pain. 
 
 b. Various forms of suffering lead to a strengthen- 
 ing of character. 
 
 "There is some soul of goodness in things evil 
 Would men observingly distil it out." 
 
 On many occasions men do distil it out. Poets learn 
 in suffering what they teach in song. Not until the 
 death of Arthur Hallam had wrought upon the mind 
 and heart of Tennyson, was "In Memoriam" pro- 
 duced. Hawthorne's genius grew in narrow and sor- 
 rowful surroundings, we must believe in large measure 
 because of those surroundings, and brought forth some 
 of the most delicate and original literary work yet 
 produced on this side of the Atlantic. Had Thackeray 
 not lost his fortune, he might never have been more 
 than an amateur art critic. Josiah Wedgewood's leg is 
 amputated, and he can no longer stand at the potter's 
 wheel. The enforced leisure liberates his mind, and 
 he invents the Wedge wood ware. Speaking of his 
 hard life as a tutor in Richmond, Channing said, 
 "I look back on those days of loneliness and frequent 
 gloom, with thankfulness." Is it not sorrow that 
 gives us our capacity for laughter? 
 
 "Alas by some degree of woe 
 We every bliss must gain, 
 The heart can ne'er a transport know 
 That never felt a pain."
 
 THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 37 
 
 c. We benefit by all sacrificial suffering. Not be- 
 cause pain is itself good, but because only through 
 pain can the highest happiness be reached. James 
 Hilton affirms that to make the most excruciating 
 tortures tolerable, it is only necessary that the sufferer 
 should be convinced that he suffers for a worthy end. 
 
 "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." 
 
 A child dies of diphtheria. Who notices the obscure 
 and common ending of his life? A Dr. Rabbeth dies 
 of the same disease, as a result of attempting to save 
 the child by sucking the poison from the patient's 
 throat, and we place a tablet to his memory. 
 
 "It should be the aim of social advance to reduce 
 as much as possible, all pain that is not sacrifice, in 
 order that sacrificial pain may shine forth as the 
 crowning glory to which character can attain." 
 
 To sum up. In no case is evil unmixed. In cer- 
 tain cases it appears greater than it actually is. A 
 good deal of pain, if not itself beneficial, leads to 
 benefit. Finally, it is only through suffering, the 
 suffering of sacrifice, that human nature can reach 
 the highest levels of its possible development. 
 
 In judging the situation ought we not to take these 
 considerations into account? If we do take them 
 into account, though a formidable volume of evil 
 remains, is there real ground for thinking it can be 
 as large, or anything like as large, as the total amount 
 of good? That good outweighs evil, is indicated 
 further, by the continued existence of societies of 
 human beings. 
 
 Society implies the rule of morality. The mortar 
 which holds the social edifice together is composed 
 of the ten commandments. Even primitive society, 
 even the tribes of central Africa, hold together only in
 
 38 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 so far as they compel a reasonable observance of these 
 principles, 
 
 As almost the entire surface of the globe is occupied 
 by people who are organized into social communities, 
 resting on a basis of social morality, it seems clear 
 that however large the amount of depravity in these 
 communities, goodness preponderates. 
 
 The vast majority of those with whom we come in 
 contact are respectable people. While their virtue 
 may not be of a shining quality, it outweighs their 
 vice sufficiently to give them the stamp of decent 
 folk, and among this predominating mass of mediocre 
 goodness, there are more saints and heroes than is 
 sometimes imagined. 
 
 The fireman, ready to dash into the flames. The 
 policeman, courting danger and death in his daily 
 round of duty. The life-boat sailors, who face 
 appalling storms. The locomotive engineer, who with 
 steady nerve and lion heart, stays with a sure hand 
 the destruction which threatens his human freight. 
 The trained nurse, who runs a thousand risks. The 
 physician, who goes with equanimity where deadly 
 diseases lurk. In the slums, a host of consecrated 
 workers spend unnoticed lives among the miserable 
 and the poor. In countless obscure homes there are 
 women whose quiet existence is a blessing to all 
 around them, and men untrumpeted by fame who are 
 models of courage and chivalrous devotion. 
 
 The predominance of good is corroborated by the 
 fact that most of us regard life as our supreme pos- 
 session. Whatever the exceptional man may do, 
 the average man enjoys himself to an extent that 
 causes him to set a high value on existence. Many 
 of us are handicapped with disabilities, mental, 
 bodily, material, nevertheless we are not willing to
 
 THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 39 
 
 give up the ghost. We are not longing for the end to 
 come. We take many precautions to stave off the 
 end. We try to hide the appearance of age, we dread 
 to see the first gray hairs. 
 
 If life be good to the average man; if, that is, the 
 average life be good, it can only be because there is 
 a preponderance of good in life as a whole. 
 
 Although the preponderance of good be true of 
 the human race, does not the ceaseless struggle for 
 existence forbid the idea of its being true of the 
 animal world? 
 
 The marks of nature's cruelty and treachery are 
 plain on every hand, she is "red in tooth and claw," 
 we are told. "Every robin chirping on the holly", 
 writes Frances Power Cobbe, "has been a parricide, 
 every cuckoo filling the April woods with soft sound, 
 has been a fratricide." 
 
 "What terrible and prolonged agony, what tortur- 
 ing suspense," exclaims Huxley, "must the deer 
 suffer pursued by the wolf. He feels the enemy is 
 gaining on him with every step, that a fearful death is 
 slowly but surely drawing near." 
 
 " Few sights are more calculated to stir the sympa- 
 thetic breast than the writhings of the cloven worm. 
 If any creature, lacking a voice, yet proclaimed to 
 heaven its agony, this is it." 
 
 In order to subserve some remote advantage to the 
 _race, nature sacrifices ruthlessly millions of lives. 
 
 All this sounds tragical enough, but on what does 
 it rest? The sole ground for assuming that animals 
 suffer in the way described, is that their feelings are the 
 same as ours. For such an assumption there is not 
 the slightest evidence. To speak of robins and cuckoos 
 as parricides and fratricides, may be rhetoric, but is 
 certainly not truth. The terms are applicable only
 
 40 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 to those who, knowing what death is, and knowing the 
 significance and sacredness of fatherhood and brother- 
 hood, and knowing also that murder is a sin, do not- 
 withstanding, slay father and brother. Who will 
 affirm that even one of these conditions exists in the 
 case of robins and cuckoos? That the deer makes 
 strenuous efforts to escape the wolf, does not prove 
 that the deer is aware of, and anticipates with horror, 
 its impending doom. Any one who has tried to catch 
 a skittish colt, or a young Texas steer, on the unfenced 
 prairie, knows that they will make an equally des- 
 perate effort to escape, whether your object be to send 
 them to the butcher, or to give them a feed of corn in 
 a comfortable stable. 
 
 "We must keep in mind that these creatures while 
 endowed with more than man's quickness of eye and 
 ear, have infinitely less than man's powers of imagin- 
 ation. That the tenants of the land and water 
 flourish exceedingly, notwithstanding their constant 
 liability to attack by enemies, proves that they endure 
 none of the mental agonies to which we under like 
 conditions should be subject, but pass their lives in 
 unsuspecting enjoyment. Instead of sending forth 
 her children to be ever harrassed by painful appre- 
 hensions, nature weaves for them a protective mantle 
 of mimicry, and weak things wear their fears in mani- 
 fold broidery of plumage, and hair, and scale, upon 
 their backs, instead of in their hearts." 
 
 [H. H. Higgens.] 
 
 As for the cloven worm, a recent writer remarks, 
 "I suspect a good deal of sympathy has been wasted 
 on the cloven worm. I am led to this opinion by the 
 heartless conduct of the front end, which usually 
 disappears down the hole. While the hinder part is
 
 THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 41 
 
 enduring the tortures of the rack, the other part 
 exhibits about as much discomfort or concern as the 
 end of a freight train which has broken a coupling. 
 Now, it may be, that one end of an earth worm is a 
 delicate high-strung creature, and the other a cal- 
 loused brute. It is however very much more likely 
 that neither half has the least suspicion that any- 
 thing is wrong. The front end crawls off, because it 
 is a front end and can crawl. The rear end, lacking 
 the usual attachment, can only go through the mo- 
 tions of dragging itself up to the advancing front. 
 There is really not the least evidence that the mental 
 states of the worm, if it had any, are in the least 
 degree altered, when it is cut in two, or strung on a 
 hook. It would be possible to multiply indefinitely 
 anecdotes of animals showing their indifference to 
 pain. We are apt to forget that in spite of evolution, 
 there is still, between ourselves and the lower animals 
 a great gulf fixed. Whatever may have bridged that 
 gulf once, the gulf is there now, and we only make 
 ourselves ridiculous when we refuse to see it." 
 
 [E. T. Brewster.] 
 
 " I feel sure, " says Alfred Russell Wallace, "that the 
 appearance of pain in the lower animals is often 
 deceptive. The only true guide to the evolutionist, 
 is a full and careful consideration of the amount of 
 necessity there exists in each group for pain sensation 
 to have been developed. 
 
 "It depends fundamentally on utilities of life saving 
 value, as required for the continuance of the race. 
 Failure to take this into consideration results in the 
 ludicrously exaggerated view, adopted by men of 
 such calm judgment as Huxley, a view, almost as
 
 43 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 far removed from fact or science, as the purely 
 imaginary dogma of the poet, 
 
 "The poor beetle that we tread upon 
 In corporal sufference feels a pang as great 
 As when a giant dies." 
 
 "Whatever the giant may feel, if the theory of 
 evolution be true, the poor beetle certainly feels an 
 almost irreducible minimum of pain, probably none 
 at all." 
 
 Up to the moment of dissolution the joy of life for 
 every creature below the human race is probably 
 unclouded. That the struggle for existence is an 
 agonizing one, is a figment of the scientific imagina- 
 tion, due to projecting into the animal world feelings 
 exclusively human. We know how we should feel, 
 and imagine the animals feel likewise, but this is 
 absurd, for were we to live like animals, we should 
 be miserable, while they flourish, proving that the 
 gamut of their sensations is a very different one from 
 ours. As Mill somewhere says, dirt is not uncomfort- 
 able except to those who are unaccustomed to it. 
 
 The contention of the votaries of woe is not borne 
 out by the observed conditions. In the animal, as 
 in the human world, evil is outweighed by good. 
 This receives further support from a fact which 
 sometimes fails of the recognition it deserves. 
 
 Evil is outweighed by good, that is to say, good 
 prevails in the world, for the reason that beauty 
 prevails. 
 
 None will deny that the world, as a whole, is 
 beautiful. A branch quivers, a blossom sways, a 
 breeze sweeps the surface of the lake, water falls 
 over the cliff, day dawns, fruit ripens, every move-
 
 THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 43 
 
 ment, every process, is marked by fitness, grace. 
 When nature stirs, there is a concord of line, and 
 mass, and tint, and tone. 
 
 "Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, 
 
 Or dip thy paddle in the lake, 
 But it carves the bow of beauty there, 
 
 And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake." 
 
 Even in her sterner manifestations, the belching 
 crater, the roaring torrent, the lightning's flash, the 
 upspringing flame, the storm's dark rush, nature is 
 seen clothed in splendor and magnificence. Regions 
 of dread exist, parched deserts, blizzard swept ice 
 fields, malarial swamps, but their acreage forms no 
 more than a fraction of the total. They are as the 
 mole on Aphrodite's cheek, the one discordant meas- 
 ure in the orchestration of the symphony. 
 
 Objects and places which seem bare of every 
 element of loveliness and altogether loathsome, as 
 for example, the prisoner's cell, the noisome vault, 
 the offal heap, have but to be examined with vision 
 reenforced by the microscope, and all is changed. 
 The hard stone of wall and roof becomes a mosaic of 
 gem like crystals, the slimy fungus growths are seen 
 to be in reality, forests and groves of graceful vege- 
 tation, the decaying flesh vanishes and in its place 
 are cell like structures radiant with all the colors of 
 the rainbow. A lens reveals loveliness even in a 
 maggot. Men of science tell us there is nothing 
 intense light will not make beautiful. 
 
 This holds true of the realm of life, as of physical 
 nature. The dragon fly flashing his jewelled body 
 across the lake, the soaring bird, the crouching tiger, 
 grazing cattle, the stag drinking at the tarn, trout
 
 44 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 poising in the pool, throughout animated nature, 
 richness of color, ease of action, strength and sym- 
 metry, are in evidence. These qualities are scarcely 
 less conspicuous in the human race. Man is a fair 
 and comely creature when he permits nature to have 
 her way with him. "Here as among most savages," 
 writes Dr. A. R. Wallace in his "Malay Archepelago," 
 "I was delighted with the beauty of the human 
 form, a beauty of which stay-at-home people can 
 scarcely have any conception." 
 
 In spite of many shadows and much that is repellent, 
 the general aspect of the world is unquestionably 
 beautiful. This general loveliness of aspect would be 
 impossible did not loveliness preponderate. Mineral, 
 vegetable, animal, human, each has its characteristic 
 mark, but the universal mark, stamped on all, is 
 beauty. Beauty is the significant thing, the world's 
 crowning quality. 
 
 A universe in which there is a predominence of 
 beauty, must have been brought forth by, and must 
 be sustained by, a beauty loving power, and it is 
 surely inconceivable that a beauty loving power 
 should be other than a power of goodness. That 
 beauty is the expression of goodness, will appear more 
 clearly, if we keep in mind, that in the realm of life, 
 beauty is associated invariably with health. 
 
 Every one will agree that the glowing cheek, the 
 sparkling eye, the upright carriage, are beautiful, and 
 they are qualities of health. A horse in first rate 
 condition, full of fire, and with glossy coat, is one of 
 the handsomest creatures imaginable, and the points 
 that constitute his handsomeness are all evidences of 
 health. 
 
 At an horticultural exhibition one sees a collec- 
 tion of unusually lovely blossoms, and their unusual
 
 THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 45 
 
 loveliness is due to the fact that every one of them 
 has been selected as a blossom in perfect health. 
 If we want beautiful men, women, animals, flowers, 
 trees, we seek healthy men, women, animals, flowers, 
 and trees. If there be any loveliness in a living 
 creature stricken with disease, it is only in so far as 
 it retains a remnant of life and health. 
 
 Since beauty and health are synonymous, and since 
 beauty in the world of life everywhere is in the 
 ascendant, it would seem inevitably to follow that 
 in the world of life, health also everywhere is in the 
 ascendant. 
 
 That existence among living creatures must be on 
 the whole healthy, appears a reasonable conclusion, 
 else how could life continue? 
 
 No doubt there are deplorable facts to be accounted 
 for, the victims of tuberculosis, cancer, malaria, pneu- 
 monia, etc.; the host of those who are physically 
 unfit, the blind, the deaf, the lame. A little reflection 
 however, will convince us that after all, the number 
 at any one time under the doctor's care, cannot be 
 more than a small fraction of the population. It is 
 certain that were it otherwise, the mills would shut 
 down, the railroads cease to run, weeds would flourish 
 in place of wheat and corn. The fact that industry 
 thrives is proof that on the whole, and with the 
 exception of a small minority, our people are in 
 a condition of vigorous life and health. It is not 
 of course for a moment contended that the sanitary 
 state of the nation is all that can be desired, far 
 from it. What is meant is, that conditions of health 
 preponderate. It may be said without exaggeration 
 that most people experience in the course of their 
 lives more well days than ill days. 
 
 Although much physical and mental disease exists,
 
 46 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 it is not enough to affect the general truth of the 
 statement, that since the world of life is a world in 
 which the dominant quality is beauty, it is a world in 
 which the dominant quality is health. 
 
 Health signifies freedom from pain, suffering, dis- 
 comfort. The currents of life pulse through our 
 arteries in a full tide, we experience a sense of buoy- 
 ancy, we feel w 
 
 Health therefore is a condition of well being. It is 
 a joyful, pleasant, happy condition. Health and 
 happiness go together, are inseparable, are the same 
 thing. A healthy state is everywhere a happy state, 
 and it is not to be denied that a happy state is a good 
 state. 
 
 Consequently, since happiness is equivalent to the 
 good, and since it has been shown that beauty and 
 therefore health, and therefore happiness, is the domi- 
 nant quality of the realm of life, it follows that the 
 good also is the dominant quality of the realm of life. 
 
 Thus the witness of beauty confirms the conclusion 
 reached by general observation, namely, that there is 
 more good than evil in the world. It unites with 
 the results of general observation to demonstrate not 
 only that there is more good than evil, but an immense 
 preponderance of good in the world. 
 
 A power capable of producing a universe in which 
 there is an immense preponderance of good, must 
 itself be good. 
 
 The truth of this is proved by the nature of evil. 
 Evil is pain, pain is always evil. Pain is the poison, 
 the sinister element. Whether the event be a wound, 
 disease, accident, misfortune, sorrow, crime, whether 
 it be voluntary or involuntary, physical, or mental, 
 or moral, the element of evil therein, is the pain 
 produced.
 
 THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 47 
 
 Objections considered. 
 
 Certain experiences seem difficult to reconcile with 
 the above statement. 
 
 1. Some evils appear devoid of pain: blindness 
 for instance. Do we regard blindness as devoid 
 of pain? On the contrary, we judge it to be evil 
 just because to an intelligent living creature, loss 
 of sight always means misery. Mental diseases 
 producing coma, automatism, unconsciousness, re- 
 sult in a condition in which the subject is immune 
 from pain, yet we reckon these diseases as evils. 
 We do so, not because they bring immunity from 
 pain, but because of the agony preceding the immu- 
 nity. Moreover, in diseases of this kind, others 
 besides the subjects themselves are affected. The 
 mental affliction of one we have loved, causes suf- 
 fering to a circle perhaps a very wide circle, of 
 friends. 
 
 2. Evils that are pleasureable. Many people find 
 opium and chloral delicious, and alcoholic intoxica- 
 tion delightful. It is not the pleasure these things 
 give that is evil. So long as pleasure is the sole result 
 of their use, these things are not deleterious. They 
 become so, they do harm, they are evil, just in so far 
 as in spite of their joy giving properties, they involve 
 pain to ourselves and others. 
 
 Is not sin or moral delinquency evil? Yet many 
 sins are not painful but on the contrary wholly 
 pleasant. The point to keep in mind is, that it is 
 not the pleasure to ourselves that makes the act 
 sinful, immoral, but the pain it gives to others. If 
 we could have the pleasure without hurting anyone 
 else, no wrong would be done. An immoral act is 
 one in which we inflict pain on others, in order to 
 enjoy some pleasure or profit ourselves. The moral
 
 48 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 iniquity, the sin, is not our enjoyment of the pleasure 
 or profit; pleasure and profit are in themselves always 
 good; a pearl is still a pearl though it adorn a harlot's 
 neck; the sin is in our willingness to enjoy pleasure 
 or profit, at the cost of suffering to others. 
 
 8. Pains that are beneficial. For example, excru- 
 ciating surgical or dental operations may be agonizing, 
 yet of advantage. How then can such pains be evil? 
 The benefit these things accomplish is accomplished 
 in spite of the pain. In so far as they are painful they 
 are evil. 
 
 Some pain strengthens and purifies. The pain of 
 punishment, for instance. Some poisons, as strych- 
 nine, heal disease when administered medicinally; 
 but in these cases the instrument of healing remains 
 itself a deadly thing. The poisonous medicine cures 
 by arousing the reserve forces of physical nature. 
 The poison of pain cures by arousing the reserve forces 
 of the soul. 
 
 In the pain of punishment, the purpose is to quicken 
 the reserves of moral energy. The culprit is stirred 
 into a condition of active repentance and reform, and 
 is made a new man. Nevertheless, the pain which 
 brings about this highly beneficial state, is itself evil, 
 and if continued too long, or administered in too 
 large doses, would result in the destruction, instead 
 of in the reformation of the subject. 
 
 The sooner we outgrow the necessity for using 
 poison and pain, the sooner, that is, we reach a con- 
 dition of mental and physical health, the better. 
 
 As things are, our present imperfect state compels 
 us to make-shift with these imperfect remedies. Nor 
 is it likely that in doing so we are going far astray, 
 for the Creator himself inflicts a certain amount of 
 pain upon all sentient creatures.
 
 THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 49 
 
 4. Even when associated with virtue, pain is still an 
 evil. A morally good action may necessitate pain, 
 but it is not the pain that constitutes the moral good- 
 ness, the virtue. Under all circumstances pain is 
 evil. The moral excellence consists in willingness 
 to endure the evil of pain, in order to promote a 
 greater good to our neighbor. 
 
 Jim Bludsoe held the burning steamer's "nozzle 
 agin the bank till the last soul got ashore," and him- 
 self perished in the flames. The excellence of the 
 deed we so much admire, was not in the agony experi- 
 enced, but in the hero's willingness to suffer the 
 agony for the sake of his fellow men. 
 
 Morality does not change the nature of evil, it 
 changes only our attitude toward it on particular 
 occasions. 
 
 On particular occasions our sense of moral obliga- 
 tion bids us forego advantage to ourselves, lest we 
 inflict pain on others, and endure pain ourselves, if 
 thereby, we can benefit others. 
 
 In moral situations as in all situations, evil is pain, 
 pain is always evil. 
 
 The nature of pain. 
 
 Pain is the outcome of defect, it is a state of im- 
 perfection, of defective or imperfect health. 
 
 It is accompanied always by lowered vitality, and 
 lowered vitality is characteristic of ill health. If 
 inflammation shows increased vital activity at one 
 particular spot, it is at the expense of the system as 
 a whole. 
 
 Although a patient suffering from some forms of 
 insanity may be endowed with the strength of ten, 
 and with a restless energy weli nigh insatiable, this
 
 50 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 cannot be regarded as an addition to the vital powers. 
 Rather is it due to the removal by disease of normally 
 restraining conditions, which removal permits the 
 vital energies to expend themselves violently and 
 irregularly. Such headlong and wasteful expenditure 
 of force implies no real gain to the total volume of 
 force, but on the contrary, a distinct impairment of 
 the general stock. This applies also, to the seemingly 
 increased vital action induced by the pain of whip 
 and spur. 
 
 Under all circumstances lowered vitality goes with 
 pain, and lowered vitality signifies lowered health. 
 Being a state of lowered vitality, pain therefore, is 
 a state of lowered, defective, or imperfect health. 
 
 Since evil is pain, it follows that evil also, is a state 
 of defect or imperfection, a state of defective or 
 imperfect health. 
 
 From this, what appears a conspicuous exception 
 leaps to view. Positive and aggressive acts of wicked- 
 ness. This kind of evil must be, it would seem, some- 
 thing more than imperfection. It looks as if the evil 
 of sin were due to an independent force antagonistic 
 to good. 
 
 The burglar fells the inconvenient householder with 
 a blow on the head. The assassin drops his victim 
 with a revolver shot. These are sinful deeds, and 
 they are deeds of power, they exhibit positiveness, 
 and forceful skill. Othello, in the play, beside himself 
 with jealousy, slays Desdemona. An act of violence 
 involving tremendous effort and a fierce and furious 
 exercise of strength. 
 
 Nevertheless, is it not possible for an event to be 
 positive and forceful in itself, and at the same time 
 relatively weak and negative, exhibiting relatively, 
 a lack of force, an imperfection of power?
 
 THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 51 
 
 For instance the report of a rifle is positive enough 
 in itself, forceful, sharp, and ear piercing. Yet com- 
 pared with the report of a twelve inch gun the crack 
 of a rifle is a weak, puny, imperfect kind of explo- 
 sion. 
 
 Regarded as isolated events, the acts of the burglar 
 and assassin are manifestations of power. The ele- 
 ment of loss or imperfection does not appear. 
 
 Regarded as activities of men, they assume a dif- 
 ferent aspect. What they represent as human deeds, 
 can be estimated only by comparing them with 
 human energies as a whole. How, then, do these 
 particular deeds stand, when compared with the total 
 amount of activity possible to the individuals con- 
 cerned? 
 
 In the case of Othello, the murder of Desdemona 
 necessitated the expenditure of much energy. This, 
 however, was not the only course of action open to 
 Othello. He might have refrained from murdering 
 Desdemona. Why did he not refrain? There is only 
 one imaginable explanation. It was harder to re- 
 frain than to yield to his passion. Great as was the 
 effort demanded by the murder, to refrain from the 
 murder demanded a still greater effort. To hold his 
 hand required an exercise of self control so severe, 
 that Othello shrank from making the effort. Finding 
 it easier to yield to the impulse of passion than to 
 control the impulse, Othello yielded. Immense as 
 was the energy expended in committing the crime, it 
 was less than the energy he would have had to expend 
 in refraining from the crime. 
 
 The same is true of the burglar and assassin. They 
 could have led decent lives and been good, industrious 
 citizens, but such a course required an exercise of self 
 denying will they found it hard to make. To prey
 
 52 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 upon society, to drift down the stream of vagrancy, 
 or to sweep along in the furious current of revenge 
 and hate, was easier than to make head against the 
 flood. 
 
 The sinful acts in the examples cited sprang from 
 an effort of the will weaker and feebler than it might 
 have been, and ought to have been. 
 
 In every instance sin is due to a defective or im- 
 perfect action of the will, for which we are respon- 
 sible and to blame. 
 
 Like all other evil, the evil of sin is a form of imper- 
 fection. 
 
 In what way does this affect the subject under 
 discussion, namely, the goodness of the Controller of 
 the universe? 
 
 It affects it to the extent of barring out evil alto- 
 gether from the nature of the Controller. 
 
 The infinite and eternal power of life whence all 
 things proceed, is in every respect supreme and 
 omnipotent, for there is none to dispute its rule, no 
 rival to contest its sway. 
 
 Absolutely free and untrammelled, whatever limi- 
 tations its activities assume, whatever modifications 
 they adopt, are self assumed and self adopted. 
 
 Originating and controlling as it does all things 
 and all powers, it possesses all things and all powers. 
 
 As a consequence it falls short of, and is lacking 
 in, nothing. 
 
 An existence absolutely free, nowhere hindered or 
 thwarted, falling short of, and lacking, nothing, is 
 one in which every function fulfills itself and every 
 quality manifests itself, in the highest degree of which 
 its nature permits, and such an existence embodies 
 the idea contained in the word perfection. The exist- 
 ence of the infinite and eternal Producer and Con-
 
 THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 53 
 
 troller of all things, is perfect existence. From this 
 it follows, that in the nature of the Infinite and 
 Eternal, there can be no evil, for evil is imperfect 
 existence. 
 
 The character of evil itself, therefore, both con- 
 firms the conclusion drawn from the preponderance 
 of good, and carries that conclusion a step further. 
 We now see that the world Controller being free from 
 imperfection, and so completely free from evil, is in 
 consequence, good, not merely to a predominating 
 extent, but altogether and absolutely good. In the 
 soul's universe a power of perfect goodness rules. 
 
 3. The place of evil in the scheme of things. If good- 
 ness rule, how account for the evil that actually exists? 
 
 To many it seems vain to talk of a righteous and 
 kindly Providence in view of the appalling amount of 
 misery visible on every hand. Can disasters and 
 calamities happen and the supposed ruler and author 
 of nature still be merciful, and just and good? How 
 are these seemingly irreconcilable facts to be recon- 
 ciled? Some attempt to explain evil as a delusion. 
 It is a phantom and has no existence, they say. The 
 most brilliant refutation of this extraordinary fallacy 
 is probably the well known essay by Mark Twain, 
 and to this the reader is referred. Another solution 
 of the paradox has been attempted on the ground of 
 indifference. Preoccupied with the creation and 
 control of myriad worlds, why should we suppose the 
 Lord of the universe to be other than heedless of our 
 microscopic woes? Forgotten by God, it is inevitable 
 that we should fall a prey to evil. The reply is, 
 indifference to suffering is incompatible with even a 
 moderate amount of goodness, still less with the power 
 of perfect goodness by which we have assumed the 
 universe to be ruled.
 
 54 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 Some have sought to account for evil by imputing 
 it to a hostile power. The world is divided between 
 two rival and co-equal divinities, an Ormuzd and an 
 Ahriman, who carry on unceasing warfare. This 
 theory is inadmissible, giving to creation as it does, 
 a double origin, and placing it under a two-fold regime, 
 a notion at odds with the accepted principle of science 
 that the universe is a single organized whole, con- 
 trolled by a single supreme power. 
 
 Another doctrine ascribes the source of evil to an 
 antagonistic and independent, but not co-equal 
 power. A fallen angel, a satan, a devil, who while 
 maintaining temporary hostilities is in the end des- 
 tined to be vanquished and destroyed. This idea has 
 the advantage of leaving the supreme power intact. 
 Its defect is lack of evidence. There is nothing to 
 show that it is true. 
 
 A less extravagant supposition will suffice to account 
 for all the ill there is. 
 
 No other, or rival, power being possible as the source 
 of evil, the Infinite and Eternal is its source. Since 
 it can be due neither to the weakness, nor the error, 
 nor the indifference, it must be due to the purpose 
 and intention, of the Infinite and Eternal. Since the 
 Infinite and Eternal is absolutely good, the fact we 
 face is, that all the evil in the universe has its source 
 in the purpose and intention of the absolutely good. 
 
 "I form the light and create darkness. I make 
 peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things." 
 
 [Isaiah 45, 7] 
 
 What are we to make of such a situation? That 
 good and evil should issue from the same source 
 appears to some minds beyond comprehension. 
 
 "To present God as the responsible cause of the
 
 THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 55 
 
 enormity of suffering and of moral evil, and at the 
 same time to present him as the perfect impersona- 
 tion of justice and love, should by this time be seen 
 to involve a hopeless contradiction, the conflict of 
 two principles in irreconcilable antagonism," writes 
 G. H. Howison. 
 
 [Hibbert Journal.] 
 
 Notwithstanding the formidable tone of this assev- 
 eration; that God is responsible for all suffering, that 
 whatsoever misery there be, exists not in spite of, but 
 because of, his power, is the conclusion to which we 
 are forced alike by reason, experience, and observa- 
 tion. There is no rational alternative. So far from 
 containing a "hopeless contradiction," or principles 
 "in irreconcilable antagonism," this is the only con- 
 clusion free from contradictions and antagonisms. 
 
 Do not the plain facts of life bear witness that good 
 and evil constantly issue from an identical source? 
 Good people inflict evil out of their very goodness. 
 Every physician, every magistrate, every commander, 
 imposes suffering, hard work, perilous enterprises, 
 upon his fellow creatures. Every prison, reformatory, 
 operating theater, is the scene of human suffering 
 prescribed by benevolent and kindly beings. 
 
 One of the most pathetic sights the present writer 
 ever saw was the children's ward of a certain great 
 hospital. The diseases under treatment were chiefly 
 those of the spine. On every side lay pitiful little 
 objects, some bound hand and foot, others stretched 
 at full length, with weights attached. The feet of 
 several were clamped in rack-like machinery, none 
 could move, or sit up, or play, or see anything save 
 the bare white walls. " Here indeed," the visitor from 
 another planet might exclaim, "is proof of the in-
 
 56 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 herent fiendishness of man." Appearances would 
 justify his gloomy inference. Yet we know how far 
 from the truth the inference would be. Were he to 
 penetrate beneath appearances, he would discover all 
 this misery to be the outcome, not of malevolence or 
 cruelty, but of a devotion, a care, a forethought, a 
 tenderness little short of heavenly. 
 
 In examples such as these, we do actually see evil 
 and good issuing from a common source of goodness. 
 Coming from such a source, evil possesses a certain 
 mark and character. 
 
 Whatever be the nature of the suffering inflicted 
 by good men and women, always and everywhere, 
 with no exception, its impelling motive is one of benev- 
 olence. Pain may be imposed, intense suffering may 
 result, still the intention is benevolent, the purpose 
 remedial. 
 
 If this be true of the evil permitted and inflicted 
 by the imperfect goodness of men and women, still 
 more must it be true of the evil permitted and inflicted 
 by the perfect goodness of the Infinite and Eternal. 
 
 Since evil issuing from good has invariably a benev- 
 olent and remedial intent, and since all the evil in 
 the universe issues in the last resort from the perfect 
 goodness of the Infinite and Eternal, all the evil in 
 the universe is of the kind which is freighted with 
 benevolent and remedial intent. 
 
 "The clouds which rise in thunder, slake 
 
 Our thirsty souls with rain. 
 The blow most dreaded, falls to break 
 
 From off our limbs a chain. 
 And wrongs of man to man but make, 
 
 The love of God more plain. 
 As through the shadowy lens of even 
 The eye looks farthest into heaven,
 
 THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 57 
 
 On gleams of star and depths of blue, 
 The glaring sunshine never knew." 
 
 Whittier. 
 
 From this general truth there is an obvious excep- 
 tion. In the suffering caused by sin, in the misery 
 thrust upon us by human carelessness, indolence, 
 viciousness, we have a form of evil issuing, not from 
 a benevolent, but from a malevolent, source. Its 
 motive instead of being remedial, is either indifferent 
 to consequences, or positively cruel and malignant. 
 
 Black as the fact of sin is, its most baleful effects 
 are neutralized by the peculiar relations which exist 
 between the sinner and his surroundings. 
 
 The doer of evil lives in a universe stronger than 
 himself. Consequently, while he is able to deter- 
 mine his own intentions, he cannot determine any- 
 thing else. The initial impulse, he may make as 
 malevolent as he chooses, but he is powerless to make 
 the outcome malevolent. The moment an evil im- 
 pulse leaves his mind and becomes embodied in a 
 deed, it falls into a sphere beyond his range of in- 
 fluence. From that moment his control over what 
 has left him, is lost. 
 
 Now the universe into which the evil impulse falls 
 is one governed by good, one in which, as we have seen, 
 all suffering and pain is of the kind that comes from 
 goodness, of the kind therefore, that makes for the 
 ultimate welfare of the sufferer. When the malevo- 
 lent impulse passes from the wrong-doer's mind, and 
 enters as action into the universe, the universe closes 
 round it, so to speak. From that instant, it ceases 
 to be suffering issuing from the sinner, and becomes a 
 part of the suffering which issues from the universe. 
 Thereupon its character is changed. No longer evil
 
 58 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 produced by evil, it becomes evil produced by good; 
 by the good universe. 
 
 In spite of the sinner's malevolent intent, the 
 misery he seeks to inflict falls into line, and instead 
 of ruining, will be found in the long run to have 
 helped his victim. 
 
 Joseph is left at the bottom of a dry cistern to perish 
 of hunger and thirst. That is the cruel intention. 
 The result, utterly unlocked for, is that he becomes 
 ruler of Egypt. 
 
 A treacherous friend blasts Silas Marner's reputa- 
 tion and forces him out upon the world apparently a 
 ruined man. The traitor's intention was malevolent. 
 He succeeded in inflicting agonising pain upon his 
 victim. The outcome, nevertheless, was very different 
 from that which malevolence desired. The suffering 
 contributed, not to the destruction of Silas, but to 
 his regeneration. 
 
 "So, almost without a pause between, he (the 
 Major) had prayed for a hell to punish a crime, and 
 for the safety of the treasured thing that was its 
 surviving record, a creature that but for that crime 
 would never have drawn breath." 
 
 ["Somehow Good", Wm. de Morgan] 
 
 It is, of course, but here and there that we are able 
 to discern the issue. Could we trace to their ultimate 
 destination the series of consequences that follow 
 our misdeeds, we should find that always for our 
 victims, they lead at last to good. What else is to 
 be expected? The moment the evil impulse leaves 
 the limited circle in which we rule, it enters a region 
 where the forces behind it are the wholly benevolent 
 and omnipotent forces of the eternal. The wicked 
 man can originate independently, but he cannot
 
 THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 59 
 
 execute independently. The consequences of his vile 
 purposes are beyond his control, and by the marvel- 
 lous alchemy of the universe the actions he intends 
 shall promote evil, are transmuted to the service of 
 the world. 
 
 Such, unquestionably, will be the result for the 
 victim, the case of the sinner is likely to be very 
 different. "It must needs be that offences come, but 
 woe to that man by whom the offence cometh." 
 The sinner does what nothing else ever does, he acts 
 with malevolence. Of malice aforethought he adds 
 to the sum of pain, and although for his victim the 
 beneficence of the world will, in the end, neutralize 
 the malicious intention, the sinner's guilt remains. 
 He intends malevolence, and thus introduces discord 
 into the harmony of things, disturbs the universal 
 order, pits himself against the universe, attempts to 
 resist the irresistible. The issue is not doubtful. 
 Unconditional surrender is the sinner's solitary hope. 
 
 To the truth that all the evil in the world is of the 
 kind that comes from goodness, and promotes, in the 
 long run, the welfare of the sufferer, there is but a 
 single exception, namely, the evil of sin, and that is 
 an exception only as regards the sinner himself. 
 
 Evil is the consequence of the capacities with which we 
 are endowed. 
 
 The immediate and efficient causes of sorrow lie in 
 ourselves. The world does us no harm. Harm comes 
 from our misuse of, and misunderstanding of, the 
 world. 
 
 The sole sources of pain are the imperfections of 
 our knowledge and our morals. Ignorance and selfish- 
 ness are the breeders of ill. For the evil we endure,
 
 60 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 God is responsible to the extent that he has created 
 us imperfect. 
 
 Why has he created us imperfect? Apparently, 
 because that is the only way in which we could be 
 created. Since the Creator himself is perfect, and 
 since all created things are less than their creator, 
 all created things are of necessity, less than perfect. 
 
 We suffer, not merely because we are imperfect, 
 but because we are imperfect human beings, with 
 souls, possessed of sensibilities. Because we hope, 
 love, desire. 
 
 "Had we never loved sae kindly, 
 Had we never loved sae blindly, 
 Never met and never parted, 
 We had ne'er been broken hearted." 
 
 From these sad sensations we might have been 
 saved had we been placed lower down in the scale, 
 endowed with vegetable, instead of with human 
 natures. Yet, most of us feel that salvation on such 
 terms is scarcely worth while. Not even to get rid 
 of a toothache would we be turned into a potato. 
 
 Still another course is imaginable. Had we been 
 placed higher up, instead of lower down, created 
 mature from the start, with our faculties developed to 
 the full, and working in undeviating accord with their 
 surroundings, it seems as though we should have 
 escaped the bitter episode of pain. Does not this 
 motion involve a contradiction? We are conscious 
 beings with all the wonderful possibilities this implies. 
 Now, the plan above suggested might be fatal to 
 experience, and it might be that without experience, 
 consciousness could never be other than a pale 
 phantom of its proper self. Like children learning to 
 walk, we learn to live, and while we learn, we trip and
 
 THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 61 
 
 fall, and bump our heads against the corners of the 
 world. It is unpleasant, but if it be the only way to 
 build up consciousness, then, the temporary liability 
 to pain may not be too high a price to pay. 
 
 "I know a limped stream that seeks the sea, 
 
 Between a surge of sedges fair it flows, 
 With scarce a ripple stirring its repose, 
 
 The very mirror of serenity. 
 From its well head till ocean claims its fee, 
 
 It breasts no barrier, daytime, dawn, or close, 
 Behold it still the same, come heat or snows, 
 
 With gentle murmur gliding tranquilly. 
 
 "Not thus would I move outward to the deep 
 Toward which all mortals hasten, with no bar 
 
 To overcome before I gain the goal. 
 
 Rather would I on some stern struggle leap, 
 
 Although my flesh be scored with wound and scar, 
 Inuring thus the fibre of my soul." 
 
 Once more, could not our woes have been avoided, 
 while retaining our human faculties, if we had been 
 placed in a situation like the following? 
 
 "I know a place," writes T. Van Ness, ''where men 
 do not smoke nor drink, where they are industrious 
 and orderly, where they rise on time and go to bed on 
 time, where there are no differences of rank or station, 
 and where the table of one is as well served as the 
 table of the other, where on Sundays in the most 
 decorous manner they one and all go to religious 
 service, and maintain correct behaviour, taking part 
 in unison when hymn and liturgy are announced. 
 This place is the Colorado Penitentiary at Canyon 
 City. Law reigns there. It is the law of compulsion, 
 of the shot gun. No personal liberty is allowed."
 
 62 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 The Creator might have made us prisoners in a 
 penitentiary. Under such conditions we should have 
 been exempt from the greater part of the difficulties, 
 troubles, dangers, that now beset us. We should have 
 been protected from all those sources of suffering 
 caused by our errors, miscalculations, and ignorance. 
 That has not been the method. Instead, we have 
 been clothed with sensibilities, and endowed with 
 liberty, and the evils we encounter are the conse- 
 quences of these gifts. 
 
 Although our sensibilities and our liberty are the 
 sources of all our woe, they are the sources also, of 
 all our happiness. This, Shelley discerned when he 
 wrote : 
 
 "Yet if we could scorn 
 
 Hate and pride and fear, 
 If we were things born, 
 
 Not to shed a tear, 
 I know not how thy joy, 
 We ever should come near." 
 
 Heartrending as our sufferings often are, we carry 
 with us the key of the door of deliverance. Pain and 
 sorrow being due to imperfection, the result of the 
 immaturity of the capacities with which we are gifted, 
 as we advance in wisdom and strength of will, as we 
 come to be more and more nearly "in tune with the 
 infinite," we may confidently look to see pain and 
 sorrow forever left behind. 
 
 Summarizing the foregoing chapter. 
 
 We found that behind all things is one thing, and 
 that one ihing is a power of conscious life. Observa- 
 tion indicates and the witness of beauty proves, that 
 in spite of a vast amount of misery the good in the
 
 THE POWER BEHIND THE SOUL 63 
 
 world outweighs the evil. From which the inference 
 follows that good outweighs evil also, in the power 
 of conscious life that brought forth the world. A 
 study of evil itself, led to the conclusion that good 
 not only outweighs evil in the nature of the supreme 
 power, but predominates to the complete exclusion 
 of it, with the consequence that the supreme power 
 is wholly and altogether good. The goodness which 
 rules over, and in, and through the universe, is perfect 
 goodness. 
 
 This ruling goodness is, we saw, no mere passive, 
 static, quality, but an infinite and eternal energy. 
 Its relation to the universe is therefore, an energetic, 
 a dynamic, relation. The influence exercised is one 
 of movement, of compelling power, of driving force. 
 
 How is this situation to be interpreted? It would 
 seem as though there could be but one interpretation. 
 Behind all things is a driving force, infinite and eter- 
 nal. Consequently, no region, no spot, escapes its 
 pressure. The pressure is exerted not only at every 
 point, but at every point it is exerted through every 
 moment of time. The driving force exercising this 
 pressure, is, it has been shown, a force of goodness. 
 One outcome alone is conceivable to such a situation. 
 Sooner or later, all things and all beings, will be 
 subject to, will become dominated by, this irresistible 
 energy of goodness, with the result that whatever is 
 contrary to goodness, will be expelled from all things 
 and all beings. Goodness will occupy every nook and 
 cranny of the kosmos, will pervade every fibre of 
 every individual soul.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 SOUL AND OVERSOUL 
 
 In his "Farthest North" Nansen tells us that an 
 Eskimo will always leave untouched the driftwood 
 left by another above high water mark, although fuel 
 is more precious than gold and often enough it could 
 be appropriated without fear of detection. 
 
 Landing in a native village in West Africa, Mary 
 Kingsley was freely given the use of a new house for 
 which at the end of her stay the owner refused to 
 receive any remuneration, on the ground that strangers 
 should be housed without charge. 
 
 Plainly the impelling motive in these instances was 
 a feeling about right. 
 
 All the great travellers and explorers bear witness 
 to a sense of right, even in the remotest corners of the 
 earth and among nations the most diverse. Its uni- 
 versality is confirmed by the religions, the philoso- 
 phies, the literatures, of the world It is assumed 
 by our educational, legal, and commercial systems. 
 That it has been possible to establish business rela- 
 tions with even the wildest tribes is proof that even 
 the wildest tribes have a moral standard, though it 
 may be a different one from ours, and hold themselves 
 under an obligation to keep to it. 
 
 The feeling that right ought to be done, is common 
 to humanity. Were any one to admit that he had no 
 such feeling, the admission would stamp him who 
 made it as inhuman. Manifesting itself in varying 
 
 64
 
 SOUL AND OVERSOUL 65 
 
 degrees in different individuals, it is absent in none. 
 Clearer in maturity than in childhood, more strongly 
 marked among civilized than among savage people, 
 in all natures that are human it exists. 
 
 Present everywhere, it is the same everywhere. 
 The standard may differ, the outcome may differ, 
 but the feeling that right ought to be done is identical, 
 unchanging, and unchangeable. A greater contrast 
 could scarcely be imagined than Gladstone's moral 
 attitude toward certain subjects at succeeding periods 
 of his life. In 1831, as an Oxford undergraduate, he 
 believed he was pursuing the course of duty in vehe- 
 mently opposing the Reform Bill, and pleading for 
 the continuance of slave labor in the West Indies. 
 Ten years afterward, we find him taking an entirely 
 new position and upholding with passion, power, 
 and eloquence, precisely those things which in his 
 earlier days he had regarded as full of peril. Look- 
 ing at Gladstone's conduct superficially, it seems as 
 though his motive had veered completely round. A 
 closer view shows that on the contrary, different as 
 were his lines of action, the underlying impulse re- 
 mained the same. On each occasion, his endeavor 
 was to carry out the felt obligation that right ought 
 to be done. 
 
 The unstable element, the movable section, so to 
 speak, consisted in the varying estimate of what 
 constituted the particular right on the particular 
 occasion. This, it is obvious, may change every 
 day, even every hour of every day, without affecting 
 the impression that whatever the right be, it ought to 
 be done. Through all changes this remains unchanged 
 the same feeling under every vicissitude. It is a 
 permanent and constant quantity. Everywhere, and 
 under all circumstances, and from generation to gen-
 
 66 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 eration, it prompts us whenever two alternatives 
 are before us to select that which appears to be 
 right. 
 
 As the mariner's compass still points north, though 
 the ship shift her course a hundred times, so the com- 
 pass of our souls, however often we shift the direction 
 of our activities, points constantly toward the right. 
 It will be conceded by almost everybody, that in this 
 universal and permanent feeling there is a quality 
 of authority. We are conscious that we ought to do 
 right. 
 
 Ought, is perhaps the most significant word in the 
 language. It expresses relationship of a peculiar 
 kind. A relationship of moral obligation. There is 
 not the slightest compulsion, and yet this feeling of 
 ought, of moral obligation, wields a strange authority. 
 It seems to lay upon us a claim of allegiance. "To 
 obey me is your duty," it whispers, and in our hearts 
 we acknowledge the claim is just. 
 
 "So potent is its sway, "says Darwin, "that man is 
 often impelled simply by the deep feeling of right or 
 duty, to sacrifice his life in some great cause." He 
 mentions three Patagonian Indians, who preferred 
 being shot, one after another, to betraying the plan 
 of their companions in war. 
 
 A missionary in Madras, called upon to visit a dying 
 leper, and regarding it as his duty to give to those at 
 the point of death the kiss of peace, hesitated on this 
 occasion. He himself was a Eurasian, and he be- 
 lieved that to Eurasians, actual contact with leprosy 
 was invariably fatal. He turned to flee, terrified 
 at the situation, but his sense of moral obligation 
 would not let him go. Leaning against the door- 
 post he wrestled with his fears. On the one side, 
 certain contamination with resulting death in slow
 
 SOUL AND OVERSOUL 67 
 
 and loathsome form. On the other, the convic- 
 tion that at whatever cost, that which he believed 
 to be right ought to be done. With such over- 
 whelming authority did this conviction make itself 
 felt, that he conquered his shrinking flesh, returned 
 to the bedside, and though trembling with dread, 
 pressed with his lips the swollen, blackened coun- 
 tenance.* 
 
 The sovereignty this sense of duty exercises over 
 our minds is indicated, also, by the consequences 
 which ensue when we shape our conduct in defiance 
 of its bidding. We are tormented with an inward 
 accusation of un worthiness. We recognize that the 
 part we have played is despicable. 
 
 Every year, the United States Treasury receives 
 thousands of dollars from correspondents who conceal 
 their names. They are people who in various ways 
 have defrauded the revenue and wish to make restitu- 
 tion. An examination of the letters on file at the 
 Treasury would convince any one that most of the 
 contributors are sincerely repentant for some fraud 
 on the government. Rarely does any sum come with- 
 out an explanatory letter, and it is unusual to have 
 any name signed. Some of the returns are trifling. 
 One poor fellow makes restitution for two loads of 
 wood he had stolen from the government reservation, 
 saying, "let him that stole steal no more." 
 
 No one except themselves was aware of what these 
 people had done. Yet, so powerful was the demand 
 of the sense of moral obligation, that they were mis- 
 erable until, to the best of their ability, they had 
 atoned for their wrong doing. 
 
 * See, Guy de Maupassant's tale, "The Two Friends."
 
 68 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 The broad fact is, that human beings feel themselves 
 subject to an authoritative influence, a sense of ought, 
 urging them toward what they believe to be right. 
 
 Whence does this influence, this sense of ought, 
 derive its authority? What is its source? 
 
 Some writers affirm that its source is in self interest 
 and prudence. Right pays, honesty is the best policy. 
 Goodness is neither more nor less than sound worldly 
 wisdom. 
 
 That many good deeds are due to the prudence of 
 worldly wisdom, cannot be denied. The copper king, 
 or the oil magnate, endows a hospital or a college, 
 with the worldly wise purpose of gaining thereby social 
 honors, but if prudence were the only source of good 
 deeds, only prudent good deeds would be done, 
 whereas, there are many, and they are those we admire 
 most, which are the opposite of prudent. 
 
 Captain Gates drags himself from the storm bat- 
 tered tent, out to death in the cold of the Antarctic 
 night, that the safety of his comrades may not be 
 imperilled by the burden of his sick body. 
 
 Miss Jewel H. Reed, aged seventeen, student, hav- 
 ing escaped from her burning dormitory, discovered 
 that two girls, probably rendered unconscious by the 
 smoke, had been left in an upper story. She deter- 
 mined to try and save them. Reentering the blazing 
 house, she made her way through the flame and smoke, 
 and succeeded in reaching the girls' room, but a fresh 
 outburst of fire cut off the exit and she was burned 
 to death. 
 
 A mill operative lost his arm, as a result of certain 
 machinery being out of order. "If you want to keep 
 your job," said the mill owners to the superintendent, 
 "you must report the machinery as all right, else we 
 shall have to pay heavy compensation."
 
 SOUL AND OVERSOUL 69 
 
 The superintendent found himself up against a try- 
 ing proposition. He must report an untruth or be 
 summarily dismissed. He was a middle aged man. 
 It was hard to be turned out into the world at his 
 time of life. Nevertheless, he chose that course, lost 
 his job, and died in comparative poverty. 
 
 All will agree that the impelling motive behind these 
 actions was a feeling of ought, of duty, a sense of right. 
 The source of this motive could not be prudence, for 
 the actions to which it impelled were the contrary 
 of prudent. 
 
 We see then, that in addition to good deeds done 
 from motives of worldly wisdom, there are good deeds 
 done from a sense of right, and into the motive of 
 these, the element of prudence does not enter. 
 
 When a man is inspired by a deep sense of right, he 
 acts without regard to consequences. In the cause 
 of justice and mercy he is ready to fling forethought 
 to the winds, and risk the loss of worldly possessions 
 and even life itself. 
 
 In such cases, it is said, prudence is still the motive. 
 The self-forgetful hero who thinks nothing of conse- 
 quences, does so only in appearance. He looks to 
 consequences just as carefully as anyone else, but the 
 consequences to which he looks, instead of being in 
 this world, are in the next. He expects to be rewarded 
 in heaven for his righteous conduct on earth. 
 
 The conviction that glory awaits the hero in 
 another world undoubtedly has inspired heroic deeds. 
 Can it be said, however, that the inspiration in such 
 instances is a sense of right? 
 
 With the vision of the black eyed houris of paradise 
 flaming in his brain, the follower of the Mahdi hurls 
 himself upon the bayonets of the British square. 
 Brave as the deed is, if the joys of paradise be its
 
 70 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 inspiration, its motive must be ascribed to a hope 
 of gain, rather than to a sense of moral obliga- 
 tion. 
 
 On the other hand, so profound an observer of 
 human nature as Tolstoy, bears witness that a man 
 may be moved not by hope of gain, but solely by a 
 sense of right, and when so moved, is capable, without 
 any expectation of reward either on earth or in 
 heaven, of as complete a sacrifice as that of the follower 
 of the Mahdi. 
 
 In his story, " Divine and Human, "Svetlogoub, the 
 principle character, a rich young man, enjoys life to the 
 full. At last, the sight of the people's misery awakens 
 his moral sense. So great does he feel its authority to 
 be, that he is impelled thereby to devote his time and 
 money to philanthropic purposes. As a result of 
 helping a revolutionary friend, he is arrested, and 
 condemned to death. By revealing to the govern- 
 ment his friend's name, he himself could escape. 
 The temptation is almost irresistible, but the author- 
 ity of his consciousness that right ought to be done 
 is strong enough to enable him to stand firm, and 
 he goes to his execution without uttering the incrim- 
 inating word. 
 
 In Svetlogoub's case, at any rate, the sense of moral 
 obligation by which he was impelled cannot have had 
 its origin in self-interest, for he surrenders everything 
 in this world, and has no faith whatever in a world to 
 come. 
 
 Self interest is the source of many good deeds, but 
 not of the good deeds inspired by a feeling of duty, of 
 ought. 
 
 If the feeling about right does not arise from pru- 
 dential motives from what does it arise? 
 
 It arises, say some, from social motives. It is due
 
 SOUL AND OVERSOUL 71 
 
 to the educative influences brought to bear on us by 
 Society. 
 
 The question being the genesis of the moral sense, 
 of its birth, and its beginning, this theory postulates, 
 to start with, a state of society in which morals are 
 as yet non-existent, and assumes that at some particu- 
 lar moment through the action of this unmoral society, 
 morals were brought forth. 
 
 It will hardly be disputed that non-moral societies 
 are moved by non-moral motives; motives, that is, 
 which have no reference to right and wrong. It will 
 be conceded further, that all human motives other 
 than those connected with right and wrong, may be 
 classified as motives of pleasure and pain, "our two 
 sovereign masters." We have thus, to start with, a 
 condition of society the moving impulses of which 
 are those of pleasure and pain. 
 
 What kind of influences can a society so moved, 
 bring to bear upon its individual members? It can 
 bring to bear in the first place, the influence of the 
 whole over the part, of the greater over the less, of 
 the majority over the minority, of the stronger over 
 the weaker, the influences namely, of force, of com- 
 pulsion. 
 
 It can bring to bear in the second place, influences 
 which operate through the desire for pleasure, the 
 fear of pain; that is to say, through hope of reward 
 and the dread of punishment, through bribery and 
 the "big stick." 
 
 Force, cupidity, fear, then, are the instruments an 
 unmoral society has it in its power to use. 
 
 It is reasonable to imagine that using these instru- 
 ments with relentless severity, a certain order and 
 discipline might be secured. The strong might be
 
 72 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 able to bribe and flog the weak into submission to the 
 rules which the strong ordained. 
 
 For the coerced masses these rules might become 
 the indisputable law. Such a social organization 
 might be orderly and obedient to a very high degree; 
 nevertheless, the order and obedience would be those 
 of the barracks and the penitentiary. The discipline 
 would be of the kind maintained by the whip of the 
 master over a gang of slaves. 
 
 The theory we are discussing, assumes a very 
 different result. It supposes that by the use of 
 these social instruments a feeling of right and wrong 
 will be engendered. That in time the coerced masses 
 would come to obey because of a consciousness that 
 they ought. 
 
 If only these social influences be continued long 
 enough it is said, the result will be a moral sense. 
 
 Yet surely it is self-evident that these expectations 
 are groundless. "From such materials, a million 
 years will no more generate a conscience, than they 
 will raise a cedar of Lebanon from a chalk stone." 
 
 In what imaginable way can the social influences 
 of compulsion, cupidity, and fear, create a sense of 
 moral obligation, of loyalty to duty? 
 
 How can compulsion create it? Our experience is 
 not that we are compelled to do right, but that we 
 ought to do it. 
 
 How can expectation of rewards, or fear of punish- 
 ment, create it? The moral sense bids us do right 
 whatever the consequences. 
 
 By such means the feeling of moral obligation might 
 be strengthened in an individual already possessed of 
 a moral sense, but it is as inconceivable that social 
 influences of compulsion, cupidity, and fear, could
 
 SOUL AND OVERSOUL 73 
 
 produce a moral consciousness where none existed, 
 as to suppose the chromatic scale could be produced 
 on the keyboard of a piano in which every string 
 was of the same length, merely by diligent strum- 
 ming. 
 
 Society can coerce, bribe or threaten us into con- 
 sent to, or conformity with, its customs and con- 
 ventions; but that conformity with social conven- 
 tions is one thing, and our feeling about right quite 
 another, is proved by the fact that the latter often 
 impels us to take a stand in irreconcilable opposition 
 to the former. 
 
 Again and again men and women have flatly 
 antagonized not only the customs of society hallowed 
 by long descent, but things which society regards as 
 its vital interests. 
 
 A Wyclif and a Luther raise their voices against 
 the creeds of centuries. A Thomas Clarkson and a 
 Granville Sharp head an unpopular movement for 
 the abolition of the slave trade, a movement which 
 seemed to their contemporaries to strike at the roots 
 of vested interests and to threaten the privileges of 
 private property. In innumerable other instances we 
 see the feeling about right prompting to courses in 
 uncompromising antagonism to social usages. How 
 can it be the product of that to which it is capable of 
 irreconcilably opposing itself? 
 
 Another school finds the source in our animal 
 ancestors, in forms of life lower than our own. 
 
 No one denies that many objects are derived from 
 predecessors externally unlike themselves. The bird 
 from the egg, the plant from the seed, for example, 
 but no one doubts that internally and actually egg 
 and seed contain the embryo respectively of bird
 
 74 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 and plant. When it is said that the source of morals 
 is in the lower forms of animal life, we are assuming 
 that moral natures have issued from natures, by impli- 
 cation, destitute of even the embryo of morality. 
 This is irrational. We can no more grow a sense of 
 right out of elements destitute of a sense of right, than 
 we can grow a crop of wheat by plowing the sea 
 sands. Some minds seem to think that everything 
 is explained by the term amalgamation. That some- 
 how if we mix things well enough and long enough 
 miraculous results ensue. But if there be only por- 
 ridge in the pot, only porridge will come out of the 
 pot for all our stirring. The outcome of the mixing 
 will be always of the same order as that to which 
 belong the ingredients mixed. 
 
 The inherent unsoundness of the principle which 
 would draw our feeling that right ought to be done, 
 from natures that have no such feeling, is to some 
 extent hidden by the specious language in which it 
 is usually expressed. Darwin, for instance, in his 
 "Descent of Man," says that it seems to him in a high 
 degree probable "that any animal whatever, endowed 
 with well marked social instincts, would inevitably 
 acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as the 
 intellectual powers had become as well developed, or 
 nearly as well developed, as in man." 
 
 It is difficult to see how "social instincts" can 
 'mean anything else than impulses of gregariousness 
 prompting individuals to associate together for pur- 
 poses of common profit and advantage. 
 
 Such impulses are at bottom nothing more than 
 the desire to obtain pleasure and avoid pain. The 
 motive forces behind social instincts are those of 
 pleasure and pain. The same is true of intellectual
 
 SOUL AND OVERSOUL 75 
 
 powers. In their essence they are the instruments 
 by which we perceive and judge, compare and adapt, 
 means to ends. We use these instruments because 
 we desire to obtain things that will be of advantage, 
 in other words, things that will be sources of pleasure 
 and happiness, or will protect us against loss, harm 
 and pain. 
 
 Consequently pleasures and pains are the motive 
 impulses behind social instincts and intellectual 
 activities. 
 
 Now the impulse behind our feeling about right is, 
 that right ought to be done regardless of pleasure or 
 pain. 
 
 It was not to embrace a pleasure or avoid a pain 
 that the Eurasian missionary kissed the leprous lips, 
 and that Svetlogoub surrendered his fortune to the 
 poor, and his neck to the hangman. 
 
 The impulse here was a sense of loyalty to something 
 to which they felt they owed allegiance. In obedience 
 to this feeling, pleasures and pains, advantages and 
 fears, were trampled underfoot. 
 
 Is it not contrary to reason to draw from pleasures 
 and pains impulses which totally ignore pleasures 
 and pains? 
 
 Again, we are assured that it is a waste of energy to 
 seek the source of our moral sensibility elsewhere. 
 The source is here in ourselves. It is the voice of 
 my higher self admonishing my lower and more 
 brutal self. 
 
 Plausible but fallacious. The phrase higher self 
 admonishing the lower self is misleading. There are 
 not two individuals within my skin, one of them able 
 to "boss" the other, as seems to be implied. Those 
 who use the expression "higher self" admonishing the
 
 76 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 "lower self," mean probably, that, feeling right ought 
 to be done, I curb my lower impulses. 
 
 What we desire to know, is, whence comes the feel- 
 ing that I ought to curb my lower impulses, a feeling 
 which I myself experience as an authoritative demand 
 imposed on me? 
 
 Since that which imposes authority cannot be the 
 same as that on which the authority is imposed, the 
 source of this authoritative feeling imposed on me 
 cannot be in me but must be in something else. 
 
 Obviously, one section of myself is incompetent to 
 impose an authoritative obligation on another section. 
 It requires a man to exact obedience from even the 
 feeblest of his fellows, while this theory would have 
 us suppose that in the moral life, the strongest and 
 most self-reliant yield obedience to something that 
 is only half a man. 
 
 If not in our ordinary self, is it not possible the 
 feeling has its source in that marvellous extension of 
 ourselves revealed by modern psychology, and called 
 the subconscious or transmarginal self? Is the feel- 
 ing of ought due to "an explosion into the fields of 
 ordinary consciousness of ideas elaborated outside of 
 these fields, in subliminal regions of the mind?" 
 
 Several difficulties stand in the way of this suppo- 
 sition. Uprushes of the subconscious take place 
 apparently, only under hysterical or at least abnormal 
 conditions. The feeling of moral obligation, on the 
 contrary, is in the strictest sense an experience of 
 normality, always with us, part of our working every- 
 day outfit. 
 
 That a welling up of the subconscious should have 
 something to do with the flashes of insight, and the 
 moments of inspiration, of men of genius, as F. W. H.
 
 SOUL AND OVERSOUL 77 
 
 Myers held, appears reasonable enough, but that such 
 uprushes are the same thing as the quiet, persistent 
 whispers of the inward monitor, will be for most of 
 us probably inconceivable. 
 
 Again, both the uniformity and the universality of 
 the sense of right make against the notion that its 
 source is in the transmarginal region. These regions 
 must be supposed to differ from each other as the indi- 
 viduals to whom they belong differ. It is therefore not 
 easy to see how they could give rise to an identical 
 feeling, except in so far as they were acted upon by an 
 identical agency beyond themselves. 
 
 Furthermore, whatever be the character of the 
 wider self in other respects, it is a part of me, a sub- 
 merged tract of my personality. 
 
 Since the feeling about right is of the nature of an 
 authority laying an obligation upon me, and since 
 the subliminal element is part of me, the authoritative 
 obligation of righteousness, is authoritative for the 
 subliminal, as for the rest of me, and as a conse- 
 quence must have its source elsewhere than in the 
 subject over which its sway is wielded. If this sub- 
 liminal is not part of me, but is external to my totality 
 of being, then the argument that the source of the 
 feeling about right is in myself, because it is in this 
 subliminal element, falls to the ground. 
 
 To review what has been said. 
 
 When we attempt to trace the feeling about right, 
 the sense of ought, to its source, we are unable to 
 find the source in prudential motives, or in social 
 pressure or influence, nor is it the result of the growth 
 of moral sensibility from lower forms of life. The
 
 78 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 magic of amalgamation is incompetent to produce 
 morality out of non-moral ingredients, nor can it 
 spring from our inner, or from our submerged, con- 
 sciousness. Whence then does it spring? 
 
 Since its origin is not to be discovered in those 
 sections of our surroundings which are on a level 
 with ourselves, namely, in human society or in our 
 own consciousness, and since it does not issue from 
 forms of life which are lower than ourselves, the indi- 
 cations are that it comes from a source higher than 
 ourselves. 
 
 Consider once more the situation. A sense of 
 obligation to do right is experienced by the whole 
 of mankind, and experienced as an authority they are 
 in duty bound to obey. 
 
 Do not these facts suggest, to some extent at least, 
 what the nature of its source must be? The feeling 
 is, in the first place, common to all mankind, a uni- 
 versal experience. In the second place, it is the same 
 everywhere. Not unstable, desultory, but immutable, 
 invariable, permanent. In the third place, it imposes 
 itself upon us with authoritative power. It speaks 
 to the soul with a sovereign voice. We acknowledge, 
 and we cannot help acknowledging, that we ought to 
 discharge our moral obligation. Try as we may, we 
 are unable to rid ourselves of the consciousness of 
 allegiance owed to right. 
 
 Here then, is an immutable feeling imposing itself 
 upon us with authority. Consequently, whencesoever 
 it may come, it must be from some source higher than 
 ourselves, for only that which is higher than, superior 
 to, ourselves can be experienced by us as an authority. 
 Furthermore, this feeling is experienced as an author- 
 ity by the entire human race. Its source therefore,
 
 SOUL AND OVERSOUL 79 
 
 must be above, higher than, superior to, the entire 
 human race. 
 
 It will scarcely be denied that whatever is above, 
 higher than, superior to, all that is human, is super- 
 human. From this the conclusion appears inevitable 
 that the source of our feeling that right ought to be 
 done is a superhuman source. " The moral law comes 
 to us out of the infinite depths and heights. It is a 
 voice that speaks to us out of the ultimate reality of 
 things." 
 
 An incredible doctrine, opposed to the whole trend 
 of modern thought, it will be said. Yet the doctrine 
 rests upon a fact imbedded in the very centre of our 
 human nature. To refute the doctrine, either we 
 must get rid of the fact, or find some other than a 
 superhuman explanation. 
 
 We cannot get rid of the fact. The feeling that 
 right ought to be done is universal and ineradicable, 
 part of the equipment of rational beings. Were we 
 without the feeling, it would mark us as either less 
 than, or more than, man. With regard to its explan- 
 ation, our endeavor has been to show that none but 
 a superhuman one meets the case. 
 
 This being admitted, the final and momentous 
 result at which we arrive, is, that since our feeling 
 about right is a manifestation of the superhuman, and 
 since its influence is exercised over the entire human 
 race, therefore, the entire human race is actively and 
 unremittingly influenced toward righteousness by a 
 superhuman agency. By an agent of the Eternal both 
 sage and savage are attended on their way. At every 
 stage of the journey of life soul is in touch with Over- 
 soul. 
 
 From such contact may not streams of energy, may
 
 80 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 not fire from heaven be drawn? Experience shows 
 that we are able to reduce the thread of connection 
 with the superhuman almost to the vanishing point. 
 Can we not also enlarge it, until the superhuman 
 permeates our being? With the cooperation of these 
 higher powers it should be possible for us to trans- 
 form our lives.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE CONDUCT OF THE SOUL 
 
 1. The Soul's Quest 
 
 Surrounded by a world on the whole, immeasurably 
 stronger than itself, the soul makes the amazing dis- 
 covery that in some respects it is stronger than the 
 world. 
 
 "In the fell clutch of circumstance 
 
 I have not winced nor cried aloud, 
 Under the bludgeonings of chance 
 My head is bloody but unbowed. 
 
 "It matters not how strait the gate, 
 
 How charged with punishments the scroll, 
 I am the master of my fate, 
 I am the captain of my soul." 
 
 The great and powerful universe can crush and kill 
 us, but it cannot make us say "yes" if we decide to 
 say "no." To a limited extent we are independent 
 of the world. Within prescribed bounds we possess 
 a real detachment and freedom, and are able to choose 
 our own course. The ever pressing question is, how 
 to choose? 
 
 Instinctively, the soul chooses for its own benefit, 
 uses its independence to seek its own good. 
 
 We perceive in ourselves certain appetites and 
 desires, impulses in a deep and true sense sacred, in 
 
 81
 
 82 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 as much as they are rooted in the nature of things, 
 in the divine order. These appetites and desires, 
 for food, drink, warmth, companionship, admiration, 
 possessions, power, love, beauty, etc., we seek to 
 satisfy, and in their satisfaction we find our welfare, 
 our pleasure, our happiness, our good. 
 
 As John Stuart Mill writes: "To think of an 
 object as desirable (unless for the sake of its con- 
 sequences), and to think of it as pleasant, are one 
 and the same thing, and to desire anything except 
 in proportion as the idea of it is pleasant, is a physical 
 and metaphysical impossibility." 
 
 When we say, the soul seeks its own good, we mean 
 then, that it seeks to fulfil its desires, finding in such 
 fulfilment pleasure or happiness. This constitutes 
 its good. The most rational view of the difference 
 between pleasure and happiness appears to be that 
 it is one of degree. If pleasure be represented by a 
 single musical note, then, happiness is a number of 
 notes sounding in harmony. We cannot perhaps 
 define happiness. We do not need to define it. Every 
 one knows what it is, and recognizes it as a desirable 
 condition, as something good. Light on the point 
 may be gained possibly, from the consideration that 
 both happiness and the good are allied to worth. All 
 good things we regard as of more or less worth. 
 The worth of things lies wholly in their capacity to 
 give pleasure or happiness. Rubies and diamonds are 
 precious, are of worth, only because they contribute 
 to this end. Did rubies and diamonds give us pain 
 instead of pleasure, their price would drop to zero. 
 Different things have different rates of worth for 
 different people, but in every instance ,the thing's 
 worth consists in the amount of pleasure or happi- 
 ness it gives.
 
 THE CONDUCT OF THE SOUL 83 
 
 Since good is equivalent to worth, and since happi- 
 ness is also equivalent to worth, and since things that 
 are equal to the same thing are equal to one another, 
 therefore, what we call the good, and what we call 
 happiness, are equivalent. 
 
 The good is thus identical with happiness. The 
 highest good is that which promotes in the highest 
 degree the happiness of all. 
 
 Some have said that the highest good is perfection, 
 but of what avail is perfection without happiness? 
 Others have regarded character as the highest good, 
 yet of what worth would character be, if it produced 
 nothing but misery? We value character because 
 we believe that through it may be obtained the oppo- 
 site of misery. Are there not forms of happiness 
 which instead of being good, are evil? Those of the 
 drunkard and the libertine, for example? In such 
 instances, it is not the pleasure or happiness that is 
 evil, the evil element is the pain caused to others, 
 and ultimately to ourselves, by drunkenness and 
 immorality. In using its independence to seek its 
 own good, the soul seeks happiness. For no other end 
 is it in the least worth striving. 
 
 2. The Soul's Dilemma 
 
 Thus, the path seems plain and clear. Not far, 
 however, do we travel along the way of life, before 
 the pursuit of pleasure receives a check. The soul 
 finds itself compelled to pause, and think, and ques- 
 tion. Potent as the impulses of appetite and desire 
 are, the soul is not the slave of these impulses. If it 
 choose to do so, it can refuse to yield to them, and 
 in certain instances it knows it ought to refuse. It
 
 84 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 is aware of a peculiar sensation that, in certain 
 instances, not pleasure, but right, should be our 
 aim. 
 
 The source and significance of this, the central fact 
 of our experience, has been discussed in a previous 
 chapter. The feeling that right ought to be done 
 was there shown to be acknowledged as authoritative 
 by the whole human race. Every one will agree that 
 right has to do with the good. We ought to do right 
 means we ought to do what is good, in other words, 
 what promotes happiness. Hence the feeling about 
 right and the instincts of the soul point in the same 
 direction, namely, toward happiness. Conflict comes, 
 only where there is an option between different 
 happinesses. Every one will agree further, that the 
 feeling we ought to do what is good, means, we ought 
 to do what is good always and everywhere, and 
 to the utmost of our ability. The only limit the moral 
 sense recognizes is the limit of capacity. Do all the 
 good you can, is the criterion. When therefore, we 
 are confronted by alternatives both good, evidently, 
 we ought to take the course promoting the greater 
 good. How are we to know the greater good? We 
 are endowed with no infallible instrument of dis- 
 crimination. The feeling about right is no such in- 
 strument. It begins and ends in a sense that right 
 ought to be done, that we are in duty bound to do 
 it. As to which is the right, the greater good, on any 
 particular occasion, it gives no indication. 
 
 We ourselves must use our wits and exercise our 
 intelligence. The course we judge and believe to be 
 for the greater good, is for us, the right, and that 
 course the sense of moral obligation bids us pursue. 
 We may be mistaken. Correct judgment depends 
 chiefly on the amount of our knowledge, and this
 
 THE CONDUCT OF THE SOUL 85 
 
 depends on education. Against error, education is 
 the only safeguard. 
 
 The direction we take, in our endeavor to obey 
 the feeling about right, thus hinges on our possibly 
 mistaken judgment. There is no help for this. We 
 have to run the risk. Our line of action may not be 
 that which in reality makes for the larger volume of 
 good or happiness, and later on we may suffer from 
 the consequences of our error, but the suffering will 
 be of the kind that follows an error, not of the kind 
 that follows a moral wrong, a sin. If we have adopted 
 the plan of action which to the best of our judgment 
 and belief was for the right, then, however foolish our 
 conduct from a practical point of view, and however 
 unfortunate the outcome, our conscience will be 
 clear. 
 
 In many, perhaps in the majority of situations, no 
 effort is required on our part to decide which the 
 greater good is. If the question be of my own good 
 and that of the community, clearly, the greater good 
 lies in the direction of the community. If the issue 
 be between myself and another individual, the greater 
 good will be promoted by sharing my good with him, 
 for the obvious reason that the good of two is greater 
 than that of one. In such examples the issue may be 
 read by him who runs. Other situations present 
 difficulties, for example: 
 
 Two passengers from a torpedoed liner are clinging 
 to a plank. One of them is a ship's stoker, the other 
 a young doctor, a specialist in childrens' diseases, 
 with important achievements in research work to his 
 credit, and a brilliant career opening before him. He 
 sees that the plank cannot support two. One of them 
 must seek safety elsewhere, if the other is to survive. 
 Which is it to be? The stoker is the older and the
 
 86 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 weaker man, but at all costs he wants to live, and 
 clings desperately to the plank. In the doctor's mind 
 a strife, an agitation, takes place. Carefully trained, 
 highly educated, is he not worth more to the world 
 than a common coal shoveller? Yet this coal shoveller 
 may be the father of a family, have many attached 
 friends, be a valuable citizen. After a few moments 
 the young physician quietly lets go his hold, swims 
 away, and overcome with cold and exhaustion, 
 presently sinks. During the next half hour the stoker 
 is rescued by a passing boat. 
 
 In this instance, the question was not of sharing, 
 but of surrendering, happiness. Did the young 
 doctor make a mistake. Would he* have promoted 
 the larger happiness by preserving his own life, and 
 shaking the other fellow off? Science and philosophy 
 may reply, 'yes, the man was a fool.' As the crackling 
 of sticks, will such an answer seem to many of us. 
 The man could not indeed be certain the course he 
 took would secure the larger happiness, but the course 
 he took makes us certain that the larger happiness 
 was his pure untainted aim. Sure of this we, 
 revere him as a hero, and our hearts offer him their 
 homage. 
 
 When a conflict arises between our own good and 
 that of other people, our moral sense bids us make 
 for what we believe to be the larger good, even at 
 cost to ourselves, even though such a course involve 
 the surrender of the whole of our own good. 
 
 "When joy and duty clash 
 Then joy must go to smash." 
 
 is the sum and substance of the ethical law. Obedi- 
 ence to the ethical law; that is, to the mandate the
 
 THE CONDUCT OF THE SOUL 87 
 
 feeling about right lays upon our heart, is what is 
 meant by moral goodness. Moral excellence con- 
 sists in willingness to endure loss and pain ourselves, 
 for the sake of promoting the good; that is, the 
 happiness, of others. 
 
 When the "Titanic" struck the iceberg, the men 
 remained on board and went down with the ship, 
 in order that there might be room for the women and 
 children in the boats. The deed was morally excel- 
 lent, and the men were moral heroes, because out of 
 loyalty to their sense of right they voluntarily endured 
 pain themselves, in order to secure good, or happiness, 
 for others. They deliberately chose the course of 
 action which they believed promoted the larger 
 amount of good, although, they themselves suffered 
 in consequence. 
 
 The ineradicable conviction of mankind is, that 
 although those who sacrifice themselves for others 
 seem to incur defeat and total loss, there is somehow, 
 in spite of appearances to the contrary, instead of 
 defeat, victory, instead of loss, gain. 
 
 An inkling of the truth at the bottom of this con- 
 viction may be obtained, perhaps, from the con- 
 sideration that if all things be related, then all souls 
 are related, soul life with soul life, and the whole with 
 the common source of life. Such being the case, is 
 it not imaginable that selfishness reduces the links 
 of relationship and thereby tends to isolate the soul, 
 and correspondingly to weaken it, while on the other 
 hand, unselfishness adds to those links, in this way 
 bringing the soul's individual life into closer touch 
 with the universal life? Would not this be likely 
 to result in an increase of the power and vitality of 
 the individual, far outweighing the loss incurred 
 through self sacrifice?
 
 88 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 Evidence exists which supports this idea. 
 
 The case of Charles Lamb, for instance. For the 
 sake of his poor mad sister, Lamb sacrificed at the 
 outset of his career ease and comfort, prospects of 
 marriage, and opportunities of devoting himself to 
 study; surrendered, in fact, about all that for most of 
 us makes life worth living. Nevertheless, it would 
 appear that out of his surrender of good came an 
 increase of good. Before this time, he tells us, he 
 himself had had at least one attack of the insanity 
 which was hereditary in his family. After this 
 renunciation for the sake of a fellow creature, the 
 tendency to mental unsoundness entirely disappeared, 
 his mental nature seemed quickened, his imagination 
 strengthened. "With me," he wrote, "the former 
 things are passed away. I have something more to 
 do now than to feel." 
 
 Writing from the battle-fields of France and Flan- 
 ders, an American newspaper correspondent declared, 
 " In scores of instances I have been with men in their 
 dying moments, men who have laid down their lives 
 for their country, and in every instance their minds 
 were serenely content. On their faces was an ex- 
 pression of radiant happiness." 
 
 Always, the saints have counted it not loss but gain 
 to suffer in the cause of justice and mercy. 
 
 3. The Easier Way. 
 
 Admirable though the course described may be, it is 
 not a necessary course. There is an alternative. It 
 is possible to ignore the feeling about right, refuse to 
 incur loss and pain at the call of duty, and turn instead 
 to seek our own happiness without consideration for 
 others.
 
 THE CONDUCT OF THE SOUL 89 
 
 Strong tendencies urge us in that direction. Look 
 out for number one, everybody for himself, is the 
 easier way. Why should not the soul choose the 
 easier way? Were we as the creatures of the jungle 
 and the poultry yard, this would be our proper course. 
 It is not our proper course only because we are not 
 as the creatures of the jungle and the poultry yard. 
 We possess a quality of which they are destitute. 
 In addition to their animal instincts we have an 
 instinct that is not animal, something much more 
 than an instinct, a feeling unique and extraordinary 
 about right. A feeling that bids us on certain occa- 
 sions shape our conduct by other than animal motives, 
 by motives of unselfishness, of altruism. 
 
 But to shape our conduct after this fashion is irk- 
 some. Why not yield to the pleasant beast-of-the- 
 field impulses, and seek after our own safety, and com- 
 fort, and wellbeing? Often enough this seems the 
 natural, the common sense thing to do. Ordinarily, 
 it is also the right thing to do. It becomes wrong only 
 when our welfare conflicts with the welfare of others. 
 It is wrong under these circumstances only because 
 we know a higher, if a harder, way. Yet not by heroes 
 are those blamed who shrink from the supreme sac- 
 rifice. The trouble is, evasion of sacrifice brings no 
 satisfying results. We are not made happier thereby, 
 but the contrary. 
 
 Alluring, pleasant, desirable though the way of 
 selfishness appear, it is the way of folly as well as of 
 moral wrong. Always the quest for joy through 
 selfishness is a failure. The price paid outweighs the 
 joy gained. Selfishness, sin, (sin is nothing but sel- 
 fishness,) leads to misery, never to anything else, for 
 as was before shown, the feeling about right is the 
 expression in our humanity of the governing goodness
 
 90 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 of the universe. The obligation laid upon us by the 
 moral sense is thus no mere human ordinance, or 
 man made rule and law, but a summons from the 
 Eternal. When, therefore, the soul sets itself in oppo- 
 sition to the sense of moral obligation, it is setting itself 
 in opposition to a power omnipotent, invincible, and 
 in the end, irresistible. 
 
 For a time opposition may be maintained, but the 
 final and certain outcome is defeat. Defeat signifies 
 the necessity of conforming to the will of the conqueror. 
 Since in this case the conqueror is the supreme power 
 of righteousness, to righteousness the defeated must 
 ultimately conform. The soul which has accustomed 
 itself to evil will be obliged both to accustom itself to 
 good, and so radically to change its own inner nature 
 as to acquire a desire for the good, a hunger and thirst 
 after righteousness. Clearly the preliminary step in 
 such a process must be a contrite acknowledgment of 
 guilt and error. Not until conviction on this point 
 has been reached will any genuine rearrangement of 
 ideas concerning good and evil be possible. Even 
 when this valley of humilation has been traversed, 
 the soul will find itself no more than at the beginning 
 of the way. Painful will it be, for the only exit from 
 the valley of humiliation, is through the door of repar- 
 ation and atonement. When the prodigal, in the 
 parable, returned home, was it not to take up, after 
 the interlude of the fatted calf, the hard drudgery of 
 a hired servant? 
 
 On the other hand, while obedience to duty results 
 often in painful experiences, these are incidental. We 
 have seen that the summons comes from the super- 
 human, from the heights of the Eternal, from the power 
 which is a power of perfect life. It is therefore toward
 
 THE CONDUCT OF THE SOUL 91 
 
 perfection of life that we are called, and perfection of 
 life means happiness. 
 
 Through obedience, the soul not only sets its face 
 toward ultimate happiness, but at once enters into 
 alliance with the Eternal, comes into accord with the 
 Most High, links soul with Oversoul, establishing 
 thereby an inflow of what must prove in the long run, 
 transforming vitality and strength. 
 
 That way salvation lies, for though the path lead 
 up many a steep hill and down many a dark ravine, 
 the trail is blazed by the axe of God, and each step 
 brings us nearer to that state in which suffering is 
 outgrown because imperfection is outgrown. 
 
 4. Practical Consequences. 
 
 The business of the soul, it has been said, is to 
 make for happiness, with the single condition that 
 when there is a choice between alternative courses 
 of action, the soul shall choose that which to the best 
 of its belief promotes the larger amount of happiness, 
 even at cost of its own. 
 
 How would this work out in practice? If this 
 principle were acknowledged as the supreme rule of 
 life, how, for example, would it affect the use of force? 
 It would limit the use of force to protection and 
 defence. But, if I am sure that my system of govern- 
 ment, or my method of social organization, or my 
 doctrines of religion, promote the largest amount of 
 happiness, am I not justified in compelling their 
 acceptance by other people? I have no such justi- 
 fication, for it must be remembered that other people 
 may be equally sure that some different kind of 
 government, or social system, or religion, makes for 
 the largest happiness. Consequently, however con-
 
 92 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 fident I may be that I possess the truth, so long as I 
 acknowledge each man's right to do what he believes 
 to be right, it can never be my right to force my truth 
 on another man. Had the Spanish Inquisitors recog- 
 nized this principle, there would have been no In- 
 quisition. Had the Protestants recognized it, there 
 would have been no hanging of Papists. If every one 
 did what he believed to be right, and permitted the 
 same privilege to his neighbor, and if every one con- 
 ceded that for every one the right course is to pro- 
 mote the largest amount of happiness in sight, not 
 only should we make an end of tyranny and intoler- 
 ance, but peace and good will would be assured. 
 
 How would the establishment of this principle 
 affect the individual citizen? It would foster and 
 develop the individual through fellowship with other 
 individuals. Were this principle the rule of life, no 
 one would seek his own happiness regardless of his 
 neighbors, for the happiness of no individual, taken 
 by itself, can ever be the largest in sight. I must, if 
 I follow out this principle, seek always the happiness 
 of others in addition to my own, and sometimes to 
 the loss of my own, and others, in their turn, must in 
 addition to their own, and sometimes at the cost of 
 their own, seek also my happiness. 
 
 Were we always busy promoting the happiness of 
 our neighbors, and were our neighbors equally busy 
 promoting ours, all the world would be happy, sel- 
 fishness would be eliminated, and sin would cease. 
 The ideal of socialism, each for all and all for each, 
 would be attained without the burden of a rigid 
 socialistic system. 
 
 Since the one thing we desire of other people is 
 that they promote our happiness, when we seek to 
 promote theirs, we are doing to them what we would
 
 THE CONDUCT OF THE SOUL 93 
 
 have them do to us. By putting our principle into 
 practice, therefore, we establish the golden rule as 
 the universal law of life. 
 
 With the golden rule accepted universally, errors of 
 judgment would be the only remaining sources of 
 discord. For errors of judgment, more knowledge, 
 more enlightenment, are the remedies, and these it 
 may well be the care of society to impart.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 
 
 What of the future? What of the destiny of the soul? 
 LIFE is the desired destiny. 
 
 INSTINCT whispers that with a sufficiency of life, 
 the rest will take care of itself. 
 
 Sometimes we cry out against life and question its 
 worth, but in our calmer moments we recognize these 
 despairing moods to be the aberrations of a mind 
 unhinged by pain. When we come to ourselves we 
 perceive that what we need is more, not less of life. 
 
 Our woes are due to the defects, to the imperfec- 
 tions, of existence, and these imperfections are the 
 result of the meagreness of the measure of existence 
 that is ours. 
 
 The current of our vitality runs low. It is like a 
 trickling stream finding its way with difficulty among 
 the boulders, each pebble a hindrance. A few weeks 
 later boulder and pebble have disappeared. Every 
 obstacle is overcome and the change is wrought not 
 by removing the obstacles but by adding to the 
 volume of the stream. 
 
 So from our troubles deliverance is to be found 
 through an increase in the volume of our vitality. 
 Give us vitality enough and our infirmities will 
 vanish. 
 
 "Whatever crazy sorrow saith, 
 No life that breathes with human breath 
 94
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 95 
 
 Has ever truly longed for death. 
 'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, 
 Oh life not death for which we pant 
 More life and fuller that we want. 
 
 Few probably formulate the desire to themselves. 
 It lies nevertheless an ineradicable instinct in the 
 depths of being. The endeavor after success, achieve- 
 ment, wealth, amusement, what are these but expres- 
 sions of the passion for larger, richer, more potent, 
 vitality. The passion is justified, it is in accord with 
 the order of things. The physical world is pervaded 
 by a movement of development and the general direc- 
 tion of development appears to be from less to more 
 life. 
 
 That this is the case with individuals is beyond 
 question. No individual remains stationary. Every 
 man makes some advance during his earthly journey. 
 The saying of Job "naked came I out of my mother's 
 womb and naked shall I return thither" must not 
 blind us to the truth that mentally a man is very 
 far indeed from being as naked when he leaves the 
 world as when he enters it. 
 
 In every instance even the most degraded savage 
 achieves some mental gain, adding thereby, to the 
 volume of his life. Is it not to life also that we are 
 called by the sense of moral obligation? He who 
 loses his life in the cause of justice and mercy, we 
 have been told, shall find it again, enriched, enlarged. 
 
 The desire of the soul is therefore one and the same 
 with the end toward which all animated nature moves. 
 A happy augury that the desire will be satisfied. 
 
 But a shadow falls across the dial, the dark shadow 
 of death. What does it portend? Is the "fell ser- 
 geant's strict arrest," the final cessation of con- 
 sciousness? In appearance, at least, the soul's life
 
 96 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 is extinguished, can it be so in reality? Plainly 
 enough, death means the end of the body. We see 
 incurable decay breaking down the substance of 
 tissue and bone until the whole is dissolved into dust. 
 But what of the soul? Wistfully our hearts ask, is 
 there reasonable ground for thinking the inward self 
 survives the shock of dissolution and passes in safety 
 the peril of the grave? 
 
 An affirmative answer may be given without hesita- 
 tion. There is very good ground for believing that, 
 as regards the soul, death is an emancipator rather 
 than a destroyer. There is a weighty volume of evi- 
 dence in favor of the soul's continued existence. 
 
 Continued existence is suggested by the indestructible 
 nature of the soul. 
 
 We know that it is made of different stuff from the 
 body. As a consequence, it is not likely to be subject 
 to the forces of destruction which prey upon the body. 
 The whole of the material universe is in the grip of a 
 subtle, unceasing, irresistible, power of disintegration. 
 Wise men tell us the world itself is growing old and is 
 slowly but surely moving toward a point of time when 
 all heat having passed off, it will crumble down and 
 finally dissolve into that impalpable cosmic dust out 
 of which it was originally formed. 
 
 Insignificance is no protection. These relentless 
 agencies are busy alike with the world and with the 
 tiny specks of matter floating in a sunbeam. 
 
 Vast as the power of disintegration is, it is capable 
 of working in but one way. Its activities are con- 
 fined within the limits of a single process. Be it a 
 rock, or a wall, or a tree, or a corpse, whether the 
 operating agency be water, or frost, or wind, or fire,
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 97 
 
 whether destruction be instantaneous, or gradual, 
 sudden, or by slow degrees, the end is in every case 
 accomplished by the same means. 
 
 Call it decay, or dissolution, or death, the method is 
 identical. The forces of disintegration work by rend- 
 ing assunder, by pulling apart, the groups and frag- 
 ments of groups of infinitely minute particles which 
 constitute the substance of all material things, thus 
 utterly destroying the object, the thing, whch was 
 composed of those particles. 
 
 How is it with the thinking mind, the living and 
 conscious soul? As we have seen it does not consist, 
 like flesh and muscle, of groups or bunches of particles. 
 In what manner, then, can the forces of dissolution 
 lay hold of it? These forces destroy, by rending 
 assunder the material of which their victim is fashioned, 
 but here there is no material. They achieve their 
 mission by tearing apart the particles, the atoms, 
 which form the substance of their prey, but here 
 there are no atoms. They work only in one way, and 
 here they have nothing to work upon. They cannot 
 break in pieces that which is not made of breakable 
 stuff. They cannot separate the inseparable. 
 
 In presence of the inward mental self, the agencies 
 of dissolution are impotent. By the molecular, the 
 nonmolecular is unassailable. Its destructive forces 
 can find no point at which to deliver their attack. 
 The probability is, therefore, that no attack will be 
 delivered, and that the inward mental self, the soul, 
 will survive the last adventure, unaffected by the 
 processes of bodily decay. 
 
 Continued existence is foreshadowed by pre-existence. 
 
 Since the inward mental self is made of different 
 stuff, it is not a product of the body, but must be the
 
 98 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 product of something else, in the sense that electric- 
 ity is not a product of the metal it magnetizes, but is 
 a product of something else. Being a product of 
 something else it existed somewhere else prior to its 
 junction with the metal it magnetizes. 
 
 Is not this likely to be the case also with the inward 
 mental self? Whatever the process, whether gradual 
 or instantaneous, by which the soul was brought into 
 being since it is made of other than bodily material 
 the agencies which brought it into being were other 
 than bodily agencies. 
 
 Consequently, there must have been, one would 
 think, a moment before soul-germ and body-germ, 
 before the embryonic consciousness and the embryonic 
 material principle entered into association, a moment 
 when they existed independently. 
 
 If the soul existed independently before its associa- 
 tion with the body began, its ability to exist indepen- 
 dently after that association is brought to an end is 
 at least a reasonable supposition, with the difference 
 that this further existence will be no longer that of a 
 mere sack of possibilities, but of an individualized 
 being, equipped with faculties drawn forth and devel- 
 oped by its earthly experiences. 
 
 Continued existence is probable because the soul is a 
 producer of energy. 
 
 The soul is a producer of energy for the reason that 
 it causes things to happen. 
 
 My hat is hanging on the peg. I take it down. 
 With regard to the hat, a change has occurred, and I 
 am the author of the change. 
 
 This illustrates what is meant by causing things to 
 happen. We mean that we produce change of some
 
 99 
 
 kind. The change thus produced is called an effect. 
 The changes I am able to produce are countless in 
 number and endless in variety. Yet, they are all 
 brought about in the same way. In every case I 
 exert myself. By this I mean that I employ a cer- 
 tain amount of force, put forth a certain amount of 
 energy. There may be much or little, it may be 
 emitted spontaneously, or employed with care and 
 deliberation, but, always, when I produce change, I 
 put forth a certain amount of force, energy, momen- 
 tum, mental or physical. In causing things to happen, 
 I exercise originating power. 
 
 Few of us, probably, question the truth of this. It is 
 accepted as a self-evident fact, almost universally. 
 Instinctively, we take it for granted, and experience 
 bears us out. By some writers, however, it is disputed. 
 
 We deceive ourselves, they tell us. We seem to 
 cause things, but it is pure illusion. In reality, we 
 do nothing of the sort. The energy displayed is not 
 our energy, but that of the universe passing through 
 us as the electric current passes through the wire. 
 Our part is that of the wire. 
 
 We are mere machines, automata, without the 
 faintest trace of originating power. We contribute 
 no more to the outcome of life than the aeolian harp 
 contributes to the music which the winds of heaven 
 call forth as they blow over its strings. 
 
 This is the doctrine of "determinism," and it has 
 much in its favor. It is symmetrical, can be dealt with 
 on exact and mathematical lines, adapts itself to the 
 scientific scheme of things, and fits into the rigid 
 natural order. 
 
 Still, plausible though it be, it will not stand the 
 test, which demands that a theory shall explain all 
 the facts. Determinism fails to explain all the facts.
 
 100 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 It fails to give any rational account of the existence 
 of the feeling itself, of how it is that the fundamental 
 instincts of the race impel us to regard ourselves as 
 possessing a real power of initiative, or of causation. 
 The determinist says there is no ground for such a 
 notion. How then, could it have established itself 
 so firmly? 
 
 Common sense affirms doggedly and obstinately, 
 that these instincts are sound, and that within certain 
 limits we can actually put forth power or energy, and 
 so cause things to happen. 
 
 As proof of this, common sense points to the fact 
 that we are able to overcome obstacles. 
 
 In an article entitled "The Forest," (Outlook, 
 June 13, 1903), S. E. White describes the difficulty 
 of carrying camp equipage. 
 
 "The first time I did any packing, I had a hard 
 time stumbling a few hundred feet with just fifty 
 pounds on my back. By the end of the same trip I 
 could carry a hundred pounds and a lot of miscel- 
 laneous traps like canoe poles, and guns, without 
 serious inconvenience, and over a long portage. But 
 at the start packing is as near infernal punishment 
 as mundane conditions can compass. Sixteen brand 
 new muscles ache at first dully, then sharply, then 
 intolerably, until it seems you cannot bear it another 
 second. You are unable to keep your feet. A stagger 
 means an effort at recovery, and an effort at recovery 
 means that you trip when you place your feet, and 
 that means, if you are lucky enough not to be thrown, 
 an extra tweak for every one of the sixteen new mus- 
 cles. At first you rest every time you feel tired. Then 
 you begin to feel tired every fifty feet. Then you 
 have to do the best you can, and prove the pluck 
 that is in you.
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 101 
 
 Mr. Tom Friant, an old woodsman of wide experi- 
 ence, has often told me with relish of his first try at 
 carrying. He had about sixty pounds and his com- 
 panion double that amount. Mr. Friant stood it for 
 a few hundred yards and then sat down. He could 
 not have moved another step if a gun had been at 
 his ear. 
 
 "What's the matter?" asked his companion. 
 
 "Dell," said Friant, "I'm all in. I can't navigate. 
 Here's where I quit." 
 
 "Can't you carry her any further?" 
 
 "Not an inch." 
 
 "AVell pile her on, I'll carry her for you." 
 
 Friant looked at him for a moment in silent amaze- 
 ment. "Do you mean to say you are going to carry 
 your pack and mine too?" 
 
 "That's what I mean to say. I'll do it if I have 
 to." 
 
 Friant drew a long breath. 
 
 "Well," said he at last, "If a little sawed off cuss 
 like you can wiggle under a hundred and eighty, I 
 guess I can make it under sixty." 
 
 "That's right," said Dell imperturbably, "If you 
 think you can, you can." 
 
 "And I did," ends Friant with a chuckle. 
 
 Therein lies the whole secret. The work is irksome, 
 sometimes even painful, but if you think you can do 
 it, you can, for though great is the protest of the 
 human frame against what it considers abuse, greater 
 is the power of a man's grit." 
 
 Is it imaginable that any influence in heaven or 
 on earth could shake the conviction of a man so 
 situated, that energy was contributed, and that he 
 himself was the contributor? 
 
 But the proof of proofs, the decisive testimony that
 
 102 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 we do really contribute the energy which causes 
 things to happen, is the evidence afforded by our 
 moral experiences. 
 
 Everyone feels that he ought to do right. The 
 sensation is not of compulsion, but of persuasion. As 
 we are under no necessity to do right, so we are under 
 no necessity to do wrong. We can always decline to 
 do it if we try hard enough. We are in every case 
 masters of the situation. 
 
 Nothing in the whole range of human life is more 
 certain than that, in moral decisions, he who makes 
 the decision does so in very truth, the action has its 
 root and beginning in him. 
 
 In spite of ourselves, we hold him responsible, and 
 give him the credit or the blame. In our innermost 
 souls we cannot help believing that it really was he 
 who lifted the latch, and opened the door, and sent 
 the impulse out upon its errand of mercy or the 
 contrary, that it really was he who, exercising his 
 prerogative of free judgment, decided nobly or basely. 
 
 When we are brought into contact with brave deeds 
 we greet them not with the coldly judicial approval 
 we should bestow on a smoothly working piece of 
 clockwork, but with an enthusiastic reverence and 
 admiration, called forth by an instinctive conviction 
 that the merit of the deed belongs to the brave man 
 and not to some ulterior power working through him. 
 
 Nothing can really persuade us that the hero of the 
 following incident was a mere machine acting under 
 mechanical compulsion. On the contrary, we simply 
 cannot help regarding him as a being before whose 
 masterful will nature herself was powerless. 
 
 The troops holding the farmhouse of Huguemont, 
 on the field of Waterloo, were short of ammunition. 
 Two wagon loads were despatched to supply the
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 103 
 
 need. Approaching the place, they found the sur- 
 rounding hedge on fire. 
 
 Without considering the danger, the driver of the 
 first wagon lashed his terrified and struggling horses 
 through the burning heap, but the flames catching 
 the powder, it exploded, and in an instant shattered 
 man, horses, and wagon into ten thousand fragments. 
 
 The second driver paused, appalled by his com- 
 rade's fate. Every instinct of the natural man urged 
 him to the rear. Then the conquering power of the 
 soul asserted itself. Observing that the flames were 
 beaten back a moment by the explosion, and that 
 this gave him one desperate chance, he crushed down 
 his fears, and sending his horses at the smouldering 
 breach, amid the deafening cheers of the garrison, 
 landed his perilous cargo safely within, while the 
 flames rose behind him with redoubled fury. 
 
 Can any one believe that a deed like this was done 
 without the expenditure of energy, or that the hero 
 himself was not the source of the energy expended? 
 
 If the heroes we revere were the instruments of 
 necessity, if they were like the phenomena of nature, 
 and did what they did by the force of gravitation, or 
 by chemical cohesion, or by the rigid laws of mechan- 
 ical motion, we should no more offer them our homage, 
 or acknowledge them as meritorious, than we should 
 the winds and waves and falling rain. How absurd to 
 pay homage to a steam engine, or to offer our allegi- 
 ance to a telephone, yet it would be not one whit more 
 absurd than to do so to a hero who was heroic merely 
 through the force of circumstances, or the pressure of 
 inherited tendencies. In our hearts we are assured 
 that those who rouse our enthusiasm by self-sacrificing 
 courage are not the slaves of circumstance and tend- 
 ency, but that the force, impulse, initiative power,
 
 104 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 energy, which achieved the heroic deeds, came from 
 and originated in these people. 
 
 Consider again, what takes place when, instead of 
 rising to our moral obligations, we beat a retreat and 
 fail to meet them. In order to save ourselves trouble, 
 or to escape a disagreeable experience, we shirk our 
 duty, and depart from the straight path of honor. As 
 a consequence, we are haunted by a peculiar sensa- 
 tion. The feeling is something more than vexation, 
 or irritation. It is an inward sense of unworthiness, 
 accompanied by a passionate desire to return to the 
 straight path and to undo what has been done, and 
 make atonement. This peculiar sensation is what is 
 meant by contrition, or remorse. 
 
 We are aware that we have done something we need 
 not have done, and ought not to have done, and for 
 which, therefore, we are to blame, and are culpably 
 responsible. 
 
 Now such a feeling, like everything in the universe, 
 must have an adequate cause, and this cannot be 
 found in the impulse of necessity. If we had been 
 compelled of necessity to do what we did, if there had 
 been no help for it, if we had had no choice, and had 
 exercised no initiative, that is to say, if the energy 
 which produced the result had its source not in us, 
 but in some power beyond us, working through us as 
 its instrument, then, we should not be the real doers 
 of the deed, we should not be responsible for it. In 
 that case there would have been nothing out of which 
 a feeling of remorse could grow. Contrition would 
 have been not only beside the mark, it never could 
 have come into existence. The fact that we do actually 
 have such a feeling is proof that we accmplished that 
 which alone can produce such a feeling, namely, an 
 act of which we are the actual source and origin, and
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 105 
 
 for which, in consequence, we are genuinely respon- 
 sible. 
 
 When I have borne false witness against my neigh- 
 bor, or have taken away my friend's good name, a 
 knowledge of my share in the misery produced flames 
 up within, and sears my heart with an awareness of 
 responsibility for a shameful wrong. Outwardly, I 
 may deny my guilt. I may deceive my fellow men. 
 I find it an impossibility to deceive myself. Notwith- 
 standing the sophistries with which I strive to weave 
 a veil before my inward eye, the glaring truth cannot 
 be hid. I know that I did this thing, with a knowledge 
 that is forced upon me. In my heart I am perfectly 
 well aware that my causal efficacy is a fact. 
 
 Would Othello have admitted any connection be- 
 tween his passionate will and the corpse upon the bed, 
 if he could have helped it? He stood self -convicted 
 by the sudden uprising of an overwhelming con- 
 sciousness of guilt. He knew what had been his in- 
 tention, that from his intention issued the energy 
 which did the fatal work, was brought home to him, 
 not so much by the sight of the waxen features and the 
 glazed eye, (if these had been all, such is the constitu- 
 tion of the human mind, he might have argued himself 
 out of it, have persuaded himself it was not through 
 him she died,) but by an accusing sense of sin, from 
 which there was no escape. Would he have slit his 
 throat if he had been able to convince himself that 
 Desdemona's corpse was merely a circumstance con- 
 comitant with his presence in the room? He knew 
 himself the cause, and in a frenzy of remorse thrust 
 the dagger home. 
 
 Although I may have no immediate knowledge of 
 the various links that connect the resolution in my 
 mind with the subsequent movement in my muscles,
 
 106 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 in moral situations I have immediate knowledge of 
 my causal responsibility. I am compelled to recog- 
 nize that from me, and from nowhere else, issued the 
 energy which produced the effect. My responsibility 
 in the case is one of those things that cannot be other- 
 wise. 
 
 Thus, the consciousness of causality, the conscious- 
 ness that we are responsible sources of energy, aroused 
 by the putting forth of effort to overcome obstacles, 
 is reenforced by our moral experiences. It is no longer 
 a probably sound conclusion, it becomes irresistible 
 truth from which we cannot get away. 
 
 Doubtless a considerable, perhaps the greater part 
 of our activities, is predetermined. Heredity and 
 environment help or hinder, make it easier or harder 
 to exercise our prerogative aright. All we affirm is 
 that they do not monopolize the field, that there are 
 still many occasions, and these the most vital, when to 
 us alone, belongs the privilege of imparting the initial 
 impulse. In such instances, the impulse, the energy, 
 which achieves the effect, comes from me, from my 
 mind or soul, with the result, that in such instances, 
 my soul is something more than a medium through 
 which energy passes, it is a source of energy, no mere 
 storage battery, but a power-house, a genuine energy 
 producer. 
 
 How is this extraordinary fact to be interpreted? 
 It cannot be fully interpreted. The heart and core of 
 the matter is beyond us, as Spencer would say, "un- 
 knowable," nevertheless, we may discern certain of 
 its implications. 
 
 1. Since we are producers of energy, and since the 
 universe is a product of energy, we produce that which 
 produces the universe. Our productivity is a factor
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 107 
 
 in the work of creation. We are among the artificers 
 of nature. We contribute to the general output. 
 
 Our contribution possesses a peculiar quality. 
 Nothing is more certain than that every individual is 
 different from every other individual. Each human 
 soul is unique. Consequently, its contribution to the 
 general output is unique. 
 
 Uniqueness means that of which there is only one. 
 It cannot be replaced. Its loss is irreparable. Each 
 soul's contribution being unique, and its loss, in con- 
 sequence, irreparable, the weight of probability is 
 against the occurrence of such loss. 
 
 In the case of the contribution of the soul, the loss 
 perhaps, is so insignificant that its irreparableness 
 matters nothing. In a masterpiece, and surely the 
 universe is a masterpiece, no part can be regarded 
 as insignificant. Every line, tint, bar, phrase, word, 
 is vital. In the " Ode on a Grecian Urn," for example, 
 each syllable contributes a unique element, not one 
 can be changed without injuring the whole. 
 
 So, it seems reasonable to believe, is each soul 
 essential to the masterpiece of the kosmic artist. 
 
 Moreover, may it not be that the soul's con- 
 tribution is of greater importance than we have 
 imagined? 
 
 While the individual is a minute speck, a microscopic 
 atom, each individual seems to be endowed with 
 potentialities which so far as can be seen are limitless, 
 with capacities susceptible of measureless expansion 
 and development. 
 
 The tiny spring welling up among the stones on the 
 hill side has in it the promise of a mighty river. The 
 indications are that so it is with the soul of man. 
 Give it time enough, and there is scarcely anything of 
 which it may not become capable.
 
 108 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 To lose even a single soul, therefore, is to lose not 
 only a unique power, one that cannot be replaced or 
 reproduced, but a power of infinite possibilities. It 
 seems unlikely that such forfeiture of possibilities 
 will be permitted. 
 
 2. Since we are producers of energy, the amount of 
 energy in the universe will depend, in some degree at 
 least, on our productivity. Were we to be destroyed, 
 the energy of the universe would be, by the amount of 
 our productivity, reduced. But, we are told that 
 according to the law of conservation, the total of 
 energy in the universe is constant, always the same. 
 This being so, the destruction of even a single soul 
 would break the law, and upset the balance. Con- 
 sequently, it is probable that not even a single soul 
 will be destroyed. 
 
 Continued existence is indicated by the analogy of nature. 
 
 "That which thou sowest is not quickened except 
 it die," expresses a principle of universal application 
 in the realm of nature. There, death is invariably 
 the basis of life, the antecedent of some new form of 
 vitality. 
 
 A winter silence falls on stream and wood. Murmur 
 of water, rustle of leaves, insect's hum, footfall of 
 prowling beast, splash of leaping fish, are hushed. 
 Nature is benumbed. In the grip of an iron frost the 
 world lies dead. 
 
 Yet even as it dies, a change begins. Round about 
 the tree roots, and beneath the surface, everywhere, 
 an invisible activity is set going, energy is stored up, 
 the first steps are taken in the process of converting 
 lifeless into living matter. 
 
 Presently the snow melts, the icy seal is broken, the
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 109 
 
 brown of hill and dale gives place to green, the trees 
 burst into bud, the air vibrates with song, hibernating 
 creatures awake, the drone of bees is heard. From the 
 death of winter issues the life of spring. 
 
 As with the succession of the seasons so with the 
 evolution of living forms. Every stage of the evolu- 
 tionary process is rooted in death. The genesis of 
 every species had its rise in the destruction of some 
 preceding species. In turn this new breed dwindles, 
 and grows less, and dies, only to usher in more highly 
 organized varieties. 
 
 Passing from the history of general movements to 
 that of individuals, we find the same predominating 
 principle of life out of death. 
 
 The seed disintegrates before the young shoot 
 appears, first the blade, then the ear, then the full 
 grain in the ear. The egg is destroyed that the chick 
 may be hatched. Soon the chick vanishes, and out 
 of its decease, issues the mature bird. 
 
 The most striking instance is the progressive trans- 
 formation known to naturalists as metamorphosis, 
 occurring in the insect world. By a series of deaths 
 is brought about a series of changes into new forms of 
 life. 
 
 The milkweed butterfly lays its eggs on milkweed 
 leaves. After an existence of three or four days the 
 eggs are destroyed and out of their destruction is 
 hatched a wormlike object, greenish yellow, ringed 
 with black, furnished with eight pairs of legs, and pow- 
 erful jaws. It eats voraciously and grows rapidly. 
 Its outer covering then dies, hardens, cracks, and from 
 the ruin issues a larger worm. After a brief interval 
 there is another death and another shedding of the out- 
 worn shell. Again the process is repeated. Yet once 
 more the outer covering hardens, but now there is no
 
 110 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 breaking forth of a new and larger caterpillar. This 
 time death overtakes both the covering and the cov- 
 ered. The active wormlike crawling thing is still. His 
 skin has become his coffin. In place of the living cater- 
 pillar there is nothing but an apparently lifeless 
 chrysalis. The caterpillar is actually dead. He is 
 never seen again. His death however proves to be 
 the basis of life, for as we know, from the quiescent 
 chrysalis comes forth in due time a radiant creature 
 winged and beautiful. 
 
 Although this winged creature itself dies, in dying it 
 leaves behind, in the shape of a deposit of eggs, the 
 promise and potency of new life. 
 
 In a modified form this same law of progressive 
 transformations, every transformation arising out of 
 the destruction of a previous transformation, governs 
 the life history of human beings. 
 
 "We trace each human life," says C. T. Stock well,* 
 "back to what physiologists know as the graafiancell. 
 This has a membranous external body and a nuclear 
 inner body. The inner or nuclear body develops and 
 finally leaves its old environment, the membranous 
 part of the graafian cell, and is born into a new and 
 independent existence. 
 
 "It is now called an ovum, and the f ollicular envelope 
 which constituted its former external body dies and 
 becomes entirely disorganized, the life principle being 
 transferred to the ovum. This in turn is found to 
 possess an external and an internal or nuclear body. 
 Being vitalised by the paternal life, the ovum now 
 passes through a course of development analagous to 
 that of the graafian cell. Its internal or nuclear 
 centre develops into an embryo, while its external 
 
 * "Evolution of Immortality" p. 125 (adapted.)
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 111 
 
 environment develops into the placental mem- 
 branes. 
 
 "Finally, the embryo leaves this placental environ- 
 ment or body, and is born into a new and independent 
 existence, into the life of the world, while the placental 
 body dies and becomes entirely disorganized." 
 
 The series of deaths and resurrections is not yet 
 ended. Metamorphosis goes on. From the instant 
 of birth an impulse carries forward the mind of the 
 child and the body of the child, until a moment arrives 
 when the child's mind and body exist no longer. In 
 their stead are the mind and body of youth. Still the 
 impulse gathers way, and bye and bye youth comes 
 to an end and its place is taken by the mind and body 
 of maturity. After a certain period maturity comes 
 to an end. A moment arrives when the partnership 
 of body and soul is dissolved. Their association 
 ceases. How far in this case does the death of the 
 old form the basis of a new association? 
 
 Is it not a rational conjecture that as during the 
 placental state, the embryo formed for itself a new 
 kind of body, suitable to the new state into which 
 it passed at the change called birth, so during our 
 present existence, the inner life principle, the mind, 
 the soul, is forming for itself a new body suitable to 
 a new existence into which it will pass at the change 
 called death? 
 
 "May it not be," says Stockwell, "that in nature's 
 transformation act falsely called death, she is simply 
 relieving the natural body of its functional activity 
 of embodying an individual personality, and trans- 
 ferring that individual personality to an etheric 
 body already present and at least potentially pre- 
 pared to receive it?" 
 
 "Death," says Butler, "may in some sort and in
 
 112 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 some respects answer to our birth, which is not a 
 suspension of the faculties which we had before it, 
 or a total change of the state of life in which we 
 existed when in the womb, but a continuation of 
 both, with such and such great alterations. "Nay, 
 for aught we know of our present life and death, 
 death may immediately in the natural course of 
 things put us into a higher and more enlarged state 
 of life, as our birth does, a state in which our capaci- 
 ties and sphere of perception, and of action, may be 
 much greater than at present." 
 
 "Perhaps," wrote Victor Hugo, "I am the tadpole 
 of an archangel." Analogy suggests that in a general 
 sense this surmise may not be far wrong. 
 
 Throughout nature, so far as we can see, the law 
 appears to be that death is the starting point of a 
 further evolution of life, so long as there is anything 
 further to be evolved. 
 
 The principle of progressive growth remains opera- 
 tive so long as there is anything to grow. 
 
 // the soul has capacities for development still unused, 
 then analogy denotes the likelihood that the end of 
 the old conditions of progress will be the beginning 
 of further progress, under new conditions, the basis 
 of a new life in which the soul will be as inde- 
 pendent of the dead body, as we are independent 
 of our former placental bodies. That the soul pos- 
 sesses such unused capacities is beyond dispute. 
 
 "What a piece of work is man. How noble in 
 reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving, 
 how express and admirable, in action, how like an 
 angel, in apprehension how like a god." 
 
 The more closely we examine the human mind the 
 more clearly apparent does it become, that within it,
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 113 
 
 lies hid a vast fund of undeveloped qualities. Each 
 stage of mental progress serves but to reveal the 
 aptitude for still further progress. The more a man 
 learns, the more he finds there is to learn, and the 
 more capable he becomes of learning it. 
 
 "So many worlds so much to do, 
 So little done such things to be." 
 
 At the end of his work, Newton tells us, he felt as 
 though he were still in the childhood of his intellectual 
 career, as though what he had done were as nothing to 
 what he might do were time and opportunity forth- 
 coming. 
 
 In demonstrating to his fellow men the marvelous 
 nature of the universe, he demonstrated also the 
 marvelous nature of the instrument by which the 
 demonstration was made. He showed that the mind 
 of man is an organism endowed with faculties of 
 unlimited sweep and range. 
 
 "The soul of man is larger than the sky, 
 
 Deeper than ocean, or the abysmal dark 
 Of the unfathomed centre. Like the ark 
 Which in its sacred hold uplifted high 
 O'er the drowned hills the human family 
 And stock reserved of every living kind. 
 So in the compass of the single mind 
 The seeds and pregnant forms in essence lie, 
 That make all worlds. 
 
 [Hartley Coleridge] 
 
 In addition, we are now confronted with a series 
 of facts which seem to attest still further potentialities 
 in the human constitution. 
 
 Modern psychology demonstrates the existence of 
 a hitherto unsuspected department, a sort of annex 
 to, or extension of, our ordinary being.
 
 114 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 A subliminal being, or self, or consciousness, as it is 
 called. 
 
 Through the science of optics we have learned that, 
 "beyond each end of the prismatic ribbon of the 
 solar spectrum are ether waves, of which our retina 
 takes no cognisance. Beyond the red end are waves 
 we recognise not as light, but as heat. Beyond the 
 violet end are waves still more mysterious, whose 
 very existence men for ages never suspected, and 
 whose intimate potencies are still but obscurely 
 known." 
 
 Even so it is with the mind of man. Enough has 
 been achieved by experimental psychology to prove 
 that beyond both ends of our conscious spectrum lie 
 faculties transcending in range and force those in 
 normal use. The self we know is but the fragment 
 of a larger self which, so far as investigated, seems 
 endowed with a more delicate sensitiveness, respond- 
 ing to stimuli unfelt by our ordinary work-a-day 
 consciousness. 
 
 Yet these apparently immense intellectual and 
 imaginative capacities, incalculably beyond those of 
 average intelligence, remain almost in abeyance. 
 
 Why then are they here ? To what purpose have we 
 been equipped with a whole arsenal of weapons 
 which owing to the environment and conditions of 
 this life, we can but occasionally, and partially, turn 
 to account? 
 
 When death brings its association with the body 
 to an end, the soul is still in possession of a great fund 
 of unused faculty. If the analogy of nature hold 
 true, this suggests that the death of the body is the 
 starting point of a new stage of existence for the 
 soul, an existence in which its still unexhausted powers 
 will find their field of exercise.
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 115 
 
 Nature supplies the fledgling with rudimentary 
 wings, the suckling with rudimentary teeth. In the 
 life of nest and nursery there is no use for these 
 organs. They are not demanded by the conditions 
 which surround the young bird, and the babe. 
 
 Time shows, however, that nature has not worked 
 in vain. Presently a change occurs. Bird and babe 
 enter a new life, come under new conditions. Wings 
 and teeth superfluous under the previous order now 
 find their proper sphere, and play their part, and put 
 forth the powers that in them lie. 
 
 Such examples point at least to the probability, 
 that when nature furnishes a faculty she furnishes 
 also somewhere, somewhen, somehow, a place and 
 an opportunity for its exercise. 
 
 Judging from its structure and capacities, the soul 
 is made for further life, from which the legitimate 
 inference is that it will be given further life. 
 
 We shall be told, perhaps, that the inference is not 
 warranted because on all hands we see the evidences 
 of nature's extravagant waste. 
 
 Out of every fifty seeds one only attains fruition. 
 Of every million eggs, laid by bird, fish, insect, or 
 reptile, but a few hundred are hatched. 
 
 With regard to the destruction of ova, etc., there is 
 much to indicate that these contain nothing that is 
 not of so rudimentary, and therefore indeterminate, 
 an order, as to be capable of development in one 
 direction as well as in another. The experts seem 
 pretty well agreed that in the lower forms of life 
 differentiation has been carried but a very little way. 
 
 "The embryos of vertebrates, whether fish, tortoise, 
 dog, ape, or man, cannot be distinguished from one 
 another, so close are the likenesses in outward 
 form and structure."
 
 116 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 If this be the case, it is difficult to see how the 
 destruction of such embryos would imply waste, or 
 deprive faculties of their fruition. 
 
 In these instances destruction can mean no more 
 than disintegration and readjustment, and aptitudes 
 so undeveloped would find their required field and 
 opportunity under the new conditions as easily as 
 under the old. 
 
 The embryonic qualities in a grain of wheat, for 
 example, may be in a condition so undetermined as 
 to be capable of development along more than one 
 line. Which line it shall be depends on the char- 
 acter of the external influences brought to bear. 
 
 In one grain the development might be toward 
 reproduction, while in forty -nine others, owing to a 
 different set of external influences, it might be toward, 
 let us say, alimentation, resulting in the forty-nine 
 becoming flour and so entering into the substance of 
 animal tissue instead of into the substance of a grow- 
 ing crop. In either case, or in any conceivable alter- 
 native, we should hardly have the right to say that 
 the possibilities foreshadowed in the embryonic 
 qualities of the grain failed of their fulfilment. 
 
 The same applies to the animal kingdom. If the 
 embryos of vertebrates be indistinguishable from 
 one another, then given a million such embryos, and 
 given a shiver of energy from without traversing their 
 structure and starting them on the road of evolution, 
 it is not essential that they should take any one 
 particular path in order to complete their course and 
 fulfil their destiny. 
 
 This will be effected equally well, whether they 
 turn out flesh, fish, or fowl, or something which is 
 none of these. 
 
 If some grow into dogs, and others into apes, it
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 117 
 
 cannot be said of the apes the promise of their dog 
 qualities was not fulfilled, nor of the dogs, the promise 
 of their ape qualities was not fulfilled, because what 
 was contained in those embryos was the promise 
 neither of dog nor ape, but simply, so far as we can 
 tell, the possibility in about equal degree of becoming 
 dog or ape, or of passing by disintegration and re- 
 absorption, into something neither dog or ape. 
 
 Where a number of alternative possibilities are 
 open, it cannot be called failure that in some instances 
 this, in others that result emerges. Man, on the 
 other hand, has advanced so far along the road of 
 differentiation, that for him, alternative possibilities 
 are eliminated. In his case escape from failure can 
 be secured only on the condition that the advance 
 already begun, he shall be enabled to continue. 
 
 When we reflect that human beings have been pro- 
 duced at the rate of millions a year for tens of thous- 
 ands of years, and that if the soul dies with the body 
 not one of all these millions ever has reached, or ever 
 can rea^h, any thing like its full fruition, it seems 
 improbable that the soul will be permitted to die with 
 the body. It would mean the failure of the work of 
 creation, not the failure of a certain proportion, but 
 the absolute failure of the whole human department, 
 a result irrational and unthinkable. 
 
 Continued existence is indicated by the requirements 
 of justice and mercy. 
 
 Look at life, examine its salient features, consider its 
 inequalities. There seems to be no rhyme or reason 
 in them. We can discern no guiding principle. Al- 
 though it is true that taken in the mass, good predom- 
 inates in the world of sentient life, there are tens of
 
 118 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 thousands of individual instances in which it is very 
 far indeed from predominating. 
 
 People with the sensibilities of buff alos are born into 
 the midst of elegance and luxury, while a Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne has to hustle for a dinner, and a Jesus of 
 Nazareth has not where to lay his head. 
 
 Varieties of talent and temperament, even of mater- 
 ial possessions, are to be desired. Were all exactly 
 alike society would be less interesting. We do not 
 mind living in a cottage while our neighbor inhabits 
 a palace, if happiness be as plentiful in the one as in 
 the other. It can scarcely be maintained that this 
 is always the case. 
 
 Here is the millionaire's son and here is the son of 
 the mill operative. So favorable are the surroundings 
 of the former that he reaps a bountiful harvest of 
 delight while the latter reaps hardly anything at all. 
 From the cradle to the grave life for him is a monoto- 
 nous round of hard tasks, toil, effort, expenditure, 
 with the most meagre of returns. 
 
 Thousands of children are born annually who are 
 blind, deaf, and dumb, defective in mind, diseased in 
 bone and limb. Heaven has given them existence, 
 but the existence heaven has given them is ghastly 
 with wretchedness and pain. 
 
 We have it on the authority of the Salvation Army 
 that a tenth of the population of Great Britain, or about 
 four millions, is "submerged," that is, sunk in degrad- 
 ing penury, and Mr. Robert Hunter tells us that in 
 the United States there are something like ten million 
 people in a similar condition. 
 
 Without going outside the English speaking nations, 
 therefore, we have fourteen million souls existing in a 
 condition of chronic misery. From their more pros- 
 perous neighbors they learn what happy homes and
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 119 
 
 good food and pleasant surroundings are like, but 
 though they long for, and endeavor desperately to 
 obtain, these things, the rigid barrier of circumstance 
 makes their efforts vain. Do what they may they are 
 condemned to pass through life surrounded by comfort, 
 yet themselves denied comfort, perpetually hungry 
 while the markets and the stores are crammed with 
 food. Under these conditions, each year millions die 
 who, with a yearning for happiness implanted in their 
 hearts, have never had that yearning satisfied. 
 
 We have seen that goodness rules, that the universe 
 is governed by a happiness producing power. It is 
 unthinkable that the miseries of mankind can be 
 regarded by such a power otherwise than with sym- 
 pathy and compassion. 
 
 This thought is expressed by William Blake in 
 verses the strange beauty of which must serve as the 
 excuse for quoting them at length. 
 
 Can I see another's woe 
 And not be in sorrow too? 
 Can I see another's grief 
 And not seek to find relief? 
 
 Can I see a falling tear 
 And not feel my sorrow's share? 
 Can a father see his child 
 Weep, nor be with sorrow filled? 
 
 Can a mother sit and hear 
 An infant groan, an infant fear? 
 No, no, never can it be 
 Never, never, can it be. 
 
 And can he who smiles on all 
 Hear the wren with sorrows small, 
 Hear the small bird's grief and care, 
 Hear the woes that infants bear,
 
 120 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 And not sit beside the nest 
 Pouring pity in their breast? 
 And not sit the cradle near 
 Weeping tear on infant's tear? 
 
 And not sit both night and day 
 Wiping all our tears away? 
 No, no, never can it be, 
 Never, never, can it be. 
 
 He doth give his joy to all, 
 He becomes an infant small, 
 He becomes a man of woe, 
 He doth feel the sorrow, too. 
 
 Think not thou canst sigh a sigh 
 And thy Maker is not by, 
 Think not thou canst weep a tear 
 And thy Maker is not near. 
 
 Oh he gives to us his joy 
 That our grief he may destroy, 
 Till our grief be fled and gone 
 He doth sit by us and moan. 
 
 That the supreme power should destroy our grief by 
 destroying us is incompatible with justice and mercy. 
 
 Worse than bodily suffering or material loss, is the 
 poignant agony inflicted by the waywardness, the 
 wickedness, the unworthiness, of those we love. The 
 woman stricken by the villainy of the man she wor- 
 shipped. The man faced by the proof that the woman 
 who has been to him the impersonation of purity and 
 goodness, is in her heart a wanton. The father and 
 mother crushed by the horror of a daughter's shame, 
 or sorrowing comfortless for the lost prodigal. 
 
 Through such causes tens of thousands of blameless
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 121 
 
 people are rendered desolate every year. There is 
 but one remedy. Wounds thus inflicted, can be 
 healed only by those who made them, only by the 
 repentance, atonement, forgiveness, and rehabilita- 
 tion of those by whom they were caused. If the 
 grave be the end, then, this never can be accomplished, 
 and injustice is done to a multitude of innocent souls. 
 Moreover, there are the sinners themselves to be 
 thought of. If death be the end, they are forever 
 deprived of the opportunity to repent. It will not 
 do to say they had their opportunity here, this is all 
 justice requires. It is not all justice requires. In 
 countless instances death overtakes the transgressor 
 in the full tide of his wrong doing. He is snatched 
 away before he realizes the enormity of his guilt, or 
 realizing it, he dies too soon to permit him to make 
 amends. 
 
 Suppose two men are competing for a position. 
 The opportunity comes to one of them to poison the 
 minds of those who are to decide the issue, by causing 
 damaging reports to be spread with regard to his 
 competitor's character. He is perfectly aware that 
 there is no truth in these reports, and he hesitates to 
 perpetrate so treacherous and base an act. But 
 then, his whole future depends on his obtaining this 
 position. Success seems vital to him. All is fair in 
 war, even a blow below the belt, he tells himself. 
 This is his chance, and he must take it. Accordingly 
 he turns a deaf ear to the voice of conscience and pro- 
 ceeds to scatter his false, but plausible, insinuations. 
 The result is he wins the coveted place and enjoys a 
 career of uninterrupted prosperity, while the other 
 man is left out in the cold. Years afterward he comes 
 to see his conduct in a new light. Bitter remorse and 
 shame fill his heart, he is anxious now to restore every-
 
 122 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 thing, to atone for everything, to suffer everything, 
 if need be, so only justice be done and the wrong righted, 
 but death's hand is laid upon his shoulder and it 
 is too late. 
 
 The founder of Christiantity laid it down as a 
 fundamental principle of righteousness that when 
 a sinner sincerely repents he shall be forgiven. In 
 the example cited, and it is the type of an innum- 
 erable host, repentance was genuine and sincere, yet 
 if death be the end, forgiveness and the opportunity 
 to make atonement are forever witheld. 
 
 Criminals who enjoy crime for its own sake are in all 
 probability but a small class. The vast majority of 
 sinners fall into evil ways through irresolution, and 
 their irresolution is due to lack of sensitiveness about 
 right and wrong. They do not feel strongly enough 
 about the matter. There is something they desire, 
 they perceive it may be obtained by cheating and 
 lying, and their sense of the imperativensss of right 
 is not strong enough to prevent them from resorting 
 to cheating and lying. 
 
 The thief, the swindler, the drunkard, the forger, 
 the seducer, the murderer, are what they are, in 
 ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, not because they 
 are wholly bad, but because they are not quite good 
 enough. In ninety -nine cases out of a hundred, 
 slightly more favorable surroundings, right influences 
 a little further prolonged, a little more skilfully 
 applied, would transform the knave and the rogue into 
 a hero and a saint. But in countless cases death cuts 
 the thread of life before any such ameliorating in- 
 fluences can be brought to bear. 
 
 If it be possible to reform the knave and the rogue, 
 do not justice and mercy require that they shall be 
 reformed?
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 123 
 
 For this, the one necessary condition is a continu- 
 ance of their existence beyond the grave. 
 
 Nor apart from a life to come can justice be done 
 to those who have suffered for righteousness' sake. 
 The glorious company of the Apostles, who in every 
 age have carried knowledge to the ignorant, light to 
 those who sit in darkness, and freedom to the slave. 
 The goodly fellowship of the Prophets, who have faced 
 angry monarchs and angry mobs. The noble army of 
 Martyrs, who have endured great tribulation that 
 others might have happiness and life. Brave souls^ 
 who, faithfully, patiently, and at cost to themselves, 
 have obeyed the behests impressed upon them 
 by the feeling about right. If righteousness be at 
 the heart of things, then surely an obligation will be 
 felt at least to acknowledge the loyalty with which 
 its requirements have been fulfilled. 
 
 In the eyes of a good man, it would be little short 
 of a crime to accept the labor and sacrifices of others 
 without rendering thanks. A good man would feel 
 bound to do his utmost to show his appreciation. He 
 would feel not merely bound to do it, he would be 
 eager, he would rejoice exceedingly, to do it. 
 
 Can we believe that the source of all moral feeling 
 is less eager to discharge obligations than a good man? 
 
 Nevertheless such discharge fails of accomplishment 
 here on earth. Constantly do the souls of the faithful 
 go down to death with no lightening of their burden, 
 with no whisper of acknowledgment or well done. 
 
 If the Controller of all things be a power that makes 
 for righteousness, it is beyond belief that broken 
 hearts should go uncomforted, the penitent unfor- 
 given, sinners unreformed, or devoted service remain 
 forever without acknowledgment. 
 
 It is inconceivable that the one condition necessary
 
 124 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 for bringing these things to pass, namely a future life, 
 should be withheld. Justice and mercy require that 
 it should not be withheld. 
 
 Yet another reason why justice and mercy demand 
 that life should be continued beyond the grave, is 
 the almost universal desire for it. "It is better to 
 live in a slum in hopes of heaven, than to walk through 
 luxury to a ditch in the churchyard." The thought 
 that death is the end may satisfy those who have 
 loved only knowledge, it can never satisfy those who 
 have loved human souls. You may come with 
 your philosophy, and arrange your reason of despair, 
 never so plausibly, but, 
 
 "That little shoe in the corner 
 
 So worn and wrinkled and brown, 
 With its emptyness, confutes you, 
 And argues your wisdom down." 
 
 Emerson in his "Thyrsis," Browning in his "Pros- 
 pice," Tennyson in his "In Memoriam," Milton in 
 his "Lycidas," utter in exquisite syllables the yearn- 
 ing and the hope that burn in the souls of those from 
 whom death has snatched their hearts' treasures. 
 An awakened desire for immortality results from 
 loving, because loving opens our eyes to the worth of 
 life. Through loving, life becomes priceless. We 
 can never have enough of it. The cultivation of 
 friendship, sympathy, affection, stirs in us a deepened 
 wish for the continuance of life, that the exercise of 
 our affections may be continued. Through love and 
 friendship the immortality once languidly desired 
 comes to be passionately desired. The longing for 
 immortality is thus due to the development, not of 
 the foolish, selfish, immoral, but the sympathetic,
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 125 
 
 and affectional, qualities of our nature. This has 
 come about from the action upon us of the natural 
 order. In the last resort it is due entirely to the 
 influence over us of the universe. 
 
 So to influence us, that the awakening of the most 
 unselfish and elevating of emotions, and the establish- 
 ment of the most beneficial of human relations, pro- 
 duce an intense desire for a continued life after death, 
 without any intention of satisfying that desire, would 
 seem to be a peculiarly hard-hearted piece of deliberate 
 cruelty. Since the desire has been aroused in us, 
 justice and mercy require that it be satisfied. With 
 goodness in the seat of power, have we not solid 
 ground for hope that it will be satisfied? 
 
 To restate in a few words the substance of the 
 foregoing pages, we see the expectation of a life to 
 come rests on five main considerations. 
 
 1. Survival of the soul is probable, for the reason 
 that not being made of destructible material, it is 
 difficult to understand how it can be destroyed. 
 
 2. For the reason that it is a spring and source of 
 energy, and its destruction would involve both the 
 loss of a unique contribution to the sum of things, 
 and a breach of the law of the conservation of energy. 
 
 3. Because of the probable preexistence of the soul. 
 
 4. Because fathomless deeps of faculty exist in 
 the soul, here unused and unusable, and the analogy 
 of nature indicates that in such cases death is the 
 basis of renewed life. 
 
 5. Because justice and mercy demand survival, 
 and since goodness rules, the demands of justice and 
 mercy will be met. 
 
 A presumption, therefore, exists in favor of im- 
 mortality. In the known facts, not only is there 
 nothing that makes the independent life of the soul
 
 126 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 impossible, there is much that makes it probable. 
 Reason and observation are on the side of faith in 
 the future. 
 
 Yet for some this is not sufficient. It fails to 
 assuage the inmost yearning of the heart. We desire 
 to be convinced in a more intimate and personal 
 way. We long for a sense of full assurance. 
 
 Sources of Certitude. 
 
 This longed for assurance is within our reach. The 
 obscuring clouds may be dispersed, and a sense of 
 certitude obtained, by any one who is willing to pay 
 the price. Certitude implies a feeling of reality, a 
 feeling of reality comes only with experience, and 
 experience is a state of consciousness resulting from 
 contact with our surroundings through our five 
 senses. We may discourse to a blind man about the 
 splendor of the starry heavens and he may accept as 
 true all we say. Nevertheless, his state of mind with 
 regard to what has been described will be compara- 
 tively vague and cold. Before he can feel as we feel, 
 he must be enabled to behold and see. That is to 
 say, he must be enabled to come into sensuous con- 
 tact with, to experience, the nocturnal glory of the 
 sky. Then, and then only, will he feel that he knows. 
 Not till then will his state of mind be one of con- 
 viction and assurance. Consequently, the only way 
 of winning certitude of the life to come would appear 
 to be by contact with it through our five senses. 
 The idea seems preposterous. How can we see, 
 touch, hear, the invisible, intangible, inaudible? 
 Yet apart from sight, touch, hearing, how is direct 
 contact to be achieved?
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 127 
 
 Certitude through Spiritism. 
 
 Modern "spiritualism" claims to have solved the 
 difficulty. The notion that the invisible world is 
 beyond the reach of sense is false, it declares. We 
 may actually see the inhabitants of another world, 
 hear the rustle of their spirit garments, feel the touch 
 of their spirit hands, and through the agency of a 
 "medium" or "sensitive" receive messages from the 
 departed as easily as through the telephone, we 
 receive a message from the friend in the next street. 
 
 Notwithstanding these great claims, many thought- 
 ful people are repelled by the vulgarity and stupidity 
 which marks so much of what goes on at "seances." 
 Moreover, the subject reeks of chicanery. The sur- 
 rounding circumstances create in the mind of an 
 impartial visitor a presumption of fraud. The 
 darkened room, the mysterious cabinet, the wierd 
 music, suggest the conjurer's art. Again and again 
 these suspicions have proved to be well founded. 
 Busy hands have been detected where no hands should 
 be. The ghostly visitors from another sphere have 
 been revealed when the lights were turned on, as 
 beings of solid flesh and bone. /'Properties" peculiar 
 to the green room, have been discovered within 
 the secret precincts where the medium was supposed 
 to sit unconscious and entranced. We have but 
 to recall the record of those accomplished tricksters, 
 the Davenport brothers, Slade and Foster, or to 
 read the narrative of investigations by Miinsterberg, 
 and Jastrow, to feel convinced that modern spiritism 
 is tainted with deception. 
 
 Nevertheless it is not all deception. No movement 
 which has influenced so many human minds can be 
 wholly fraudulent. There is a basis and residuum of
 
 128 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 fact. Strange forces are undoubtedly brought into 
 play. Powers more than normal are exercised. This 
 residuum of fact, these abnormal powers, can be 
 explained, however, so competent observers declare, 
 on psychological and physiological grounds, without 
 calling in the aid of spirits from the vasty deep, or 
 from anywhere else. 
 
 We are assured that all phenomena of spiritism 
 not due to trickery may be accounted for, if they 
 are physical manifestations, as the work of muscular 
 automatism, the extraordinary condition in which the 
 limbs perform sometimes quite complex acts, (writing, 
 drawing, etc.), independently of the will or even of 
 the consciousness. 
 
 If the phenomena be mental, (visions, clairvoyance, 
 trance utterances, etc.), exhibiting an apparent 
 knowledge beyond the normal, they must be regarded 
 as the subconscious reproductions of latent memories, 
 brought about by a more or less profound hypnosis, 
 or as due to thought transference. Such, at least, is 
 the conclusion arrived at by Podmore, one of the 
 most careful of observers. 
 
 In fairness to mediums it should be said that even 
 where deception exists, there is reason to think it is 
 not always conscious. It seems probable that fraudu- 
 lent acts may be due sometimes to automatism, 
 apart from the consciousness of the medium. This 
 makes the practise of mediumship none the less mis- 
 leading to those who seek for light through its agency. 
 
 Taking into consideration how great is the tempta- 
 tion to fraud, and how manifold are the opportunities 
 for error, spiritism can scarcely be regarded as a safe 
 or satisfactory way of establishing certainty with 
 regard to a life beyond the grave.
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 129 
 
 Certitude through psychical research. 
 
 Are the conclusions of Podmore and others correct? 
 Is the admitted residuum of abnormal fact in spiritism 
 completely accounted for by psychological and 
 physiological causes? 
 
 The question can be answered only by further 
 investigation. To carry out this investigation on 
 unimpeachable and scientific lines, is the aim of 
 psychical research, which has been described as "the 
 patient attempt to unravel from confused phenomena, 
 some trace of the supernal world." 
 
 Founded about 1850, the "Society For Psychical 
 Research," has carried on its labors with the one 
 purpose of working by scientific methods for scientific 
 ends. Slowly yet steadily the enterprise has pro- 
 ceeded. Gradually, and in spite of innumerable 
 difficulties, a mass of valuable material has been 
 accumulated. Though results seem small, they are 
 solid, and promise much for the future. "Beyond 
 us still is mystery, but it is mystery lit and mellowed 
 with an infinite hope." 
 
 Sir Oliver Lodge thus summarises the present situa- 
 tion. "The boundary between the two states, the 
 known and the unknown is still substantial, but it is 
 wearing thin in places, and like excavators engaged 
 in boring a tunnel from opposite ends, amid the roar 
 of water and other noises we are beginning to hear 
 now and again the strokes of the pickaxes of our 
 comrades on the other side." 
 
 While the work of the Society for Psychical Re- 
 search is of the highest importance, and should receive 
 our financial aid, and our cordial and respectful 
 sympathy, for many of us it will prove to be "no
 
 130 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 thoroughfare," so far as the attainment of certitude 
 with regard to the future life is concerned. 
 
 The drawback is, that it must ever be "caviare to 
 the general." It is a recondite theme, illusive, diffi- 
 cult, requiring for its successful prosecution, not only 
 the utmost caution, the most wide awake vigilance, 
 but careful preparation and technical training. 
 
 The results achieved in this direction, must be for 
 most of us, a matter of report. Intensely interesting, 
 perhaps sufficiently convincing, but still for most of 
 us, destined to remain secondary knowledge, lacking 
 the reality which only experience can give. 
 
 Certitude through the mystical mood. 
 
 Admitting that under ordinary circumstances the 
 senses are the sole media through which we can achieve 
 contact, and so gain experience, and that under 
 ordinary circumstances they respond only to physical 
 stimuli, is it not imaginable that there may be extra- 
 ordinary circumstances, in which the nerves are 
 attuned to a finer sensitiveness, so delicate as to thrill 
 in temporary response to other than physical stimuli? 
 
 In such abnormal states, is it not possible that 
 without the aid of medium or seer, abnormal experi- 
 ences may be obtained corresponding with truth, in 
 spite of their abnormality? 
 
 In all ages, individuals have claimed to have had 
 periods of exceptional sensitiveness, peculiarly exalted 
 and ecstatic moods, "mystical states of mind," in 
 which abnormal sensibilities are aroused and the 
 conviction becomes irresistible that we are in actual 
 touch with a life larger than our own. A few modern 
 instances may be quoted. 
 
 In his "journal," Emerson writes:
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 131 
 
 "A certain wandering light comes to me which I 
 instantly perceive to be the cause of causes. 
 
 "It transcends all proving. It is itself the ground of 
 being, and I see that it is not one and I another, but 
 this is the life of my life. 
 
 "That is one fact, then, that in certain moods I have 
 known that I existed directly from God, and am as it 
 were his organ, and in my ultimate consciousness am 
 He." 
 
 ["Journal" 1837 pp. 248-9.] 
 
 In the letters of James Russell Lowell, vol. 1. p. 75, 
 occurs the following: 
 
 "I had a revelation last Friday evening. I was at 
 Mary's, and happening to say something of the 
 presence of spirits, (of whom I said I was often dimly 
 aware), Mr. Putnam entered into an argument with 
 me on spiritual matters. As I was speaking the whole 
 system rose up before me like a vague destiny looming 
 from the abyss. 
 
 "I never before so clearly felt the spirit of God in me 
 and around me. The whole room seemed to be full 
 of God. The air seemed to waver to and fro with 
 the presence of something, I knew not what. I spoke 
 with the clearness and calmness of a prophet. 
 
 "I cannot tell you what this revelation was. I have 
 not studied it enough. But I shall perfect it one day, 
 and then you shall hear it, and acknowledge its 
 grandeur." 
 
 John Sterling writes in a similar vein : 
 
 "I rode through some of the pleasant lanes in the 
 neighborhood, and was delighted to see the primroses 
 under every hedge. The whole aspect of the world 
 is full of quiet harmony, that influences even one's
 
 132 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 bodily frame, and seems to make one's limbs aware 
 of something living, good, and immortal, in all around 
 us." 
 
 [Carlyle's "Stirling." p. 215.] 
 
 In a letter dated from Farringford, May 7, 1874, 
 quoted in the London "Spectator" Feb. 2, 1889, 
 Tennyson wrote: 
 
 " A kind of waking trance, (this for lack of a better 
 name) I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, 
 when I have been all alone. This has often come 
 upon me through repeating my own name to myself 
 silently, till all at once, as it were, out of the intensity 
 of consciousness of individuality, the individuality 
 itself, seemed to dissolve and fade away into bound- 
 less being, and this not a confused state, but the clear- 
 est of the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly 
 beyond words, where death was an almost laughable 
 impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) 
 seeming no extinction, but the only true life. I am 
 ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said 
 the state is utterly beyond words." 
 
 A like state of mind is recorded by A. C. Benson: 
 
 "I walked today in sheltered wooded valleys, 
 and at one point in a very sheltered and secluded lane, 
 leaned long upon a gate that led into a little forest 
 clearing, to watch the busy and intent life of the 
 wood. There were the trees extending their fresh 
 leaves to the rain, the birds slipped from tree to tree, 
 a mouse frisked about the grassy road, a hundred 
 flowers raised their bright heads. 
 
 "And then I felt for awhile like a tiny spray of sea- 
 weed floating on an infinite sea, with the brightness 
 of the morning overhead. I felt that I was indeed
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 133 
 
 set where I found myself to be and that if now my 
 little heart and brain are too small to hold the truth, 
 yet I thanked God for making even the conception 
 of the mystery, the width, the depth, possible to me, 
 and I prayed to him to give to me as much of the 
 truth as I could bear. 
 
 "And I do not doubt that he gave me that, for I felt 
 for an instant that whatever befall me, I was indeed 
 a part of himself, not a thing outside and separate, 
 not even his son and his child, but himself." 
 
 [" The Thread of Gold." pp. 223-4.} 
 
 "And yet as angels in some brighter dreams 
 
 Call to the soul when man doth sleep, 
 So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes, 
 And into glory peep." 
 
 wrote Vaughan, and Wordsworth describes a cor- 
 responding mental condition in the famous lines 
 beginning, 
 
 "I have felt 
 
 A presence which disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 And the blue sky and in the mind of man, 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 All thinking things all objects of all thought 
 And rolls through all things." 
 
 For further instances see "Varieties of Religious 
 Experience" pp. 66-72, 395, 396, 398, 221, William 
 James. 
 
 It appears, then, that human beings do on occasion, 
 believe themselves to pass into states of conscious-
 
 134 
 
 ness during which they perceive in an experiential 
 way, the reality of an unseen and superhuman world. 
 
 The possibilities of supra normal perception seem 
 now to be enlarged by the disclosure that we possess 
 sensibilities other than those of ordinary sight, 
 sound, touch, taste, smell, and that consequently 
 we may not be so completely dependent on our 
 five senses as has been supposed. 
 
 "I cannot but think," says James ["Varieties" 
 p. 233], "that the most important step forward that 
 has occurred in psychology since I have been a 
 student of the science, is the discovery first made 
 in 1886, that in certain subjects at least, there is 
 not only the consciousness of the ordinary field, 
 with its usual centre and margin, but an addition 
 thereto, in the shape of a set of memories, thoughts 
 and feelings, which are extramarginal and outside 
 of the ordinary consciousness altogether, yet must 
 be classed as conscious facts of some sort, able to 
 reveal their presence by unmistakable signs. The 
 human material on which the demonstration has 
 been made has so far been rather limited and in 
 part, at least, eccentric, consisting of unusually sug- 
 gestible hypnotic subjects, and of hysteric patients. 
 Yet the elementary mechanisms of life are pre- 
 sumably so uniform, that what is shown to be true 
 in a marked degree of some persons, is probably 
 true in some degree of all, and may in a few be true 
 in an extraordinarily high degree. There is reason 
 to believe that under special conditions, uprushes 
 of energies originating in this extra marginal or 
 subliminal mental region take place." 
 
 If our normal senses be capable on occasion, of 
 more than normal sensitiveness, and if also, there 
 be in us extra marginal faculties which, when brought
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 135 
 
 into play greatly enlarge our perceptive capacities, 
 and if nothing more be needed to raise normal senses 
 above their normal sensitiveness, and to bring the 
 extra marginal faculties into play, than a suit- 
 able mental state, it is conceivable that given such 
 a mental state, we may, either through the action 
 of our more than normally sensitive ordinary senses, 
 or through the transmarginal faculties, or through 
 the cooperation of both, at once become aware of 
 realities normally hidden from our view. Can a 
 mental state of this kind be induced? 
 
 In India training in mystical insight has been known 
 from time immemorial under the name of "Yoga." 
 "Yoga signifies the experiential union of the human 
 with the divine. It is based on persevering exercise, 
 and the diet, posture, breathing, intellectual con- 
 centration, and moral discipline, vary slightly in the 
 different systems. The disciple who has by these 
 means overcome the obscurations of his lower nature 
 sufficiently, enters into a condition of supersensi- 
 tiveness, and is face to face with facts which neither 
 reason nor instinct can ever perceive. Then we 
 know ourselves for what we really are, free and 
 immortal." Christendom and Islam as well as 
 India have produced schools of mystics who have 
 claimed that through certain courses of discipline 
 a state of trance or ecstasy may be induced, during 
 which the world beyond is revealed to the inward 
 sense. 
 
 Coming nearer home, hypnosis suggests itself 
 as possibly a means to the desired end. 
 
 "There can be little doubt," says F. W. H. Myers, 
 "that under hypnotic conditions a state of sensory 
 delicacy may be induced, which overpasses the 
 ordinary level. Not only are the senses capable
 
 136 SOURCES OF FATIH AND HOPE 
 
 through hypnosis of being raised to an abnormal 
 degree of sensitiveness, but it would seem that 
 sense capacities of an altogether new kind are some- 
 times developed, decidedly different from those 
 with which we are familiar." 
 
 If our capabilities can be, under hypnotic conditions, 
 so increased in power as to enable them to perceive 
 hidden marks and objects, to warn us of impending 
 dangers, etc., [see Myers "Human Personality" p. 
 270,] why should not this increase of power enable 
 them to discern also, the reality of an unseen world, 
 lying beyond the sphere of our normal faculties, 
 assuming that such a world exists? 
 
 See works on Hypnotism, also the literature of 
 Theosophy, and the "Proceedings," of the Society 
 for Psychical Research. 
 
 Certain modern writers affirm that the difficult, 
 doubtful, and perhaps dangerous methods of hypno- 
 tism, are not in the least necessary, the mystical 
 mood of supranormal sensitiveness may be induced 
 by comparatively simple means. See, "Ideal Sug- 
 gestion," by Henry Wood. "The Power of Silence," 
 by H. W. Dresser. "In Tune with the Infinite," 
 by Trine. 
 
 There are those for whom the gateways of the 
 beyond are opened by music. 
 
 Music stimulates the emotional side of human 
 nature and sets its sensibilities and sympathies 
 aglow. "Music," writes Hegel, "Builds no permanent 
 fabric in space. It has no form. It is a voice out 
 of the unseen. Itself invisible, with neither shape nor 
 tangibility, music makes us susceptible to the invis- 
 ible. It stirs within us, as nothing else can, a con- 
 sciousness of the reality of the world unseen." 
 
 As Abt Vogler declares in Browning's poem,
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 137 
 
 "Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear, 
 
 Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and 
 
 woe, 
 
 But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear, 
 The rest may reason and welcome, 'tis we musicians 
 know." 
 
 It has been held by some, by the Quakers among 
 others, that to bring us into experiential relations 
 with the unseen, little more is needed than quietness. 
 
 The landscape is there, actinic forces from hill 
 and tree and stream are playing upon the lens 
 and sensitive plate, but there will be no picture 
 unless the camera is held motionless. Forces from 
 the unseen play upon the sensitive plate of the 
 mind, but unless there is quietness, there will be no 
 picture. 
 
 "Be still, and know that I am God," says the 
 old writer. Neither in the tempest, nor in the earth- 
 quake, nor in the fire, was the prophet able to dis- 
 cern the presence of the Lord. The still small voice 
 was heard afterwards in the quietness. 
 
 Wordsworth insists that it is only when our 
 bodily powers are at rest that we are fully alive. 
 He speaks of the blessed mood when, 
 
 "Even the motions of the human blood 
 Almost suspended, we are laid asleep 
 In body, and become a living soul." 
 
 It is, he tells us, not by a restlessly inquisitive eye, 
 but by an eye made quiet "by the power of harmony 
 and the deep power of joy," that we see into the 
 life of things. So too, he defends himself for sitting 
 hour after hour on an old gray stone in apparent 
 vacancy.
 
 138 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 "Nor less I deem that there are powers 
 
 Which of themselves our minds impress, 
 That we can feed this mind of ours, 
 By a wise passiveness." 
 
 Wordsworth's vision is, in his own belief, never 
 thoroughly lucid until he is rapt by it far away from 
 the ordinary alertness which is commonly called 
 quickness of sense, and transported into a region in 
 which he is alone with his thoughts, and all but 
 unaware of the momentary changes going on around 
 him. 
 
 Even the mere man of the world is conscious that 
 when he is "laid asleep in body" he often becomes a 
 much more "living soul" for those things which he 
 is most desirous to discern truly. As his senses sink 
 to rest, he recalls errors of which he was unconscious 
 when he committed them, or expressions on the 
 countenances of his friends or rivals, which till then, 
 he completely ignored. And if this be so in relation 
 to things essentially of this world, it is certainly much 
 more so as to those deeper springs of motive and 
 character which it takes a still deeper peace of spirit 
 to perceive. We need a "wise passiveness" to inter- 
 pret truly what we see." 
 
 ["Spectator," Aug. 6, 1887.} 
 
 While most of us, perhaps, are too incurably rest- 
 less to attain by any such means the mystical mood 
 of insight, there is evidence enough to show that 
 certain natures find no insuperable difficulties in their 
 way. They are able with comparative ease to bring 
 their minds to that tranquil condition, of which the 
 poet speaks, a mental state in which celestial in- 
 fluences imprint themselves upon the soul, revealing
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 139 
 
 with the convincing force of experience, the reality of 
 the unseen. 
 
 The churches have always taught that the mystical 
 mood may be induced, and access to the unseen 
 obtained, through the instrumentality of prayer. 
 Certitude is communicated to those who, under 
 proper conditions, pray for it. 
 
 Many have an ingrained prejudice against the 
 notion of prayer. To seek information, or to seek 
 anything, through this means seems like a return to 
 the superstitions of the dark ages. We have been, 
 perhaps, educated in an atmosphere alien to devotion, 
 at least in the emotional sense. The Almighty, we 
 have been accustomed to think, attends to his busi- 
 ness and expects us to attend to ours. To a deputa- 
 tion which came requesting that he would apoint a 
 day of fasting and prayer on account of the cholera, 
 Palmerston replied, "Pray with a broom in your 
 hand. Go home and clean up." 
 
 By fulfilling our part in life, by doing our duty, 
 overcoming difficulties, conquering, achieving, we can 
 best approach the Lord. There is in fact no other 
 way of approaching him. To labor is to pray. Such, 
 probably, is the confident conviction of a majority 
 of educated people. 
 
 Nevertheless, in all ages there have been men and 
 women who have thought otherwise, who have felt 
 that work is not the only way of communicating with 
 the higher powers, who have held that we can pray 
 with the mind as well as with the body, and that the 
 former is often the more direct, and more immediately 
 effective method. 
 
 Said a scorner of religion to the fugitive slave, 
 "Your feet, I guess, helped you more than your
 
 140 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 knees." "But for the knees first," replied the black, 
 "I should have had no courage for the feet." 
 
 The doctrine of response to prayer. 
 
 "Prayer," says F. W. H. Myers, "is a process of 
 telepathic communication between our minds and 
 minds above our own, which are supposed not only 
 to understand our wish or aspiration, but to impress 
 or influence us in return." 
 
 Grounding their conviction on personal experience, 
 saints have believed that sincere prayer is in all cases 
 effectual, that no call from earth to heaven, whether 
 wise or foolish, goes without an answer, so long as 
 the call is uttered in sincerity and truth. Everyone 
 that asketh receiveth. It is a law, say the saints, 
 that prayer is answered. Not a caprice, but a divine 
 method, sure and certain as any law of nature. We 
 can no more pray without result than we can open our 
 shutters without letting in light, or raise the window 
 without letting in air. 
 
 The supplications of mankind ascend to no unten- 
 anted abyss, but to the living source of affection and 
 of sympathy. It is unthinkable, therefore, that 
 they should be ignored. 
 
 "Between the stirrup and the ground, 
 He mercy asked and mercy found." 
 
 Even the briefest of our appeals brings a beneficent 
 rejoinder. 
 
 Yet how many instances we recall when there 
 seemed to be no rejoinder. When the passionate 
 human cry went up to heaven, and the heavens were 
 as brass. 
 
 May it not be that in such instances the apparent 
 absence of response is due to the unexpected shape
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 141 
 
 in which the response comes? That very frequently 
 it must come in unexpected shape, is surely inevitable. 
 
 " We, ignorant of ourselves, 
 
 Beg often our own harm, which the wise powers 
 Deny us for our good, so find we profit 
 By losing of our prayers." 
 
 We pray for what we think would benefit us. 
 Fortunately, the powers above answer, with a wisdom 
 greater than our own. 
 
 There are two ways of curing a diseased member. 
 The affected part may be removed by a surgical 
 operation, or the general health of the patient may 
 be so improved, the tone and vigor of the whole 
 constitution so increased, that the disease is overcome, 
 and the difficulty ceases to be annoying. Obviously, 
 a similar choice of methods is possible with regard 
 to every one of the troubles and misfortunes of 
 existence. Either the outward circumstances may 
 be changed, and the obstacles removed from our 
 path, or we ourselves may be changed to such an 
 extent that what were obstacles before now cease 
 to be so. 
 
 Instead of modifying external conditions, our own 
 condition may be modified. 
 
 By the enlightening of our ignorance, and by the 
 transforming of our weakness into strength, we can 
 be delivered from all we need delivering from, just 
 as fully, as though actual mountains were removed, 
 or the order of nature itself reversed. 
 
 The drowning sailor clinging to the tottering 
 mast, shrieks to heaven to save him, if not for his 
 own sake, then, for the sake of the little helpless 
 ones at home. When morning dawns, his corpse 
 lies stark and battered upon the rocks.
 
 142 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 Appalling as such an event appears it does not 
 imply, necessarily, that the prayer of the forlorn 
 mariner went unheard. It was possible for an answer 
 to be given to that cry, instant, complete, and satis- 
 fying, while still permitting the storm to run its course. 
 If, in response to his appeal, the sailor's heart were 
 suddenly suffused with peace, so that all fear vanished, 
 while into the recesses of his mind a light penetrated, 
 revealing beyond, a bliss unspeakable, and if, at the 
 same moment, the divine solicitude watching over 
 his fatherless home were made clear and convincing 
 to him, so that all desire for this life, and all anxiety 
 for his beloved ones, were taken away, would not 
 death in the storm cease to appear as a calamity? 
 Would not the removal of every misgiving be an 
 answer to his prayer? 
 
 The cripple pours forth a supplication for deliver- 
 ance from his bed of pain, and if in response to his 
 supplication a strength be imparted, making en- 
 durance light, and quickening the soul with a sensi- 
 bility that feels, even among the shadows of the 
 sick room, something of the life and glory of the 
 Celestial City, even though the mattress prison 
 remain a prison, will not an answer have been vouch- 
 safed, a change wrought, as effective as though the 
 crippled limbs had been made straight? May not 
 such infusion of additional and more potent mental 
 qualities so transform the situation as to take 
 away all in it that before was evil? As real and 
 true a deliverance may thus be effected as though 
 the evil itself had been removed. In fact, the evil 
 has been removed, for those mental disabilities 
 have been done away with, which alone made the 
 conditions evil. 
 
 Moreover, this method of answering prayer is of
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 143 
 
 benefit to us in a way that no other method could 
 be. Merely to strike obstacles from our path would 
 relieve us from the necessity of enduring present 
 pain, or of making immediate effort, but it would 
 be likely to leave us enervated. On the other hand, 
 by instilling into us an added measure of strength, 
 insight, intelligence, affection, fortitude, not only are 
 we helped effectively over present trouble, but our 
 personality is invigorated. In this way the whole 
 aspect of even the most destitute existence may be 
 transfigured. 
 
 Seeing that all prayers are answered, the only 
 element of uncertainly is the form the answer will 
 assume. In respect to a number of things, even 
 this uncertainty is absent. Some things there are 
 which we may look infallibly to receive. Patience, 
 courage, hope, enlightenment, for instance, these 
 are always granted. Such, in brief, is the doctrine 
 of response to prayer. 
 
 Since all prayers are answered, and since there are 
 some things, as patience, courage, hope, enlighten- 
 ment, which, when we pray for them, are invariably 
 given, is it not likely that among these things is 
 included assurance with regard to our future beyond 
 the grave? Assurance of the future is of the same 
 nature as patience, courage, hope, enlightenment, 
 in that it is a desirable condition of mind and heart, 
 and being of the same nature as these always granted 
 things, we may reasonably believe, it also will be 
 granted. Reference to the records of prayer exper- 
 ience show that this has been the case. 
 
 Why, if assurance with regard to death be for 
 our benefit, do the higher powers wait to impart the 
 benefit until we pray for it? Seed will not grow in 
 soil that is uncongenial, or unprepared. Endowed
 
 144 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 as we are with a measure of independence, some 
 cooperation on our part, probably, is essential. Must 
 we not at least desire knowledge, and be in a condition 
 to receive it, before it can be imparted, or do us any 
 good? The light from stars so distant as to be 
 invisible alike to the naked eye and to the strongest 
 telescope, has, for centuries unknown to us, bathed 
 the earth. Not until our astronomers exposed to 
 those astral forces the surface of a sufficiently sensi- 
 tive photographic plate, were messages from the 
 invisible worlds- received. As the increased sensi- 
 tiveness of the photographic surface made it com- 
 petent to receive and register hitherto imperceptible 
 influences, so, many believe, will the increased 
 sensitiveness produced by prayer, make our minds 
 competent to receive and register hitherto imper- 
 ceptible influences. 
 
 Gradually, as the practise of prayer is pursued 
 we become aware of new and non-sensuous impres- 
 sions, which have stolen into the mind by way 
 neither of eye nor ear, but through some hidden 
 gateway. Little by little these impressions flood our 
 souls, rising into every inlet, every ramification, 
 every crevice, of the brain. They do not represent 
 definite objects. We see no distinct images. Shapes, 
 and forms, and colors, there are none. Primarily, 
 they are impressions of proximity to something. At 
 first indistinct, but, as a consequence of prayer 
 continued, gathering substance, until there accumu- 
 lates in the mind a sense of certainty that we are 
 directly associated with a power of life greater than 
 our own. 
 
 As two musical notes brought into harmony, 
 mingle into one combined note, so our life, brought 
 into harmony with the divine life, is combined with
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 145 
 
 the divine. The two pass into one another, and 
 we thus experience the life that is beyond death. 
 Our real relation with the unseen grows plain, we 
 have a sensation about it of the nature of "an im- 
 mediate perception, as if one touched something 
 with one's hands." 
 
 In some such way as this the telepathy of prayer 
 brings us by imperceptible degrees, to a consciousness 
 of immortality. We find ourselves possessed of a 
 happy sense of assurance, that, 
 
 "To die 
 
 Is to begin to live. It is to end 
 An old stale weary work, and to commence 
 A newer and a better." 
 
 A mystical mood of mind and soul, in which, "death 
 becomes an almost laughable impossibility." 
 
 To this mystical mood of insight there remains 
 still another means of access. While it may be won 
 through prayer, it may be won also through Associa- 
 tion. 
 
 Granting that our five senses are the sole channels 
 of communication with the world of material things, 
 with the unseen world they are not necessarily the 
 sole channels of communication. 
 
 In another chapter we learned that there is no wall 
 of partition between seen and unseen. At every 
 instant soul is in touch with Oversoul, human with 
 superhuman, not through the ordinary faculties of 
 sense, nor through the extra marginal faculties, but 
 through that additional, yet still normal sense, which 
 exists at the heart and core of our being, the sense, 
 namely, of moral obligation, or the feeling about right. 
 
 We saw that this extraordinary element in our 
 nature is explicable in but one way. It can be ac-
 
 146 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 counted for only as the manifestation in our con- 
 sciousness of a power superior to our consciousness, 
 a power having its source and origin in a region above 
 our consciousness. 
 
 At this point, then, man comes directly in touch, 
 not through his five senses, nor yet through his sub- 
 liminal sensibilities, but through his feeling about 
 right, with something more than man, with some- 
 thing superhuman, and the attitude we assume 
 toward this superhuman influence is bound to have 
 an important effect upon our lives. 
 
 Suppose we choose to shut our hearts against the 
 sense of right, and to live as though we had none. 
 The result is, that without disappearing altogether, 
 it grows dim, shrinks as it were, into the background. 
 On the other hand, if we answer the appeal made by 
 this feeling, and take it as our guiding motive, it 
 comes to occupy a leading place in our sphere of 
 being, and our existence is profoundly modified. 
 
 If association with nature instills into the heart 
 of man, as Wordsworth affirmed, an awareness of her 
 hidden significances, and awakes a "sense sublime 
 of something far more deeply interfused," is it less 
 reasonable that association with the feeling about 
 right, the manifestation of the superhuman in the 
 midst of our humanity, should prove also a path to 
 insight, and lead to the growth in us of a new organ 
 of vision, a new awareness of the presence of that 
 superhuman world, of which, as we have seen, the 
 feeling about right is an expression? That indeed, 
 is what happens. Association with this feeling, con- 
 tinued, developes in us a finer sensibility with regard 
 to the invisible realities, until by stages too impal- 
 pable to analyse, a point is reached when "obstruc- 
 tions melt away, the light streams in, and the servants
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 147 
 
 of conscience know themselves to be in touch with 
 the unseen and the divine," because the unseen and 
 the divine have been lived and experienced. Through 
 such experiential knowledge there arises in us a new 
 attitude of mind with regard to life and death. 
 
 We begin to understand with ever growing clear- 
 ness that "we ourselves are more than earth and 
 clay," that in us, there is actually, and as a matter of 
 fact, a superhuman element. We find ourselves pos- 
 sessed, we know not how, except that it has come 
 through accord with righteousness, of that immediate 
 assurance of our kinship with the eternal, which 
 experience alone can give. " Such a life slowly gathers 
 and builds up a faith, a hope, a vision, which disarms 
 the calamity of death, and creates an impetuous expec- 
 tancy of the life beyond." 
 
 Why then, when the means of enlightenment are 
 so close at hand, does any one remain in doubt? 
 There are various answers. For example, it is 
 possible to deceive ourselves, and to imagine we live 
 in the way that will bring enlightenment, when in 
 reality we do nothing of the kind. We may lead a 
 good life, be useful members of society, put ourselves 
 to inconvenience, make sacrifices for other people, 
 and yet be very far indeed from obedience to the 
 feeling about right. 
 
 It is, as a rule, both pleasant and profitable to be 
 good. Prudence and sagacity, and worldly wisdom, 
 alike impel toward an honest existence. Prompted 
 by these motives alone, it is quite possible to go 
 through life respected, esteemed, and honored, and 
 to be at the same time further from the unseen world 
 than the publican and the harlot. 
 
 Motives of pleasure, convenience, prudence, saga- 
 city, are excellent. Most desirable is it that we should
 
 148 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 be influenced by these impulses, but we shall be dis- 
 appointed if we imagine thay will lead to a knowledge 
 of the superhuman. 
 
 Their tendency is in the opposite direction. They 
 are practical motives. That is to say, they deal with 
 the here and now, with present problems. They are 
 concerned only with making existence more com- 
 fortable, more prosperous. We cannot expect to 
 find in them information about that with which they 
 have nothing to do. 
 
 Again, obedience to the feeling about right is a 
 hard path to follow, not only because we are apt to 
 imagine we are following it when we are in fact pur- 
 suing a quite different road, but because in order to 
 follow it we have sometimes to give up many things 
 the heart desires. He who fulfils his moral obliga- 
 tions, may find himself compelled to ignore prudence, 
 do without prosperity, take poverty for his bride, 
 and be willing to surrender, if need be, even peace 
 and happiness. He will have to act from principle 
 instead of from expediency, and regardless of the 
 consequences to himself, to make for that only which 
 is right. On every occasion he must ask, not is it good 
 business, is it profitable, but is it just and merciful? 
 Should profit and prosperity conflict with justice and 
 mercy, he must give up profit and prosperity. He 
 must cease to be, in short, what the world calls a 
 practical man. He will be compelled to abandon half 
 the methods of making money regarded by the com- 
 mercial world as legitimate. He will be obliged to 
 take the chance of business collapse and failure. He 
 who is loyal to right principles may sometimes have 
 to choose a path more perilous still, a path that 
 leads not only to suffering but to death. A difficult 
 road to pursue. Nevertheless, those who have forti-
 
 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 149 
 
 tude enough and persistence enough steadfastly to 
 walk therein, those who in this moral strife, again 
 and yet again, obey the still small voice, though they 
 lose outward peace, and comfort, and riches, and 
 worldly consideration, gain a new insight into the 
 nature of things, an insight which reveals in close 
 association with our own mortal existence, an exist- 
 ence more than mortal. 
 
 "The true knowledge," said Oliver Cromwell, "is 
 not literal nor speculative, but inward, transforming 
 the mind." Those who tread the narrow way come 
 to understand, with an inward and transforming 
 knowledge, with a knowledge possessing the con- 
 vincing quality of a genuine experience, that, 
 
 "Death is not 
 
 So much even as the lifting of a latch. 
 Only a step into the open air 
 Out of a tent already luminous 
 With light that shone through its transparent 
 walls." 
 
 Our conclusion is, then, that while reason and 
 observation indicate the extreme likelihood of soul 
 survival, assurance is to be sought through the 
 mystical mood. This mystical mood results from the 
 awakening of certain finer sensibilities, of which 
 probably all of us have a share. 
 
 Under ordinary circumstances these sensibilities 
 are dormant, but they can be quickened into activity, 
 by bringing to bear the proper influences. What the 
 proper influences are, depends largely on tempera- 
 ment. Some seem to require a prolonged and sys- 
 tematic, and it may be a painful discipline, perhaps 
 that severest of all forms of discipline, the loss of 
 one they have truly loved. For others, "a wise
 
 150 SOURCES OF FAITH AND HOPE 
 
 passiveness" suffices. For many music is the fitting 
 agency, and the churches have always taught that 
 whosoever will, may attain the mystical mood of 
 awakened sensibility, and so win the desired cer- 
 titude, through prayer. The mood of insight may 
 be achieved also by association, steadfast and con- 
 tinued association with that superhuman element 
 which, as we have endeavored to show, is, to some 
 extent at least, present in every one. 
 
 Looking back at the road we have travelled, it will 
 be seen that we have been dealing, not with tradition 
 from the distant past, nor with fantastic theories, 
 nor with strange and oriental cults, but with the 
 sober facts of our own human nature, with the 
 realities of our own souls. In these realities we have 
 found a guide to the conduct of life, and the ground 
 and reason for a great hope. 
 
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