GIFT OF 
 
THE MEANING AND 
 OF LIF 
 
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 A SEARCH FOR RELIGIOPT^- b 
 
 IN BIOLOGY 
 
 GEORGE M. GOULD, A.M., M.D. 
 
 FROM LIFE, THROUGH LIFE, TO LIFE. 
 
 "D A6yo$ 2dp tysrero. 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 
 
 LONDON 
 
 24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND 
 
 lje liniehnboeher 
 1893 
 

 COPYRIGHT, 1893 
 
 BY GEORGE M. GOULD 
 
 Entered at Stationers' ////, London 
 
 By GEORGE M. GOULD 
 
 Electrotyped, Printed, and Bound, by 
 
 e Iknicherbocher press, "Hew 
 G. P. PUTNAM 's SONS 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 PACE 
 
 INTRODUCTION ... 
 
 I. PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL . .12 
 
 II. PARTIAL TRUTHS . 2 4 
 
 III. INCARNATION 5^ 
 
 IV. CYTOLOGY . 77 
 
 V. SENSATION . . IOI 
 
 VI. EVOLUTION . . T 45 
 
 VII. REPRODUCTION . J 57 
 
 VIII. CONCERNING EVIL. . I l^ 
 
 IX. JUSTIFICATION OF THE INCARNATION PROCESS 1 88 
 
 X. FREEDOM . 1 99 
 
 XI. PERSONALITY 2I1 
 
 XII. IMMORTALITY . . 22 9 
 
 XIII. ETHICS . 2 39 
 
 XIV. BEAUTY . . . 28 
 XV. SLEEP, DREAMING, AND AWAKENING . 284 
 
 INDEX 2 93 
 
 249043 
 
THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE ordinary railway laborer, in cutting through a 
 wall of stratified rock that by volcanic action has 
 been tilted or warped out of its original level, never 
 dreams of the causes of the stratification or of its dis- 
 placement. To him the quarrel of the " Neptunists" and 
 the " Plutonists " has never been distantly suggested. He 
 daily sees these peculiarities, but to his incurious mind 
 no question of why or how has been aroused thereby. 
 When the railway cut has been completed, thousands of 
 people are rushed through it, but doubtless to very few, if 
 the train were halted in front of the wall, would the 
 significance of the tilted and twisted layers be clear. Of 
 the millions drawn by the locomotive engine, few under- 
 stand the mechanism by which they are so powerfully 
 and rapidly pulled along. Of these few in a million, 
 least of all probably the engineer, who can use the 
 force so perfectly, of these very few, perhaps one may 
 understand the nature of heat and the action of heated 
 water, and how the combined bombardment of billions of 
 crowded atoms striking the piston-head batter it back 
 and forth and transmute atomic vibration into molar 
 motion. Thousands daily pass an optician's window and 
 are not moved to inquire as to the cause of the turning 
 
2 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 of the vanes in a Crookes' radiometer. And yet all these 
 mysteries upon, among, and by which we live, are clearly 
 and easily explainable, if our minds but stopped to in- 
 quire ; if we desired to know, the knowledge would be 
 forthcoming. One of the saddest things in man is his 
 willingness to be ignorant and incurious of the mystery 
 that he is and by which he is surrounded. A very dis- 
 couraging exaggeration of this willingness is agnosticism, 
 an unmanly resignation and despair after a first defeat. 
 The bravest, noblest attitude is that of unsatisfied long- 
 ing, and the never-stilled faith that light will come into 
 all of our darkness and that the riddle of our lives will be 
 solved. We must trust that light exists, and must persist 
 in trying to find it, must be willing to give up half-truths, 
 for whole truths, and guard the mind against the bias of 
 prejudice. Agnosticism, materialism, atheism, pessimism, 
 sensualism, reckless luxury, despair, rigid creed-worship and 
 superstition, and a thousand similar evils of our time, are 
 directly begotten and fostered by this lack of trust in 
 coming light. 
 
 The best method of reaching truth is that of a sym- 
 pathetic study of the facts before us that is, by induc- 
 tion, and by a broad, careful, systematic inference, by 
 making the light about us ever wider, and fearlessly at- 
 tacking the mystery beyond. Darkness and half-truths 
 are thus progressively merged into light and larger truths, 
 and the world of the known becomes ever greater and 
 more satisfying. Let us renounce deduction, theories 
 clutched out of the air, word-wars and logical juggling, 
 and fix our minds to a perception of facts and a sym- 
 pathetic interpretation of them. 
 
 Now when one looks about him the plainest, largest 
 fact he sees is that of the distinction between living and 
 
INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 lifeless things. All things are divisible into the two 
 categories. Just as there is all the difference in the world 
 to the mother's heart between the living and the dead 
 child, so to the philosophic mind there is all the differ- 
 ence in the world between living matter and non-living 
 matter. Upon that distinction must begin all honest 
 thinking. A step further is gained by the obvious truth 
 that the visible part of living forms is made up of the 
 complexed, systematized, and utilized atoms and molecules 
 of the non-living world. The invisible life is an organiz- 
 ing power using matter as material, and intelligence and 
 purposiveness are plain characteristics of the invisible 
 life. Every cell and organ and organism shows presently- 
 acting intelligence, healing power, adaptation to circum- 
 stance, resistance to or use of circumstance. It is plain 
 that a practically omnipresent, invisible, living, intelligent 
 force is operating in and through every living thing. To 
 identify matter and this living intelligence by any system 
 of idealism, monism, pantheism, or materialism, is to do 
 violence to logic and misread the facts. The dark riddle 
 of life is to explain why Life is thus incorporating itself in 
 material forms, and why the peculiarities, course, accidents, 
 length of progress and evils, of the process are as they are. 
 This little book, I believe, gives the keynote and method 
 of solution of the riddle. The question of the origin of 
 the lifeless universe is left untouched, with the accept- 
 ance of what seems to me the axiomatic truth that its 
 essential elements, the atoms, are uncaused, did not 
 originate at all, and, least of all, by any mental or intel- 
 ligent fiat. It is a simple untruth that the non-living 
 world of matter shows any faintest hint of design or of 
 divinity. But there is comfort instead of despair in this 
 background of fate, of a universe not made or ordered by 
 
4 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 mentality. Matter could not have been created, as some- 
 thing out of nothing is unthinkable ; and only one law or 
 mode of its action, gravity, is at present unexplained, and 
 this " law " is really all the quality it has. The whole end- 
 less and eternal universe is made up of the same kinds of 
 atoms as we know here. It could not have begun, or the 
 despair-provoking certainty of its coming end would be 
 inevitable, since, to use a simple illustration, a rope that 
 has one end must have another. Nor can it be limited in 
 extent, since any immaterial space beyond it, or any 
 boundary to it, by the inevitable laws of gravity would 
 bring about universal catastrophe. No such catastrophe 
 is discoverable, or inferable from astronomic fact. Every 
 large part of the sidereal universe is held more or less 
 fixed in place by the opposing gravitational force of a 
 literally infinite universe upon every side. If upon any 
 side that universe were less than infinite in extent, the 
 space-filling suns and worlds would be drawn toward a 
 somewhere-existing gravitational center, and there would 
 result a persistent and consecutive crashing together of 
 all suns and matter into one tremendous central sun. 
 Hence the attempt of astronomy to determine the per- 
 manent direction of motion of a body of stars toward a 
 point, or their orderly revolution about a center, is use- 
 less and always will remain resultless. The existence of 
 such motion or revolution would mean the speedy end 
 of the extended universe. There is, therefore, comfort 
 even in fate. 
 
 It is not absurd to ask as to the origin of life, because 
 in the infinite progress possible to Spirit or Life, we may 
 not block the way by any useless and impertinent agnos- 
 ticism as regards even this great question. There are many 
 reasons, deductive and inductive, for supposing Life to 
 
IN TROD UC TION. 5 
 
 have had some sort of a primary inception, or progressive- 
 ness, however hidden from our present mental power. 
 Every expression of Life we know shows process, difficul- 
 ties unconquerable and difficulties conquerable, mastery 
 by fate or ingenious partial conquering of fate never a 
 suggestion of omnipotence. The inference is quite clear, 
 that if life were a worker in matter in all the past eternity, 
 it would have been a more successful conqueror of it than 
 is pathetically evident. The most patent aim of life is to 
 win itself a home in worlds of inorganic matter, and to 
 obtain progressive control of purely physical matter and 
 forces. The fact that the success is only partial in our 
 own world, that it has been attended with such difficulty 
 and such expense (suffering, evil, death, reproduction, etc.), 
 and that not more than two or three worlds of our solar 
 system can possibly allow life a home in them, together 
 with the certainty that like conditions exist everywhere 
 else, all this points to the finiteness, if one may so speak, 
 of God, and His struggle with adverse circumstances. But 
 it also gives blessed reasons and incentives for sympathy 
 with Him, and makes duty clear, unravels a thousand mys- 
 teries of our being here, makes religion a psychical as well 
 as a biological necessity, indeed, forms the ground of an 
 indissoluble and necessary identity of religion and biology. 
 Lives must be linked with Life by love and sympathy 
 and loyalty, just as much as they are derivatively, 
 physically, and physiologically. 
 
 Upon its physical side this conjoining of religion and 
 biology is made clear by the cell-doctrine which physi- 
 ology and pathology have established as the fundamental 
 truth of all biological processes. The physiological unit 
 is the cell. This truth has been seen plainly enough, but 
 only physically and physiologically ; its application, as 
 
6 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 explanatory of the thousand mysteries of our own life, 
 and especially as explanatory of what is called evolution, 
 the process of life-incorporation or incarnation, and of the 
 great mysteries of death, nutrition, psychology, etc., has 
 not been seen. I have endeavored to suggest this appli- 
 cation and explanation in these pages, and in more effi- 
 cient hands than mine I believe the method capable of 
 such splendid use and extension that through it men's 
 minds may come to see purpose and hopefulness in our 
 life, and look forward with confidence and trust to a fu- 
 ture that before was blank with mystery and dark with 
 death. According to this thought God can only reach 
 incarnation through the cell, and the difficulties of cell- 
 nutrition explain the necessity of what is called "evolu- 
 tion," the fact of development and the length of the 
 process, as well as its thousand peculiarities, partial failures, 
 and evils. The progress of the process to ever higher 
 forms, humanization, and thespiritualization of humanity, 
 are explained by the purpose of God, luminous with 
 coming beneficence and resplendent with coming beauty ; 
 the delayed progress is due to the single fact that His 
 only seat of power in the material world is the cell, of 
 which He alone has direct control, through which all ulte- 
 rior aims are realizable, and that the difficult nutrition of 
 this cell-life is subject to a thousand conditions of tempera- 
 ture, food-supply, etc., and those accidents of untoward 
 circumstance we call disease and evil. Accordingly 
 death is the great unconquered difficulty of nutrition, and 
 reproduction is an ingenious semi-overcoming of it. Ac- 
 cordingly the complex cell of the animal is only possible 
 when fed upon the less complex cell of the vegetable. 
 Upon the preservation of the conditions and perfection 
 of the vegetable world is based the existence of the animal 
 
INTRODUCTION. J 
 
 and human world. Hence the exuberance and perti- 
 nacity of vegetation. Civilization, with its railroads and 
 scientific agriculture and multitudinous systematization of 
 food-supply and distribution, for the first time in the world 
 now assures a security and settlement of the nutritional 
 problem, and permits the attention of God and humanity 
 to be given to the work of spiritualization, to the benefi- 
 cent and artistic use of power over the material world. A 
 certain corollary of this great incarnation-process is that 
 in veriest literalness, it is God's own life and self that lives 
 in and uses every cell of every living thing, and that He 
 is thus " very near " indeed to every one of us, if happily 
 we but search and find Him. It is His omnipresent per- 
 sonality that constitutes the reacting psychical reality of 
 our being ; through the highest cerebral cells of sensation, 
 receiving the synthetized, transmuted, classified facts or 
 stimuli of the external world, and through the motor cere- 
 bral cells ordering the use of body and of the external 
 world. Finally the certainty of our freedom comes from the 
 certainty that we are the very sons of God, sharers of His 
 personality, possessed of His freedom, and that He long- 
 ingly awaits our educational fitness and loyalty to confer 
 upon us the honor of inheritance of His kingdom, and of 
 being His co-workers and friends. 
 
 A great philosopher said that two things especially 
 inspired him with awe and reverence : the starlit heaven 
 above, and the moral law within. Until I reached the 
 vivid knowledge of the foregoing truths these two things 
 were precisely they that inspired me with that utter deso- 
 lation of despair I have called cosmic horror that volcanic 
 shuddering and sickening of the soul at the contemplation 
 there without of the awful infinity of the dead, cold, and 
 purposeless universe ; whilst within, an unknown God, by 
 
8 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 an unknown instinct, commanded an unknown self to do 
 an unknown duty. I have learned that many another sen- 
 sitive despairing soul, in the face of the glib creeds and 
 the loneliness of subjectivity, has also and often felt the 
 same clutching spasm of cosmic horror, the very heart 
 of life stifled and stilled with an infinite fear and sense of 
 lostness. But I can now lie and look into the starry 
 depths of space without soul-sickening or spirit-shudder, 
 for knowledge lends comfort even to fate, and the cer- 
 tainty of the vision and the love of God in the world about 
 and within me translates the stern command of duty into 
 a sweet and irresistible invitation of the Father to help 
 Him. 
 
 I believe that very few indeed find in the stars or in 
 the command of duty either consolation or helpfulness 
 for their spiritual homesickness and orphanage. As for- 
 merly with me, I judge that, with the common mental 
 attitude, the two objects inspire terror and despair. 
 There can be no doubt that from similar fear of the awful 
 unresponsive infinity of the universe, and from the con- 
 tradiction of internal command and external fact, unknown 
 thousands consciously or unconsciously renounce thought 
 and investigation, and either bury themselves in an 
 authoritative system, creed, or church, or fly from the 
 demands of duty to the distractions of money-getting, 
 sensuality, fashion, and the thousand sad devices people 
 have made in order to forget themselves. But the nobler 
 can never stifle the soul's unrest and insatisfaction in such 
 ways. The feeling can never be kept wholly out of 
 consciousness that they are orphans who still hunger for 
 a Father they have never beheld and cannot find, and 
 yearn with a sickening nostalgia for a home they have 
 never known and see no hope of ever knowing. More 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 superficial minds turn to the hollowness of an absurd 
 atheism and materialism or a more absurd spiritism, while 
 the virile seek relief in science, literature, socialism, or 
 government. But all alike have despaired and renounced, 
 and have settled into a conscious or unconscious agnos- 
 ticism that crushes the great decisive questions of life out 
 of sight, and that logically and practically, sooner or later, 
 leads to lowered ideals, more selfish practices and habits, 
 to psychical, and not infrequently to physiological suicide. 
 
 The great need of the age is a scientific religion or a 
 religious science that shall give these despairing, toppling 
 minds a home in the universe ; a religion that, blinking no 
 fact of evil or truth of science, nay, built beyond possi- 
 bility of wreckage on the everlasting bases supplied by 
 science, shall thereby have certain foundation for a super- 
 structure wherein may joyfully dwell the Soul, with all 
 its infinite possibilities of art, love, and faith. Such a 
 suggestion of a reasonable and even necessary faith I 
 firmly believe, however imperfectly, is herewith accurately 
 given. For twenty or more years I have despairingly 
 ransacked the wisdom of ethnic religions, systems of 
 philosophy, and of natural theology, and lo ! under the 
 microscope I found God at work, and in biology revealing 
 Himself so fast and so far as fate and His myriad diffi- 
 culties allowed, self His incarnation and deputy, Duty 
 and Intellect His pleading with the deputy to become co- 
 partner and helper in the Divinization of the World. 
 
 The sole solutions of the modern tragedy of the spirit 
 that so far are at all clear or worthy of consideration 
 are those supplied by a religion that is not scientific, or 
 by a science that is not religious. Science and religion 
 equally and alike await the vision and knowledge of the 
 ever-present, living, and struggling God. 
 
10 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 The relation of philosophy and religion should and 
 must be a genuine union and interfusion. They represent 
 two methods of mental activity of one being, two aspects 
 of one great life-truth. True personality will bind them 
 into a living unity. The philosophy that is not religious 
 and the religion that is not rational are either but half- 
 truths, each needing the other to complete and perfect 
 itself. The history of the marriage, yet, alas, to be 
 solemnized, may be symbolized by the sweet story of 
 Gilbert a Becket and his love. Captured during the cru- 
 sades by a Syrian Emir, Gilbert and the daughter of the 
 Emir fell in love with each other and planned to escape 
 together. In this he succeeded, but she at first did not. 
 At a later time she was able to elude her father and with 
 great suffering travelled the long way to London knowing 
 but two English words. For months, followed by a 
 curious mob, she cried these two words, Gilbert, London, 
 about the streets, until arriving accidentally before Gil- 
 bert's house, he by chance discovered her and took her to 
 his home and heart. The more virile reason of the Occi- 
 dental mind has escaped from the slavery of Oriental 
 error, but Religion, that true and ever-faithful daughter 
 of the East, has followed so soon and fast as possible, 
 and now, seeking her lover, Philosophy, sadly wanders 
 dazed and fainting about our modern world with but two 
 words, God, Love, ever upon her lips, while the rabble 
 follow with cold or superstitious curiosity, or cruel jeers. 
 
 It is the conjunction of scientific reason and religious 
 emotion that alone can give the soul of man the chakar 
 wings and gladsome spirit * to mount above the clouds 
 
 * ' ' The heavenward flight of a large bird is always a magnificent spectacle ; 
 that of the chakar is peculiarly fascinating on account of the resounding 
 notes it sings while soaring, and in which the bird seems to exult in its sub- 
 
INTRODUCTION. II 
 
 and storms of life when they become too oppressive, and 
 soar high in the sunlit empyrean of freedom and 
 happiness. 
 
 lime power and freedom. I was once very much surprised at the behavior 
 of a couple of chakars during a thunderstorm. On a still, sultry day in 
 summer I was standing watching masses of black cloud coming rapidly over 
 the sky, while a hundred yards from me stood the two birds also apparently 
 watching the approaching storm with interest. Presently the edge of the 
 cloud touched the edge of the sun, and a twilight gloom fell on the earth. 
 The very moment the sun disappeared the birds rose up and soon began 
 singing. their long resounding notes, though it was loudly thundering at the 
 time, while vivid flashes of lightning lit the black cloud overhead at short 
 intervals. I watched their flight and listened to their notes, till suddenly, 
 as they made a wide sweep upwards, they disappeared in the cloud, and at 
 the same moment their voices became muffled, and seemed to come from an 
 immense distance. The cloud continued emitting sharp flashes of lightning, 
 but the birds never reappeared, and after six or seven minutes once more 
 their notes sounded clear and loud above the muttering thunder. I suppose 
 they had passed through the cloud into the clear atmosphere above it." 
 HUDSON, Naturalist in La Plata. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL. 
 
 H*HE two essential constituents or factors of the work 
 of every artisan indeed, of every act or function 
 of a living organism are the material and the 
 worker. This is the dualism that underlies all the outgo- 
 ings of man's ingenuity and industry. There are many 
 other subdivisions possible : for example, there is the 
 finished product or manufactured article ; but, on the one 
 hand, that is evidently only the chosen and transformed 
 material, or it is the idea of the workman incorporated in 
 material shape ; or, from the side of the workman, it may 
 be said that his hands that as tools do the work, his 
 eyes that aid him, his senses nay, his entire body, are 
 but instruments of his mind. His body is but the inter- 
 mediate agent for the realization of ideas or ingenious 
 energy. Thus the slightest reflection shows that all other 
 phases of bionergy or life-force are resolvable into two 
 fundamental ones : the material acted upon, and the 
 intelligent energy that manipulates it. 
 
 Generalize this thought, and we have the necessary 
 prerequisite of a proper conception of the world. All 
 accurate knowledge, all valuable philosophic thinking, is 
 based upon the same distinction of maker and material. 
 In all the world there are finally but two objects, the 
 physical and the extra-physical, or, in common language, 
 Matter and Life. Perception, through the senses, with 
 
 12 
 
PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL. 13 
 
 scientific imagination and inference, give us knowledge 
 of the physical world ; self-consciousness gives us knowl- 
 edge of the metaphysical world, supplemented by the 
 observation of the results of Life's activity in the material 
 realm. 
 
 THE PHYSICAL comprises all matter, the physical uni- 
 verse with all its inherent powers and properties, and forces, 
 gravitational, and chemical. Herein, of course, is included 
 the ether, with its forces, radiant energy, light, heat, magnet- 
 ism, and electricity. The doctrine of the persistence and 
 co-relation of physical forces, assented to by all rational 
 minds, proves conclusively that this physical universe was 
 without beginning, and will be without end ; that it is 
 uncreated, existing in and of itself. The spectroscope 
 shows that, in addition to its infinity of time, it has per- 
 haps not a strictly logical, but what, without serious error, 
 we may call a practical, infinity of space or extension. 
 The farthest suns, the light-messages of which take incal- 
 culable light-years * to reach us, are shown to consist of 
 essentially the same chemical elements as our own solar 
 system. About these suns there doubtless are, as with 
 us, swinging worlds hidden from our eyes by their dis- 
 tance and lack of self-luminosity, upon some of which in 
 each system there can be little doubt there are millions of 
 men wondering, as we wonder, about their fellow-men in 
 other world-islands, swimming in the inpenetrable deeps 
 of space. The doctrine of the atomicity of matter, of 
 which there can be no rational denial (" centers of force," 
 
 * A light-year is the distance travelled by light in a year of our time. It 
 is equal to something like six hundred billion miles. Light travels about 
 one hundred and eighty-nine thousand miles per second. A centauri is sup- 
 posed to be the nearest star to our solar system. It is about four and a half 
 light-years distant. 
 
14 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 " vortex-rings," etc., are but aspects or modifications, not 
 negations, of the theory), shows us that however combined 
 into complex systems by mutual inter-actions or the 
 master-forces of Life, they all tend to fall back again into 
 simple systems or elementary independence whenever 
 released from a mechanically controlling or an intelligent 
 domination. Combine, dissolve, and recombine, however 
 many million times you please, the atoms of the seventy- 
 two or more elements that Life shapes and uses for pur- 
 pose, and each preserves forever its independence, and 
 is forever unchangeable, has been, and always will be so, 
 wherever the universe extends. 
 
 THE METAPHYSICAL. Geology and cosmology make it 
 clear that so far as this world is concerned Life is a late- 
 comer, and will depart early. Millions of years before the 
 earth was cool enough to permit of a succession of living 
 types, the physical held full sway, and millions of years 
 hence, when too cold to permit life a habitation, it will 
 swing on about the sun, a dead mass of cinder without 
 the moulding and vivifying touch of its present wonder- 
 working visitor. The inference that it is the same in 
 other parts of the universe is beyond question. Thus it 
 is conclusive that Life is a reality absolutely different from 
 matter, and in no wise to be identified with it or derived 
 from it. The proof of this fact is primarily an act of per- 
 ception, secondarily of self-consciousness, but as we shall 
 later see, it is also a mechanically deducible truth. The 
 failure in perceiving this truth is the fundamental error of 
 all monistic and solely deductive systems of philosophy, 
 and has rendered self-contradictory and sterile the think- 
 ing of great and good minds. The fertility and light 
 brought into philosophy by the sole sway of the reverse 
 and likewise partial truth is shown by the results of physi- 
 
PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL. 15 
 
 cal science and Darwinism. However puerile and pitiable 
 may seem the crass materialism of some of the sorry 
 parasites of this school, one is astonished and delighted 
 to recognize the beautiful banishment of mystery follow- 
 ing the one-sided emphasis of the study of the material 
 alone. The misfortune has been that by some strange 
 fatuity, probably as a stupid psychological reaction to 
 the God's-work-forgetting supernaturalism of a previous 
 age, scientific research and philosophy too often deny 
 all supernaturalism, and burden themselves with the 
 farce of accounting mechanically for the mechanically 
 unaccountable. 
 
 All of the usual terms heretofore in use to designate 
 the extra-mundane source of purpose and intelligent 
 power, connote attributes and sentiments that are either 
 impossible to unite in such a being, or that are unjustifi- 
 ably ascribed to him. Let us limit ourselves modestly to 
 what is demonstrable or fairly inferable as to this being; 
 by no means implying that our tentative boundaries are 
 either final or definite. Let us stand always in the light 
 and upon the known, enlarging so fast as we may our 
 area of light and knowledge, but never jumping blindly 
 into the black chasm of the unknown. If thus plunging 
 we think to be upborne by the divine wings of faith we 
 shall, as so many others have done, batter our heads with 
 inglorious fatality against the rocks of ignorance. The 
 God we see daily at work all over the globe is primarily 
 and essentially LIFE. This word alone, for the ordinary 
 uses of our writing and speech, is sufficiently full and rich 
 to satisfy the sympathetic mind. But life to many means 
 but little more than a mere blind energy, like Schopen- 
 hauer's blinde Wille, which, even to the concocter of that 
 sad, brilliant philosophy, apparently had most fiery and 
 
1 6 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 piercing eyes. To the sympathetic and open vision, how- 
 ever, nothing is more patent than purpose, wisdom, and 
 intelligence instinct in every living thing. To /?zos" 7 
 therefore, we must add hoyo?, and with the designation, 
 Biologos, we connote all that is at present needed, while 
 we leave unknown power and possibility unexpressed. 
 
 ATTRIBUTES OF BIOLOGOS. The childish and uncritical 
 faiths of mankind have in a fervor of wonder endowed 
 their supreme Gods with a multiplicity of absurd, un- 
 justifiable, and self-contradictory characteristics and pow- 
 ers, that have chilled true love and sympathy, and left 
 the mind of the worshipper wandering in a maze of mys- 
 tery and intellectual inconclusiveness, and his heart the 
 home of sorrow and doubt. Much of this was because 
 the so-called " natural theology " was oblivious of nature 
 and its widest lessons, because men spurned or ignored 
 the very works of God all about them, and of which their 
 own bodies were the sublimest and divinest proofs. They 
 plunged into an ecstasy of adoration and flattery, or of 
 logic-chopping dialectic, that by no road led nowhither. 
 The sorrowfulest and stupidest error of all was in the 
 ascription of omnipotence to the being whose every plant, 
 tree, animal, or man, conclusively shows struggle against 
 difficulties, and ingenious half-victories, progressive fail- 
 ures and successes, devious and indirect results outworked 
 with imperfect means and obstinate materials. This 
 supposed attribute led thousands to doubt, denial, and 
 atheism, by the simple and unanswerable logic of " Either 
 He does not wish (to destroy evil) or He cannot," either 
 horn of the dilemma, of course, negativing His existence. 
 A part of the same fallacy was the like unjustifiable as- 
 cription of infinity to God, an attribute wholly unthink- 
 able when considered as a positive one, and leaving the 
 
PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL. 1 7 
 
 poor befogged mind seized with sudden chill and amazed 
 doubt. 
 
 As to omniscience, the thought is not destructive of 
 religious feeling and intellectual clearness. We stand in 
 rapt amazement at the intelligence displayed in the syn- 
 chronous creation, re-creation, guiding, and governing, of 
 million-fold types of billion-fold individual organisms all 
 over the world, deep in its oceans, and high in its airs and 
 mountains. Here is a science that so far as our seeing 
 goes is almost an omniscience, especially if we suppose 
 Biologos covering millions of other previously dead worlds 
 with million-fold forms of palpitant life. Perfect intel- 
 lectual candor lets all doubts and qualifications have their 
 full expression and influence, and therefore we may not 
 quench the suspicion sometimes arising that, if Biologos 
 were omniscient, He would have been able, even with far 
 less than omnipotent power, to have spared Himself much 
 indirection, much misdirection and waste, and His crea- 
 tures the awful poignancy of wretchedness, which, like 
 the groan of a monotonous sub-dominant, is heard in all 
 the music of life. But there are a thousand illustrations 
 daily happening in our hearts and before our eyes that 
 all biologic phenomena are led and marshalled by an In- 
 telligence whose ends, however hidden and misappreciated 
 by us, are still very clear to Himself. We are much like 
 soldiers whose primal duties are obedience, bravery, and 
 confidence in the General-in-Chief. Even the highest of 
 His subordinate officers does not know the entire plan 
 of campaign, lying in the most hidden deeps of the 
 Commander's mind. The last battle will make it clear. 
 Moreover, the noblest of human minds and hearts are so 
 fast reaching almost a practical omniscience, that it be- 
 comes easy to believe Biologos endowed with a knowledge 
 
1 8 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 of almost positive infiniteness. So approximate is it that 
 the question has little significance, and its discussion is 
 comparatively useless. The vital point is to recognize the 
 sadly but awfully evident fact that knowledge with Him 
 and with us has outrun power. We know much about 
 the constitution and motions of the heavenly bodies, but 
 are wholly powerless over them. Of the history and 
 march of life-forms of our planet we have a growing 
 accuracy of knowledge, but are able to modify or influence 
 them scarcely any. In the same way the biography of 
 every plant or animal shows that its wise Creator has 
 been forced by indirection and inexhaustible ingenuity to 
 obviate or overcome innumerable difficulties and dangers. 
 Precisely the same thought arises when we think of the 
 goodness of God. To endow sensitive creatures with 
 longings and possibilities scarcely less than infinite, and 
 thereafter deny the bulk of them any proper realization 
 of ideals ; to make suffering and death the condition and 
 means of progress ; all this, and more, seems incom- 
 patible with a Christ-like sympathy and a limitless good- 
 ness. But there are many proofs that we can see, whilst 
 from them we may infer others not seen, which prove 
 suffering and denied realization of longing to be either 
 temporary accidents, necessary antecedents, or inobviable 
 conditions of a larger ethics, in which the errant note of 
 pain is blended as a passing discord to heighten the aton- 
 ing beauty of the final resolving harmony. Slowly men 
 come to learn that even now a large proportion of the 
 world's suffering is obviable, and that each may attain a 
 greater and at least a moderate happiness with a greater 
 loyalty to God. Moreover, the purest vision sees that 
 there is something better than happiness happiness as 
 usually conceived always awaiting the purest heart. 
 
PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL. 19 
 
 Practical intellectual observation, therefore, harmonizes 
 with the hunger of the religious heart in finding the 
 Father-Heart of Life and the divine vision essentially the 
 same as our own, transcendently larger and purer, willing 
 the good, seeing and knowing almost or quite infinitely, 
 but very far from omnipotence either physically or 
 morally. Friends and parents, whom we love, are none 
 the less prized because finite and faultful. Indeed we 
 love them all the more if we see them ever struggling 
 against difficulties within and without, and ever progres- 
 sively actualizing their ideals. So is God brought closely 
 correspondent to our yearning if we recognize Him as a 
 finite and suffering God, of quite limitless benevolence 
 and knowledge, but struggling with divine heroism 
 against recalcitrant material and perpetual obstacle. Only 
 such a conception can give a basis for religion, and make 
 thinkable or possible, obedience to the command that we 
 love God. No infinite and omnipotent being can be 
 loved, as the Avatars, Incarnations, Virgin and Saint wor- 
 ship of all times practically prove. 
 
 At the first glance it would seem that this process of 
 finitizing the divine were impious. To the truly religious 
 it will not finally so appear. I am sorry for the dogmatist 
 who will persist in his illogical logic, but for the profes- 
 sional dogmatist I have little concern. The time has 
 passed when inquiry may be throttled by the authority 
 of lordly domination either of systems of so-called 
 philosophy or miscalled religion. And what is impiety? 
 Primarily irreverence and unkindness. But it has often 
 appeared that a loving trustfulness and a genuine rever- 
 ence is sometimes found in the heart of the modest 
 " heretic," that was conspicuous by its absence from the 
 bulemic appetite of the " believer." Piety, I would be- 
 
20 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 lieve, consists in the conscientious attuning of one's per- 
 sonality in the most perfect unison with the " tonic " 
 struck by God for the world's orchestra. Intellectual 
 honesty is a string often sadly out of tune, I fear. To 
 the truly pious, I have said, the finite but the acting and 
 loving God will be a welcome belief. Indeed, in all time 
 the genuinely pious have made themselves such Gods 
 when denied them by the articles of the dominant creed. 
 Thus one God after another is created as logic and 
 authority have pushed the previous God back into the 
 soundless abyss of infinity. When Jehovah talked with 
 Moses, and Himself led the children of Israel, no nearer 
 anthropomorphic divinity was needed. But it was soon 
 seen that the one-tribal God must perforce neglect the 
 other nations. The God of all people, of all worlds, at 
 once became dim and shadowy in His infinity, and out of 
 the heart-needs of hungering humanity His Son is born to 
 be near them. Him they can love. With blind fatuity the 
 iron creed pushes Jesus into an equality of Godhood, 
 robbing the human heart of its cherished faith. But 
 the ever prolific, ever-hungering, again transfers its love 
 to new semi-divine humanities, to the Virgin Mary, 
 and to Saints innumerable. What of throbbing re- 
 ligious faith manages to keep itself alive in these days 
 of practical sensualism and theoretical materialism clings 
 with the energy of desperation to these pathetic fresh 
 creations, at once idols and idyls of an undying faith 
 periodically robbed of its young by the dogmatist and 
 logician. 
 
 And likewise all over the world, new Avatars and in- 
 carnations without number attest the devotion of the 
 people to a loving, suffering, acting, finite God, and the 
 incomprehensibility and inutility of an infinite God. 
 
PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL. 21 
 
 The child's question, Who made God? is justifiable and 
 pertinent. If the construction of our minds and the pro- 
 duct of our experience makes us ask for a cause of things, 
 it is just as necessary that we ask as to the cause of the 
 cause. Alas, that the unwisest of peasants or the wisest 
 of philosophers must render the same answer. In the 
 light of modern science such a question as regards the 
 origin of the purely physical universe seems highly absurd. 
 In the whole realm of inorganic nature there is not the 
 slightest hint of purposiveness or intellectual ordering. 
 We may only ask concerning a designer when the product 
 manifests design, but until Biologos created self-moving 
 organisms with the dead matter of the physical world, no 
 trace of extra-material influence is discoverable by the 
 sane intellect however " God-possessed." It is unthink- 
 able that matter could have been created de novo, and it 
 is equally unthinkable that even divine power could 
 annihilate a single atom. Matter and its properties, all 
 purely mechanical and unchangeable, we must accept as 
 eternal and self-existent. The sole considerable mystery 
 in connection with it, of which we are still awaiting a 
 solution, is gravitation, and possibly further study of the 
 ether may give this to us. 
 
 But when we turn to a consideration of our metaphysi- 
 cal reality and that of Him who is the Father of us, we 
 find no warrant of science or of immediate perception to 
 justify us in a wholly restful certainty of conviction of 
 His eternity or self-sufHciency. The perpetual continu- 
 ance and infinite variety of ever renascent incarnations, 
 every blade of grass and living thing being His Avatar, 
 is a faultless proof of process and non-attained result. 
 This alone is evidence of finiteness and incompleteness, a 
 necessity put on Him from without (or worse still, spring- 
 
22 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 ing from within) to be other, to attain an unreached end. 
 Is there a hint in the restlessness and ever-uprising desire 
 at the heart of us, and in the driving, almost frightful 
 hunger of Biologos for world-wide incarnation, that there 
 is also insatisfaction in the deep of His being, and that 
 He Himself may also be a divine victim of some 
 " struggle for existence." The thought may make us 
 shudder as if icy-steel were in our soul, but every deep 
 spirit has often felt the sudden sickening cosmic horror 
 and chill as the infinite doubt of stability clutched his 
 palsied heart while peering tremblingly over the 
 crumbling precipice of supposed certainty into the abyss 
 of past and future night. 
 
 Beyond all doubt, not matter-born, but matter-taming, 
 Biologos came to our planet from without, whether, as 
 has been taught, gaining the first foothold by means of a 
 meteor-carried cluster of organic cells, or whether such 
 an elementary organism were nursed and fanned into 
 activity here in the warm ooze of some tropic shore, 
 matters not. Life's organizing architectonic force is so 
 profoundly unlike any mechanical force that the materi- 
 alist of our day can only command our sincere pity for 
 his congenital atrophy of perception. One who is blind 
 to the extra-physical origin and hyper-mechanical nature 
 of life-force is dead to argument. It is simply a question 
 of perception, and to those who have never heard or 
 seen, there is no mental image possible of sound or color. 
 The fact of materialism, however, is a terrible proof of 
 the power of prejudice over spontaneous and normal 
 mental activity, whilst the pathos is heightened in that this 
 materialistic prejudice is the reactionary child of a rabid 
 monomaniac theology and mechanical creed-building. 
 
 By the most irresistible logic we recognize ourselves as 
 incarnations or Avatars of Biologos ; sharing His being 
 
PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL. 2$ 
 
 we may therefore reason from our own nature to His. 
 But since the subtlest and strongest human intellect can 
 frame no faintest conception how intelligent life could have 
 originated, we may feel some sorrowful certainty that such 
 knowledge of Himself is perhaps hidden from Himself. 
 But, on the other hand, man's ever renewed attack upon 
 mystery, the torment of its weight to normal minds, is 
 also a hint that even the child's intolerable question may 
 finally get answer. The answer may not be at all what 
 we should expect. Perhaps it may consist in recognizing 
 an abnormalism of our mind begotten in us by our 
 struggle with the laws of matter. To Biologos the neces- 
 sity of ascribing cause to the ultimate elements of exist- 
 ence may not obtain. Have we an abnormal excess of 
 the causation-ascribing impulse woven into our mental 
 warp and woof by our million-year-long experience and 
 work in the engendering of material forms? Uninfluenced 
 by any of the material subjugations and changes, does 
 mind feel any obligation to ask for final cause and origin? 
 In view of the acceptance of the scientific doctrine of the 
 conservation of energy and the indestructibleness of 
 matter, we see how easy it has been for us to renounce 
 the necessity of asking as to the ultimate cause of the 
 physical world, and in this fact we catch suggestion that the 
 mystery of the origin of the metaphysical may in time cease 
 to have vexation, interest, or even significance for us." :: " 
 
 * A psychological inquiry as yet not thought of or attempted would be a pure 
 effort to discern the validity and reach of intuitional or deductive truths as pro- 
 duced, modified, repressed, or distorted by the accidents of our total past and 
 inherited experience in evolution-ages. But compensation for our insatisfac- 
 tion in this colorless and airless height of dizzy thought is happily at hand when 
 we turn to look at the silent, splendid cosmic panorama of biologic phenomena 
 spread all over the world, the glorious victory over death whereby the Father 
 of Life has covered and filled the dead crust of a desert planet with soft, sweet, 
 home-making vegetation, and with fleet-footed, limpid-eyed, and palpitant 
 animal-life. Could rocks and fire, winds and waters, sunshine or star-shine, 
 forces gravitational, mechanical, chemical, or ethereal, action or reaction, 
 eon-long or world-wide, have resulted in a single grass-blade or cell of bio- 
 plasm ? Fool indeed is he who hath said in his heart there is no God. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 PARTIAL TRUTHS. 
 
 THE truth and limits of materialism are simply the 
 truth and limits of the physical universe, and rightly 
 considered that truth is of such tremendous im- 
 portance that the error and sin of Buddhism, of medieval 
 asceticism, of idealistic, deductive, and pantheistic systems 
 of philosophy, of most of the sentimental and theoretical 
 religion of the day, are stupendous errors and sins. So ludi- 
 crous or awful according to the point of view are these er- 
 rors, that the contempt of the scientist and of the eupeptic, 
 if not justifiable, is at least comprehensible. And chiefly for 
 the religious ascetic and religious idealist what consummate 
 delusion and stupidity ! These worshipped a divinity who, 
 according to their own creed, made, ever upholds, and 
 ever works in the world ; and hence, in the fact of his own 
 body, as in the magnificent array of cosmic animal and 
 vegetable life, this impious religionist, if not prejudice- 
 blind, must have beheld the dead-in-earnest work of his 
 divinity and of his interest in this world. And yet he 
 refuses to behold it, and ignores or hates the beloved 
 handiwork of his divinity. Could folly be more foolish, 
 or unreason more unreasonable ? Could his deity be 
 more outrageously insulted ? What God considers worthy 
 of interesting Himself in so deeply as he does in the laws 
 and uses of matter, God's creatures may scarcely pretend 
 to find of no interest whatever or to condemn outright. 
 
 24 
 
PARTIAL TRUTHS. 2$ 
 
 Were his work but done in the spirit of loving sympa- 
 thy, the physical scientist may by all odds be held to 
 have chosen the wiser part. Alas, that too generally 
 science is not pursued in such a spirit! If chemistry, 
 physics, physiology, medicine, and forestry, could but 
 catch the spirit of imitation of God, working as He works, 
 and espousing His ends, what progress would follow, and 
 what a light would come among their darkness ! It is 
 admitted that no life is possible in the sun, nor in the 
 majority of his planets. On our globe but a fractional 
 part of the matter forming its bulk has been or will be 
 touched by Biologos. Moreover, for the greater part of 
 its past the earth has had no living thing upon it, and will 
 again refuse life a home. Biologos, therefore, makes use 
 of but an infinitesimal part of the atoms and forces of the 
 universe ; the remainder pursue their own way indepen- 
 dent and eternal. The delight and function of the 
 intellect of man is knowledge, and, as an object of 
 study, the physical universe is assuredly a large and 
 sufficiently interesting part of all objects to admit neither 
 of indifference to it nor of disdain of it. The delight 
 and function of man's will is to do, and the sole material 
 of artistic or useful recreation is the physical. The de- 
 light and function of man's emotional nature is sensation, 
 and most of our feeling consists in the play of physical 
 forces upon those exquisite wonders, the attuned and 
 vibratile organs of the senses. 
 
 From a multitude of cogent reasons, therefore, there 
 may be no indifference to physics and the physical uni- 
 verse. To find and maintain a safe home therein, and to 
 use it wisely, requires all the assiduous study we can give 
 to it and to its laws. With its clumsy but distinct justice 
 it ruthlessly punishes ignorance or neglect of it. This 
 
26 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 constitutes the strength and justification of all material- 
 istic or scientific modes of thinking. 
 
 But to hold that the material is all, to affect a belief in 
 no other powers than normally inhere in mechanically 
 ruled atoms and their natural correspondings, this is a 
 fatuous sin, exactly on a level with that of the ascetic. 
 
 PANTHEISM, " God-intoxication," has the merit of pos- 
 sessing a visual power that sees the most visible fact in 
 the world, but it errs in supposably seeing God where He 
 has never been. Not the millionth of the millionth of 
 the millionth of the matter of the universe shows any 
 trace of divinity. Moreover, pantheism finds God in the 
 world by a process of ratiocination rather than of percep- 
 tion, and it is therefore a pale, bloodless God that it adores, 
 a sort of ghost of a ghost. One has yet to hear of a con- 
 fessed pantheist who also works earnestly as a biologist. 
 The pantheistic divinity is so much of an abstraction, is 
 so thin, so far away, and works in such subtle and indirect 
 ways, that he is content to live millions of years as rock- 
 strata, polar ice-caps, incandescent suns, or sterile planets. 
 If the pantheist perceives God in the biological world he 
 fails also to see what is equally visible and equally im- 
 portant, His struggle with difficulties and obstinate 
 material. But his chief sin is the topsy-turvyism of seeing 
 divinity in the appallingly godless inorganic universe. In 
 the universe of dead matter there are but two things : 
 vibrating atoms and vibrating ether.* There are some 
 seventy odd classes of tiny atoms, each member of a 
 group exactly like his fellows throughout the infinite 
 reaches of space, and each atom in constant vibration or 
 revolution, according to rigid mechanical method and 
 
 * Perhaps more properly but one thing, as the ether is doubtless 
 atomic, like an immensely rare hydrogen. 
 
PARTIAL TRUTHS. 2 7 
 
 inherent necessity. The inter-revolution of two or more 
 types of atoms in a closed system forms a compound 
 substance, and the study of these constitutes chemic sci- 
 ence. The rate of vibration, the extent of " free-path," 
 and the relative crowding, constitute what we vulgarly 
 call " heat," or solidity. 
 
 But in the densest bodies the substance is very porous ; 
 the atoms are always swinging. The thinnest substance 
 of which we have any knowledge, the ether, passes through 
 the earth much as wind through a leafless tree, and almost 
 frictionless. Atomic immobility or absolute density, theo- 
 retically equivalent to 273 C.,* is a purely imagined 
 condition. These bunchings, clottings, or knottings of 
 vibrant atoms constitute the suns and subordinate members 
 of the world-systems. The strokes or beats of the vibra- 
 ting atoms on the thinnest substance, the ether, give rise 
 to resultant and similar vibrations and pulsings of this 
 substance, whence the phenomena of heat, light, electricity, 
 and magnetism. But always rigidly mechanical are these 
 phenomena, always uniform and necessary, never betray- 
 ing a trace of freedom or design. Language is a subjec- 
 tive convenience, and has no validity except that of mutual 
 understanding and communication. If, now, we designate 
 as mechanical all such phenomena of physics as these fixed, 
 necessary, invariable, and inherent ones, language becomes 
 meaningless and useless if we call them also theistic. This 
 applies also to the error of monism. We simply meander 
 in a dreamy waste of nowhereness and indistinction, if we 
 smudge over the limiting uses of an agreed-upon nomen- 
 clature. Phenomena that show no freedom, purposiveness, 
 reason, or rational irse, cannot by any clear mind be classed 
 
 * The latest researches show that absolute zero recedes as it is neared, and 
 that absolute atomic immobility is beyond this point. 
 
28 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 in the same category as phenomena whose chief character- 
 istics are spontaneity, design, adaptative reaction, and 
 mentality. The mistake of materialism is to ignore the 
 living worker ; that of pantheism is to ignore the dead 
 material. 
 
 MONISM is muddleism. It is the sole system of religion 
 or philosophy without any truth whatever as a basis. 
 Unlike any other system it does not exaggerate the partial 
 truth and ignore the contradictory truth. Every system 
 has done this, but the partial truth, of course, has given it 
 validity and following. As monism has not done this it 
 therefore has little or no validity and following. It con- 
 tradicts the fundamental law and function of the mind, a 
 perception of difference in two things. It contradicts the 
 first result of action of this fundamental mental power, in 
 that it asserts that life and matter are essentially identical. 
 In which case, to be sure, language and the naming of 
 things become useless, and the only logical thing for a 
 monist worshipper to do would be to sit staring at his 
 navel, and for all eternity monotonously murmur, Om. Om. 
 
 It is perhaps possible as a mere feat of logical or intel- 
 lectual gymnastics, not unmixed with a strong touch of 
 legerdemain, to construct some colorless concepts that 
 cover and seem to unite matter and life in a pseudo-iden- 
 tity. But after this is done nothing is gained. It is quite 
 as reasonable to start out with two unknowns, or infinites, 
 as with one. Since time began, the weary brains and 
 fancies of thinkers have tried to solve the question of 
 ultimate origins. But all are agreed that no solution has 
 been reached, and that much good brain-power has been 
 wasted in the futile effort. Let us then leave such result- 
 less searchings, and accept the two indubitable facts that 
 stare us in the eyes from every object of the actual world. 
 
PARTIAL TRUTHS. 2g 
 
 If life and matter are by and by to be fused into an 
 harmonious unity, the truth, when it comes, will be plain 
 enough without our frightful labors. I do not see why a 
 tentative dualism should be considered plebeian and 
 infidel. On the contrary, a frank and free vision sees as 
 the most certain of all facts a purposive and intelligent 
 power, life, using and dominating a wholly alien, unsym- 
 pathetic, and changeless material, physical substance, and 
 no mental ingenuity can imagine either as derived from 
 the other, or even as having any origin in time. 
 
 It is wholly useless to struggle against this dualism with 
 an inherited bias of mind for a divinity responsible for the 
 physical universe. Any system of monism, dualism, athe- 
 ism, materialism, or idealism, can by an astute and erudite 
 dialectician be proved or disproved with incontrovertible 
 logic, provided that that logic be deductive in character, 
 and that certain axiomatic premises be admitted. I have 
 little or no respect for such logic, but ask only as to the 
 fact that exists here before us. In the physical universe 
 untouched by life's transforming power, there is not a 
 trace of evidence that any but mechanic forces have ever 
 moved an atom. But in all life-dominated matter there 
 is even in every atom's movement something hyperme- 
 chanical. If the responsibility of God be extended so as 
 to comprise the inorganic universe either as to origin or 
 as to present dominion, human freedom is then a myth, 
 determinism is unavoidable, religion is nonsense, and the 
 existence of evil inexplicable. In biology there is nothing 
 more certain than the existence of process, unattained re- 
 sult, purpose being wrought out. Now process, ipse facto, 
 demands a non-omnipotent God, and it confuses beyond 
 all sanity to extend the reign of a finite divinity into the 
 origin and government of the entire inorganic universe. 
 
30 THE KfEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 This is simply to locate fate, or the limiting and controlling 
 power of God, behind both Himself and the inorganic uni- 
 verse. Process demands a finite God, and the fact evident 
 in every biological phenomenon is the partial, difficult use 
 of dead atoms and mechanic forces by an intelligent life- 
 force. 
 
 Nothing is gained by seeking to go behind the patent 
 fact, the certain dualism of life (or God) and matter, united 
 only in the biologic process. Seek to unite these two forms 
 of existence anterior to the biologic process, and intellect 
 is anesthetized, and the mind goes mooning in a haze of 
 dream out of which can come no clear decision either of 
 reason or of morals. As a matter of fact, every great 
 religion or system of ethics has been rooted in dualism. 
 No human action can be ethical that does not consciously 
 or unconsciously spring from it. If one denies the fact of 
 process and progress in biological history, he may logically 
 enough soar into dreamland and wordland, and rest con- 
 tent with the imaginative phantasmagoria that Berkeley, 
 Hegel, Spinoza, and others have spun there. It seems to 
 me an immoral desire on the part of many minds to ignore 
 the evidences of struggle, process, and endeavor, most 
 awfully present in the living world, and to find God in the 
 mechanic universe as omnipotent author and governor. 
 It is both intellectual sin and moral sin, because at one 
 blow it palsies virile thought and kills sympathetic en- 
 deavor. 
 
 Lastly, it is the most awful impiety ; because, unless one 
 absolutely deny imperfection and unattained result in 
 biological history, any monism puts the reason and ground 
 of this evil or imperfection in the very being of God, instead 
 of in a condition outside of Himself, and which He is 
 successfully and progressively overcoming. Waste worlds, 
 
PARTIAL TRUTHS. 31 
 
 incomprehensible mechanicalism, glaring evil, deadness, 
 uselessness, are everywhere the distinguishing characteris- 
 tics of the mechanical universe. If God did all this, He is 
 an incomprehensible God, and covers in Himself such hid- 
 eous contradictions that I prefer blank atheism as being far 
 more truthful and more comforting both to the intellect 
 and to the heart. 
 
 And such an attempt to hold the human mind to an 
 acknowledgment of the divine origin and control of the 
 inorganic universe has turned thousands and millions 
 to atheism. The intellect denies such a God the war- 
 rant of fact or of logic, and the heart rejects him as a kind 
 of jumble of Fate, Devil, and God, the compassionless 
 deity of all pessimisms and self-deceptions, and the fatal- 
 istic servant of his own imperfections and contradictions. 
 Distinguish ! Fate and Evil and delayed progress exist, 
 their great foundation being the uncaused, non-intelligent, 
 inorganic universe; Intellect, Freedom, Goodness, Life, 
 and Love exist, all conjoined in the God we see working 
 under difficulties, and with the inorganic universe as dead 
 material. Conjoin these two types of fact or existence 
 prior to biological history, and no mind thoroughly com- 
 prehending the absoluteness of the logical contradiction 
 could act or persist under such a condition, and the heart 
 that loves goodness or beauty is at once chilled to icy death. 
 If one prefer to make a finite God, a non-omnipotent strug- 
 gling divinity, the cause and controller of the whole inor- 
 ganic universe, I see no advantage therein over the dualism 
 of life and matter that I urge, and that confronts us in every 
 biologic fact. With the latter belief the mind is free, the 
 heart religious, and sympathy springs unbidden for Him 
 who in and all about us is heroically at work against 
 intractable material and tremendous difficulty. With the 
 
32 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 former belief the facts are at variance, and from a tragically 
 perplexed mind and heart, doubt and despair spring un- 
 bidden. 
 
 BUDDHISM is the most pathetic fact in the world's his- 
 tory. It is the heart-broken confession, first of one of the 
 largest minds and hearts that has ever lived on this earth, 
 that God's tremendous labor of incarnation and world- 
 revivication is a failure and must be renounced. In the 
 acceptance of this conclusion by so large a proportion of 
 the human race, the confession gains a tragic grandeur 
 and awfulness that reveal the terrible struggle of Biologos 
 to perpetuate the human race, and for centuries how ter- 
 rifyingly near catastrophe He was. As Buddha and every 
 Buddhist was nothing less than incarnate Biologos Himself, 
 in specialized and functional form, the solemn tragedy 
 reveals the very face of the suffering, half-failing God. 
 
 But while this glancing aspect shows the long suffering 
 and plaintive side of failure and abnegation, we must not 
 forget that it is only partial, and that it is the average, 
 the massed expression of the " composite photograph," 
 that reveals the permanent and essential expression of the 
 divine physiognomy. If the great world-drama was a 
 failure in India and in Buddhism, elsewhere the hero's 
 face shone with virility and victory. Greece and Israel 
 were ripening while India decayed. Here was youth, 
 while there, the machinery of life seemingly obtained the 
 control and exhausted the ingenuity of the engineer. 
 Blind forces got the upper-hand of spontaneity, habit 
 crystallized into dead routine which the divine freedom 
 and vitality could not break up. Life got imprisoned in 
 formalities and class-interests, the sense of play and victory 
 faded out, and for that people and time all that the keen- 
 est intelligence could see was eternal pain and failure ; all 
 
PARTIAL TRUTHS. 33 
 
 that the most heroic ingenuity could devise was a way of 
 release by return to Nirvana's renunciation of desire and 
 incarnation ; all that the sublimest love could do was to 
 sacrifice power, pleasure, life, ay, even Nirvana itself, until 
 all others should first have entered its blissful portals. 
 
 A powerful factor contributing to this pessimism was 
 the unquestioning acceptance from Brahminism of the 
 doctrine of transmigration. It seems strange that this 
 race of consummate metaphysicians should have devel- 
 oped this doctrine to such extreme exaggeration, and that 
 it should have become so woven into the very texture of 
 its psychological structure. The reason of this, of course, 
 is that it is such a profound truth. No great belief of a 
 large body of people can be without a basis of fact. It 
 will always be found to rest upon a partial truth. The 
 greater part of the doctrine of transmigration is the truth 
 that under a different name we have locked up in the 
 mystery of heredity, a continental mystery upon the 
 shores of which some of the discoverers of science have 
 begun to try to land. The incomprehensible phase of the 
 Indian belief is the haphazard way the disembodied spirit 
 gets its new incarnation. In a universe to them most or- 
 derly and rigidly regulated, this new housing of the freed 
 soul appeared, as it seems, to be pure accident. One must 
 not kill a flea, because it might be the soul of one's grand- 
 father. 
 
 This element of chance in a world so law-bound, and in 
 so weighty a matter, gives us pause and excuse for reflec- 
 tion. It certainly has this much of significance, that it 
 shows recognition of the element of chance and accident, 
 recognition too by deep minds, keenly metaphysical, and 
 by millions of them, through thousands of years of history. 
 To the pompous scientific Louis Fourteenths of our mod- 
 
34 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 ern type of thinkers who are ever harping on " the orderly 
 government of all phenomena by unbreakable law," and 
 such like bosh, the conviction of the Oriental mind may 
 have no disquieting effect. It is a thankless task to say 
 to them, first, that "law " is never an ab extra superposi- 
 tion of method upon facts, but is merely the statement of 
 the inherent method of process of phenomena; second, 
 that even in physics the fact of one happening falling upon 
 the fact of an unrelated process produces a chance or ac- 
 cidental sequence. That a fern leaf in a coal-seam should 
 lie east or west is accident, and that the coal stratum 
 should " dip " in one direction of the compass is due to 
 unpredictable or accidental causes. Moreover, in biologic 
 phenomena the mechanic rigidity or lawfulness of inert 
 matter seems to impress upon them almost all the legal 
 method they take on. The only laws to which there is 
 no exception as important as the law itself, is some large 
 generalization or colorless abstraction that leaves spon- 
 taneity and accident an adequate play-room. In the realm 
 of free spirit, as in the pre-incarnating Biologos, and in ar- 
 tistic creation, in the sweep of dream and in the flashing 
 of imagination, freedom knows no law and laughs at pre- 
 vision. 
 
 The sin of intellect of Buddha and of his followers 
 consisted in non-recognition of the work of Biologos, and 
 in not perceiving the living God behind and in living 
 things. They had no penetrating power to see this vision 
 of the unseen. The distinction between the living artist 
 and the dead material was not clear. The sin of char- 
 acter or emotion followed naturally on this intellectual 
 sin: they were disloyal. Biologos never gives up; He is 
 never indeed altogether conquered ; He is among Polar 
 ice mountains, in ocean depths, and even in the trackless 
 
PARTIAL TRUTHS. 35 
 
 deserts created by man's improvidence. He is always 
 trying to win the world to Himself. The first of all 
 human duties, the root-principle of all duties, is loyalty to 
 God. 'Had Buddha but studied God's way and Being 
 more accurately, had he but been His loyal acceptor and 
 helper, the unexampled power of his influence might 
 have won India from caste and despair, and rescued her 
 from a history of submission and alien domination. But 
 to Buddha there was no God, and therefore no way of 
 God. Cycles of formalistic and dead religion had 
 quenched in the hearts of the people the perception of 
 the supernatural ; hard habit had hidden from them the 
 conception that spontaneous intelligence ruled even 
 biological phenomena, as muck as it could, and, with the 
 fading of the perception of God, came in the Godless 
 religion, although, to speak more properly, Buddhism is 
 but a people's philosophy of method of gaining release 
 from the thraldom of incarnation or material form. See- 
 ing no Father behind the veiling of organic events, it 
 naturally came about that the little group of fatherless 
 children must bind themselves together more earnestly in 
 brotherly love and mutual helpfulness ; wherefore arose a 
 missionary spirit, a purity and a tenderness of heart, and 
 a self-sacrifice, rivalled nowhere unless by the early 
 Christians. The fact is a magnificent contradiction of the 
 shallow nonsense of some dogmatists who have stoutly 
 averred that a lively degree of morality and love cannot 
 exist without a theistic belief. If Buddhism may be 
 called a religion it is certainly an atheistic religion. 
 
 Born out of Brahminism, the dying sigh of a failed 
 civilization, Buddhism, if not justifiable, is at least 
 explainable, and commands our sympathy and pity. Not 
 so modern pessimism. In the Europe and America of 
 
36 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 to-day fruit awaits the picking, opportunity comes to 
 meet virility, and positive badness in a child is less 
 repulsive than whine and sulk. While the hibernating 
 Schopenhauer was grinding out his ursine philosophy, the 
 brave Goethe was singing imperishable songs, his eyes 
 agleam with the light of the rising sun of Science. If 
 Goethe's craniology and his optics were as errorful as 
 Schopenhauer's phantasmagoric idealism and diabolic will, 
 the faithful one was right, the faithless one all wrong. 
 Had the disloyal one but devoted his splendid power of 
 psychological analysis, the misused verve and brilliancy of 
 his incomparable intellect, to the service either of God or 
 of man, what a helper he might have been ! Instead of 
 that, a hinderer, disloyal beyond compare. And one sin 
 always treads upon another's heels : From the strong, 
 headstrong thinker have sprung a sorry brood of croak- 
 ers and maudlin sentimentalists, whose puerile pessimism 
 is little else than the voice of ennui and exhausted 
 sensualism. These echoes of the feigned despair of a 
 perverse but virile thinker are without every attribute 
 that wins for their master some measure of reluctant 
 admiration. They are belated births, misplaced in a 
 world where success awaits the thinker and worker of 
 every type. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY, it cannot be denied, has failed to con- 
 quer not only the world, but even its own communicants. 
 In great part this arises from the indefiniteness of its 
 basic creed and of its essential characteristic. There is 
 neither logical unity nor common assent on the part of 
 those calling themselves Christians as to what the ideals 
 and aims of Christians should be. An unbiassed ethnic 
 student can find little or no warrant in the words of Christ 
 for the course of Christian history, even when the church 
 
PARTIAL TRUTHS. 37 
 
 was most powerful. The motive force of St. Paul's fervor 
 was beyond question the belief in Christ's resurrection 
 from death and his literal second coming. The manufac- 
 ture of a trinitarian creed and the establishment of a 
 Roman Catholic church with its pomp and ceremony were 
 as little dreamed of by the Galilean carpenter as the 
 truths of spectrum analysis or as the nature of civilization 
 in the planet Mars. If Christ's teaching means anything 
 the whole history of medieval asceticism was unchristian, 
 and for a thousand years the bitter warfare of the Inqui- 
 sition and of official Christianity against the irresistible 
 on-coming victory of reason, freedom, and science is, if 
 proof were needed, the most powerful proof, either that 
 Christ had not christianized his Christianity or that the 
 human mind must seek its religious incentives, ideas, and 
 control outside of Christian precept and example. The 
 division of the church into Roman, Greek, and Protestant, 
 with the ludicrous schismatization of the latter group, 
 each set at heart thoroughly convinced that it alone 
 represents the founder, leaves but two alternative con- 
 clusions to the dispassionate student : either this " Gos- 
 pel " of Jesus was too indefinite to cohere into a body 
 of authoritative and understood truth ; or his personal 
 influence was incapable of impressing upon his followers 
 this truth with sufficient force or momentum to make it 
 carry beyond the enthusiasm of his little band of personal 
 followers. The undebatable deduction is again alterna- 
 tive ; either that by thousands of years his teaching was 
 superhuman, in advance of his age, beyond the compre- 
 hension and actualization of his professed followers dur- 
 ing all this time, or that it was a tremendous error. From 
 every logical impasse we are forced back to conclude that 
 individual judgment, based upon entire lack of prejudice, 
 
38 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 upon faultless erudition, and after at least many years of 
 the deepest investigation and study of original docu- 
 ments of the entire history of all branches of the church, 
 and especially of the reported works and life of Jesus, 
 that individual judgment must decide what to do about 
 the acceptance or the rejection, as a whole or in part, of 
 the Christian church, or of the " Christian revelation." 
 Nothing less than this will satisfy absolute intellectual 
 honesty. This only a few scholars can do, and it is sad 
 that the few that have done it reach non-unitary con- 
 clusions. In the hurried sweep of our little conscious 
 being through the cycle of life's changes, interests, and 
 duties, the majority can only look hastily about them, a 
 little way before and after, catch here and there a maxim 
 of wisdom, a cheering word, the glimpse of a precious 
 example to follow, the hurt of a sin to avoid. Life is 
 certainly for action, emotion, and perception, not for 
 exegesis and biblical criticism. Christ flung his undying 
 message upon the winds and waters of world-accident, 
 and all may find it if they look for it rightly and care- 
 fully, bewaring of the organizations and creeds that 
 would officially minister it. 
 
 I opine that the God of Christ was far wiser than the 
 spirit of Christianity. Jesus, by a wisdom that seems 
 superhuman, or by a fervor of emotion that gave him no 
 time to organize, left no written word or authoritative 
 statement. The circumstances of his life also conspired to 
 the same end. The pathos of the world-wide gulf between 
 himself and his followers becomes awfully tragic : " Could 
 ye not watch with me one hour ? " Through the dark 
 night of those surroundings, the impenetrableness both of 
 crucifier and follower to such ideas as his, there flashes 
 the repetitive lightning of a divine wisdom and a divine 
 
PARTIAL TRUTHS. 39 
 
 love that strove equally and vainly against the sin and the 
 formalism of his followers. In the glow of his death the 
 reflection of these silent lightnings could certainly never 
 have reached our eyes had it not been for the accident or 
 for the miracle of St. Paul the persecutor one who never 
 saw Jesus. It is indeed most weird and wonderful to 
 note how, again and always, the significance and precious- 
 ness of Christ's message was passed on by hands and 
 hearts that knew it not. In conversion and life-long mis- 
 sionary work Paul was dazzled by it rather than under- 
 stood it ; creed-makers juggled with it ; ecclesiasticism 
 stole it and built upon it ; sects wrangled over it all 
 fascinated by it, but all unconscious of its vital import 
 and content. Such are the ironies of history. 
 
 But more mordant still becomes the irony when it is 
 seen that this unappreciated message of Christ has been 
 carried by those it was destined to destroy. It was all the 
 while at work upon and against the hearts and institutions 
 of its defenders and carriers. The most unchristian and 
 antichristian facts of the world, the Nicene creed, the 
 Catholic church, Asceticism, the Inquisition, Versailles, 
 Bourbonism, and Calvinism, all have prided themselves 
 as being defenders of a faith that in very truth was 
 secretly opposed to them and that was slowly, silently, 
 undermining them. Had they but realized its signifi- 
 cance, how they would have hated it ! Thus God com- 
 pels messengers to convey to new masters the sealed 
 orders of their own execution. 
 
 But pride not yourself Churchman, Catholic or Protes- 
 tant, Orthodox or Heterodox. You are also ignorant, 
 sinful, unconscious bearers of a message you understand 
 little better than your official forefathers. You also carry 
 the order to a better Master of the Future for your own 
 
40 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 death-sentence. You, in your way are quite as ludicrous 
 an exponent of the gospel of father-love and brother-love 
 as battling Hun-Bishops, Torquemada, or Pompadourist. 
 You have not seen the silent, searching, tender eyes of the 
 yearning invisible Christ, waiting through centuries until by 
 your ignorant hands his word shall at last reach the recep- 
 tive sympathetic heart that knows, that understands, and 
 that executes. You are still not his knights, but servants 
 still of the sin of all centuries, the sin of luxury and of 
 self-comfort. Nor is the illusion ever quite complete in 
 your own consciousness. You cannot quite deceive your- 
 selves or others. There stand the words, gloss them as you 
 please, and ignore them as you may. There also are the 
 men your brothers, they who vicariously minister to your 
 physical comfort and who vicariously suffer for your sins. 
 There also are the untaught, mistaught, sin-taught children, 
 there the vicious and the filthy, there the corrupt politician 
 making your laws, there million-fold parasitism, there the 
 habit-enslaved, the insane, the poor, the diseased. From 
 every page of the Jesus-records there blazes and burns the 
 unquenchable fire of social love, and the duty of socialism: 
 " Go sell what thou hast and follow me " ; " Inasmuch as 
 ye have done it unto the least." Whilever there exists in- 
 justice, a wronged, suffering, sinful, or ignorant one, it is 
 only the sham Christian that can enjoy ease and luxury, 
 and that can build or have aught to do with luxurious 
 churches. Luxurious, time-wasting, and time-saving " wor- 
 ship of God " is in Christ's eyes the veriest acme of hypo- 
 critic sin. Foolish folk compound with their consciences 
 by building useless churches, instead of inquiring why the 
 more churches there are the more empty they are. 
 
 RELIGION, the mere fact of its existence, and especially 
 of its tremendous role in and before all history, if anything 
 
PARTIAL TRUTHS. 41 
 
 could do so, should give the lie to materialism and deter- 
 minism. It confutes the one and confounds the other. 
 Here is a somewhat as evidently ab extra as it is law- 
 less ; and yet it is everywhere found dominating new 
 nations and enslaving old ones, the cause of innumerable 
 wars with weapons or with words only, an agent that 
 turns all forecast topsy-turvy, an ever powerful fact at 
 least, for good or for evil. There is much latter-day in- 
 crease of the unreligious, and of the irreligious ; of the 
 agnostic, who under a name thus euphuistically seeks to 
 conceal his atheism and materialism ; and of his Philistine- 
 brother, the so-called "scientist" who thinks "science" 
 conterminous with physics, and whose brief creed is, No 
 God but Evolution, and Spencer his prophet. 
 
 These logicians most stoutly maintain that all things 
 take place according to invariable laws, the chief of which 
 is the law of cause and effect. If so, then whence and 
 wherefore religion ? But when it does not suit his pur- 
 pose, i. e., the support of his prejudice, there is nothing this 
 excellent logician cares for less than for genuine logic. 
 Belief in an extra-mundane cause, a belief dominant 
 in all the affairs of men, from savagery to civilization 
 would seem to mortal and human logicians to imply the 
 existence of that cause itself. If the predominant fac- 
 tor of all evolution is the interaction of organism and 
 environment, " the reaction of sensitive protoplasm to 
 external stimulus and change," as we are tirelessly told, 
 then whence and where the " external religious stimulus " 
 to which the organism has been so frightfully and per- 
 sistently reagent ? The farcical attempts to explain the 
 religious belief of the world as ghost-worship and ancestor- 
 worship are pleasant reading for the psychological humorist. 
 It goes without saying that in a world ruled purely by in- 
 
42 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 exorable law the simplest religious idea could never have 
 gained admission. 
 
 But if religion and duty have been the twin voices of 
 God, why is it that they have so often spoken the com- 
 mands of the devil? The fact is most undeniable. The 
 answer is threefold : I. The role of religious ideas in 
 the world has in great part been that of psychological 
 tutelage, a metaphysical gymnastic exercise for the mind, 
 against the time when it should undertake the real drama 
 of rational, religious, and ethical life. All processes must 
 have initial and intermediate stages, and the world pro- 
 cess is no exception to the rule. 2. The respect of Bi- 
 ologos for the freedom of rational creatures and their 
 development toward a freedom like His own, presupposes 
 a schooling and apprenticeship in virtue, the perpetual 
 power of choice, the tentative trial of evil in its thousand- 
 fold protean disguises. Any government of His that 
 would interfere with the freedom of man would defeat the 
 progressive cultivation of spontaneous ethical and rational 
 activity, itself one of the ultimate ends of the biological 
 world-process. 3. However crude and apparently far from 
 the highest religion, the general religious status of a tribe 
 or nation is that for which it is adapted, and which cor- 
 responds to the phase of its development and of its 
 modifying and imperative necessities. 
 
 Any religious idea or custom whatever stands as incon- 
 trovertible proof that biological phenomena are not solely 
 those of mechanical action and reaction, that sensation 
 and nutrition are not the only laws of organic develop- 
 ment. I conceive the origin and development of religion 
 in human history to be that of a free discovery and an in- 
 ference, rather than that of an imposed command ; religion 
 had its origin within rather than without ; it is a discovery 
 
PARTIAL TRUTHS. 43 
 
 rather than a command ; a progressive educative finding of 
 the Father, rather than any revelation from the Father. All 
 truth is acquirement and reward of searching, religious 
 truth certainly not excepted. Christ's revelation, his intui- 
 tion or finding of religious truth, the best and purest the 
 world has ever listened to, was, from present standpoints, 
 sadly deficient, and in some respects it was erroneous. 
 Many things that sound strange to us may be due to the 
 misreporting of his cloudy-minded, unappreciative follow- 
 ers. That indeed is a sad possibility in reference to every 
 line of the gospels. A hundred sayings show the great 
 mind adapting the great truth to the almost infantile com- 
 prehension of his childish audience. We must, of course, 
 throw out the whole disturbing illusion of myth and 
 miracle that fond love always weaves about the persons of 
 its adored religious teachers. The doctrine of non-resist- 
 ance ; the teaching of his literal second coming to judge 
 the quick and the dead ; the non-interest in government, 
 good or bad, implicate in " Render unto Caesar, etc.," 
 these and many more are instances of positive error. Of 
 things omitted, it may be noted that no word exists from 
 him as to kindness to animals, and especially as to the 
 tremendous importance and truth of God's revelation of 
 Himself in vegetable and animal life. Thrift, a primal 
 duty of man, is in many precepts and instances distinctly 
 scorned or discouraged, whilst of family duties, sexual, and 
 other matters, there was a negation or an aloofness that 
 would but little help poor laboring men and women in 
 their trials and temptations. He strove, of course, as is 
 plainly seen, to give his followers a new birth, to make all 
 their living spring from a new motive, expressed in the 
 eleventh commandment, the essence and summarization of 
 all his teaching. Thus acting, all minor rules would be 
 
44 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 unnecessary, and all questions of subordinate ethics would 
 at once attain solution. 
 
 Being a Jew there could be no doubt and no merit 
 about the theism of Jesus. There is personality and di- 
 vinity behind material things the truth that Brahmin, 
 Buddhist, and Confucian failed to see. The unique teach- 
 ing-service of Jesus was in the sole command that we love 
 instead of fear Him, supplemented by that other* that all 
 men are to be loved as one loves self. And certainly no 
 human wisdom has ever reached a more compact, com- 
 prehensive, and enduring summarization of religious and 
 ethical truth. 
 
 There is nothing more remarkable in all history than 
 the persistent and almost universal practice of the human 
 mind of religion, and the belief in the existence of a 
 hyperphysical governing intelligence. Against the obsti- 
 nacy and unresponse of the inorganic world ; in the face 
 of death, and what was worse, of life-long suffering of the 
 innocent ; in the face of vicarious pain, of unmerited and 
 inexplainable poverty or luxury, man still believed in a 
 ruler and a cause of living things. He did not care a fig 
 for the illogicality of the belief with which the atheist 
 quite logically mocked him. 
 
 What was the function of this belief? It corresponded 
 only partially to the truth, and it gave him infinite suffer- 
 ing. Why should such a true-untrue and inexplicable thing 
 have dominated his "environment-reacting" organism? 
 On his part it was a perception of fact that his intellect 
 had not the strength and training to correct and limit ac- 
 cording to the teachings of things, and yet it was a belief 
 too precious and true to renounce altogether. May we 
 not say that the function of the belief was to preserve the 
 
 * Both quoted and acknowledged as from Moses. 
 
PARTIAL TRUTHS. 45 
 
 essentials of the truth, to keep the tradition until such 
 time as living perception and vision of the whole fact 
 should become possible ? It was the assertion that God 
 existed, however much determinism and godlessness 
 seemed to prevail. The process from pure animalism to a 
 stage of civilization hardly yet reached, was one that would 
 every day have ended in disaster without the saving fact 
 of hope, and the illogical conviction of final victory. 
 Viewed simply in the light of logic, the readings of the 
 day's signs and the deductions of the day's facts could 
 end only in an acknowledgment of failure and in a re- 
 nunciation of endeavor. Buddha drew the conclusion with 
 infallible accuracy. But they reckon ill who leave God 
 out of the count, and God is in the count despite all the 
 Buddhas and atheists of all time. Religion and its ever- 
 lasting twin-deity, Duty, held men's faces to the east until 
 such time as the sun should rise. It still holds them 
 toward the sun until the surgeon of science shall remove 
 the cataracts of ignorance, of habit, and of prejudice, and 
 they shall see God. Dazzled and dazed the scientific 
 mind is at present like the aphakic, suddenly brought 
 to see, but not recognizing or knowing what he sees. 
 It still sees men as trees walking, and does not know 
 .that what it sees is at last the benignant and beckoning 
 God himself. 
 
 Religious belief was thus and literally a " saving" faith. 
 It kept men from despair. It was one of the safeguards 
 the human mind created to carry it through the process 
 of humanization. Without its staying and supporting, 
 the monkey would never have become man, nor the man 
 philosopher. It was the sine qua non of civilization, 
 and to future species, it will certainly have this much 
 of validity. 
 
46 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 LIMITATIONS AND SUPPLEMENTATIONS OF THE ELEV- 
 ENTH COMMANDMANT are necessary, even by those 
 accepting it most heartily. In almost any statement of 
 any truth, it is quite possible, and upon the philosophic 
 thinker quite obligatory, to find a large measure of error 
 or of exaggeration, and, in the absolute reverse of the 
 statement, a large measure of truth. This is the sufficient 
 basis of failure of all monisms, deductive systems of 
 thought, of all one-sided idealisms and one-sided material- 
 isms. Hence the stringent necessity of testing every 
 statement by experience, or by the first-hand study of 
 facts. The human mind has been produced or developed 
 as a reflector, a perceiver, and a moulder of facts, and 
 therein lies its beauty and power. Just here arises the 
 criticism of almost all religions ; they are deductive 
 systems : they superimpose theory, statement, or emotion, 
 upon the facts ; they are not the products of experience, 
 but they are judgments or ideals antedating experience. 
 Hence they are often found to need correction or out- 
 filling by experience. 
 
 The law of love of God and man, as true and as bind- 
 ing as any law can be, still needs interpretation by the 
 living intelligence, needs adaptation to the needs and 
 ideals of the individual life, and of all living beings col- 
 lectively considered. In such interpretation and adapta- 
 tion it will be found that its absolute sweep of application 
 will suffer limitation, and that always and everywhere it 
 is not sufficiently comprehensive to furnish a rule of life. 
 Such a primary limitation is the truth that the connota- 
 tion if not the denotation of the word God, according to 
 all old habits of thought, is omnipotence or absolute crea- 
 tion and control of all phenomena, organic or inorganic. 
 But it cannot be represented in thought, and it never was 
 
PARTIAL TRUTHS. 47 
 
 observed in fact, that the physical universe was either 
 created, or in any least way (except through the great 
 incarnation scheme) controllable by God. To love an 
 omnipotent God is psychologically as impossible as it is 
 to represent such a being in thought. No faintest thrill 
 of tender emotion ever went from a human soul to a 
 God clearly conceived as omnipotent. Whatever the 
 creed and the theologian demanded, the wiser human 
 heart, blindly knowing a better way, always anthropomor- 
 phized his God, and this process consisted essentially in 
 leaving out of sight and out of thought His supposed 
 omnipotence. To have the power and not to help, chills 
 every possibility of love in a normally made being, 
 and when, as in some aspects of Mohammedanism, 
 Judaism, and especially in Calvinism, the thought of 
 omnipotence gets comparative domination, God at once 
 becomes a sort of devilish determinism, or grinding 
 machine, whom one may fear, but from His worshippers 
 even His omnipotence could wrench no spark of love. 
 Christ should therefore have given his disciples some hint 
 that God does wish but is not able, rather than that He is 
 able but does not wish. There is no Fatherliness in the 
 " Great First Cause, least understood." 
 
 Religion, in common with all other activities of the 
 human mind, has suffered from man's general indifference 
 to the fact and significance of the world of living nature 
 that surrounded him and of which he was outcome and 
 part. Standing before the wonderful panorama of nature, 
 man, in the first place, confused the living and non-living 
 into one indiscriminate jumble, and thus prevented him- 
 self from seeing the evidences of intelligence, design, and 
 tendency so clear to our eyes in the world of living forms. 
 In the second place, he had not yet freed himself suffi- 
 
48 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 ciently from the egotism resulting from the " struggle for 
 existence," to be able to perceive an objective fact except 
 in relation to his own selfishness. As a consequence of 
 the necessity he was under of ruthlessly dominating and 
 using everything that could be of service to him in order 
 to secure his own individuality in the thousand-fold war- 
 fare of his daily life, things that had no relation to that 
 service became as if non-existent, and only just that 
 aspect of the serviceable thing that yielded the service 
 was known or attended to. Hence until now that which 
 was neither tool nor food nor enemy, was ignored. Even 
 now that insane fury of clutching more than we can either 
 eat or use, called money-making, and the shooting of ani- 
 mals for " sport," are survivals of the barbaric struggle, 
 and show how little we have outlived the cruel time. 
 Hence the essence and scope of religion was the relation 
 of the human personality to an extra-mundane person- 
 ality. The study, knowledge, and love of God, as mani- 
 fested in organic life, was practically unknown. 
 
 The points toward which I have been looking in a too 
 long introduction are that not only can one not love 
 inactive omnipotence, but one cannot love an inactive 
 God of any kind. There is hardly any love of God 
 psychologically possible except as one loves the work that 
 God is doing in the world. There are numberless reasons 
 for this fact, among which may be mentioned the evident 
 one that solely in the affairs of men, one's fellows in time 
 or in history, there is no striking evidence of God's exist- 
 ence or of His government, such evidence, I mean, as the 
 unerudite and unphilosophical could find or appreciate. 
 Moreover, without nature-love and knowledge (by which 
 of course is meant of the living phenomena of nature) 
 God remains a sort of ab extra cause, an impersonal some- 
 
PARTIAL TRUTHS. 49 
 
 what, or an unknown power. There is no adequate or 
 hardly any partial realization of the Fatherhood of God 
 except with the emotional recognition of the fact that he 
 is not only our Father, but, in as exact and literal and 
 loving a sense, that he is also the Father of every grass- 
 blade, plant, fish, insect, or animal throughout the whole 
 wide world. Through insight into the intent, charac- 
 ter, and work of Biologos, one may come to some appre- 
 ciable degree, to know and to love Him. This will form 
 the basis for the oft-talked-of religion of science, or of 
 the future, but no clear eye can look into self or into his 
 fellow-Christians, and fail to see that love, that spontane- 
 ous play of emotional trust and cherishing, is not possible 
 toward an unknown, impersonal, and vague " Great First 
 Cause," such as too often God has been represented. 
 No wonder that the study of " secondary causes " and 
 " influences of the environment " seem to cheat God out 
 of his slender share in man's life, and that to the " ad- 
 vanced modern thinker " the world seems godless. So 
 unreal a divinity is easily displaced from a throne so 
 fragile. Men respect the phrase in lesson and reading, 
 they hear and assent, but they do not love an unknown 
 God. It may be said that the soul knows its Father 
 directly, that personality touches personality instantane- 
 ously, and, without either a knowledge of history, of men, 
 or organic nature to intermediate or to aid, it adores and 
 loves Him. I do not deny it, and I am glad to believe it, but 
 it must be confessed that it is a highly exceptional fact, and 
 that, far from what one would naturally expect in such 
 cases, the direct appreciation and immediateness of union 
 leads to little or no secondary study and love of God's 
 work in nature, whilst the road " through nature to nature's 
 God " is far more beautiful and more often travelled. 
 
50 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 To these and to many other reasons that might be 
 mentioned, may be added the fact that the placid love and 
 study of objective nature is necessary to win the mind 
 from the egotistic and selfish habit of all previous time, 
 and to permit the recognition of the large impersonalities 
 and final ends of biological history, toward which Biologos 
 is calmly working with individuals, types, and civilizations, 
 as his tools and his stepping-stones. The humility of true 
 science outdoes the humility of religion. 
 
 To the command, Thou shalt love God with every fiber 
 of thy being, there must therefore be added, in order to 
 make the command possible and effective, Thou must seek 
 to know God, sympathizing with Him in His aims and in 
 His difficulties as shown in a discriminating love of His 
 work in living nature. 
 
 As to the second part of the Eleventh Commandment, 
 it is a perfect ideal of human conduct, but like all ideals, of 
 course, almost never realized, or realizable. 
 
 The whole command, indeed, partakes of the unattain- 
 able that characterizes Christ's life and the lives of all 
 those who have approached Christian perfection, or who 
 have been carried off their feet by the unearthly enthu- 
 siam of Christian feeling. A sort of passionate somnam- 
 bulism seems to be the characteristic of strong Christian 
 feeling. Jesus seems to have walked in a kind of dreamy 
 rapture, oblivious of many homely but distinctly necessary 
 virtues, scorning thrift, frugality, legislation, government, 
 schools, settled habits, and the work-a-day world. One 
 wonders just why he permitted himself to be crucified. 
 The terrible words wrenched from his agonized soul, Why 
 hast Thou forsaken me, point to mistake and subjective 
 expectation secretly entertained up to the last minute, to 
 of observation of facts, and to a non-comprehen- 
 
 B R A F 
 
 , 
 
PARTIAL TRUTHS. 51 
 
 sion of the world about and above. His beautiful social- 
 istic teaching would certainly have had added weight, if 
 he had stuck to his carpenter-bench. The same dream-like 
 fervency of world-scorning enthusiasm is seen in Paul's 
 life, and in that of the early Christians and Christian 
 martyrs ; it broke into morbid exaggeration in medieval 
 crowd-delusions, in asceticism and in the crusades, even a 
 children's crusade not seeming absurd ; sobered by Eng- 
 lish stolidity it grasped at something human and practical 
 under Cromwell ; and it is now echoed to our shores in 
 the excesses of evangelical Christianity and of the Salvation 
 Army. Psychologically all these things are illustrations of 
 a mental law or habit that is somewhat common, consisting 
 in the luxury or in the utility of emotional exaltation and 
 excess. It is indeed a genuine intoxication, neurologically 
 not much different from that derived from alcoholic stimu- 
 lation, and in whatever phase presenting itself it is sub- 
 jective, heedless of facts and of consequences. This power 
 of the mind and especially of crowds, to override obstacle 
 with a saint's indifference, or by a flooding rush of wild 
 emotion, has doubtless served many useful purposes, but 
 it has often also led the hypnotic and frenzied by pain- 
 ful roads to useless death. Surely the heroism of the 
 present and of the future must be a heroism of home- 
 keeping virtues, of reflection, and of quiet persist- 
 ence of steady emotion throughout a life of loyalty to 
 God and to man. The Kingdom of Heaven can be 
 taken neither by dreaming ecstatics nor by storming 
 warriors. 
 
 PROOFS OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, logical, ontological, 
 cosmological, and void-o'-logical are for a time amusing, 
 but soon become " stale, flat, and unprofitable." If instinc- 
 tively one have the belief in his heart, he would better never 
 
52 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 read the " proofs," and if he has not the belief, these proofs 
 can certainly not supply it. No atheist was ever converted 
 by them, and doubtless many atheists have been made by 
 them. I remember how shocked I was to find that there 
 was no proof of what I already believed, and the discovery 
 was the initial step of examination that for many bitter 
 years led me a sad dance through atheism and pessimism. 
 It finally occurred to me that fact needed no proof. Some 
 funny old metaphysicians, indeed, have reasoned as to the 
 fact of an apple, parcelling out the " data of experience " 
 and the " forms of thought " that go to make up a " sensa- 
 tion," a "percept" and a " concept," until the fruit has 
 faded into " nowhereness," and one feels like a child with 
 watering mouth, cheated out of its apple by some tricksy 
 nonsense of a sleight-o'-hand man. It is precisely the same 
 way with " reality." Metaphysical hair-splitting will not 
 give it to us, and will seemingly rob us of what we had. 
 Facts need no proving. If God is a fact He will doubt- 
 less become evident without much help of proofs. This 
 makes me doubtful about the possible usefulness of 
 additional arguments, and yet I feel that to certain 
 minds in a peculiar phase of development the follow- 
 ing thought may be of use, as it has been of use to 
 me. It might be called the Booby's Proof. When 
 one is bound hand and foot, incapable even of winking, 
 by the awful bonds of " immutable law," with which the 
 stern atheistical master of our modern mechanic world 
 has harnessed all phenomena, actual, past, or possible, one 
 becomes thankful even for a little glimpse of a free world 
 between the rifts of bandaged eyes. The physicists and 
 the mechanic philosophers have shut God into such an 
 iron mask that we must borrow their own key to get a 
 little glimpse of Him. 
 
PARTIAL TRUTHS. 53 
 
 A pile of cannon-balls will for all eternity remain as it 
 stands, so long as the foundation on which it rests is not 
 disturbed, so long as the balls are not moved by any ex- 
 ternal mechanical force, or so long as they do not rust 
 or are not melted by heat. As to the heating and the 
 chemical action, the mystery of their forces is fortunately 
 cleared up by the knowledge that radiation and the com- 
 pounding of elements, or the dissolution of compounds, 
 are all due to purely mechanical forces. Just so literally 
 as the blow of the suddenly-made gas in the cannon 
 knocks the ball forward, just so exactly does the blow of 
 a striking fellow-atom or of an ether-wave, hit the individ- 
 ual atoms of the cannon-ball and produce the phenomena 
 we call heat and chemical action. Therefore, in the water, 
 in the heap of stones, or in cannon-balls, no other forces 
 than those named mechanical are required to account for 
 all molecular changes. But a bird alights on the topmost 
 cannon-ball with some hairs and dry grass-leaves in its 
 mouth. Here is a new phenomenon ; it was neither 
 knocked there, nor was it put there by any mechanical 
 force, but itself utilized all mechanical forces in getting 
 there : it had indeed directional power over mechanic 
 forces of all kinds. In the simplest form of the argument, 
 it had spontaneous motion;- and the wisp of building 
 material in its mouth pointed to purposive action, to a 
 thousand indirect means towards the bringing into exist- 
 ence of other beings like itself, with relations and effects 
 beyond computation. In a word, then, the existence of 
 spontaneous motion, coupled as it always is with direc- 
 tional power over mechanical forces, and with purposive 
 activity, is a fact that cannot by any sane reason be 
 identified with mechanics, or named mechanical. It 
 is absolutely unthinkable that mechanic forces could 
 
54 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 have produced it. It is a separate, distinct, sui generis 
 order of fact, and however limited one may please to think 
 its scope or significance, it fairly, squarely, and indispu- 
 tably introduces into the universe and into the mind of 
 the young philosopher, the facts of freedom, of intelli- 
 gence, of design, and of the utilization of, not government 
 by, mechanic forces. Now a universe in which there exists 
 the least degree of these elements is not mechanical, is not 
 " bound by the rigid and unexceptional reign of law,"- 
 and all that. The simplest bit of alga, diatom, or of self- 
 mobile protoplasm, proves God's existence. The shackles 
 and bonds of determinism, that a crude science had woven 
 about every muscle and thought, drop off as if by magic, 
 and the mind looks about at a world limitedly free and 
 of intelligent interest. 
 
 It may be said that if the argument is valid, it gives us 
 but a poor God; I answer: I, that if you don't see and 
 perceive God, no reasoning or proof will enable you to do 
 so ; 2, that if you do not wish a God, no argument will 
 give you one ; 3, that the argument is more valid, and to 
 a normal fair mind, far more convincing, than any I have 
 heard of ; 4, that a poor God is far better than no God. 
 I emphatically contend, however, that this God is by no 
 means a poor one. In the first place He is a living, a real, 
 and a present God, and this cannot be said of the Gods 
 of the old arguments, and of the old religions ; and in the 
 second place, study of the actual work of this Divinity, 
 following up the necessary implications of the argument, 
 lead to the evidence of His present and visible richness, 
 and to glimpses of coming greater fulness. The bird and 
 every living thing show mental use of physical atoms 
 and forces; the bird's nest and the reproductive function 
 of every living thing show mentality behind minds, using 
 
PARTIAL TRUTHS. 55 
 
 individual organisms for ulterior purposes, absolutely 
 contradicting or overriding the " law " of the struggle for 
 existence, the " law " of self-preservation, or whatever 
 other " law " man's prejudice may have devised to hide 
 from his perception the fact of intelligent, purposive, 
 extra-organismal control. Lastly, the creative instinct 
 in man as shown by musical and other arts, the designed 
 production of new fruits and animals, or the improvement 
 of already-existing ones to such a degree as to be of mar- 
 vellous service such things point to the living Divinity 
 working to ends the incomparable richness of which are 
 but hinted at in the splendid attainment of present sci- 
 ence and art. 
 
 Another argument to me of an equal collusiveness, 
 either unknown or unemployed by those who instruct the 
 Godless how to find Him by the road of ratiocination, is 
 the following: In all purely physical phenomena, the 
 relation of cause and effect goes on producing a series 
 of understandable sequences, all united in clear order, all 
 depending on one another, and all explained by mechanic 
 principles. However often reflected from a thousand 
 successive objects, however transformed into other types 
 of force, a beam of light produces or itself becomes effects, 
 that are of a common kind and comprehensible. But let 
 it strike an eye and it finally results in a " reaction " not 
 comprehensible, and not to be classified in any mechanical 
 or physical category of existence. All physical things 
 and forces are " objective," lie outside of a metaphysical 
 subject that is affected by them through the medium of 
 sensation. All sensation begins in an understandable 
 physical force, and ends in a non-understandable con- 
 sciousness. The physical stimulus is passive, unimportant 
 comparatively ; but the sensitive-plate of mind is active 
 
56 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 and all-important. However the mechanism of con- 
 nection between the perceiving consciousness and the 
 perceived thing may be explained or construed, the fact 
 is indisputable that behind the " object " (in which is 
 comprised the ultimate physical end-organs of the brain, 
 the last intermediating agents) there is a reflection or 
 prolongation of the material force over into an order 
 of existence that by no one can be called physical or 
 material. Out from this extra-physical realm there 
 return intelligent and purposive responses. The hyper- 
 physical therefore is a fact, and this hyperphysical is 
 mental, volitional, purposive. The essential identity of 
 all living natural things, and the multiform interdepen- 
 dence and relation of all these hyperphysical existences, 
 point by the most incontrovertible logic to an organismal 
 unity of source and being. Of course no Infinite or Om- 
 nipotent is gained by this road, but none such is desirable. 
 We reach, however, a working and actual God, of very 
 satisfying proportions and powers, and we are forever 
 relieved of " rigid law," materialism, determinism, and 
 all that. 
 
 Another form of this argument would be this: Classing 
 the ether, the lightest of known substances, with the phy- 
 sical, the physical world consists in one single phenom- 
 enon, vibrating or revolving atoms, particles moved by 
 each other according to pure mechanic laws or methods. 
 There is nothing in the " spontaneous" motions of matter 
 except gravitational phenomena. All mechanical or 
 non-biological phenomena are explainable in terms of 
 gravity, which is absolutely a non-mental force. Study 
 and observe for a million years, and nothing else 
 exists " out there," but waves or undulatory movements 
 in predictable regularity. Include the physical parts of 
 
PARTIAL TRUTHS. 57 
 
 spontaneously moved bodies, and from the ether-waves 
 of light, the air-waves of sound, and the molecular or 
 atomic waves of heat, taste, and smell, along the white 
 conducting threads to and including nerve and ultimate 
 cerebral centres, nothing is discoverable but waves or 
 vibratory motions, impelled by understood and unexcep- 
 tional mechanic forces. Without importing among these 
 waves mentality, without an illogic reading into them of 
 extra-physical fact, no mentality or extra-physical fact is 
 discoverable. But, mark well that volition, mentality, 
 subject, are parts more indubitably existing than physics, 
 mechanics, and object. To deny these psychic facts is 
 first and ipso facto to deny the physical facts, because the 
 knowing of the latter and the asserting their existence, is 
 possible only by means of and in terms of the extra- 
 physical. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 INCARNATION. 
 
 IT is customary for " the enlightened " to sneer at the 
 " old-fashioned " religious doctrines, and people whose 
 function in life is to sneer, so long as they will not take 
 themselves, may as well take these doctrines as objects 
 for their scoffs as anything else. 'But any great belief of 
 the human mind must be founded upon some great truth. 
 However much it be modifiable by another truth, it is 
 never an absolute untruth. Primitive and wide-spread 
 beliefs constitute their holders the first philosophers. The 
 function of perception and judgment in the most 
 savage is not so wretched as to cause great bodies of 
 people through centuries to believe the unbelievable. In- 
 deed, untrained thinking and belief is usually truer than 
 the half-trained variety, a little knowledge being prover- 
 bially a dangerous thing. A little enlightenment of the 
 sort so fashionable, makes easy the sneer against the 
 popular religious dogma of special incarnation, but no 
 incarnation at all is still more untrue, and neither believer 
 nor scoffer is apt to catch the great truth that the living 
 world, both vegetable and animal, is in its vast entirety a 
 literal and glorious incarnation. There is no perfect re- 
 ligion, nor is there perfect philosophic perception in 
 whomsoever does not zealously believe this. It is the 
 chief and keystone article of the creed of the coming 
 religion. This article in no way denies, indeed, it implies 
 
 58 
 
INCARNA TTON. 59 
 
 that there are many degrees of incarnation, but it leaves 
 no tiniest living cell or humblest living organism without 
 divine paternity and guidance. 
 
 The fact is of course one to be perceived, and no amount 
 of reasoning, again, will give one such perception ; but in 
 spiritual as well as in physical failure of vision, artificial 
 aids may be of great service. To psychic myope or astig- 
 matic, then, one may say, " You see nothing but the evi- 
 dence of adamantine law and blind impersonal forces" in 
 the whole biologic world ? How is it that I see not a 
 whit of evidence of either, since to me it is freedom and 
 personality that chiefly characterize every cell and organ- 
 ism of that world ? 
 
 We should first note that there is spontaneous motion 
 in these beings. All purely physical things are moved 
 only from without, but every law or force of physics is 
 used and dominated by extra-physical volition. The bird 
 dropped in air does not fall. There is everywhere control 
 of the dead material of the inorganic world. Besides this 
 the control is mental or purposive. No mechanical force 
 compels the flower to bloom, the spider to weave its net, 
 the bee to store honey, or the man to build ships. Such 
 things are done in obedience to foresight, fear of hunger, 
 etc., hyperphysical capacities and qualities, surely. More- 
 over not even " the preservation of self," not any 
 egotism of the lowest or highest order accounts for the 
 actions of these organisms, because an ill-nourished tree 
 will kill itself in the supreme spasm of producing its seed, 
 and "nature" will suck the phosphates out of the bones 
 of the poorly-fed mother for the sake of the unborn child, 
 and if she survive, the same mother later will knowingly 
 rush to death to save her drowning child's life. So there 
 is control of the organism by an intelligence above all or- 
 
60 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 ganisms. They are never reduced to an automatonism 
 or to a ceaseless slavishness of obedience : the extra- 
 organismal command is always there. 
 
 The instant thought of the balking mind is easily met : 
 "Why," it persists, "Why is it necessary to identify the 
 life-principle of organisms and God ? Surely the highest 
 wisdom and power displayed in all biological history and 
 science is far short of what we seek in a Supreme Being." 
 I answer first, that the Supreme Being is a credal myth, 
 a speculative fancy, and a useless luxury, both of religious 
 and of philosophic thought, with which as sensible men 
 living in time and space, and governed by fact, we have 
 nothing to do. It was a natural hyperbole of adoring 
 hearts, in large measure true, but in full literalness not 
 true. The real divinity of Whom we thus get knowledge 
 is quite " Supreme" enough, finite and unomnipotent as 
 He is, to almost take Him out of the reach of our love 
 and comprehension, without adding unauthorized attri- 
 butes, to carry Him farther away from our dazzled power 
 of vision. Then, secondly, the identity is proved, by the 
 unanswerable logic of the maxim, qui facit per aliam facit 
 per se. The intermediation of subordinate gods, after the 
 fashion of the gnostics, avails nothing, but only compli- 
 cates the difficulty. What God does through His agents 
 He is responsible for. Indeed, the largeness of God is 
 really lessened thereby. The theory makes Him more 
 instead of less finite, in being Himself incapable of the 
 details of the great work, and in being necessitated to carry 
 it on by subordinates and vicegerents. I prefer rationally 
 to see, and religiously to love, the one great God, than any 
 under-officer. Any supposition except that of His direct 
 and immediate infilling, lands us at once in a tangle of 
 absurd contention, contradictory theory, and polytheistic 
 
INC A RNA TION. 6 1 
 
 mystery, which lead inevitably to the death of clear think- 
 ing and of living religion. There is no abiding satisfaction 
 of intellectual honor or heart-hunger except in the un- 
 equivocating, unexceptional statement that every living 
 organism of the world is what it is by the literal and con- 
 stant incarnation of God Himself in this form and manner. 
 He Himself is there, in person and power, its life is His 
 life, its doing is His doing. u Pantheism?" yes, if you 
 leave out all but an infinitely small fraction of nav as the 
 part with which alone OeoS has to do. "The creature be- 
 comes automaton and freedom is lost?" O no! 
 
 The indestructible basis of this very modified Pantheism, 
 its mechanics, if one may so speak, is as demonstrable as 
 any Euclidean theorem, and consists in the necessity of 
 an extra-physical force for the production of the cell, 
 the physiological element or unit. The building and 
 nutrition of a cell from its inception to its death is inex- 
 plainable by the action of mechanical forces alone.* 
 
 * The chemical operations performed by the living cell cannot be imitated 
 in the laboratory or explained by any known chemical laws. Halliburton, 
 Handbook of Chemical Physiology and Pathology, p. 210. 
 
 Since this chapter was written the following words from a medical 
 work of the highest practical and scientific character have been accidentally 
 found. They are so apposite that I give them in full, italicizing certain 
 sentences that seem to me especially suggestive. 
 
 " It was an epoch-making advance when the old vital forces were- de- 
 throned and only physical manifestations were allowed to explain the 
 operations of the organism. The physical methods of research were adopted 
 and the vital processes were placed on a corresponding basis. This was the 
 first step which absolved physiology from its long bondage as a subordinate 
 part of anatomy and elevated it to an independent science. But the fond 
 hopes which were placed on purely physical explanations even up to a few 
 decades ago have since been proved to be unattainable, and the inevitable 
 reaction has set in after we have in vain waited for the solution of all prob- 
 lems by physical science. Even some of the most enthusiastic investigators, 
 who had placed implicit fate in these explanations, now ceased to blindly 
 
62 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 Without the instant support of Biologos a cell falls to 
 death as certainly as a dropped stone to the ground. The 
 dead atom falls apart, or rather it comes under the unhin- 
 dered propulsion of mechanical forces alone, and that 
 
 follow this alluring path. Not that there was a reaction to the old vital 
 forces ; not that every attempt at an explanation was rejected in despair ; but 
 experimenters became convinced that in many, in fact in nearly all the better 
 known phenomena the physical laws did not suffice to give a clear explanation 
 of the mysterious vital phenomena. Unfortunately, we are now nearly 
 everywhere compelled to assume a specific yet absohitely unknown activity 
 of the living cell. This reaction was very beneficial ; it unmasked an ap- 
 parent knowledge and brought us nearer to a true understanding of nature ; 
 and, even if we must finally admit a mechanical basis, yet we are still infi- 
 nitely remote from the goal of all natural science. That we can only reach 
 this goal by extending our knowledge of the vital phenomena in the indi- 
 vidual cells is the advance which has resulted from the reaction against 
 purely physical speculations. The same conceptions which elevated physi- 
 ology to an independent science would merely have converted it into physics 
 and chemistry as applied to vital phenomena. Now, however, its character 
 as an independent science is forever preserved. 
 
 "The functions of the stomach consist mainly of secretion, absorption, and 
 motion. It was once thought that the activity of the glands could be ex- 
 plained by the purely mechanical processes of filtration and diffusion. The 
 chemical and physical changes in the blood circulating about the glands, of 
 which the physical were regulated by the nerves, seemed sufficient to explain 
 why the secretion of one and the same gland may vary in strength and com- 
 position. 
 
 "Although Johannes Miiller had long ago called attention to the specific 
 activity of the glandular cells, yet only recently was it positively demonstrated 
 that the mechanical processes of filtration and diffusion do not suffice to 
 explain secretion^ and that we must accept the existence of a peculiar activity 
 of the cells. [Foot-note. Ewald, Klinik, etc., I. Theil, 3. Auflage, S. 
 61 und 208 et seq.~\ Nerves may regulate this cellular activity, yet secretion 
 is unquestionably possible without them, and in this respect the animal 
 tissues do not differ from the vegetable, which have glands but no nerves. 
 
 " In the process of absorption the specific activity of the individual cells 
 becomes even more obvious. Here, contrary to physical laws, some sub- 
 stances are taken up, while others are rejected. The lymph-cells have been 
 observed to wander to the surface of the intestinal mucous membrane, and 
 
INCARNA TION. 63 
 
 organism is no more. Couple with this the fact that the 
 humblest living cell always shows mentality, and the phys- 
 iological evidence is clear that divinity is more intimately 
 and more vitally present than any deductive faith could 
 
 there incorporate drops of fat ; they then creep back, even into the lacteals, 
 where they give up these particles of fat. In the face of such occurrences, 
 which seem to play an important part in absorption, how can we think of 
 purely mechanical explanations ? At all events, in the processes of absorption 
 peculiar functions of the living cells must coexist with filtration and diffusion. 
 
 " The conditions are no more favorable in the motor function. I disre 
 gard entirely the fact that what occurs in a muscle during contraction is as in- 
 comprehensible as what constitutes innervation in a nerve. But the depend- 
 ence of the contraction upon the nervous impulse, and the invariable result 
 of this impulse, namely, a shortening of the muscle, were formerly regarded 
 as a general and, in a certain sense, physical law. Indeed, for striped mus- 
 cle it would be difficult to find an exception to this law, if we do not include 
 the direct stimulation of the muscle which can only occur in an abnormal 
 way. The striped muscle-fibre is always at rest till an impulse reaches it 
 through its nerve ; the result of this impulse is always a contraction, be it a 
 jerk or tetanus. The apparent exception that the heart continues to beat 
 even after all its nerves have been divided, was explained by assuming that 
 the impulses may arrive in the heart itself in the ganglion-cells and that 
 these impulses are transmitted to the cardiac-muscle fibres through the in- 
 tracardiac nerves. It was, however, discovered that sections of the heart 
 which positively contained no ganglion-cells continued to beat rhythmically. 
 The greatest difficulty of maintaining the law of the dependence of muscular 
 contraction upon nervous impulses is encountered in the unstriated muscles. 
 Here we not alone observe movements which are independent of any nervous 
 influence, as for example in the ureter, but we are not even able in every 
 instance to prove that the result of the nervous impulse is a contraction of 
 the muscle. Thus irritation of the vaso-dilator nerves causes the arterioles 
 to relax, and as, for many reasons, we cannot explain this by the longitudinal 
 fibres we are compelled to assume the paradox that the circular fibres length- 
 en upon irritation. We must therefore admit that, with the possible excep- 
 tion of the striated mucles, the above law does not always operate, and that 
 consequently the muscles may both make spontaneous movements^ and may 
 also lengthen upon stimulation. 
 
 " These preliminary remarks will enable us to comprehend more readily 
 the unpleasant fact that we know very little about the secretion, absorption, 
 
64 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 have conceived. With this conception of incarnation, of 
 the immanent in-living, up-bearing, through-thrilling 
 Father of Life, struggling under difficulties with rebellious 
 and dead material, comes the perfect solution of most of 
 the ^mysteries that have always and so sorely grieved the 
 heart of man, that have made the course of history so 
 puzzling, the records of biological history so gloomy, and 
 our way in time so aimless and hopeless. The reason of 
 "evolution," or progressive process, becomes clear; the 
 question of the origin and nature of evil, that like a terrible 
 Sphinx stood in every path, devouring whoever could not 
 solve her insolvable riddle, is now smilingly answered by the 
 Sphinx herself. Duty is no longer a blind, stern force push- 
 ing us nowhither through darkened, roadless woods, but a 
 loving pleasure-walk to distant hill-top outlook, with peace 
 in one's heart and happiness ever at one's side ; the shudder 
 and the gloom of death itself are forgotten, and a rational 
 immortality takes the place of the sensual or ennui-filled 
 heaven of the objectless after-life of childish faiths. 
 
 and motility of the stomach. The experiments are very frequently contra- 
 dictory ; many contain conditions which, upon closer examination, preclude 
 a uniform result. It is evident that the study of the organ has been under- 
 taken with too many physical propositions \ whereas here, as in the digestive 
 tract, biological laws are more important. It seems that the more highly 
 vegetative the functions of an organ are, the more does its activity depend 
 upon its own cells, and the less upon the nervous system. In fact, could 
 we remove every nervous element, nerve-fibres as well as ganglia, from the 
 walls of the stomach without injuring other tissues, it would secrete, absorb, 
 and contract quite well. One may ask, why, then, all these nerve fibres 
 which enter the stomach? For the same reasons that nerves go to the auto- 
 matic heart to connect it with the rest of the body. On the one hand, the 
 stomach has these connections with the central nervous system to fulfill the 
 demands of the other parts of the body ; and, on the other, to enable the 
 entire organism to take cognizance of its condition." Diseases of the 
 Stomach, Ewald, p. 363. 
 
INCARNA TION. 65 
 
 THE MECHANICS OF INCARNATION are at present locked 
 up in the mystery of the living cell, or more accurately 
 of the living somacule of bioplasm. The secret of the 
 method of God's entrance into and use of matter lies here. 
 In inorganic chemical compounds there is the basis or 
 hint of the system-formation upon which Biologos builds 
 the living molecule and cell. The solution of the mystery 
 of mechanism of the living cell is partially dependent 
 upon the solution of the mystery of inorganic chemical 
 union. Both are at present somewhat hidden from us, 
 though both will doubtless be solved by progress in 
 microscopy, spectrology, and thermal chemistry. In 
 part we are coming to understand the mechanism of the 
 inorganic chemical compound. It is probably entirely 
 explainable by the simple law of gravity and momentum, 
 and in precisely the same way as the solar system is 
 explainable. The application of Newton's laws to the 
 inorganic chemical molecule may explain all interactions 
 of its constituent atoms, and the qualities developed by 
 their union. 
 
 A system, i.e., a compound, is only formed when the rate 
 of the periodic vibrations of its constituent atoms is such 
 that they revolve about, or in relation to each other, indif- 
 ferent to or resistent of the weaker gravitational influence 
 of neighboring atoms with inharmonic or aimless vibration. 
 A system is formed when individual and aimless swing \s 
 transformed into periodic revolution, in conjunction with 
 another or other atoms. In the mechanical mixture 
 forming our air each element has a periodic vibration (or 
 specific weight) out of mathematical proportion to that 
 of the other, and it swings aimless, under the blows of 
 colliding atoms. In the formation of water, however, 
 a genuine chemical union or system-grouping takes place 
 
66 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 under certain conditions, whereby two atoms of hydro- 
 gen and one of oxygen are caught in harmonic phase, and 
 mechanical aimless vibration becomes interacting revo- 
 lution, with closer condensation and resultant density of 
 product, and with just that largeness of free path of 
 revolution which above 32 F. results in the condition of 
 a liquid, and at other temperatures, in that of a gas or 
 of a solid. 
 
 Viewed as a unit the solar system is a closed sys- 
 tem, and it is truer to say that the sun and any planet 
 revolve about each other rather than that the planets re- 
 volve about a fixed center. The solar system typifies in 
 large the complex, inorganic molecule. In fact "matter," 
 though to a lesser degree, is like the solar system "open." 
 The essential difference between the solar and the chemical 
 molecule is that the latter can be crowded upon by adja- 
 cent atoms or systems, and thus changed in characteristic ; 
 can be relieved of external pressure by greater distance 
 of adjacent systems, often with consequent results ; or it 
 component atoms may be struck by the blows of in 
 coming ether-waves, and thus swung out of the systerr 
 with resultant disruption of the compound. In the sol: 
 system nothing of this kind takes place. There is r 
 other solar system so near as to crowd or relieve fro 
 pressure even Neptune being so far away from the nearc 
 external neighbor as to be comparatively uninfluenced b 
 it and there is no interplanetary fluid except the ether, tl 
 blows or waves of which are so infinitesimally small th 
 they can only exert mechanical pressure or tension upo 
 atoms as small as themselves, and in vibratory period h: 
 monically related to them. Now, the supposable exhibitk 
 of purposiveness, or of mental control of the solar-syste 
 could only be conceived as taking place through an . 
 
INCARNA TION. 67 
 
 extra will coming into it, with ability to lessen or to increase 
 the distances from each other of the globes, to draw in 
 from without other complex systems and exhaust them 
 of their force or heat, thus breaking up their combinations 
 of vibrations and stealing the vehemence of their swing- 
 ing, and stilling them down. In physiological language 
 we call this on its constructive side, anabolism or nutrition, 
 and its reverse aspect is named katabolism or retrograde 
 metamorphosis. If there were a giant deity capable of do- 
 ing this, the solar system would become what we call living, 
 i. e., it would show the functions of a living molecule or 
 cell. The difference to be noted consists in the number 
 and complexity of the constituent elements, the solar 
 system being composed of a limited number of planets, 
 some with simple subordinate systems, asteroids, and 
 comets, like the inorganic compound, whilst the living 
 molecule of protoplasm is made up of an unknown num- 
 ber of constituents 1,000 or 2,000 (the ignorance a re- 
 proach to chemistry), grouped together in a bewildering 
 complexity of intricate and involved sub-systems with 
 marvellous dependencies and inter-relations. 
 
 Now, although no such evidence of ab extra influence 
 or of volitional utilization of the solar-system molecule 
 exists, just such evidence and use is shown by the actual 
 miracle of the formation and the function of the physi- 
 ological molecule, or somacule * and upon the fact is 
 based the existence of every living organism. The entire 
 mechanism of incarnation depends and hinges upon this 
 secret. Biologos gets control of matter in this single and 
 
 * The molecule is the smallest quantity of a substance representative of 
 its qualities, capable of existing in a free state ; it is the typical unit of the 
 compound, and should be limited to inorganic substances. The somacule is 
 the organic molecule, and the cell an organized system of somacules. 
 
68 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 only way, and the entire drama of organic life on the 
 globe is dependent upon this mechanism of molecular 
 formation and control. This is the essential principle 
 of biologic philosophy. Firmly grasped and compre- 
 hended, it will be seen that from it radiate lines of light 
 like the karyokinetic figures of cell-division from the 
 nucleus * into all the darkness of religion and philosophy. 
 Cytology, the secret of physiological chemistry, is the 
 secret of the mechanics of incarnation, but it is also very 
 largely the secret of the greatest problems of philosophy, 
 of religion, of ethics, and even of esthetics. 
 
 I am well aware that the streng wissenschaftlichen 
 sticklers will aver that any such interference with molecu- 
 lar physics contradicts the law of the conservation of 
 energy. Kinetics, they say, can know no exception to 
 the law that " in a closed system the sum of energy 
 is the equal of the sum of the specific heat units of 
 its elements." The least directional energy, it is said, 
 brought to bear upon a process, seems to imply the im- 
 portation within it of an increase of energy, and of that 
 our finest analysts with their finest bolometers can detect 
 no evidence. This is as much as to say, "you can't get 
 more meat out of the egg than there is in the shell." The 
 contradiction is only seeming, and is another of the many 
 ways men take to cheat themselves with words, instead 
 of trusting to first-hand observation of facts. 
 
 Assuredly no bolometer will ever detect it ; nor will 
 any physical thermometer ever do so. The only weigh- 
 
 * " The cytasters and radiating lines in the protoplasm around the poles 
 of the spindle of a dividing cell remind one forcibly of the effect produced 
 by placing a magnet in the midst of some iron filings, the radiating position 
 of the metallic fragments around the poles of the magnet indicating the 
 direction of the lines of force." 
 
INCARNATION. 69 
 
 ing machine delicate enough to react to this stimulus is 
 the pondering instrument that lies behind human percep- 
 tion. When the miscroscope enables us to see atoms, 
 and when ocular muscles are nimble enough to move 
 synchronously with them some several hundred millions 
 of millions of motions per second then the bolometer 
 may be invented that can measure the force of God's 
 finger in the somacule and cell. In the meantime we 
 wait, reckoning it better to believe our spiritual eyes than 
 to trust to a crude physical law, physicists having so 
 often proved themselves mistaken in their judgment as to 
 what is *' unexceptional law." The criticism to us says 
 only that life-force has not yet been correlated with 
 physical forces. Whatever form of mental picture we 
 make of life-force, it must be deemed of infinitely greater 
 tenuity and subtlety than etherial forces, and it is only 
 yesterday that science has told us anything of the ether. 
 One hundred years ago it was not necessary that we 
 should understand spectrum-analysis to believe in the 
 beautiful sunshine. To-day the science of biophysics is 
 not born, but we can quite as truthfully believe in Life 
 because Life we are, and Life is the fact that, of consum- 
 mate interest, is everywhere most real and evident. One 
 of the severest tasks of philosophic thought is to hold 
 fast the truth already gained, while grasping and allow- 
 ing validity to a higher and contradictory truth, contra- 
 dictory only in temporary seeming, because all chromatic 
 half-truths are by the achromatic lens of honest reason 
 finally brought to focus in a higher unity of pure white light. 
 THE UNITY OF ALL ORGANIC LIFE is rarely acknowl- 
 edged, and even by those acknowledging it, its remote 
 consequences are little appreciated. Almost every day one 
 will find writings that separate man and " Nature," and, 
 
70 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 by a previous jumble of inorganic and living " Nature," 
 make man the enemy of all Nature, each following different 
 and cross purposes. To confuse under the term Nature 
 two such different orders of phenomena as the living 
 and the non-living, may pass in Sunday-school books, but 
 there is no school-boy now-a-days that should not under- 
 stand that man is part of the great order of biological 
 phenomena. Any good text-book of botany will prove that 
 the protoplasm of the lowest vegetable organism presents 
 all the qualities of the protoplasm of the highest animal 
 organism. It is needless now to emphasize the admitted 
 fact that no hard and fast line exists between the plant 
 and the animal, many species being in the neutral bound- 
 ing territory, and that in some degree all plants possess 
 many of the intelligent purposive functions, whilst in 
 moderate degree many possess all of the essential charac- 
 teristics of animal life. The difference that exists in the 
 fact of the power of the plant to eliminate living cells 
 from mineral or inorganic material alone, whilst the 
 animal is dependent upon the vegetable world for its 
 supply of this prepared food, really argues against any 
 essential difference between the two types: it is simply 
 a differentiation of function, and argues for unity, since it 
 shows an interdependence and close vital relationship. 
 Every agricultural or botanical chemist also knows that 
 the vegetable kingdom is also dependent upon animal 
 functions and activities for its stability, so that the rela- 
 tionship is one of mutuality in ways more subtle than the 
 striking example known to all, of the complemental ser- 
 vice of bee and flower. 
 
 The extremely complex protoplasmic molecule of the 
 animal is built upon the moderately complex molecule 
 formed by the plant : this is the striking and highly 
 
INCARNA TION. *J\ 
 
 suggestive arrangement upon which depends the existence 
 of animal and human life on the globe. Except in some 
 possible rare instances the animal, if it ever had it, has now 
 lost the power of constructing its unit of physiological 
 activity, the cell, out of crude inorganic materials. This, 
 our utter dependence upon our humble " little brother," 
 furnishes an intelligent explanation of one of the greatest 
 mysteries : the apparently reckless, useless, wasteful 
 luxuriance, the fighting, clinging pertinacity, and the 
 infinitely ingenious device, whereby millions of forms of 
 plant-life find means to penetrate and live upon every 
 possible inch of the world's surface. It might seem that 
 the omnipotence of an infinite spendthrift were intoxi- 
 catedly scattering the riches of eternity in heedless pro- 
 fusion in the few hours and acres of our little planet. 
 But if we could look with the large vision of Biologos, I 
 doubt not we should reckon it all as the most economic 
 wisdom. 
 
 Should we conceitedly question the foresight that for 
 millions of years transformed dead atoms into living trees 
 and ferns, and these into reservoirs of force, our coal- 
 measures, upon which our civilization is at present de- 
 pendent? Always distrust the wisdom that deems itself 
 wiser than the wisdom whence it sprang. Harmful, use- 
 less weeds and noxious plants and trees! I doubt if there 
 be one such. The deeper the insight the less the criticism 
 of God, and the more the old-fashioned faith comes back 
 that every living thing " has its use," present or possible. 
 And when all criticism is allowed there remain the in- 
 dubitable facts that all animal life, that of man most of all, 
 depends upon all vegetable life, and that, in the thousand- 
 fold danger to which any one type or all types are 
 always subject, from volcano, recurrent glacial period, 
 
72 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 submergence of islands or continents, vegetable disease, 
 parasites, or destroyers of exhaustless variety, upon any 
 single order or family nay, upon any single plant, that 
 by limitless pertinacity and ingenuity had saved itself in 
 some wreck or lethal change, may depend the related ex- 
 istence of other forms of life, even the human ; its "pluck" 
 may rescue from absolute destruction the results of the 
 combined effort of production of past ages. In any such 
 general death or destruction one rescued seed or plantlet 
 may be of incalculable service to any or all animals, 
 besides giving Biologos a foothold from whence to re- 
 people a continent with that type, or from it to re-develop 
 new species. The adaptability of any one type to change 
 and variability heightens its possible value, because it is 
 always easier for Biologos to develop one type into a dif- 
 ferent, than to create a new one immediately. There is 
 more than a pathetic beauty in such instances as that of 
 the little hairy wood spurge that before the Thames and 
 Seine were disunited by the English Channel produced 
 by the drop of England into the ocean, had crept along 
 the earth from the warm South to England, and there for 
 thousands of years has sustained a precarious existence 
 in one or two sheltered nooks or by some warm spring, 
 while its nearest sisters frozen out of the north have had 
 to retreat to the Mediterranean shores again. Upon sev- 
 eral American mountains there are yet left glacial butter- 
 flies, stranded by receding ice-tides some eighty thousand 
 years ago, still brightening bleak solitudes with beauteous 
 life; they may be thought of as awaiting their cousins 
 when the returning glacial period may bring them again, 
 although ages hence other catastrophies we know not of 
 may endow them with a superlative and practical use to 
 our descendants. 
 
INCARNA TION. 73 
 
 The vanity of man makes him assume a competence 
 and a right to judge and condemn the whole order of things 
 of which he is a part and out of which he has sprung. 
 "Ah!" we always hear. "Ah! If God had but been 
 possessed of my wisdom and righteousness. What waste, 
 what blundering ! What egregious follies mark the evo- 
 lution of life and blacken the sorry farce of history ! 
 Nature is a stern and relentless blind mother, and her 
 cruelties are as heartless as her follies are stupid." Much 
 such nonsense one is forced to read and hear every day. 
 
 One feels like asking these silly beings if they were 
 produced outside of " Nature." Did some other faultless 
 "Nature" beget them and their high critical powers? 
 Whence do they draw the sources of their being, and the 
 mental outfitting they so admirably use? At least they 
 are guests of Nature now, however daintily exotic their sup- 
 posed origin. They are living off her bounty, and like 
 filthy lunatics they abuse and vilify the kind host that nour- 
 ishes them. We may never safely lose sight of the divinely 
 suggestive fact that if we have anything admirable in our 
 human nature, if reason, love, honor, character, are ideals 
 or actualities of our life, if benefaction, order, freedom, are 
 our acquirement or seeking, if science, poetry, art, music, 
 are our creations and delight, they are primarily the 
 handiwork of Him who made us. We did not certainly 
 make ourselves. These things cannot be conceived ex- 
 cept as the blooming and fruitage of a tree planted and 
 nourished not by men's hands, for they all sprang and 
 still gush not from planned effort of our conscious seeking, 
 but from the still deeps of being below and behind our 
 personal consciousness. 
 
 The destruction of the interdependence of one class of 
 animal organisms upon another is a fact of which we have 
 
74 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 as yet gained hardly a hint. Some writers have touched 
 upon it, and catch glimpses of the sad disturbance of 
 power such interference as our brutal hunting causes, in 
 destroying the very agents that keep our living world 
 healthful. The otter takes the salmon blinded by fungoid 
 disease, and birds of prey capture the grouse weakened 
 by disease that would infect the whole family. The un- 
 avoidable conclusion of such a careful student as Darwin 
 is that in the struggle for existence the vigorous, the 
 healthy, and the happy survive and multiply. Among 
 the most pernicious of man's actions in this respect is the 
 wanton destruction of forests. The perturbations, the 
 echoing and re-echoing effects of desertizing the globe, in 
 climatic and hygrometric changes, in the pernicious up- 
 setting of a long and laborously-established harmony of 
 vegetable, animal, and human life, are beyond finite calcu- 
 lation. One rises from the perusal of such a book as 
 Marsh's The Earth as Modified by Human Action, with a 
 pained sense as of a horde of Northmen destroying or 
 putting to Atilla-use a gallery of Greek marbles. How can 
 the Infinitely Patient and Ingenious Healer ever curb and 
 enlighten man and repair the damages of his invasion? 
 But, just when hopelessness seems the only fruit to gather, 
 there is growing a God-planted " seedling " : Forestry is 
 becoming a science, and humanized, or divinized Science 
 is dextrously setting herself to discover, to save, and to 
 repair. There is in our modern love of the living world, 
 and unconsciously beneath the beautiful zeal of science, an 
 unseen wisdom working to heal the hurt, and undo the 
 injury of the horrible years when the animal was struggling 
 to a yet-unreached civilization, and harming all about 
 him with the insanities of a sated but undigested animal- 
 ism, and a tasted but unattained humanization. " Man 
 
INCARNA TION. 75 
 
 opposed to nature?" "Wresting from her her sullenly 
 yielded secrets ? " " Fighting her invasions and enmity ? " 
 Ah, me ! How blind themselves are these philosophers ! 
 The purer and the clearer eye recognizes that all life is 
 interdependent and a unit ; that the greatest king is be- 
 holden to the meanest diatom, and to the humblest weed 
 of unexplored regions ; that fungus, tree, animal, and 
 unhumanized savage, are all dumbly longing for the love 
 and the guidance of their rational, seeing brother, man. 
 Biologos will hold them with His soft slavery, He will keep 
 them, and they will wait for the Coming King, governed 
 in the meantime by His agents, the instincts and the 
 " struggles for existence," the subtle balances of power, 
 the curbs of hypertrophies and stimuli of hypotrophies, 
 His only but effective means, until He shall have so 
 educated and deified man, until He shall have so filled his 
 heart with helpful love, as to operate through him by 
 more effective and direct means to perfect life upon the 
 globe. The great world of living things awaits " the 
 coming of the Lord," the deputy of God, man, to give it 
 freedom, to bring it release and guidance, to educe soul 
 out of sense, and to teach the inexhaustible beauty of love. 
 Poor half-savage and shipwrecked folk, we have clutched 
 the island of Time on which we have been washed, and 
 seek to crush, and enslave, and devour the little brothers 
 stranded here before us, and who in the common misfor- 
 tune that has overcome us all, would better deserve, and 
 more infinitely repay, our sympathy and our unselfish 
 help. " Thou shalt love God with all thy heart," acquires 
 a divine significance when we come to recognize the real 
 " God," and to know all of " our neighbors." The human- 
 ization of our friend the dog, the domestication and im- 
 provement of fruits and animals, the miraculous response of 
 
76 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 all living things, heretofore loved and cultivated by man, 
 give hint of the waiting readiness of the living world, and 
 of the wonderful results that will follow when we learn to 
 love and to help all instead of hating, or at best selfishly 
 using all. Happy he who shall be the new Christ, the re- 
 arisen and extended Christ of this new religion, and shall 
 both point and lead the way to this coming Kingdom of 
 Heaven in all the Earth ! 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 CYTOLOGY.* 
 
 CYTOLOGY IS THEOLOGY, because a perfect know- 
 ledge of what takes place in the cell, a knowledge 
 of what causes the changes, and of the ultimate 
 effects of these changes, would let light into the whole 
 " before and after." I can only give a few of the glimpses 
 of the implications and of the consequences that I have 
 caught, but below the horizon's edge it is bright with a 
 light I fain would travel to see. 
 
 "O \6yoS 6ap% eyevs TO : The Word became Flesh. So 
 said religion most truly, and yet religion has never shown 
 the faintest curiosity as to how the Logos made unto itself 
 a beauteous instrument of flesh. And the bitter irony is 
 heightened by the sad spectacle of a Godless Science 
 blunderingly seeking to discover the method, whilst at the 
 same time, far from working herself, and far from show- 
 ing any interested encouragement, Religion stands by and 
 affects to scoff at the blind worker. Such are the specta- 
 cles that meet the philosophic eye everywhere. We are 
 all working to hidden ends by mistaken motives, and the 
 light will come when the divinely beneficent smile reveals 
 the reward of unexpected success greater than would have 
 been that we delusively sought. The honor and the suc- 
 cess will be in proportion as our work has been guided by 
 a self-effacing loyalty to truth. 
 
 * KuroS, cell ; XoyoS, science, the science of the cell and of Cell-Life. 
 
 77 
 
78 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 The cell is God's nov GTOD for moving the world. Its 
 nucleus is His millionfold point of contact with matte.. 
 Back from every cell-nucleus run the lines of unity, 
 meeting in the focus of His personal control. Language 
 fails us when we try to picture to ourselves or to others 
 this almost incomprehensible fact. Perhaps it would b_ 
 nearer truth to say that Spirit, which is outside the limit.' 
 of space and time, finds, or rather makes, the cell Hi^ 
 universal throne, so that He Himself in very literalness ie 
 the life of each of the innumerable tiny elements tha' 
 make up the substance of plants and animals. In this fac 
 we get the vivid demonstration of many things entire!" 
 extra-cellular. For instance, the infinite detail of Hi 
 work. The atoms of every cell could not place ther 
 selves as they are in the cell, they could not build the ce 
 as it any instant is, or for a moment keep it in function 
 Constantly rebuilding and upholding, an extra-cellul 
 control of every cell is evident. 
 
 But every cell differs from every other cell. Not on 1 
 does each cell of all of the myriad classes of tissue 
 have a typical likeness to those of its kind, and a 
 utter unlikeness to those of all other kinds, whethc 
 of liver, kidney, parotid, contractile, constructive, < 
 osseous, but it is only our finiteness that keeps us fro 
 realizing that the individual cells of each class diffc 
 from each similar associate. The typical protoplasm- 
 molecule of each planet must differ in general chemic; 
 formula from that of every other planet, that of the veg 
 table from that of the animal, every class of each, in Ian 
 
 * Despite such oft-repeated nonsense as this : " The movements of mat 
 and the phenomena of mind, are separated by a fathomless abyss. Betw 
 the one and the other there is a great gulf fixed, and neither can matter 
 upon or induce changes in mind, nor can mind act on or induce changes 
 matter." MERCIER, Sanity and Insanity. 
 
CYTOLOGY. 79 
 
 ways, from that of every other class, and so on down to 
 each individual, and to each cell of every individual. In 
 men, we easily detect racial body-odors, and the dog can 
 instantly differentiate the odor left by his master's foot 
 from that of every other of the fifteen hundred millions 
 of men in the world. I have alluded to proofs of God's 
 finiteness, but here of course the mind is crushed with 
 wonder at this proof of His practical infinity. 
 
 The mathematician can hardly estimate, and the mind 
 can in no way conceive the multi-millions of cells of any one 
 organ of the many that make up our body, or the grass- 
 blade at our feet. It is said that about five million blood- 
 cells die with every breath. The nimblest imagination 
 shrinks and shudders as it peers out through the stretches 
 of space and time rilled and palpitant with silent inex- 
 haustible life-power. 
 
 With all the repeated life-time labors of great minds on 
 single subjects of study, on single organs of any organ- 
 ism, there is exhaustless mystery beyond. We know the 
 ultimate secrets of no one organism or of any one of its 
 organs. In rapt astonishment we can only catch promises 
 of glimpses and glimpses of promises of the subtle 
 devices, the delicate mechanisms, the out-worked intrica- 
 cies of construction and adjustment, the far-sighted vision 
 and forefending dexterity that characterize even the 
 simplest organism, and that appal us when we correlate 
 each with all. Linked each to other, intermediate and 
 inexplained result merging itself into cause, kaleidoscopic 
 change bound to ever foreseen purpose, purpose linking 
 itself to purpose, losing and finding itself in higher unities, 
 the mind is able certainly to know that the living Logos 
 is in all, but it has certainly not seen the limits of that 
 metaphysical mentality. 
 
80 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 And in this way we could go on envisaging phase after 
 phase of the many aspects that spring into view as we 
 clearly realize the indirect inferences derivable from cell- 
 incarnation and cell-philosophy. 
 
 But certain negative considerations also rise, and warm 
 emotion is suddenly chilled into its isomer, reason. 
 Fate that as servant may bow, but as slave will never 
 bend, fate is plainly seen in the simple fact that only 
 by the mechanics of the cell could God compass his ends. 
 Matter could only be conquered by the awful indirection 
 of cellular physiology. In other words, molar or mechan- 
 ical energy (with all correlate forces and distant ends) is 
 directly impossible to Biologos ; He can only reach 
 mechanical and meta-mechanical results by the massed 
 effects of billions of separate but conjointly-working cell- 
 functions. The nearest metaphor, or likeness, is that 
 of light. Repetitive billions of ether-waves are required 
 even to beget the simplest sensation of light, but only 
 combined multiples of these numbers can finally evoke 
 the mite of mechanical force shown in Crookes' radiome- 
 ter, whilst calculation of the waves locked up in a pound 
 of coal is quite beyond finite mathematics. Just such 
 cost of indirection is asked by matter as the price of 
 niggard consent to serve the Lord of Life. God accepted 
 the condition, and the living world stands before us. The 
 fact shows the most decided lack of absolute omnipotence, 
 but, from the other point of view, it also shows the fulness 
 of relative omnipotence. 
 
 It is this complete recognition of the labor, the ingen- 
 uity, and the love, the infinite patience, and the indirection 
 with which Biologos has circumvented the poverty and 
 obstinacy of matter, and turned defeat into victory, that 
 enables us to sympathize and love Him. Because His 
 
CYTOLOGY. 8 1 
 
 work is our work. Throughout our life we are but doing, 
 in our way and limited sphere, exactly what He is doing. 
 We can, indeed, do nothing else. To maintain a perfect 
 incarnation, to conquer, control, and utilize matter, to 
 make spirit speak through physic this is the work at 
 which life is set, whether the life be that of God or of 
 ourselves. The sacrifices He has been compelled to 
 suffer to compass His object make Him comprehensible 
 and endear Him to us, and these same sacrifices consti- 
 tute the mysteries of evil, of imperfection, of disease, and 
 of death. Sacrifice is always the key to mystery, and 
 just as suffering brings clearness and modesty and chast- 
 ening to man, revealing many human mysteries, so God's 
 sacrifices constitute the explanation of most divine and 
 cosmic mysteries. 
 
 It is worth noting that our ignorance of matter is, in 
 strict analysis, far greater than our ignorance of God. In 
 the ultimate of self we have direct knowledge or percep- 
 tion of "the ultimate reality that is behind the veil of 
 appearance," * whilst all our knowledge of matter is medi- 
 ate, second-hand, and as yet indefinite. The reality is 
 what we do know, and the appearance is as yet the un- 
 known. 
 
 All biological facts and truths center and end in 
 questions of nutrition ; and all questions of nutrition are 
 solely questions of nutrition of the physiological unit, the 
 cell. The cell, it must be again repeated, is the only 
 agent and tool that Biologos has. Organogenesis is solely 
 the massing together of some billions of independent 
 tools, of which He has the use and control, to educe there- 
 from mechanical results, the mechanical results or organ- 
 
 * " We are not permitted to know, nay, are not permitted even to con- 
 ceive that reality that is behind the veil of appearance." SPENCER. 
 6 
 
82 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 work being merely the summarization of the individual 
 labors of all the cells. The organ is the mere unition of 
 the work of all the cell-elements. In botany and in 
 zoology, cellular physiology is the ultimate science to 
 which all other physiologies minister, and in which they 
 end. Indeed, physiology as ordinarily taught and under- 
 stood in the schools, is only the mechanics of the subject, 
 only the consideration of a few of the crudest end-results. 
 The child with the most rudimentary philosophical bent 
 suspects this, but the questioning is at once hushed by 
 the teacher, who by his "scientific training" prevents 
 any suspicion of ultimate reasons, final causes, root 
 questions, or teleological suspicions, to arise in his own 
 mind or in the minds of his pupils. To the healthy in- 
 tellect every question of physiology leads by the most 
 natural and inevitable logic to teleology ; to the " enlight- 
 ened scientist " it too often leads to intolerable blankness 
 and self-stultification. The crude end-results that com- 
 mon physiological teaching is satisfied to consider, all lead 
 to cellular physiology, and all cellular function leads as 
 inevitably to extra-cellular life and control, and a multi- 
 tude of metaphysical facts. The bones are to give the 
 body stability and uprightness, to attach muscles to, 
 whereby motility is assured ; the muscles are the agents 
 directly mediating self-motility ; the visceral organs are to 
 elaborate nutritive elements for the feeding of all parts ; 
 the vascular system is to carry the food to and from all 
 parts, the heart pumping, the lungs oxygenating; and, 
 lastly, the nervous system is to control all parts and make 
 all functions harmonic and unitary. Mutatis mutandis, 
 the same " explanations " of the same functions in the 
 plant organism are held satisfactory. 
 
 Now, all this is just as sensible as to explain a 
 
CYTOLOGY. 83 
 
 steamship without a thought as to the sheets and 
 bolts of steel on which all depends ; without a word as 
 to the coal or steam ; the intelligence that created and 
 guides the huge mechanism ; or the purposes for which 
 it is to move about the ocean-world. The cells and 
 bioplastic units of the living organism, the combined 
 individual life and workings of which constitute the life- 
 mechanism of the whole, are not spoken of, neither the 
 force that proceeds from each cell-nucleus, nor the men- 
 tality displayed in the creation and working of the un- 
 conscious machine, or in its conscious guiding will. If, 
 finally, object and purpose of the whole mechanism is 
 inquired about, the poor little dazed philosopher is told 
 by the catechism of the religionists that the object of life 
 is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, or by the cat- 
 echism of the scientists that agnosticism is the end of all 
 thinking, and " evolution " the purpose of all existence. No 
 wonder that the stunned curiosity silently concludes that 
 the theologic answer is wholly beyond comprehension 
 and practice, and that the scientific answer is blank pes- 
 simism. The resultant " line of least resistance " is that 
 indicated by the indubitable pointing of the lowest senses, 
 and in this way self-preservation and self-gratification 
 necessarily (and rightly, too) become the pursued ideals. 
 Religion and science have both united in the noble calling 
 of making atheists and sensualists out of their pupils, who, 
 in graduating from either school, fling their diplomas with 
 disappointment and disgust into the dying fire of youth- 
 ful ideals and enthusiasms, and plunge out into the whirl 
 of commercialism and self-seeking. The best and shrewd- 
 est of these pupils attain " comfort " and philistinic 
 "respectability"; the worst and the stupidest (with a 
 considerable minority of the unbalanced, unselfish, and 
 
84 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 noble) drift into galling poverty, sensuality, criminality, 
 and multiform wretchedness. But all alike are plebeian, 
 coarse, without poetry, religion, or ideal blown by the 
 winds of passion into a future that is dark and hopeless, 
 without rudder of intellectual stability or compass of 
 guiding duty. The atoning and righting civilization of 
 the future will have bitter thanks for the irreligious 
 religion and for the unscientific science of to-day. 
 
 Every subordinate organ or part of an organism points 
 otherwhere for its explanation. All parts pertaining to 
 form and motion are to aid in the satisfaction of desires, 
 usually of hunger and regeneration ; all digestive and 
 vascular functions are to supply food to other parts ; all 
 nervous structures and organs of special senses, to help all 
 other parts, each is slave to other, and finds no end 
 in itself. But it is to be noted that all organs whose 
 function is to secure the nutrition of others, at the same 
 time effect their own nutrition ; that all organs are made 
 up of the same elements, that is of cells slightly differen- 
 tiated for their special work ; and that every living cell, 
 vegetable or animal, displays all the essential functions 
 that are shown by the organ or the organism, or by any 
 other organism. More striking degrees appear by the 
 combined action of many differentiated cells, but the care- 
 ful eye finds them all in the cell seeking expression and 
 power. Now this is equivalent to saying that the great 
 Biologos, the living God Himself, is present in the cell in 
 full mentality, purpose, and personality, lacking only ade- 
 quate means or power to more fully reveal Himself and 
 to effectualize His aims, and moreover plainly taking such 
 steps toward this effectualization.. The discerning eye 
 can meet divinity face to face in the ameba and its pseu- 
 dopods, or in the white-blood corpuscle, and can as genu- 
 
CYTOLOGY. 85 
 
 inely and often as justifiably worship Him there as in the 
 temple or the cathedral. 
 
 To again repeat : the chief and absorbing function of 
 nearly all but one set of organs is that comprehended 
 under the term nutrition. The millionfold devices of 
 plant and animal for securing food, and for protection 
 against the antagonisms and enemies of life, animate and 
 inanimate, against cold, and against the "running down" 
 of the clock-mechanism, all are but various phases of 
 cell-nutrition. It is the hunger of the cell that has created 
 the corporeal instruments, and the corporeal unity itself, 
 the more surely to bring about cellular feeding. Of 
 course a not-forgotten and still deeper " final cause " lies 
 behind all hunger and all nutrition, but of that just now 
 it is not question. The science of microscopy is only an 
 indirect assertion and proof of this fact. 
 
 But there is one set of organs, which, together with the 
 emotions that lie behind them, yield no obedience to 
 other organs, are servant to no others, but imperiously 
 demand service of all. To the savage mind these organs 
 were the most indubitable proofs of a mysterious outside 
 deity, whose symbols were most serious and whose wor- 
 ship most sincere, whilst to the profoundest philosopher, 
 they now none the less flash upon the perception, the 
 gleaming evidence of extra-organismal control and* of 
 after-coming revelations. After the biologist's nutritional 
 studies, hardly second in importance are those of the 
 reproductive function. The two departments comprise 
 quite all of his work. The primary significance of the 
 one is a hyperphysical Logos-life gaining self-expression 
 and control of matter through the mechanism of the cell ; 
 the significance of the other is the perpetuation and ex- 
 tension of that control, and of that revelation, in advance 
 
86 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 of foreseen failure, by the mechanism of reproduction. 
 There is a subtle but profound significance, indeed all 
 the significance it has is here, in the decking with flowers 
 of young-womanly beauty in blooming years or in mar- 
 riage-days. The flower perfumed with God, the girl his 
 divine exotic, each flooded with unearthly benediction 
 and crowned with His halo of beauty, both alike bespeak 
 the wonder of His promise and the reward of its fulfilling, 
 when we render loving obedience to His command. " Eye 
 hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the 
 heart of man the things which God hath prepared for 
 them that love him." 
 
 The truth that CYTOLOGY IS MEDICINE is illustrated by 
 a number of facts, chief of which of course, is the firm 
 establishment and general scientific acknowledgment of 
 the cellular pathology of Virchow. As all physiology is 
 primarily and essentially the physiology of the cell, so all 
 pathology is necessarily essentially the pathology of the 
 cell. All scientific physicians are conversant with Vir- 
 chow's great work and of the development of the doctrine, 
 and its exemplification by every new medical discovery, 
 It is therefore useless to further emphasize or detail it. 
 As the body is composed entirely of its cells, it is, in- 
 deed, a mere axiom, that disease must be disease of its 
 cells. As physiological chemistry learns the facts of cel- 
 lular nutrition, it will become more and more clear how the 
 cell's vitality is lessened or interfered with by improper 
 nutrition and microbic enemies. Slowly the prevention of 
 disease is coming to be recognized as the great problem and 
 the established fact. Already knowledge has outrun prac- 
 tice, because if the known truths of preventive medicine 
 were applied, the present death-rate would be reduced by 
 one half. The ultimate philosophical lesson of physiology 
 
CYTOLOGY. 87 
 
 and pathology is that Biologos is the great Father of phy- 
 siological chemistry ; that our little child-like glimpses of 
 the science is the lisping a b c, of His cosmic science, begun 
 with the first speck of bioplasm that He created, and to-day 
 active in every cell of every living thing. He in person is 
 present in the cell ; all physiology is healthy nutrition of 
 His cells and all disease is their disturbed nutrition. All 
 curative medicine is taking away enemies, faulty or dis- 
 turbing elements, and supplying healthy ones. No bung- 
 ling medication ever did aught in disease but permit the 
 intelligence and healing life behind and in the cell to cure 
 the cell. The removal of a few obstacles and the supply- 
 ing of a little proper food, constitute the intelligent phy- 
 sician's task. Biologos in His own unknown way does 
 the work of cure whilst we stand almost idly by, our little 
 wisdom largely consisting in not interfering and in not 
 complicating His struggles. 
 
 To the understanding of the world the subject of tem- 
 perature is of more interest and importance than all the 
 disquisitions of speculative philosophy from Plato to 
 Lotze. But not one great philosopher ever thought of, 
 or mentioned the idea. It was the chief element of God's 
 first great labor, and it is to-day the burdensome problem 
 and exhausting task of an ingenuity and care wholly 
 beyond comprehension. At present the balance of tem- 
 perature established in man is so extraordinarily deli- 
 cate and fine that the functions of the most complexly 
 organized centers that intermediate the highest vital and 
 mental processes are liable to fluctuation and danger from 
 the most subtle and unperceived causes. This uniformity 
 and exquisiteness of heat-balance has been established by 
 making the substance of the highest functional cells of an 
 amazing complexity of structure, wherein the change of a 
 
88 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 degree or two either chills the metabolic process below 
 the most perfect working, or heats it toward dissolution. 
 Our knowledge, our thermometers, and our tests are at 
 present as incapable of proving and putting this in scientific 
 language, as a Hottentot is capable of properly operating 
 and explaining a magnetometer. We do not even know the 
 names of the hundreds of complex subordinate substances, 
 each with its own delicately-adjusted melting-point and 
 qualities, each held to other by the slightest bonds of intra- 
 molecular vibration, united together in subtle couple of 
 intricate balance and affinity, all held in the most un- 
 stable equilibrium, and utilized by the great cell-chemist 
 for definite but by us hardly-guessed purposes. We are 
 so far from definite chemical knowledge that we cannot 
 tell within hundreds, perhaps within thousands of atoms, 
 the sum-total of ultimate elements composing the typical 
 protoplasmic molecule. In a patient a rise of temperature 
 above the normal shows, of course, increased cell-activity 
 and increased danger of the more violent atomic and 
 molecular vibration disrupting the delicate bonds that hold 
 the more unstable subordinates in subjection. Cytolysis 
 results. If the engine is put to too high a rate of speed 
 the centrifugal forces overcome the centripetal and there 
 is death from exhaustion and dissolution. Unless the cell- 
 mechanism is of exceptional stability, fever, or abnormal 
 heat, which are names for increased vibrational or cell- 
 activity, very soon gives evidence of an excess of the 
 centrifugal forces beyond the control of the cell by its 
 master, and molecular, followed of course by somatic, 
 death, ensues.* 
 
 * Of the total heat evolved in the body, about 7 per cent, is used in exter- 
 nal mechanical work ; of the remainder, four fifths is radiated through the 
 skin, and the rest by the lungs and excreta. 
 
CYTOLOGY. 89 
 
 But it is of exceptional interest to note that subnormal 
 temperature is far more rare, and far more dangerous than 
 fever. Control of the cell sufficient to liberate enough 
 heat or to permit of cell-nutrition (different for every species 
 of animal), has evidently been reached only by great dif- 
 ficulty, foresight, labor, and delicacy of nutritional adjust- 
 ment. Too much, within certain limits, can be guarded 
 against, excluded, or compensated for, but a very little too 
 little, is quick death. Empiric therapeutics knows that 
 dangerous fever calls for cold, or other lessening of cell- 
 metabolism. A quaint old physician ordered as his epi- 
 taph, " He fed fevers." That was one method, and of use, 
 but many others are required, and our knowledge of cell- 
 life must be much increased, before Biologos, when strug- 
 gling with disease, is not as much hindered as He is helped 
 by our clumsy therapeutics. The same lesson comes out 
 clearly in the fact that the lower functions (muscular or 
 glandular,) may be deprived of their blood-supply for con- 
 siderable periods without injury. Their cell-compounding 
 is evidently not so complex, and so much does not depend 
 upon it. But deprive the cerebral consciousness-centers 
 of their nourishment for the fractional part of a second and 
 recuperation is impossible. The ceaseless attention of the 
 engineer, his straining and sleepless watchfulness, the un- 
 interrupted stream of God's life that must be poured into 
 the mechanism of the nerve-cells and centers, (for He is 
 steam and engineer in one) is beyond the limits of any 
 finite imagination. Such is the price He pays for control 
 of material cell-systems, such the reluctant consent to 
 serve on the part of matter, built up into enormously 
 complex and artificial tiny solar systems, and ever silently 
 seeking to slip away from the Divine Master. Can it be 
 believed that the intelligence and ingenuity that could do 
 
90 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 all this has no object, has not enough sense to have an 
 object, in doing it? Blind evolution? Pah! 
 
 In every class of animals and plants the problem and 
 labor of temperature-preservation is a different one. Each 
 group has its peculiar range, above and below which con- 
 trol of cell-metabolism is lost. In a general way the lower 
 or more simple the function, the simpler the cell-mechanism 
 and the wider the range of temperature-change, the lower 
 the average degree. Plants have been trained to perio- 
 dicity of function, crowding the active work of life into a 
 few of the summer months, shedding their lungs, etc., and, 
 as it were, during winter, stilling down all tissue-metamor- 
 phosis to the lowest degree, they preserve the mother-cells 
 intact, ready to redevelop all the destroyed organs when 
 outside temperature permits, and with Spring's coming to 
 reinstate the order and machinery of their inner purpose. 
 The hibernating animals in their way have a similar but 
 far more limited power. The entire machinery of natural 
 clothing, bark, hair, feathers, and multiple modifications 
 of skin structures, developed in response to the need of 
 temperature-uniformity, and of withstanding the increased 
 radiation in cold weather, has been not only an enormous 
 tax upon energy and ingenuity, but has, of course, been a 
 great factor in governing the character and direction of 
 all biologic evolution. The few degrees of permissible 
 temperature-change in the higher animals and in man, shows 
 the complexity and delicacy of equilibrium of the typical 
 cell, and especially of the higher nerve-cells, and indicates 
 the heightened task, together with the necessity of com- 
 pensating for climatic changes and thermometric differ- 
 ences by artificial clothing, housing, and fuel, in which the 
 work of humanization and civilization so largely consists. 
 Just here we catch suggestions of how the laws of cell-ac- 
 
CYTOLOGY. QI 
 
 tivity and cell-function dependent on temperature, reach 
 out into all the institutions and developments of sociology 
 and commerce, dictating very decidedly the character and 
 work of government and the evolution of civilization itself. 
 If God could control and preserve cell-function more 
 easily, ours would be a very different world. All work and 
 outlook is rigidly conditioned on the enormously difficult 
 task of keeping His little instruments in a delicately poised 
 temper and temperature of flux and obedient plasticity. 
 
 That Biologos works only through the cell-mechanism, 
 and that through this mechanism he does work intelli- 
 gently, is exquisitely illustrated by the healing-processes 
 of wounds. A healing and knitting wound is quite as 
 good a proof of God as a sensible mind would desire. 
 Every tissue of the body, even the bones, has this beauti- 
 ful power, and in every instance there is an adjustment of 
 means to ends, an intelligent adaptation to the ever- 
 varying circumstances, that is consoling to behold. A 
 great surgeon has said that in some cases where callus 
 would be useless, a subtle wisdom seems to recognize the 
 fact in advance, and none is thrown out ; but that when it 
 would be of possible value, heroic efforts are made to 
 heal the fracture, and with superabundant callus. Of the 
 general means of healing, however, there is not the perfect 
 disposal that existed in the nascent or young tissue. In 
 scurvy and in other diseased conditions of the general 
 system, old healed wounds will open again, and scar- 
 tissue is evidently "making the best of a bad job." In 
 plants there is the same power of healing injuries as there 
 is in animals, and the similarity of the two processes is very 
 striking. With a nervous mechanism or tool to help, the 
 two processes would doubtless be identical. Much study 
 has been given to the healing of wounds in animal tissues, 
 
92 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 but little or none in plants, which, interesting enough for 
 its own sake, might also be of use in throwing a side-light 
 on human surgery. A surgeon-philosopher of vegetable 
 life is needed. 
 
 The entire result of bacteriological study and " Lister- 
 ism " is summed up in the very simple advice : " Keep 
 the healing wound clean and free from any interference of 
 living or inert material that will hinder the healing 
 process." The wisdom of the tissues will do the healing. 
 The surgeon's duty is to keep the interferences away, and 
 to help nature mechanically. Except cleanliness, all that 
 can be done outside of mechanics, or the moving and 
 removal of masses, Biologos will do ; because, except 
 indirectly through muscular contraction, He is incapable 
 of effecting molar motion. The action of the concerned 
 and related structures, or in the case of traumatism or 
 surgical disease of the entire individual, is often and almost 
 always indicative of powerlessness and subtle ingenuity 
 in trying to circumvent it. That is to say, God's agent, 
 man, endowed with intelligent disposal of mechanical 
 energy, denied to God directly, is silently but longingly 
 called and waited for. Man's function in the spiritual 
 and biological evolution of cosmic purpose is to aid and 
 supplement His work, to do as helper, and mechanically, 
 what Biologos can not directly do. Medicine and ethics 
 alike rest upon that basis. Thus co-working, these two, 
 Biologos and the surgeon, have established modern 
 surgery, and the splendid bravery of the surgeon has 
 always been followed up, completed, and complemented 
 by the divine loyalty of the inherent healing and curative 
 power resident in the tissues themselves. In the history 
 of every surgical operation, there shine between the lines 
 and behind the facts, the divine eyes of intelligent love, 
 
CYTOLOGY. 93 
 
 denied mechanical power, and calling for the hand of the 
 loyal surgeon for a moment's " lift." I had gathered but 
 may not describe a number of striking instances illustra- 
 tive of this dumb appeal of God, and failing to get it, of 
 His heroic roundabout methods, the best with the means 
 at disposal, taken to reach the end that intelligent control 
 of mechanic forces could give in a minute. The extrusion 
 of a renal calculus through the wall of the renal pelvis, 
 and on through intestinal wall, thence naturally got rid 
 of, with healing of the two vitally dangerous wounds ; 
 the cutting by peristalsis of several feet of intussuscepted 
 bowel, and its passage per rectum, with reinstitution of 
 the intestinal lumen ; the encysting even in the brain 
 itself of foreign bodies that could not be pushed out, and 
 thus rendering them harmless ; the history of every 
 sequestrum ; the long foresight and precaution against 
 possible accident shown in the allowance of means for 
 collateral circulation ; these and a hundred more 
 indeed, as I have said, every surgical case, to the sym- 
 pathetic seeing mind, speak the lesson emphasized. Many 
 volumes have been written and lives spent to discover 
 the philosophy of inflammation, but the essence of all 
 is that the intelligence of the cells rushes with loyal 
 response, like watchmen and repairers to a dike-break, 
 to repair the injury with all the zeal and means at dis- 
 posal. Inflammation has been called " a physiological 
 process strongly exaggerated," and Germain See has de- 
 fined it as " a struggle for life, not a destructive process, 
 but essentially a vital phenomenon, eminently reactionary, 
 against a morbid agent." The function of the white 
 blood-corpuscles, and that also of phagocytosis, show the 
 same sanitary intelligence of the cell. 
 
 The key of almost all the tormenting mysteries of our 
 
94 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 life is, I have said, the recognition of Biologos, i. e., com- 
 bined mentality and life, incarnating Himself in material 
 form, by the sole mechanism of the cell, and contending 
 with the infinite difficulty and labor consequent upon 
 poor, obstinate, and dead material, and upon untoward 
 circumstance. Try that key in whatever lock closes you 
 out from intellectual, ethic, esthetic, biologic, or socio- 
 logic satisfaction and answering, and you will be charmed 
 to see how the cosmos glows with light and comprehen- 
 sibility, when before we stood in dumb suffering against 
 the dead walls of fate, non-understandableness, and 
 despair. If my own twenty years of heart-hunger, mind- 
 hunger, and stoical abiding in the inevitable, have taught 
 me the value of loyalty to truth as seen, the end of the 
 imprisonment has also taught me that modern thought is 
 needlessly, blindly, and illogically atheistic and pessi- 
 mistic, or uselessly, formalistically, and irreligiously 
 theologic, and that by the aid of natural sane human 
 perception, this key will unlock for us an understanding 
 of the living purposive world, itself the very flesh and 
 body of a living, loving Father. 
 ORGANOFACTION is THE MECHANICALIZATION AND 
 
 AUTOMATONIZATION OF CELL-FUNCTION. The setting 
 apart of a number of physiologic units to perform one 
 task is evidently primarily a simple method of conjoining 
 the separate labors of individual cells, and thus massing 
 their work to a common use and end. Their special- 
 ization, based upon the possession of inherent capacity 
 by the undifferentiated cell to perform in a limited way 
 any possible function, is a further striking extension and 
 proof of that economy of labor that has been remarked 
 by every biologist. The differentiation of cells into con- 
 tractile elements constitutes the muscular system, and 
 
CYTOLOGY. 95 
 
 thus Biologos indirectly reaches mechanical power, other- 
 wise impossible to Him. The independent control of 
 mechanical force endows man with responsibility and 
 power, but its derived nature necessitates the conclusion 
 that man must hold its use in trust for and according to 
 the purposes of its giver. In the past and present transi- 
 tion-stages of development, Biologos commands the ser- 
 vice by instinct, poverty, religion, custom all such being 
 devices that enable Him to keep some control of the de- 
 puted power, until by intellectual perception combined 
 with loyalty, man shall choose the right use, when the gift 
 will be made more unconditional, and man will then 
 become the intelligent and free co-worker with the divine. 
 But there is one aspect of organofaction that to my 
 knowledge has not been recognized. I refer to the 
 evident fact that it mediates an automatonization, an 
 ordering, or an habitualization of function, with retain- 
 ment of superior control by the great Mechanician, exactly 
 analogous to every use of the body by individual 
 man. Every habitual act or art of man is first 
 performed with conscious volition. Slowly the first 
 difficult steps pass into unconscious habit, the mind 
 always occupied by higher, and as yet unlearned stages, 
 but retaining a slight consciousness of the lower auto- 
 matic actions, and always capable of instantly seizing 
 them and directing them with conscious purpose. Thus 
 the mind teaches the mechanism, as it were, to run 
 itself, or delegates to subordinate nerve-centres the 
 performance of repetitive functions whilst devoting 
 attention to higher objects. I think there are many 
 facts in life and biological science that go to show a 
 precisely similar method on the part of Biologos. The 
 most striking illustrations that occur to me are teratologi- 
 
96 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 cal facts, where an accidently-missed step of the process, 
 a " failure of connection," as it were, or some other yet 
 unknown cause, mars or complicates the higher design, 
 and the automatic machinery goes on to the completion 
 of a monstrosity in which a " slip," or a glaring loss of 
 control of the subordinate working-mechanism is pal- 
 pably evident. In certain tumor-formations a similar 
 lesson seems evident. A bunch of cells "told off" for a 
 specific function, gets misplaced, the organogenetic func- 
 tion loses control of them, seems thereafter to forget them, 
 and to become incapable of hindering them from their 
 prearranged development, and they run their automatic 
 course of life. Pathology is proverbially faulty or mor- 
 bid physiology, and pathology has many such negative or 
 positive illustrations of this biologic device. The per- 
 sistence of unused structures long after their possible 
 function has been forgotten and undiscoverable, will to 
 many minds suggest this as the explanation. 
 
 It should not be forgotten, however, that the possible 
 vicissitudes and catastrophes of the future may make 
 Biologos slow to utterly do away with old mechanisms 
 that may again be required. So doubtful and apparently 
 absurd as it may seem, we may yet be compelled to return 
 to the primitive "natural clothing" of the animal, and if 
 so the partially atrophied hair-bulbs would be at least a 
 happy economy. 
 
 A positive example of the truth I am seeking to bring 
 out is a well-established " law " that the longer an organism 
 has been subject to uniformity of condition and action 
 the less capable is it of adaptation to changed circum- 
 stances. Habit, of course, is a habit of the component 
 cells, and the uniformity of cell-action renders them less 
 plastic to the control of their extra-cellular master. Too 
 
CYTOLOGY. 97 
 
 long or too great uniformity of condition is therefore 
 harmful to responsive plasticity and adaptability. But 
 precisely on the automatonization (differentiation or 
 habit) of function must rest the certainty and uniform- 
 ity of nutrition and of progress, planting ever higher 
 functions and uses on the lower, whilst reserving 
 control of results, and without return to conscious 
 readaptations and changes of the lower. The automa- 
 tonization must be progressive, if the perfection of 
 personality is to be progressive. Now, incarnation in a 
 world subject to the tremendous differences of condition 
 of ours, every condition being of unforeseeably undue 
 length, shortness, or severity, the obstacles to an orderly 
 and progressive, or a desirably speedy perfection of the 
 objects of incarnation become tremendous. History, 
 geologic, anthropologic, or written, is strewn with the 
 sad evidences of the many desperate attempts and fail- 
 ures. Only by such a way of looking, a way that is more- 
 over justified by the facts about us, can we account for 
 the history of biological and sociological development, and 
 keep intact our faith in and reverence for an overruling 
 and in-living divinity. Especially in human history do 
 we find the most marked illustrations of how habit and 
 custom, good and necessary as they may be to give bases 
 for progressive advance, become by mere momentum and 
 excess of automatonization the veriest engines of evil. 
 That obedience to constituted governmental authority 
 was once a need and duty of superlative benefit to the 
 French people, there can be no more awful proof than the 
 continuance of that obedience when peasant-hunting was 
 an amusement of " nobles," and when that authority 
 levied 82 per cent, taxes to indulge in Versaillesism. But 
 repetition stares us in the face all the time, and our own 
 
 7 
 
98 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 modern method of concocting thousands of millionaires 
 on the infamous plea of " protection to American labor" 
 all the while inviting the outside world of " pauper labor" 
 to come here and compete for lowered wages and buy 
 manufactured articles at advanced prices, a happy illus- 
 tration of the machine running away with engineer, is 
 also an unhappy illustration of the possible depth of 
 human diabolic selfishness. I do not argue either for or 
 against " the restriction of immigration " ; I argue only 
 against the hypocritic illogicality. 
 
 In the last analysis this phenomena of the automatoniza- 
 tion of function is a mere consequence of the specialization 
 of cell-function. The momentum of social forces carrying 
 the agent past the point of objective utility, constantly 
 seen in historic events, has its origin in specialized cells 
 outnumbering and outlasting the lessened need of func- 
 tion. Life never voluntarily releases possession of a foot- 
 hold once gained, and the differentiated cell-agents 
 partially denied either nourishment or proper activity 
 persist in function after the need has passed away. 
 Thus arises disease of the physiological as well as of 
 the social body. It is one of the consequences of un- 
 pliable material and of fickle circumstance, that Biologos 
 has not yet entirely conquered. The conscious loyal 
 helpfulness of man when it shall awaken and respond, 
 will wondrously aid in the restoration of the balance of 
 " supply and demand," not only in the human world but 
 in the vegetable and animal as well. " Teach me Thy way, 
 O Lord," is the prayer of the good man, whether he be 
 meek or mighty. The bad man says there is neither 
 Lord, nor the way of the Lord, and derides the most 
 beautiful characteristic of teachableness. 
 
 The theory of De Vries, the Dutch botanist, also lends 
 
CYTOLOGY. 99 
 
 support to the view of a diffused intelligence using all 
 parts and cells of the nascent organism for metaphysi- 
 cal purposes and by metaphysical means. The latest 
 researches in cellular physiology and histology are 
 slowly putting to one side the theoretical, cumbrous 
 mechanism of heredity devised by Weissmann, and 
 the still more materialistic one of Darwin. Darwin's 
 pangenesis-theory supposed that each of the different 
 cells of the body gives off germ-cells capable of repro- 
 ducing themselves, and that these gemmules penetrating 
 the specific generative cells thus reproduce in the off- 
 spring all the peculiarities of the parent body. Weiss- 
 mann supposes two classes of cells, the germ-cells and 
 the body-cells, the first transmitting in unbroken con- 
 tinuity from generation to generation the hereditary 
 characters. This ancestral plasma is therefore possessed 
 of " immortality." The second class, the body-cells, com- 
 posing the body-plasma, are used in building the tissues 
 of the individual body. De Vries proposes to designate 
 the cell in its entirety protoplast, and its different organs 
 or parts he terms pangenes. All parts of the cell not the 
 nucleus or the chromatin rods alone but the chromato- 
 phores, chlorophyll-grains, starch-spots, membranes, walls, 
 and even the vacuoles all parts are living, vital, separate, 
 independent organisms, of which the cell is the com- 
 pound organism or colony. If this is true, as it appears 
 to be admitted, there is plainly seen the invisible hand of 
 Biologos at work differentiating, shaping, modifying, and 
 using any and all means and parts of this little cell-uni- 
 verse. According to De Vries it is not the nucleus alone, 
 but all the pangenes help to effect the hereditary trans- 
 mission of organization. In offspring the pangenes grow 
 into separate organisms of a character like those of the 
 
IOO THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 parent. What is this but to say that Biologos continues 
 His work from the point attained, from the advantage 
 gained, and with the cellTmechanism acquired. We pro- 
 ceed to a distant point by starting from where we stand. 
 The cell as it exists must form the basis of the cell that 
 is to be. Absolute and sudden change there can never 
 be, only modification of the existing mechanism. Slowly 
 but surely there is shaping itself in the minds of the 
 genuinely scientific the necessary recognition of the truth 
 that a metaphysical life is working out through the physi- 
 cal cell an extra-cellular purpose or intelligent will, which 
 is cramped and hindered of free effectualization by the 
 fact of cell-habit, cell-mechanism, and cell-nutrition. The 
 frank acknowledgment of this extra-cellular mechanician 
 would speedily resolve a multitude of mysteries and 
 difficulties that now block progress, because of the im- 
 possible attempt to explain cellular physiology by purely 
 material or physical principles. In many organisms the 
 so-called germ-plasma, or, in other words, God's ability 
 to reproduce an organ or an organism, is plainly scattered 
 throughout the body. Precisely ! and because God Him- 
 self is scattered throughout the body. In these less dif- 
 ferentiated organisms the cells are still so plastic that 
 working from where He stands, and with the acquired 
 material, He can reproduce lost parts. Thus in the newt 
 or lobster the amputated tail or claw will regrow, the 
 snail's lost eye re-form, and an Italian naturalist, Mingaz- 
 zini, has seen the entire brain of Tunicata, with all its 
 processes, develop after its entire destruction. Every 
 lover of flowers knows how a whole plant of certain kinds 
 will grow from a small part, or a " slip " stuck in the 
 ground. 
 
 ~i5_ 
 
 IBRAR"> 
 
 ;** 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 SENSATION. 
 
 THE mystery and wonderfulness of sensation have 
 hardly been appreciated, often not recognized by 
 physiologists. From the ordinary text-books one 
 would gather that when a series of waves of air or of ether 
 appears to us as tone or as color, it is quite as much a matter 
 of course as when one pan of a balance goes up and the 
 other down. But a moment's reflection shows us no dis- 
 coverable relation or likeness between the stimulus and 
 the sensation. There is as great or a greater difference 
 between any two color-sensations as between the sensation 
 of color and that of tone, and there is no hint to our minds 
 why either should be what it is, or why a certain stimulus 
 should produce a certain result. But to an alert mind 
 nothing so inevitably forces the suggestion of a hyper- 
 physical, designing, choosing, utilizing, ingenious artist 
 and mechanician, as does the study of sensation. A ma- 
 terialistic or an atheistic physiologist is certainly the most 
 illogical and absurd being that can be imagined, and yet 
 one as much expects to hear from every second physiolo- 
 gist the sardonic sneer at " vital force," as to hear the 
 heart called a pump or the lungs an oxygenating machine. 
 Every sensation and sensing mechanism shows a choice 
 from an almost infinitely extended series of wave-stimuli 
 of a limited, Useful, and utilizable portion, and a rejection 
 of those not useful or utilizable. Every one shows a pur- 
 
 101 
 
THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 posive and a specific function of value to the organism, 
 and such adaptations and modifications as are peculiarly 
 useful to it. Every utilized stimulus appears on the 
 mental side, or to consciousness, as something so utterly 
 different from its original nature that, were it not for the 
 sequence of stimulus and sensation, the latter would never 
 be suspected of having any relation to the first. The 
 mechanism intermediating the known cause and the 
 mysterious effect is one that shows peripheral receiving, 
 or end-organs, at every point of the skin, and from every 
 particle of tissue, that lead to a unifying, responding, 
 central intelligence, upon whose control and government 
 the life and function of each part and of the whole de- 
 pends. The mechanism is clumsily, but so far as it goes, 
 accurately analogized by that of the switch-board and the 
 city telegraph-office, which, from the local offices in every 
 part of the land, receive accurate reports in cipher-mes- 
 sages, understood by no operator or clerk, of every ex- 
 ternal condition, and through this central governing office, 
 again by cipher, orders and controls every distant part in 
 accordance with need, desire, and circumstance. But as 
 the writing and written telegram is unlike the transmitting 
 instrument and Morse alphabet, as the electricity is an 
 alien utilized force, as the manufacture of dots, dashes, 
 and spaces first into the known-unknown jumble of Roman 
 letters, and then by the solitary intelligence into mean- 
 ingful and understandable messages, just so is the crude 
 stimulus of sensation passed through non-understood 
 biological mechanisms, by means of foreign forces, and is 
 translated into significance and usefulness only by the 
 ganglionic centers and their manipulating mental governor. 
 The importance of the nerves (telegraph wires), and of 
 the central ganglionic or nervous centers (home office) is 
 
SENS A TION. 103 
 
 shown by the fact that embryologically these structures 
 are among the first organs created, and that in death by 
 starvation they are not touched. Neurologic life outlasts 
 somatic or molecular life. 
 
 There are multitudes of facts in physiology and in 
 pathology that show the highest biological control in 
 closer and more immediate contact with nerve, ganglionic, 
 and cerebral structures, and through them governing the 
 semi-automatonized peripheral organs. The higher nerv- 
 ous structures are immensely complex in atomic constitu- 
 tion, and the greater the molecular complexity the greater 
 is the contained force, the more unstable, and the more 
 subject are they to delicate disturbance i. e., the more 
 absorbed attention and unerring accuracy of adjustment 
 are required of Biologos. Hence in death by starvation 
 we understand why there is a preservation of the imme- 
 diate organs of control and a feeding of these upon the 
 muscles and less important peripheral organs. 
 
 Following the invitation a step further one may truth- 
 fully say that the whole body, the generative organs ex- 
 cepted, is but the mechanism of nutrition of the higher 
 sensations and the brain. The body exists to furnish the 
 cerebral centers with prepared food, just as the vegetable 
 world viewed biologically exists to furnish the animal world 
 with similar food. The higher is the last formed, the most 
 difficult, and the most complex, but it is just this that is 
 most precious, and significant, all of which, in biological 
 development, shows the unrolling purpose, and the succes- 
 sive and progressive preliminariness of all the preceding 
 stages. It is the last that alone explains all that went 
 before, and it is the coming that will alone explain the 
 present. God before all, through, foreseeing, and still 
 preparing all, is profoundly evident. But it should not 
 
104 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 fail of observance that the purposivenessand intermediate- 
 ness of every stage does not, as in the telegraph or any 
 other analogy, reduce any structure to pure mechanicalism 
 or to perfect automatonization. This is evidenced in the 
 healing of wounds and numerous other facts. The subor- 
 dination and differentiation of function are never absolute 
 and complete, but at any instant, like any good military 
 commander, Biologos may step down from the highest 
 command and generalship, to lead, encourage, and use 
 single cell-companies, or the smallest of " squads," with 
 perfect command and with definite purpose. The con- 
 sciously-acquired function never passes entirely into the 
 unconscious or automatic. Representation and deputiza- 
 tion never become forgetful of responsibility, because 
 final authority is lodged only in one mind, whatever agents 
 and helps are devised and allowed. 
 
 Such a chief help and agent is the nervous system, but, 
 to the last correlating centre, its every particle is plainly 
 though not absolutely an instrument, a tool, though not 
 solely a tool, of the mind. Not solely, I say, because it 
 is the unique quality of God, to overflow all He does with 
 such largeness of love and plenitude of life that each in- 
 carnation, however subordinate, has joy in being. I am 
 quite sure the tree and every vegetable growing thing has 
 satisfactions, aspirations, delights, and a degree of con- 
 sciousness that reward it for its limited powers and lowly 
 uses, and is evidence of the beautiful divinity always 
 larger than His work and ever having pleasure in His work. 
 So in a higher degree with the animal, and so of course 
 superbly with God's highest deputy, man. But even each 
 cell and each organ has its own special and indisputable 
 part in the silent song of all right-doing things. What- 
 ever God touches is ever afterwards ennobled, and the 
 
SENSATION. 105 
 
 veriest rag or piece of leather of the ash-bin is possessed 
 of divine memories and qualities that arouse in the clair- 
 voyant mind a thousand thoughts and suggestions of its 
 far-way origin and history. Organization is like the 
 photographer's sensitive plate of which, when once God 
 has flashed into it His life, the dead particles will ever 
 afterward show the lineaments of the divine face, until 
 elemental decomposition is utterly complete. 
 
 A noteworthy fact about sensation is that with two ex- 
 ceptions its stimuli, of whatever kind, are vibrations. The 
 first exception is the muscular sense, that of weight, ten- 
 sion, or muscular effort, the least useful and the least 
 used of all the senses, so inaccurate and dumb that we 
 see how difficult it is for spirit to reach any sort of rela- 
 tionship with masses and molar motions, even of the body 
 itself. 
 
 In touch, the pressure sense, the stimulus is of mass, 
 but of such slight degrees that it approaches the delicacy 
 of the infinitesimal forces of the other senses, and, 
 moreover, the molar force is undoubtedly at once re- 
 ceived and mediated by the crowding of the molecular 
 vibrations of the end-organs upon the delicately poised 
 molecular balance of the true tactile element. With any 
 high degree of pressure, there is speedy paralysis, and 
 pressure of whole organs is perceived as the pain of in- 
 jury, or of interference with organic function. All pain 
 is the evidence of heightened or interfered-with molecular 
 or nutritional function always, one recognizes, a question 
 of infinitesimal vibrations perceived or utilized. 
 
 But however caused, all peripheral stimuli must at once 
 be transformed into nerve-force, of which we know little 
 except that it is vibratory. At the ultimate center the 
 agency of the transfer to spirit, the final mechanism of 
 
106 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 the relations of Biologos and matter, is beyond question 
 that of the molecular and atomic vibrations within the 
 highly organized cell, which is the means of influence 
 upon or from the metaphysical. 
 
 We now know that the skin has limited areas and related 
 end-organs, of course with intermediating and back-run- 
 ning nerve-fibers, for the sensations of cold, and yet others 
 for those of heat. Impinging atomic and molecular 
 vibrations below the health-norm in number are per- 
 ceived as " cold," and those above the standard are 
 perceived as " heat." But out of the infinite range of 
 such degrees of vibration, only a tiny part or scale is 
 chosen and utilized by the organism. These crude senses 
 are plainly those of the lowest uses, such as defending, 
 guarding, helping, and they have little psychic significance 
 or value, except, and then in a still partial degree, when 
 the mind is deprived of light and sound. In such cases 
 there is possible a wonderful education and psychic ex- 
 tension of them. God can always as it were, re-enter 
 and live again in his old dwellings, set them to semi-auto- 
 matic tasks, remould and re-use his humblest still-plastic 
 mechanisms, and make them shine with unwonted light 
 and glory. 
 
 I once experienced an odd series of feelings that 
 brought vividly to mind the fact that life, emotion, and 
 happiness are compatible with great differences in and 
 deprivations of ordinary mental stimuli. A social gather- 
 ing was going on in a large hall, and the sounds of excel- 
 lent music, dancing, laughter, and gayety came from this 
 room where a hundred or more happy folk were passing 
 happy hours. Upon opening the door and being ushered 
 into the hall the room was found to be as dark as mid- 
 night. Not a thing could be seen. It was the social 
 
SENSATION. ID/ 
 
 hour of the inmates of an institution for the blind ! The 
 first uncanny, creepy feeling was soon dissipated by the 
 thought of congratulation that indomitable mind and 
 spontaneous emotion, though deprived of light and vision, 
 could still find satisfaction and play through the medium 
 of indirect sensation. Soul still conquered sense ! 
 
 The same thought is exemplified and emphasized by a 
 consideration of the report of a convention of deaf-mutes. 
 One is apt thoughtlessly to pass over the beginning of the 
 report that says, " The meeting was called to order by 
 the president, who rapped vigorously on the desk to 
 attract the attention of his audience." An audience of 
 deaf-mutes called to order by a noise ! Those who see a 
 blind man tapping the street in front of him, as he walks, 
 are likely to think that this is solely to avoid objects that 
 the cane may strike. It is also to avoid objects that the 
 cane does not strike because to the blind man's ears and 
 hand there is a timbre from the blows upon the pavement 
 near its edge, near posts or steps, that is very different 
 from the resonance when the blow is not near such objects. 
 It is said that blinded bats are able to fly unharmed, 
 avoiding objects in their flight by means of the percep- 
 tion of an increase of barometric pressure of the air close 
 to those objects so sensitive to variations of pressure is 
 the expanded interdigital membrane.* 
 
 A suggestion is indirectly aroused by this fact as to the 
 " relaying," if one may so speak, of crude and faint stimu- 
 lation by the mechanism of the nerve-ganglia and centers. 
 There is a nervous device that reinforces and transforms 
 whilst also repeating the subtle, weak, and in themselves 
 
 * The experimental blinding of the bat, however, was not necessary, 
 because millions of bats winter in Mammoth Cave, miles from the faintest 
 ray of light. 
 
108 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 meaningless, hints of the external world that we call 
 sense-impression. It is the living prototype of the electri- 
 cian's "relay" and microphone combined. Thus all 
 man's mechanic devices are but poor imitations and repe- 
 titions of what Life's vital forces have long ago brought 
 to wondrous perfection ! 
 
 In the deaf-mutes' convention prayer was said, the roll 
 called, addresses made, business conducted, and long 
 sessions held all in the sign-language all in silence ! 
 "The amended constitution and by-laws were adopted 
 after a lively debate." If present, our blind friends would 
 certainly have thought the meeting very strange and 
 stupid. But the success in raising funds for a proposed 
 home for aged and infirm mutes, and the discussion of 
 other worthy objects, made the gathering a very interest- 
 ing one for the attending delegates. 
 
 According to the Paris correspondent of the London 
 Times the method of analyzing motion by the chrono- 
 photograph, which has been so happily applied by M. 
 Marey in the case of moving animals, such as horses run- 
 ning or birds and insects in flight, has recently been 
 employed by M. G. Demeny, a preparator at the physio- 
 logical station of M. Marey, to examine the movements of 
 the lips in speaking. He has obtained results which show 
 that the form of the mouth is quite different for the dif- 
 ferent articulate sounds. With these photographs com- 
 bined in a zoetrope he has reproduced the movements of 
 the lips by synthesis. An ordinary person finds it diffi- 
 cult to read the words by the animated pictures ; but a 
 deaf-mute who has been accustomed to read from the 
 lips of a speaker, found it easy to do so from the photo- 
 graphs. A young pupil of the National Institute of 
 Deaf-Mutes in France could read the vowels and diph- 
 
SENS A TION. ICQ 
 
 thongs as well as the labials. The first experiments were 
 of course, not all that could be desired ; but, in bringing 
 the matter before the French Academy of Sciences, M. 
 Demeny expressed the hope that in continuing his re- 
 searches he would be able to develop a new method of 
 educating deaf-mutes by sight from more perfect photo- 
 graphic images. Obviously a magic-lantern lecture might 
 be delivered to an audience of deaf-mutes in this way. 
 
 The encouraging and deeply suggestive fact of rescu- 
 ing the faculty and power of speech in these deaf-mutes 
 is one that commands our sympathy. There is no limit 
 to the ingenuity of Life and to her triumphs over adverse 
 circumstances and deprived stimuli. We have all read 
 of another striking example very different in kind, of 
 course, but illustrating the same great truth. One of 
 England's greatest statesmen was blind ; so was a great 
 numismatologist ; and another of her great men, a hunter 
 and rider of unexampled daring, a peerless sportsman, an 
 excellent business man, and an active administrator, had 
 neither arms, hands, legs, nor feet. One is reminded of 
 the philosopher's answer to the Millerite who excitedly 
 told him that the world was to come to an end that day : 
 " Oh, well ! " was the answer, " we can get on very well 
 without it." 
 
 It would seem that if loss of sight were added to loss 
 of hearing and speech, naught but tragedy and melancholy 
 could be left, or that merely the routine life of the lowest 
 functions such as those of nutrition, would persist. But 
 there are few happier and brighter-minded people than 
 Laura Bridgman was and than Helen Keller is. Another, 
 a man likewise deprived of these great avenues of influence 
 from and communication with the external world, without 
 which life to us would seem so barren, travelled all over 
 
I 10 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 the United States alone, raised a family, and lived out his 
 period of brave and satisfied life. He could talk with 
 anybody by means of the ingenious device of tattooing 
 the English alphabet upon his hand. Words and sentences 
 were spelled out and recognized by the positions of the 
 letters touched. 
 
 The emotional life of these imprisoned souls, cut off 
 from so many relations and avenues of interchange with 
 the external world, must be all the more vivid and hyper- 
 sensitive. A coarse jar of the hyperesthetic receiving end- 
 organ of sense is transformed into a rude thunder by the 
 highly attuned and delicately responsive microphone of 
 the inner sensation-making mechanism. Thus the possi- 
 bility of causing sharp sorrow is a necessary concomitant 
 of the ease of eliciting joy. It is the glory of civilization 
 to care for such and shield them from pain, and it is the 
 delight of medicine to minister to them its healing. It is 
 hard to sympathetically understand and realize the inner 
 life of these almost windowless minds. How strange must 
 seem to them the dreams and somnambulisms of never-to- 
 be awakened emotions, the dumb reaching-out toward 
 reality of denied possibilities, the unsatisfied hungerings 
 of imprisoned sensibilities. Their minds must be thrilled 
 by dim hereditary echoes and the far-away caresses of 
 ghostly ancestral hands. With what pathetic half-respon- 
 siveness do these shut-in souls catch the shimmer of 
 long-departed life, that comes to them like the last faint 
 evening flushings reflected from distant mountain-tops to 
 valley dwellers that are in the night. 
 
 The sense of taste is a response to the molecular vibra- 
 tions of dissolvable bodies, and. its purpose and use are 
 evident. But even with as lowly and temporary a func- 
 tion as this there is proof of self-satisfaction, a beneficence 
 
SENSA TION. 1 1 1 
 
 that surcharges pure use with a luxury of pleasure and of 
 diversity, and is never content with leaving brute utility 
 without a touch of useless but delightful heaven. If 
 Biologos were satisfied with telling the eater simply what 
 was good and what was bad food, varying degrees of one 
 kind of sensation would have been sufficient warning. 
 Bitterness, pungency, acidity, and a hundred other un- 
 pleasant tastes, would have been alike or with varying 
 degrees of disagreeableness, whilst of pleasant things a 
 thousand delightful-tasting fruits and edible goods would 
 have been alike, or all simply savory more or less, not, as 
 now, with the exquisite differences as from utterly different 
 orders or types of stimuli, that give a passing pleasure 
 and invite to an educational examination, and to the crea- 
 tion of new forms. 
 
 Similarly, the perception of the vibrations of volatile 
 bodies by the mechanism of smell is a function not only 
 of utility, but has exquisite extensions, psychic pleasures, 
 and uses, that recall the same kind elaboration and 
 bountifulness. But our atrophied organ is indifferent to 
 a million of existing perfumes. The uses of the sense of 
 smell in wild animals are numerous and of an exquisite 
 perfection. The odors of every animal, peculiar to each 
 family and even to each individual, are the determining 
 agents in warning against enemies, in preserving the hives 
 of bees from intruders, in telling of the existence of water, 
 or of better pasturage, as many, it is said, as five hundred 
 miles away, in telling of approaching storms, in protecting 
 (by disgust, etc.,) from enemies or noxious agents, or in 
 avoiding toxic substances or malnutritional food. It is 
 said that 1-46,000,000 of a milligram of mercaptan can 
 be perceived by the sense of smell. 
 
 But in the uses and out-building of the sensation of 
 
112 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 hearing we stand amazed at the exuberant and spon- 
 taneous life beyond any possible use. Gratuity is heaped 
 upon abundance, and, with swelling heart, the mind 
 through music, as Beethoven said of himself,* comes into 
 close union with God. The perfection of the sense of 
 hearing, and the relatively complete utilization of all 
 lengths of aerial waves, provokes comment and inquiry. 
 There is considerable evidence and much proof that insects 
 and other living organisms have sensory mechanisms that 
 react to aerial wave-lengths far smaller than our own ears 
 respond to. The upper limit of perception of the human 
 ear varies in different individuals, but below some 5,000 
 vibrations per second, our ears and auditory centers have 
 a marvellous perfection of response to wave rapidity, 
 wave-dimension, and wave-shape, respectively called by 
 us pitch, loudness, and timbre. When one ponders upon 
 the individual perception and easy analysis of the multi- 
 tudinous synchronous tones and qualities of tones of a 
 full orchestra, one is lost in wonder that the auditory 
 mechanism can intermediate and unravel the whole. 
 
 And gratitude outruns wonder when we think of the 
 magnificent unnecessariness of the gift. For simple 
 utility's sake the whole could undoubtedly have been 
 made infinitely simpler, danger foretold, and needed help 
 gained as to the environment without the magical richness 
 and endowment superadded to the necessary. This per- 
 fection of mechanism has been possible because of the 
 combined strength and fluidity of the stimulus. Of the 
 two gaseous oceans, the air and the ether, in which we 
 live, the latter has acted with such incomprehensible small- 
 
 * " I well know that God is nearer to me in my art than to others. I com- 
 municate with Him without fear ; evermore have I acknowledged Him 
 and understood Him." 
 
^^ SENSATION. 113 
 
 ness and lightness of force that it has presented the 
 frightful obstacles to the elaboration of its reacting 
 mechanism to which I shall allude by and by. But in the 
 aerial waves there is a sufficient strength of force, and at 
 the same time a sufficiently high degree of gaseousness or 
 fluidity, to assure pliancy and rapidity of act consonant 
 both with mental speed of movement and suppleness, and 
 with the concentrated play of external event. The mind 
 itself would most certainly be more at home with a stim- 
 ulus and mechanism infinitely more subtle and rapidly- 
 acting than air and auditory apparatus, but the difficulties 
 of creating a mechanism respondent to such slight and 
 rapid undulations is enormous and is exemplified in the 
 case of the eye. To sound-waves, however, though for 
 the highest mental use greatly too crude and slow, Biolo- 
 gos, with characteristic ingenuity, has a recipient and 
 intermediating mechanism that gives us two wondrous 
 languages of emotional and psychic life. Speech and 
 Music ! what suggestions the simple words call up ! How 
 intolerably pathetic would our life be without them ap- 
 parently, and now that we know them because, Hush ! 
 there ever recurs the inexhaustible idea of the love and 
 richness of God, as the warning thought quickly breaks 
 into our thankfulness that neither tree nor animal has 
 these awful blessings, and yet are they happy, still are 
 they ever satisfied. The compensations and bounteous- 
 ness of blessing of the lower are not lessened by the 
 superlative lavishness of the unexpected gift of the 
 higher. So kind, so kind, is the dear Father of us all! 
 
 It is often said that music is the one creation of abso- 
 lute novelty of the human being, and that herein man 
 shows himself, as it were, superior to God. The thought 
 would be unworthy of mention were it not seriously and 
 
114 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 persistently repeated by the human egotist. How He 
 must smile at such childish prattle ! Even if it were true 
 we might at least thank Him for the instruments, for the 
 permission, and for the outfitting of neurological and men- 
 tal mechanism. " He that planted the ear, shall He not 
 hear? And He that formed the eye, shall He not see ? " 
 But the egotist did not know the birds. Even the few 
 poor, dwarfish, prosaic little birds that hang to the fringes 
 of our temperate-zone civilization show him gladness and 
 music at the heart of life. But it is only in tropical birds, 
 they that have not been blasted by the devilish impiety 
 of man's cruelty, that can sing as God would have them 
 sing. I would call particular attention to Hudson's 
 exquisite chapter on music and dancing in birds and 
 animals, in The Naturalist in La Plata. Among other 
 things he says: 
 
 " My experience is that mammals and birds with few excep- 
 tions probably there are no exceptions possess the habit of in- 
 dulging frequently in more or less regular or set performances, 
 with or without sound, or composed of sound exclusively, often of 
 the most complex and beautiful forms. . . . Many songsters in 
 widely different families of birds possess the habit of soaring and 
 falling alternately while singing, and in some cases all the aerial 
 postures and movements, the swift or slow descent, vertical, 
 often with oscillations, or in a spiral, and sometimes with a suc- 
 cession of smooth, oblique lapses, seem to have an admirable 
 correspondence with the changing and falling voice melody 
 and motion being united in a more intimate and beautiful way 
 than in the most perfect and poetic forms of human dancing." 
 
 Note especially his discription of the song of the white- 
 banded mocking-bird. Of the spur-winged crested 
 screamer, a noble bird as large as a swan, he says : 
 
SENSATION. 115 
 
 " Its favorite pastime is to soar upwards until it loses itself to 
 sight in the blue ether, whence it pours forth its resounding 
 choral notes, which reach the distant earth clarified, and with 
 a rythmic swell and fall as of chiming bells. It also sings by 
 night, * counting the hours,' as the gauchos say, and when they 
 have congregated together in tens of thousands, the mighty roar 
 of their combined voices produces an astonishingly grand effect." 
 
 Hudson rightly judges that the songs and flights and 
 dances of birds and animals are not, as Darwin would have 
 us believe, due to erotic fury. He says they are due to 
 the genuine pure gladness in the heart of the bird. For 
 example, the male birds often arrive first in their migra- 
 tions, and even with the female absent and pairing time a 
 month hence, their songs burst forth most divinely. Wal- 
 lace also, together with Ruskin, agrees that brilliancy of 
 color goes with vigor of life and purity of substance. 
 
 But the egotist also forgot to say who created the 
 mechanism of the human voice and of song, the memory 
 of melody, and the grief or the gladness of heart that finds 
 expression in the pathos and splendor of music. For 
 purposes of speech alone, for the simple necessity of the 
 mechanical intercommunication of ideas, a monotone is all 
 that is necessary. But what a glorious superabundance of 
 gift in the octave-ranging, palpitant richness, and soul- 
 expressiveness of the human voice.* 
 
 * Probably as ludicrous a thing as ever happened was the experience 
 of my friend, Professor Roswell Park, of Buffalo, N. Y. A man's life had 
 been saved by the beautiful surgical skill of a. successful laryngectomy. When 
 health had been restored, my friend proposed to his patient the insertion of 
 an artificial larynx, so that vowel-tones, or true voice could be added to the 
 whisper that necessarily resulted from the absence of the vocal cords. This 
 apparently highly desirable thing was done, but the tone, of course, was uni- 
 form ; there was no change of pitch possible to the mechanical larynx, and 
 expression, modulation, timbre, everything that makes voice pleasant and 
 
Il6 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 But over and above all such human conceits hovers the 
 absorbing thought : What man does is God's doing, be- 
 cause man is His work and is Himself at work. Whatever 
 is the honor and glory of the one is that of the other, and 
 man should be as willing to acknowledge the symphony 
 and orchestra to be the labor of the Divine Artist, as that 
 magnanimous musician is glad to allow the honor to His 
 dear children, in whose music He not only rejoices, but in 
 which He is theme, harmony, and player at once. " He is 
 the Singer and the Song." 
 
 Between waves of a few thousand a second up to those 
 of some four hundred millions of millions a second there 
 is a blank space that is so huge in extent that it suggests the 
 possibility of a million orders of sensation, each as different 
 and each of as large range as either that of hearing or that 
 of seeing. If only there had been the stimuli ! If, instead 
 of two oceans, we lived in a thousand, each of different 
 degrees of fluidity, and if we were outfitted with a sense- 
 mechanism for each as beautiful as that for air-waves and 
 that for ether-waves ! Eternity would then be too short to 
 exhaust the pleasures of sensation, each type having its own 
 world of opera and composition, as diverse and as progres- 
 sive as that of music, or that of painting. In a world, the 
 specific gravity of which is different from our own, the 
 
 more than useful was absent. The man could speak, convey ideas perfectly, but 
 when he tried to give emphasis, mtanccs, shadings, diverse meanings, and 
 especially when he tried to express emotion, anger, or resentment, there 
 was only the monotonous drone and squeak of the intolerable machine. 
 Nothing could control the convulsive laughter of surgeon and assistants. The 
 poor man's indignation sought outlet in speech, but the very words of wrath 
 were turned to outrageous absurdity by the infernal device. In a spasm of 
 ebullient rage he tore the mechanism out of his throat, cursed the man who 
 had saved his life, and is probably running and hoarsely whispering invec- 
 tives at him still. He never came back. 
 
SEA T SA TION. 1 1 7 
 
 atmosphere of a different density, and with other conditions 
 of life varying from those in our own globe, the size, appen- 
 dages, and conformation, of the body of the inhabitants 
 would necessarily vary largely from our own ; but it is in the 
 differences of possible sensation that the greatest variations 
 would occur. Should such, to us, new worlds of possible 
 sensation exist out there, we would never understand them, 
 because it is impossible to tell another what a sensation is. 
 Indeed, in our sight and hearing, extension beyond the 
 limits already set is hardly possible. In color-sensation 
 how we desire eyes that would react to waves above and 
 especially octaves below our present confined ability. 
 There are the waves, steadily pouring upon our eyes, but 
 wholly unutilized, nay, the eye has even to shield itself 
 from these rejected parts of the spectrum by special 
 devices. The entire series of magnetic and electric waves 
 constantly streaming through and about us are also un- 
 utilized, unless the suggestion I have thrown out be true 
 that the Homing Instinct is carried out by means of a 
 mechanism responsive to the magnetic currents of the 
 earth. The reason for this neglect to devise a reacting 
 sense-mechanism to these waves, is because of their 
 changeability, the inutility of the function to the develop- 
 ing organism, and the inefficiency of the stimulus. This 
 will be made more apparent later. 
 
 There are many facts that prove that the development 
 of the function of vision has been extremely difficult. 
 The function is not only dependent upon, but it consists 
 in a retinal reaction to fine degrees of heat, the light-waves 
 of the ether being translated by a sensation into color, 
 according to their sizes or heat-energy. 
 
 The exclusion from vision of the ultra-violet and the 
 infra-red rays of the spectrum is because of their relative 
 
IlS THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 weakness and inconstancy. As to the ultra-violet, the 
 insignificance of the total energy of these rays is perceived 
 by noticing the tiny curve and extent of activity of these 
 undulations figured in the little triangle beyond H of a 
 normal spectrum. Not only is the energy too inconsider- 
 able, as compared with that of the adjacent red space, to 
 produce sufficient organic reaction of the ocular mechan- 
 ism, but the varying quantities of such rays, resulting 
 from the ever-changing remnants left over after the ab- 
 sorptions of the atmosphere have been satisfied, render 
 constancy of stimulus impossible, and the eye naturally 
 fails to develop response to such stimuli, or it is forced to 
 exclude them from the retina, because they are so weak 
 and capricious. Moreover, we must not fail to recollect 
 the exaggerated importance and mistaken supposition of 
 extent of the rays of this part of the spectrum, naturally 
 engendered by their influence in photography. A line 
 must be drawn somewhere, and the remarkable fact seems 
 to be that the violet rays should not also have been ex- 
 cluded from color-production. The limitation of the 
 chromatic scale should not be a cause of critical complaint, 
 but its extension is rather a source of delighted wonder. 
 
 The infra-red rays so rich in the total amount of energy, 
 and so magnificent in the range of their wave-lengths, do 
 not produce visual results because though three fifths of the 
 total energy of the spectrum is in this region, it is spread 
 over a space six times as great. Now it is apparent that 
 amplitude of range beyond a certain necessary and satis- 
 factory amount, would be of no advantage. Extension of 
 the visual function to these regions would imply immense 
 complications of the ocular and cerebral mechanism, com- 
 plications and intricacies that, if in any way possible, would 
 hardly give any considerable advantage to their possessor. 
 
SENSATION. 
 
 In the next place we must note that this great stretch 
 is one continuous succession of peaks and valleys, or in 
 other words, that its energies are not constant and regu- 
 lar. Cool places alternate with hot places, and though 
 the shorter wave infra-red peaks are as high as some 
 parts of the visible curve upon the other side, they are 
 not regularly so, and during a fall of the general supply 
 of the radiant energy, as in an obscure day, or in the 
 morning or evening, these valleys would drop down to a 
 level where their maximum of energy would be very small 
 or even nil. And this fact of a continual pulsation of the 
 general amount of the stimulus must be borne in mind. 
 It is not sufficient to say that the great space from 0.80 to 
 0.90 contains an energy as high as that between 0.40 and 
 0.50. Upon this last side of the curve there is no valley 
 at all, whilst just within A we have a tremendous one that 
 with diminished general illumination would make a break, 
 sharp and decisive, between the two visible portions. 
 The existence of this deep and canon-like chasm at A 
 seems to me highly suggestive. At this point there is 
 the boundary-line of visibility. Did this cool notch not 
 exist, it is easily conceivable that the retina might have 
 learned to react to the stimulus extending so far as 
 wave-length 0.95, or even to the next great cool space 
 at 1.15, had there likewise been no such fall as is seen at 
 0.95. But the great ebb and flow of radiant energy 
 every twenty-four hours, complicated always, and 
 rendered more highly inconstant by the varying con- 
 ditions of atmospheric cloud and dust, of shade, of vege- 
 tation or hill, of longitude and equinox all these sources 
 of variation and inconstancy proved to the hard-tasked ocu- 
 lar and psychic Mechanician that He could rely with con- 
 fidence only on that part of the spectrum, or upon those 
 
I2O THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 wave-lengths that under all conditions were strongest and 
 most persistent. His creatures had to gain the best inti- 
 mations possible of external objects during foggy and 
 cloudy days, in twilight, moonlight, nay, even by star- 
 light, and at these times the reduction or even the extinc- 
 tion of energy in the infra-red regions would be too great 
 or too frequent to give such indications. Hence the 
 necessity of ignoring them. 
 
 Professor Rowland has ruled 160,000 lines to the inch in 
 his concave gratings. The finest slit admitting a beam of 
 light to such a grating is one fifth of a millimeter wide, 
 yet this covers more than the distance between the two D 
 lines, and in this space there are at least a dozen alter- 
 nations between brightness and extinction. The astound- 
 ing sensitiveness of the bolometer is far from discerning 
 the absolutely homogeneous ray. It has been shown 
 (by Nichols, Am. Jour. Set., Oct., '84.) that the retina 
 responds to an exposure to rays (from the pigments of a 
 Maxwell-disk) lasting only 0.00144 of a second. This was 
 the time for yellow, and at the brightest of three degrees 
 of illumination. For red the figures were 0.00209, for 
 violet, 0.00286. Experiments with spectra of the solar 
 radiation are still more remarkable. B. O. Pierce, Jr., 
 (Am. Jour. Sci., '83) found that the largest displacement 
 needed by any observer corresponded to a difference in 
 wave-length of about 0.000005 mm i tne smallest to a 
 wave-length of about 0.0000005 mm. In all these cases, 
 the extreme refinement of response is in yellow precisely 
 where the stimulus is strongest, most invariable, and most 
 persistent. The most trained imagination can catch only 
 the most impotent and inadequate fancies and glimpses of 
 the marvellous sensitiveness of the retinal mechanism that 
 can react to stimuli represented by the foregoing figures. 
 
SENS A TION. 1 2 1 
 
 Sunlight, we are told, is composed of the following 
 parts : 
 
 Red 54 
 
 Orange-red 140 
 
 Orange 80 
 
 Orange-yellow 114 
 
 Yellow 54 
 
 Greenish-yellow 206 
 
 Yellowish -green 121 
 
 Green and blue-green 134 
 
 Cyan-blue 32 
 
 Cyan 40 
 
 Ultramarine and blue-violet 20 
 
 Violet 5 
 
 IOOO 
 
 Condensing the intermediates with the principals we 
 have 
 
 Red colors 194 
 
 Golden colors 454 
 
 Green colors 255 
 
 Blue colors 97 
 
 IOOO 
 
 If we ask what great color-classes of visible objects have 
 most occupied man's eye and mind in all past history, the 
 first in overwhelming importance is light and fire ; the 
 second, the world of vegetation ; the third, blood, as the 
 concrete representation of war, struggle, and superstitious 
 symbol ; the fourth, the sky above with its reflection in 
 the waters of the earth. It would be difficult to name 
 another class, for whatever other colors the world may 
 have presented to the eye of historic man, they must 
 have been mixtures of these, or unimportant exceptions 
 that have left only a small and inconsiderable organic re- 
 
122 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 sponse in the psychic mechanism. The ordinary suffused 
 daylight, even of a clear day, is slightly yellowish, and in 
 almost all degrees of obscuration of the sun, the more 
 refrangible rays being cut off, the indifference-point of the 
 spectrum is sent farther down into the yellow band. 
 : Whether from a greater turbidity of the atmosphere, or 
 from an increase in thickness of the several-mile-deep 
 dust-shell always present over the earth, or from the 
 morning and evening obliquity of the sun's rays, much of 
 the day of average humanity has been more yellowish 
 than was perhaps mistrusted. This, it is probable, was 
 more pronouncedly the case in the earlier stages of the 
 world's life. Moreover, the rising and the setting of the 
 sun have always flooded the earth for one or two hours 
 each day with a glory of orange or of golden radiance. 
 It is also certain that our earthly fires are of a ruddy 
 golden or yellowish hue, and the student of mythology 
 and of early religions knows well enough the part that 
 fire has played as a representative of the unseen divine 
 life, or as an analogue of the recurrent changes of the 
 lights of the sky by day or by night. " Pyrolatry," says 
 a life-long student and historian of ethnic religions, "is 
 common to all religions." " Through the whole history of 
 Aryan faith runs the fire-symbolism of Mithra." Quotation 
 from a thousand sources could be added, all of the same 
 import. We all know the beautiful myth of Prometheus 
 and the stolen fire. Ever since man's dawning intelligence 
 caught a glimpse of the mystery of light, of the wonder of 
 the strange lurid glow of the sun at eventide nay, even 
 back to the time when, by its aid, he cooked the flesh of 
 the animal whose blood he had shed, the wonder of fire 
 was daily and hourly before his eyes. Further reason for 
 including the daylight, the sunshine, and the fire-hues 
 
SENSATION. 123 
 
 under the general term golden, comes from the symbolism 
 of gold itself, which, in all ancient faiths, as well as in 
 the instinctive feeling of the modern artist and poet, is 
 the representative metal and color of the divine glory and 
 halo. 
 
 To this consensus of reasons might be added the com- 
 parative absence of whites in nature. Clouds are some- 
 times a dull or grayish-white, and snows, however consid- 
 erable in some countries, are certainly the world over, a 
 small and short-lived covering of the earth's surface. 
 Wherever white sunlight falls on land or tree or rock, it is 
 always reduced to colors by the unequal absorption and 
 reflection following ; these colored reflections are the eye's 
 customary stimuli. When sunlight falls on the sea, only 
 a small portion of the surface reflects white back to the 
 few eyes there or thereabouts. So that as a fact white 
 sunlight is generally reduced to yellowish tints, or to 
 other shades before it reaches the eye. Where this is 
 not the case, the rays would be too powerful, and unpleas- 
 ant effects upon the eye would be certain. 
 
 The closeness of relationship between white light and 
 golden light is also shown by the ease with which spec- 
 tral yellow, by increase of illumination, passes over into 
 white, being, as it is, the nearest of all colors to the lumi- 
 nous intensity of that compound. Consequently a comple- 
 mentary color of the lower kinetic value is all that is 
 required to quickly heighten it into the white to which 
 it is so closely allied. 
 
 The proportion of the spectral golden rays, 454, or 
 nearly half of the whole, represents the overwhelming 
 part the diffused lights of day and those of fire have 
 played in the world's history. The unity of character 
 running through this vast space of the spectrum, testifies 
 
124 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 to the unity of the cause, and to its power both physically 
 and mentally. 
 
 The vegetable world 1 whose greens take up the next 
 greatest portion of the spectral rays representing one 
 fourth of the whole is so plainly the origin of the green 
 band of the spectrum that it is unnecessary to go into de- 
 tail concerning it. When eyes appeared, next after the 
 golden light of day, they would certainly fall upon some 
 of earth's verdure, and except to the city-man, the propor- 
 tion holds up to the present time. Green is philologically 
 the growing thing, and grass or tree covers the face of 
 the earth. 
 
 Red occupies the next lower degree in the proportion 
 of the spectral waves. The crimson of the fruit man ate, 
 or of the wine he drank ; the deeper orange hues of the 
 flame-points or embers of his hearth-fire; the autumnal 
 red of the forest trees, or the expansive glory of an occa- 
 sional scarlet sunset, would not, all combined, account for 
 the proportion of spectrum-space occupied, and these 
 things are infinitely far from explaining the intense and 
 distinctive character of the subjective sensation of spec- 
 tral red. I believe that it can only be explained by 
 the role that war and bloodshed, blood-sacrament and 
 blood-rites, have acted in the history of the race from 
 man's egress out of animalism and progress to nineteenth- 
 century militarism. " The blood is the life." In a curi- 
 ous and deeply instructive book, The Blood Covenant 
 (Trumbull), one learns something of the influence of 
 the vision of blood-shedding in the early world. It 
 is an instructive, though a ghastly picture, that, despite 
 the author's sympathy and sanction, makes one shud- 
 der. Strange insights, these, into human nature, that 
 we gain in reading of the blood-drinking, blood-bathing, 
 
SENSATION. 125 
 
 blood-ransoming, blood-unions, blood-compacts and friend- 
 ships, blood-sacrifices, and blood-suppers, blood-burials, 
 blood-cures and sprinklings, bloody hands and uplifted 
 arms, blood-transfusions, human sacrifices and cannibal- 
 isms, bloody passovers, and blood atonements. What 
 an echo, too, of long-passed ages when bloodshed was no 
 mimicry. The bloody idea is certainly " nail'd wi' scrip- 
 tur'." 
 
 But this it may be said is all legend and myth. Yet 
 mythogenesis is organogenesis : when beliefs were making, 
 organic structures were hardening and shaping, and more- 
 over when authentic history begins, it writes of the sword 
 and red-handed death ; the record rolls on with the tired 
 centuries, depicting one monotonous tale of sanguinary 
 strife. " War is the matter that fills all history," says a 
 great historian. One million nine hundred and forty-eight 
 thousand lives lost in the last twenty-five years in Euro- 
 pean battles, is the last record, with Europe a huge camp 
 to-day. 
 
 The proportion of spectral blue is small in extent and 
 weak in power, and it has a character of distance and of 
 impersonality exactly corresponding to the sources whence 
 this color has reached the eye. The sky is above, but 
 man's eyes are seldom raised to it. At the horizon it 
 often fades to the violet in which the spectrum likewise 
 passes out of sight. 
 
 Certain colors are called primary or elementary, because 
 they have been derived from these great divisions of nat- 
 ural objects that have been reviewed. They have been 
 the uninterrupted stimuli of the visual function since the 
 brain sent its retinal servant out to the body's surface to 
 see by its aid. Some, if we may so speak, are more "ele- 
 mentary " than others, in the sense that some stimuli have 
 
126 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 
 
 been either more prevalent, more powerful, or more inter- 
 esting than others. This is overwhelmingly so of red and 
 gold. In Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, Mr. Grant 
 Allen found the red epithets numbered 159, the gold 143, 
 the green 86, and the blue 25. In Tennyson's Princess 
 the respective numbers were 20, 28, 5, I ; and it was so in 
 other cases. 
 
 A " color" of the spectrum occupies just that amount 
 of space, or, to put it in another way, waves of more or 
 less extended differences of length are perceived as a 
 single color, just as the bulk of the waves from each of 
 these classes of objects have been most uniformly and 
 persistently reflected into the eye during the growth of 
 the race. Nature has acted upon the organism in these 
 continuous ways, and the cerebral 'products are the spec- 
 tral colors, in the proportions and with the characteristics 
 we find appearing in consciousness. The largest and most 
 persistent stimulus has been that of the gold rays the 
 varied shades of the diffused light of day, or the ever 
 present mystery of fire. These have been poured in pro- 
 fusion into all eyes, comprising nearly one half of their 
 total stimulus, while the green rays make up a fourth, the 
 red less than a fourth, and the blue a still more limited 
 amount. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact that the objective luminous 
 power follows the same law, and is not caused, as we 
 might a priori suppose, by the wave-length. According 
 to the measurements of Mac and Nikati, the following 
 are the relative luminous powers of the wave-systems cor- 
 responding to the wave-length, the highest power corre- 
 sponding to wave-length 569 JLI (yellow) taken as unity : 
 681 656 641 613 589 569 550 534 527 520 507 
 
 0.015 ^ - 111 * 2 5 2 -7^8 i.ooo .954 .512 .400 .314 .128 
 
SENSATION. 127 
 
 In order to reach the same result of visual acuity, as in 
 the 569 wave-length rays, the quantity of light of red had 
 to be increased sixty-six times, of green three times, of 
 blue eighteen times, of extreme violet 5,460 times. 
 
 The explanation of these figures will be found to lie in 
 the physiology of the retina. The stronger or longer waves 
 do not, as we see, produce the most powerful effect ; indeed 
 the luminous intensities have no relations with refrangi- 
 bility, but seem to depend on facts of another order, or 
 the utilization of the residue of rays left over after the 
 absorptions of natural bodies have been satisfied. The 
 greater the wave-length the more complete the, absorp- 
 tion, until the line of the descending curve dips pretty 
 low down in red or orange, when the residue becomes 
 so great that the light-curve takes its swift rise, to fall 
 gradually from its crest in D J E, to the extreme end 
 of the visible spectrum, where the dispersive forces of 
 atmospheric refraction allow few of the more refrangible 
 rays to pass to the eye. So the retina has learned to 
 react, not to the most powerful, or to the finest, but to the 
 most continuous and steady stimuli. Its response, there- 
 fore, is more perfect to the gold rays, next to the green, 
 lastly to the red, and to the blue, as Mace and Nikati 
 have found. 
 
 But there has been a great failure to differentiate the ob- 
 jective from the subjective intensity. Confounding these 
 wholly different phases has resulted in the non sequitur 
 of Magnus and Gladstone, who think red was the first of 
 the colors historically developed. Color being a creation 
 of the mind, and after a double transmutation of forces, 
 it follows that its subjective character may in part be in- 
 dependent of objective causes, or of direct stimulation, 
 may be a complex whose elements are by no means all 
 
128 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 gained through the retina or the visual mechanism. A 
 thousand facts prove that of all the senses vision is the 
 most free from bonds of logical and necessary connection 
 with the primary sources of stimulation. No fact is more 
 strikingly characteristic of this law than these differences 
 between the objective and the subjective intensities of 
 colors. As we have just seen, the order of the former is the 
 highest in gold, falling then to green, to red, and finally 
 to blue ; the order of the subjective intensity is first red, 
 then golden, then green, and lastly blue ; and precisely 
 this order tallies with that of the vital and personal con- 
 nection with man's life of the four classes of natural 
 objects we have named. The mordant acids of life's 
 needs and passions have eaten these tones deeply or less 
 deeply into man's brain, according as they have in varying 
 degrees been associated with his miseries and gratifications. 
 Only on this principle can the vivid and powerful effect 
 of red be explained. Private and public bloodshed, 
 social and religious blood covenants, all of which have 
 always been bound up with every day of humanity's ad- 
 vance, these have bitten into his being an intensity of 
 response unapproached by all other chromatic stimuli. 
 In the language of physiological psychology, this fact 
 might, perhaps, be expressed as the demand for more 
 numerous connections with other cortical centers, corre- 
 sponding to the variety of interest the stimulus excites 
 in them, and the power required in co-ordinating the 
 multitudinous waves of emotion called forth. 
 
 The most valuable thing to a man is, of course, his life, 
 symbolized forever, in fact and in covenant, in rite and in 
 ceremony, by his blood. Next to this comes the light of 
 day and of fire, which he has always represented to his 
 mind, as it has been to his eye, of a golden hue, under 
 
SENSATION. I2Q 
 
 which term may be accurately grouped the changing effects 
 of the ruddy orange, or the yellowish whites of light and 
 of fire. 
 
 Among earth's vegetation man has, of course, built his 
 home ; but there is in the subjective green a lack of power 
 and intensity exactly corresponding to the nature of our 
 impersonal and semi-independent relations to the meek 
 verdure and growing things about us. In blue these 
 qualities are exaggerated into the feeling of distance, 
 coldness, and elevation, derived, of course, from the far- 
 away mystery of the sky and sea. 
 
 The intermediate colors of the spectrum should be 
 considered for a moment. The fact of their existence is 
 almost forgotten by color students. This neglect is all 
 the more remarkable when we observe their amazing 
 extent. While each pure " primary " color comprises from 
 forty to eighty parts, we find the mixed intermediates 
 stretching out to 140 between orange and red, to 1 14 be- 
 tween orange and yellow, and to 327 between yellow and 
 green. Strictly speaking, these are just as " primary " as 
 the other shades we call red, or yellow, or green. The 
 whole nomenclature is relative, a mere thing of custom or 
 arbitrariness. If simple spectral space occupied, or, if 
 the proportions these intermediates bear to the whole 
 number of rays, were decisive, the small spaces of the 
 purer colors would serve as the unnamed delimiting lines 
 for the other and larger stretches and quantities. The 
 extent of these spaces shows us how differing nature's 
 " colors " are from those of the mind, or rather, what re- 
 ceptacles and constructions the mind puts upon the color- 
 intimations or wave-hints of nature. The " colors " of the 
 inorganic world are always broken and mixed ; the spec- 
 trum gives us homogeneous wave-systems, sorted out of 
 
130 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 the compound, and arranged seriatim. The prism brings 
 order out of chaos, whilst for itself the mind still further 
 idealizes and reconstructs another world out of the spec- 
 trum, by ignoring the mixed intermediates, and empha- 
 sizing the small spaces more pleasing to it. But, keeping 
 close to nature, we must ask concerning the significance 
 of the extensiveness of these spaces, and this can only lie 
 in the fact that external colors are not saturated (from 
 homogeneous wave-systems of maximum strength) but are 
 always from mixed wave-systems, culminating in a higher 
 average of those of one of the four primary colors in each 
 of the four classes of phenomena mentioned. The ocean- 
 swell may be made up of many lesser crests and troughs, 
 but there is always one point where the general variations 
 reach their maximum, and this would correspond to the 
 narrow limits of the pure color. But between these crests 
 are large regions of indeterminate mixture. Between the 
 pure hues of the deep autumn reds and the paler yellows, 
 and beyond the rapid instants of ruddy flames and setting 
 suns, are the multitudes of the ever changing tints of 
 brighter glows, which account for the 140 parts between 
 spectral red and orange. In a like manner we perceive 
 the rationale of the 114 parts between orange and yellow, 
 whilst the protean changes and mixtures of the ever vary- 
 ing light playing amongst the myriad-tinted shadows of 
 the infinite variety of vegetable forms, produce the 
 enormous interspace represented by the 327 inter- 
 mediate parts between the yellow and the green of the 
 spectrum. 
 
 It will be seen that the endeavor has been to institute 
 a correspondence between luminous stimuli from the nat- 
 ural world, and the chromatic effects of the spectrum's 
 analysis upon the mind. Our color-sense must be the 
 
SENSATION. I3T 
 
 organism's response and reaction under stimulus ; in a 
 word, it must be investigated by the methods of study 
 that in all other departments of biology science has taught 
 us to use with such brilliant results. The hand of a man, 
 the wing of a bat, the dog's fore-foot, and the horse's fore- 
 leg, the bird's wing, and the seal's paddle, these are all 
 modifications or variations of one fundamental structure, 
 according to the work to be done, and in response to the 
 peculiar stimulus ; just so the cerebral products of multi- 
 form color-stimuli have left their psychical homologues in 
 our own complex color-sense. 
 
 In accordance with this conception of the origins of 
 our color-sense, there should be a natural association and 
 symbolism of the different colors with the great classes of 
 our emotional states. If man's mind is the concrete result 
 of cycles of permanent reaction between organism and 
 environment, then his visual sense must find its ultimate 
 explanation in the same process, and, like it, look for- 
 ward to extension and perfection on the same lines as its 
 development has followed in the past. Now upon look- 
 ing within, it is not a little startling to find the great 
 divisions of our psychical nature corresponding with the 
 great associations and divisions of our color-sense. It 
 would be still more striking if we were not partially aware 
 of the part that color has played in history and in the de- 
 velopment of the mind. All objective existences are per- 
 haps more vividly than in any other way represented to 
 the imagination as colored things, and their associations 
 with the woes and joys of life point to no fanciful sym- 
 bolism, but one that is quite as real and as vital as the 
 emotions whence he draws his mental life. Classifying 
 the directions and methods of mental activities, we find 
 them to fall naturally into four classes : 
 
132 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 1. Those of the passions, the emotions pertaining to 
 the sensual life. 
 
 2. Those of the intellect or reason. 
 
 3. Those of utility and labor. 
 
 4. Those of the spiritual, moral, and religious nature. 
 
 These we find to correspond in an exact and specifi- 
 cally real sense to the four types of the chief colors 
 previously set forth. Blood is the life, the sensual, physio- 
 logical life, the nearest, most precious, and vivid of all 
 things or thoughts ; golden light is next in its necessity 
 and nearness to our daily life ; of green we are somewhat 
 more independent ; while blue is far away and beyond the 
 reach of our earthly cares and wants. 
 
 The symbolisms of red are, therefore, perforce, those 
 of the two great factors of history war and love. The 
 passions that stir the blood and heart of men to action, 
 the emotions of honor, vengeance, valor, love, friendship, 
 protection, and the rest, these are the fitting correspond- 
 encies of the rigorous challenge of red. 
 
 In the same definite way the symbols of golden light 
 as aptly and restrictedly answer to the light of reason and 
 of intellect which, flowing over and through all the world's 
 ways, alone promises that clearness of vision by which we 
 can walk in the labyrinthine maze of crowding passions, 
 necessities, and duties. 
 
 But it is among earth's verdure that man's daily life is 
 cast, and where he builds his home. This with its culti- 
 vation and shade, its fruitage and its various sustenance, 
 gives him occupation, rest, food, and contentment. So in 
 our psychological analogies, green may stand as the every- 
 day color of labor, of use, of homerlife, of peace, and rest. 
 
 Lastly, how perfectly blue represents the spiritual life 
 of religion, of aspiration, and of morality. The impene- 
 
SENSATION. 133 
 
 ( 
 
 trable deeps of the arching sky may for a time be over- 
 cast by the passing clouds of chance and change, but the 
 changeless blue persists, still there by day or by night, 
 ever impersonal, and ever unattainable. 
 
 The entire history of the eye in various animals shows 
 plainly the tentative, groping experimentation of Biolo- 
 gos, at one time conquered or half-conquered by a diffi- 
 culty, always being changed and modified to meet emer- 
 gencies, to preserve and to carry to perfection an organ 
 without which all final causes and all ultimate purposes 
 would be prevented of realization. Particularly sugges- 
 tive is the square " about face " in changing the direction 
 of the ocular rods and cones : in the reptilian eye they 
 point toward the entering light ; in the mammalian eye 
 they point away from it. It seems hard to account for 
 this, except it be on the supposition of the impossibility 
 of making the retinal intermediate of the color-sensation 
 as perfect as required, when the extraordinarily delicate 
 molecular vibrations constituting its chief mechanism 
 were located so far away from the deep-bed of capillaries 
 of the chorioid. In the crude color-sense of the colder- 
 blooded and inferior types of animals the molecular func- 
 tion could be carried on without the higher degree and 
 the greater uniformity of heat required by the mammal 
 and especially by man. The natural plan would certainly 
 be that that was first adopted, but, according to the 
 changed plan, the optic-nerve fibers must be divested of 
 the white substance of Schwann, and yet preserve their 
 complete insularity. Something over 800,000 of them, 
 therefore, together with all the other retinal layers, must 
 be made so faultlessly transparent as not to rob the enter- 
 ing and traversing light of any of its power or qualities. 
 A profound necessity must have dictated this enormous 
 
134 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 labor, and that necessity I can imagine none other than 
 that I have given. The fact that in death by starvation 
 every particle of fat in the body is autodigested except 
 that cushioning the eyeball within the orbit, also points 
 most certainly both to the value of the eye to the organ- 
 ism, and to that preservation of the necessary degree and 
 uniformity of warmth upon which our visual function 
 depends. 
 
 Another evidence of the experimental stage and of the 
 difficulty is the median or pineal eye of some lizards and 
 reptiles. No longer functional it still sometimes exists 
 more or less atrophied beneath the scales of the forehead. 
 In the success and progress of development the Ever- 
 Ingenious and Astute found that three eyes were not 
 necessary, and so dispensed with one, or possibly turned 
 the cerebral part of it to use in focalizing or utilizing 
 magnetic currents for homing purposes.* 
 
 Here may also be noted that other great difficulty of 
 the nutrition of highly complex and vastly delicate struc- 
 tures without the direct feeding of blood. Cornea, cap- 
 sules, lens, and vitreous, together with a million of reti- 
 nal nerve-threads and end-organs have to be nourished 
 by lymph. Blood-corpuscles are necessarily colored, and, 
 if present, would render any structure untransparent. 
 Moreover, the nutrition and function of many of these 
 structures are effected without nerve-control or aid. Bi- 
 ologos has to take charge of each cell again and dispense 
 
 * The explanation of the homing instinct by sight or smell is utterly dis- 
 proved. Dogs chloroformed and taken hundreds of miles in round-about 
 ways return cross-country straight home. Pigeons taken in covered baskets 
 hundreds of miles into a new country return as direct. I have heard of one 
 man with a tumor of the pineal gland who showed in life the most morbid 
 restlessness and desire to walk all the time. One swallow, of course, does 
 not make a summer. 
 
SENSATION. 135 
 
 with adventitious helps and the subordinate automa- 
 tonizations of government. 
 
 The fact is undoubtedly connected with the formation 
 of senile cataract and is the sole cause of presbyopia, that 
 frightful anomaly of the organism, in which a most im- 
 portant function fails when life is only half lived. 
 
 The important fact is also to be considered that all these 
 tremendous difficulties and labors are by no means yet 
 surmounted. Possibly greater are yet to come. Every 
 other organ and function of the body, relatively speaking, 
 shows completion and perfection, but civilization is now 
 bringing problems to the ocular divinity, and likewise to 
 the ophthalmologist, of the greatest complexity and dan- 
 ger. The chief of these arise from the fact that, far more 
 than any other function, that of vision is most important, 
 most exercised, most bound up with every other act and 
 with every other cerebral center and function. Consider- 
 ing the enormous delicacy of the forces utilized and the 
 corresponding refinements and subtilties of the mechan- 
 ism, we are struck with the fact, first, that civilization 
 infinitely multiplies the mere physiological labor of the 
 organs of vision by the simple increase that follows 
 urban life, printing, writing, commercialism, handiwork, 
 art-work, mechanics, and science. 
 
 But the chief relevant point pertains to the salient char- 
 acteristic of all this increased ocular labor; its execution 
 at what the oculists call near-range. The preponderant 
 amount of vision in all animals and in uncivilized man was 
 of distant objects I mean objects beyond sixteen inches 
 from the eye. The ability to accurately discern objects 
 within this distance (" accommodation ") was a temporary 
 and comparatively unimportant function, and its organ 
 was therefore one fitted for temporary use. Distant vision 
 
136 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 was the standard, and even now that is performed by the 
 normal eye at perfect rest. Anything nearer than the ho- 
 rizon is by such an eye seen by means of the innervation 
 and contraction of a delicate little sphincter muscle acting 
 in a peculiarly " make-shift," anomalous, almost awkward, 
 manner. All animals and savages are habitually, and all 
 normal civilized children are congenitally, " far-sighted," 
 or hypermetropic. But lo ! within a century, after mil- 
 lions of years of preparation of the eye for a specific 
 function, here at a bound comes civilization, absolutely 
 reversing the function of developmental history, and de- 
 manding that the standard and habitual vision shall be 
 within a foot or little more, and that the distant vision shall 
 be exceptional. Moreover, it demands that both distant 
 and near vision shall be equally perfect vision. We are 
 witnesses of the attempt to develop a new muscle in order 
 to meet this emergency, the Mu'ller Ring muscle in 
 hyperopes acting in an entirely different manner from 
 the ciliary muscle, but to the same end and complementing 
 its insufficiency. If the suddenness and, as one may say, 
 the virulence of the on-coming of civilization had not been 
 so great, and if an artificial help had not been at hand, 
 the attempt would probably be successful. This may now 
 be doubted. But happily with the hurt, in the other hand 
 civilization brings the healing, and though spectacles are a 
 " poor excuse " they must be used by civilization's servants 
 a thousand times more than in the past or present. The 
 eyeball is a soft rubber-ball-like structure, any slightest 
 departure of which, caused by many conditions and cir- 
 cumstances, from the most ideal and accurate shape in 
 length (myopia) shortness (hyperopia), or curvature (astig- 
 matism), at once results in dangerous imperfections of vi- 
 sion, and disease of itself, of adjacent, or of distant organs. 
 
SENSATION. 137 
 
 To such facts must be added others that are noteworthy, 
 e. g., that the position of the eyes must be in the most 
 exposed part of the organism ; that, by the necessity of their 
 free motility, they must be in a condition of semi-detach- 
 ment from it ; and that, by the necessity of quick directa- 
 bleness toward different points of the compass, they must 
 be moved by twelve tiny muscles all in perfect balance 
 and counterbalance. The least inco-ordination in power 
 or in function of these muscles, may at once breed trouble. 
 One could go on indefinitely detailing the dangers, the 
 difficulties, and the delicacies of this organ and of its Ar- 
 tificer. At the risk of wearying the reader I shall further 
 mention but two : The usual reflex nerve action from an 
 irritated or diseased organ normally brings the reply of 
 inflammation, reaction, motion, etc., back to the organ 
 irritated or affected. The out-valuing importance of the 
 eye over most every other organ makes this a dangerous 
 result, and hence an exception is instituted to this other- 
 wise almost invariable physiological rule. The result is 
 that the pain and the disease-effects of abnormal ocular 
 function are felt elsewhere than in the eye (reflex neuroses) 
 and usually as pain or ache in the brain. This morbidity 
 and anomalousness of reflex-return is doubled by the fact 
 that facial beauty is dependent upon, almost consists in, the 
 limpid, soul-expressive beauty of the eye. Now the influ- 
 ence of beauty in sexual choice and its powerful role in 
 biological history are plain to the Darwinian and to every 
 one who has never even heard of Darwin. As the natural 
 return of the reflex to the eye would quickly result in 
 inflammations temporarily or permanently destructive of 
 ocular and so of all beauty, the subtle wisdom, nowhere else 
 so severely tested and so evidently present as in the eye, 
 stores up the irritation in the brain cells (headache), or 
 
138 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 shunts them elsewhere. Not one patient in a hundred 
 complains to the ophthalmic surgeon of pain or visible 
 disease of the eye. The more unrelieved the " eye-strain," 
 the greater the production of irritational unused stimuli, 
 and the greater their flow or overflow to other centers. 
 The more and the longer the storing of the continuously 
 generated steam, the greater the pressure, and the more 
 harmful and certain the release when a weak rivet or 
 other opportunity is present. A natural and a customary 
 method of obviating the injury in the mechanism consid- 
 ered, is to shut off the fuel and the firing by means of 
 anorexia, digestional interference, or some other disturb- 
 ance of function. 
 
 A last illustration is that of the psychological influence 
 of difficult ocular function. Thousands of children are 
 to-day being switched into less intellectual lives, are being 
 restricted in mental development or occupation in life, 
 by the fact, to them unconscious, of irksomeness and of 
 discomfort in reading, in study, or in other intellectual task 
 that necessitates labor at near range with an organ illy 
 adapted for the work. Activity therefore finds outlet in 
 sports, or in other physical methods and occupations ; if 
 the task be forced, worse evils ensue, and in either case 
 parent and child both suffer. 
 
 Of profound interest to the philosopher is the embryo- 
 logical fact that the essential organ of the eye, the retina, 
 is a cerebral outgrowth, and not a dermal structure. The 
 brain comes out to see. It is not the light, not the skin, 
 that goes in to stimulate and interpret. The doctrine that 
 an organ and an organism is solely a mechanically rigid 
 reaction to the environment is disproved by the develop- 
 mental history of every organ, but notably and beautifully 
 so in this most psychical and most useful of all the senses. 
 
SENSATION. 139 
 
 I cannot forbear reference to a possible artistic exten- 
 sion of the function of vision similar to that already made 
 actual in hearing. It is natural that music should have 
 been born and perfected before the as-yet-unnamed art of 
 visual or scenic opera and representation. The lower and 
 simpler must precede the higher and more complex, and 
 the function of music is distinctly emotional. But intel- 
 lect is higher than emotion, and vision is par excellence the 
 sense of the intellect, at once its servant and lover. 
 Moreover, a series of symbols lie at the hand of the 
 visual artist, of far greater exactness and specificity than 
 Beethoven or Wagner ever had. The glory of Wagner 
 will be that he sought, and successfully too, to supply 
 the want of definite musical symbols and typifications 
 of concentrated emotional experience by a somewhat 
 artificial but withal significant series of representative 
 harmonies. He tried to mentalize emotions, to classify 
 them, and to epitomize and symbolize them by the motiv. 
 He bravely and creatively marched into the unknown and 
 definitized his art with this de novo production, which has 
 revolutionized music and that will set it in progressive 
 advance to yet undreamed-of vigor and splendor. The 
 coming opera of visual harmonies and delights is only 
 suggested by the perfection of scenery of the modern 
 stage, approximated by the Berlin " Urania," but no one 
 has thought of making the eye the sole organ appealed 
 to in a great work of creative art. This combination of 
 sculpture and painting; the symbolisms of color; the 
 scenes of landscape ; of water, still, rippled, or colored ; of 
 multi-colored illumination; of atmospheric effects; of 
 sunsets, these form an alphabet of visual elements where- 
 with an artist could make an evening of pure, peculiar, 
 and of more intellectual enjoyment than has yet been 
 
140 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 known. Nature rarely unites all the conditions of a per- 
 fect landscape or sunset. For example, it is only once in 
 the life of but few that one stands upon a plank or two in a 
 still, horizonless ocean, with nothing for the eye to rest 
 upon, a cloud of fog distantly hiding everything above, 
 below, and all about in a monotone of gray, and in the 
 east a huge ball of red fire gleaming, and in the west 
 another similar globe of lurid light, self lost in the midst 
 of nothingness, the lifted hovering Ego stared at from the 
 depths of infinite space by the ghostly glory of those two 
 motionless, splendid, terrible, cosmic eyes. 
 
 In viewing sensation as a whole, it seems impossible to 
 withhold allusion to the idealist's contention that because 
 all qualities of objects, one's body, nerves, and nervous 
 centers, just as well as the extra-physiologic world of in- 
 organic matter, are only to be stated or thought of in 
 terms of mental experience, therefore naught but mental 
 experience or mentality exists. When one gets wholly 
 within the machinery-room of subjective being, and, a la 
 Berkeley, will listen or indeed can listen only to the buzz 
 and din of one's own mental machinery, it is not diffi- 
 cult to delude one's self into a sort of somnambulistic 
 daze or hypnotic stupor, and to simulate a belief that 
 objective facts do not exist, or that they exist only in 
 relation to sensation, and that " the organs of sense are 
 themselves so many groups of sensible phenomena exist- 
 ing only in the mind, the body itself being simply a part 
 of our mental experience." " If," says an idealist,* " if 
 when I die no one is present or observes me, there would 
 be no physical death, properly so-called, but simply 
 the inexplicable fact of my ceasing to feel and think." 
 " The whole sensible world, heavens, earth, and the physi- 
 
 * First Steps in Philosophy, by W. M. Salter ; Kerr&Co., Chicago, 1892. 
 
SENSATION. 141 
 
 ologic body, are equally unreal if regarded as a self-sub- 
 sisting thing apart from a sentient subject." 
 
 These are spoken words, but nobody ever imagined the 
 supposed fact they represent. They are simply jugglings 
 with words after such words have been disconnected from 
 a vital significance and relationship with facts. No 
 Berkeley, even of the most super-refined and gigantesque 
 sort, could look at himself in the mirror and say that his 
 physiologic body is non-existent when he goes to sleep, 
 or when neither self nor any one else is present to evoke 
 that body into an illusional objectivity by the power of 
 "mental experience." * The first requisite of philosophic 
 thought is to recognize differences in facts, indeed this is 
 the beginning and end of all intellectual function. To see 
 no difference between the objective, self-existent causes of 
 sensation, and the ultimate products of sensation, is simply 
 philosophic barbarism or monomania. It is not healthy 
 thought. To deny objectivity and self-existence because 
 the forces and impingements of matter must be translated 
 into sensation before being presented to mind, is to 
 flatter one's self that dreams and imaginations are facts ; 
 it is a lazy sort of dogmatism that contents itself with the 
 whirr of subjective machinery, rather than look with virile 
 earnestness into the question of whence the forces, the 
 coal, the steam, and the piston, that propel the whole. 
 The natural order of true scientific thought consists first 
 in the study of molecular physics, or the nature of the 
 objective forces ; secondly the nature of the receiving 
 sense-organs is considered ; then follow the problems of 
 nerve-force and nerve-transmission, and the nature of 
 
 * I have a little nephew who, in his grief and between his sobs that his 
 mother had gone away, piteously complained that she had not at least 
 left him her body while she was away. True philosopher, that baby ! 
 
142 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 sensation proper, together with that of the psychic reality; 
 finally is reached the consideration of the whole as regards 
 the elements of product or reality that are contributed 
 by each factor. 
 
 Sensation of any kind and as a whole is but the mechan- 
 ism of that differentiation of function whereby the pur- 
 poses of Biologos are more easily and perfectly carried 
 out. We are obliged to admit that the undifferentiated 
 cell has all the same kinds of powers and purposes as the 
 highest and most specialized cell or being, the sole differ- 
 ence being one of degree. Thus as to sensation before 
 being assigned a special function, the living cell shows 
 reactions to light, to air-waves, to pressure, to heat, to cold, 
 to odors, to poisons, to anesthetics in a word to all phys- 
 ical and chemical agents and agencies. It also shows 
 every physiological function possessed by the highest 
 organism that is, contractility or spontaneous change of 
 form ; irritability, or response to stimulation ; respiration ; 
 anabolism, or the indrawing of new material, the building 
 up of greater complexity, and the repair of waste ; kata- 
 bolism, or excretion ; and reproduction. The lowest uses 
 of sensation are the nutritional and protective, which are 
 sufficiently evident, but the higher are not so plain and 
 may be described as threefold : (i) to gain control of 
 molar motion ; (2) to learn the qualities, actions, and laws 
 of the inorganic world ; and (3) to utilize acquired 
 power of molar motion and knowledge of matter for 
 spiritual uses, enjoyments, and progress. The enjoy- 
 ment is largely summarized in art and esthetics ; the pro- 
 gress in the increasing dominion of mind over matter, or 
 the control and ordering of the inorganic substances and 
 forces of the universe. The final cause of the entire 
 nervous system and of subordinate functions is to be 
 
SENSATION. 143 
 
 found in that aspect of differentiation of function con- 
 sisting in the more perfect control and use of an order of 
 highly complex cerebral cells, more accurately and 
 thoroughly responsive and obedient to the control of 
 Biologos, and whereby He can more perfectly effect His 
 purpose and make permanent His use of the whole 
 organism. Nor should we forget that in His specialization 
 of control-cells these immediate agents of the highest in- 
 carnation are also the final end-products of organization, 
 and that they have the exalted function of carrying to 
 Biologos the synthetized quintessence of the inorganic 
 world, and the revelation to the mind of the sublime 
 products of objective life. They are at once the first dep- 
 uties of mental control and the last finishers of received 
 influences, the final co-ordinators of concentrated and 
 representative experience. This is true, because the 
 function of cell-pliancy and the perfection of metaphysical 
 control must be as much or more a matter of progress 
 and of differentiation as that of musculation, or of secre- 
 tion. God's control of the process of incarnation, and the 
 objectivation of Himself is progressive, and these higher 
 stages are dependent upon the delicate poise of tempera- 
 ture, the permanent supply of ever-higher orders of nutri- 
 tion, and upon the ever-increasing complexity of cerebral 
 cell-life and function. The struggle for existence has largely 
 passed the nutritional stage, and has merged itself into a 
 struggle for intellect and art ; and a similar change has been 
 reached in the task of incarnation, which is becoming one 
 of an ever-higher differentiation of cerebral cell-systems, 
 based upon the systematization and automatonization of 
 subordinate centers and adjusting mechanisms of similarly 
 increasing complexity. And, just as by artistic creations 
 and exercises in music and poetry, we make application 
 
144 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 to esthetic uses of the mechanisms born of utility, so, hav- 
 ing conquered and learned the world, we may suppose 
 that God is preparing arts unknown to be played with the 
 completed products of incarnation. And as man is the 
 highest completed product of incarnation, so, as we learn 
 loyalty, we may expect each personality to form a line or a 
 thought in the epic of the coming poem, or a tone in the 
 approaching symphony of humanity. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 " EVOLUTION." 
 
 EVOLUTION " is the word most drummed into the 
 ears of the young philosopher and the godless 
 child. I have some difficulty in controlling my 
 amused contempt at the mere mention of it. The word 
 is, consciously or unconsciously, the evidence either of 
 disingenuousness of heart orof indiscrimination of intellect, 
 and usually of both combined. By its devisers and users 
 the term is applied to two unrelated and unrelatable orders 
 of phenomena, the living and the non-living. If it be ap- 
 plied to both it must denote only a colorless meaning, like 
 that of the word, being, or fact, or phenomenon. If it can 
 specify any quality of the one, or any considerable pecu- 
 liarity beyond the mere fact of existence, it cannot specify 
 that quality of the other, because matter and life have little 
 more in common than mere existence. In the entire 
 realm of inorganic matter untouched by life, all changes 
 are non-purposive, proceed purely mechanically, repeat 
 themselves aimlessly, and lead nowhither. In other 
 words, there is change but not progress, causation without 
 object, rigid uniformity but not freedom. It is perfectly 
 logical that after the designation of two such diverse types 
 of phenomena with one name, its shrewd fathers should 
 proceed in the natural course of self-stultification by 
 denying the existence of life, purpose, and freedom in 
 biological phenomena. To them the mechanical clank, 
 10 145 
 
146 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 clank, of a blessed determinism is both natural and 
 certain. But their neophytes and pupils will by no means 
 so see the world ; they protest that there are bird-songs, 
 mother-love, laughter ; that there are sports of children 
 and " sports " of morphology (how the last must be to 
 the scientist as holy-water to the stage-mephisto,) and 
 if " evolution " covers these things, the sensible child 
 will unconsciously say, " Why, then it can't be such a 
 horrid bugaboo as our teachers would have us believe." 
 There is therefore a lazy, cunning, double sin thus dex- 
 trously allowed and encouraged by those who should have 
 both more honor and more intellect. Like a great many 
 more such words " Evolution " is a large garment for cover- 
 ing a multitude of sins. It is about on a par with the 
 indirectness wrapped up in the word agnosticism, or the 
 words God, and Father, as used by some " liberals " who 
 in their hearts acknowledge neither personality nor guiding 
 love in their brand new mechanic-god, stuffed into the old 
 wine-bottles of an ancient faith. " Agnostic " and " evolu- 
 tion " thus connote meanings very different from those held 
 by their concoctors. The ethical sin consists of the con- 
 currence in such connotation, and in giving out that ticket- 
 ing a process as evolutional explains it, or does away with an 
 intelligent evolutor. Thousands who make a God of evo- 
 lution do it by stealing attributes from the old divinity 
 and hiding them carefully under the cloak of the new one. 
 The new cathedral is made of stones quarried from the 
 deserted ruins of the old temple ; the name of the deity is 
 changed, but the worship secretly continues. 
 
 Take the official definition : " An integration of matter 
 and concomitant dissipation of motion ; during which the 
 matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity 
 to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; and during which 
 
DEVOLUTION." 147 
 
 the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation." 
 With perfect candor one may first ask, has one learned 
 from it anything of the world ? It is so colorless and 
 vague, so powerless to help the imagination, that one 
 might quite as well say, things change and multiplicity 
 results. Even if true, it is so indefinite as to be of little 
 use to the inquiring mind. The generalization does not 
 even glitter, so devoid is it of specificity and life. 
 
 Even if true of the inorganic changes, is it true of 
 biological phenomena ? Certainly a large portion of 
 vital phenomena illustrates the reverse of the theorem. 
 One full half of every living metabolic process is katabolic, 
 and katabolism is the exact opposite of the definition. 
 Indeed, according to Mr. Spencer himself, " reverse dis- 
 tribution " is precisely one half of the world-process 
 organic or inorganic, and " reverse distribution " or " dis- 
 solution " yet awaits its Spencer to base a universal 
 philosophy upon a neglected half of all phenomena. The 
 characteristic of organic " evolution," i. e., of living 
 anabolism or constructive change, is progress ; that of 
 all inorganic " evolution," however, is simply change, 
 change by pure mechanical forces, undesigned and leading 
 nowhither. To cover both processes by the one word 
 tells little enough about physics, but it tells absolutely 
 nothing about the distinctive quality of metaphysics, 
 unless it be that, temporarily, perhaps, unity results in 
 diversity a somewhat unsatisfying creed. But the other 
 half of the truth is the reverse, and to say that diversity 
 results in unity is precisely as true a statement, and often 
 more illuminating to the mind. The wonderful unity 
 produced by ten thousand bees, their exquisite workings, 
 adjustments, divisions of labor, sacrifices, interdepen- 
 dences, and ingenuities, produce an astounding singleness 
 
148 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 of result. So with every illustration of mentality in nature. 
 It takes billions of separate cells, " diversities," to create 
 the unity of each organ and of each organism. 
 
 As applied to the inorganic world, evolution can mean 
 nothing more than the purposeless sequence of mechani- 
 cally caused change. There is not, legitimately, any 
 " development " here, because that word connotes method- 
 ical progress and precedent purpose, and these are 
 characteristics that apply only to biological phenomena, 
 whilst the great gloomy and mysterious word Evolution 
 is kept as a sort of primary Fate that rules all worlds, 
 things, men, and gods. 
 
 Limited to its strict etymological signification and 
 stripped of unlicensed connotation, the word evolution can 
 only be applied to one aspect of one half (anabolism) of 
 the biologic process, whilst it fails to cover many aspects 
 even of anabolism, and has no application whatever to 
 katabolic changes whether physical or metaphysical. The 
 one idea clearly called up in the mind by the word is that 
 of a ceaseless process, of which every step, stage, or instant is 
 derived from that of the immediately preceding condition, 
 by the absolutely necessary (mechanical, deterministic, or 
 unavoidable) action of natural (or mechanical) inherent 
 forces. Now this, as regards living things, is utterly 
 false. Every cell and somacule of living matter is what it 
 is by the incoming, re-creating, and in-living control of an 
 extra-cellular intelligent force. This scorned fact is deftly 
 slipped out of sight by the further explanation on the part 
 of the " evolutionists " that the living organism is dis- 
 tinguished by a rigid (mechanical or necessary) adaptation 
 of the organism to external circumstance, or reaction to 
 external changes. Here again is a double untruth, by 
 confusing and by ignoring. The confusion consists of 
 
" E VOLUTION." 149 
 
 making " adaptation " and " reaction " necessary, unex- 
 ceptional, and mechanical, whilst to all of us simple folk, 
 the words unavoidably imply intelligence, discrimination, 
 mentality. A " reaction " that does not flow from men- 
 tality would speedily end in the death of the reactor. The 
 ignoring consists in not seeing that by all odds the larger 
 number of acts of living beings have not their origin or 
 anything whatever to do with " reactions to external 
 changes and stimuli." All growth, as of the ovum and 
 child, proceeds from within ; the roles of the repro- 
 ductive instinct, of hunger, and nutrition, are called forth by 
 no external circumstance but spontaneously arise within, 
 always dominating and using external circumstance. 
 What have music, art, aspiration, and moral ideals, to do 
 with external stimuli? Verily it is pathetically strange 
 that a mind so great and calm as that of Spencer could be 
 dominated by a preconceived theory so much as to ignore 
 and misconstrue the greater part and the most striking of 
 facts. It shows the fatuity of deductive reasoning ; but 
 sadder still, it shows how a captivating theory may enslave 
 the mind of a supposably inductive thinker, and, bewitch- 
 ing thousands of less discriminating followers, handicap 
 science and lead modern thought into an impasse of error. 
 Leaving out of consideration the entire domain of the 
 organic and metaphysical, we find that the " laws " of the 
 atomicity of matter, and of the persistence and inter- 
 transformation of forces, explain all the meaningless 
 changes occurring in this world. Turning to the world of 
 living things, let us grasp the essential idea or mystery 
 desired to be expressed, or mistakenly understood, by the 
 word evolution. I mean the mystery of the gradual pro- 
 cess. Here is something every one sees is different from 
 any purely mechanical process. The scientist's sin is in 
 
I5O THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 ignoring, jumbling, or denying the difference, whilst the 
 waiting world stands dazed before the inexplicability of 
 it. As to absolute origin I have of course no explanation 
 to offer except that already emphasized and to me very 
 satisfying one, of its creation and instant in-living by the 
 self-incarnation of Biologos. But the very heart of the mys- 
 tery yet untouched is the chronicity or slow progressive- 
 ness of the process, the facts of rejuvenescence, senescence, 
 and death of individual forms, the continuity of special 
 character and purpose throughout any one line of these 
 sequent organisms, and the domination of one harmonic 
 character and purpose over and through the entire order 
 of all sequences. The explanation of this I have never 
 seen attempted or known to be thought of as within the 
 scope of human reason. And yet the key seems to me to 
 lie placed in our hands by the most childishly easy and 
 simple perception of the controlling necessity or struggle 
 that constitutes the essential fact of the life-history of 
 every cell, organ, and organism, of one's own life, of all 
 history, vegetable, animal, or human. I mean nutrition, 
 in its full significance, as the condition of cell-building and 
 cell-control, cells being the primary intermediates or ele- 
 ments of incarnation, through the association and con- 
 joined work of which in organs and organisms, Biologos is 
 with difficulty working out His ulterior purposes. The 
 condition or difficulty is plainly nutritional, disease being 
 impaired nutrition ; death of the individual organism being 
 the seeming victory of the difficulty ; sociological progress, 
 ethics, the good of civilization, being firstly and physio- 
 logically the sharing, assuring, and stabilizing of nutri- 
 tional success, and, secondly, the working out of the meta- 
 physiological purpose. The life of plant, animal, or man, 
 from seed or ovum to death, is based upon the necessity 
 
"EVOLUTION." 151 
 
 of gathering food from without. Disease and death are 
 solely the consequences of incapacity to gather or to 
 utilize the food. The condition of the cell or of the 
 individual (organized family of cells) is the condition 
 imposed upon God, literally and in large ; and the great 
 mysteries and characteristics of organic history, viewed in 
 their physiological and strictly biological aspects, are indi- 
 vidually and collectively the results of this difficulty or 
 condition pressed upon Deity by the nature and laws of 
 matter. Blinded by an illogical deductive habit of mind, 
 controlled by an unscientific scorn and a " reaction " from 
 religious habits, Science has failed to realize the signifi- 
 cance of the plainest of all facts, which is mentality in 
 living things put to enormous labor by the difficulties of 
 nutrition. In a world of mechanics, with so great differ- 
 ences and fluctuations of temperature, with storm and 
 drouth, with flood, ice-ages, submergences of continents, 
 volcano and earthquake, and a hundred like enemies 
 always about and before, Biologos has had to take precau- 
 tions, forefend dangers, devise mechanisms of defence and 
 safety, preserve balances and control, hold by infinite 
 devices and watchfulness against the elusive slipping to 
 rest or out of control of the dead atoms, all in myriad 
 ways, and with a subtle wisdom, of which the mind of man 
 has scarcely begun to find the faintest clue or hint. And 
 with it all He has had to keep the march onward and 
 upward towards the final result, civilization, and of what 
 civilization has scarcely yet commenced to prophesy. 
 Because, so far, all, or nearly all, is but prophesy and 
 preparation. Herein rests the blessed logic of faith. 
 1 Though he slay me, yet will I trust Him." But this 
 faith must be supplemented by an intellectual perception 
 of present difficulties being conquered, of progress going 
 
152 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 on, and of final victory certain, whence will arise in the 
 heart of mankind a living intellectualized religion, and a 
 large reasoned content that that heart has never yet known. 
 And such an intellectual religion will inspire men to 
 become God's co-workers and co-partners, true sons of 
 God, according to the grand old promise, whereby " the 
 coming of the Kingdom " will be immeasurably hastened, 
 and wherein, also, that Kingdom really consists. 
 
 One suggested thought may appropriately be interjected 
 in this connection the instinctive clinging to life on the 
 part of cell and organism. In part this may be inter- 
 preted as a corollary of the automatonization of function, 
 the persistence in action of specialized cells. But this by 
 no means accounts for the " never-give-up " of the non- 
 self-conscious organism, the acceptance of life when its 
 meaning is utterly lost in denied and distorted function, 
 in degradations of a thousand types and degrees, in dwarf- 
 ings, stuntings, and reversions, and in most pitiable adap- 
 tations to tyrant condition. There is no suicide among 
 God's creatures who have not been given deputed power, 
 i. e., it exists nowhere except in disloyal man. His true 
 lieges dispute the last inch of place gained, and die only 
 when killed. In part again this is explained by the posi- 
 tive truth that upon the brave fighting for and holding on 
 to life on the part of the humblest plant or animal may 
 depend the fate of the entire fauna and flora of a conti- 
 nent or of a world, threatened as it is with wreck by the 
 possible disasters and certain changes of a physical world 
 such as ours. But even this would explain only the aspect 
 of positive assertion, the exuberant energy to extend ; it 
 would not explain the instinctive heart-clutching fear of 
 death and the acceptance of life under conditions that 
 make it absurdly illogical. That, I take it, is explained 
 
"EVOLUTION." 153 
 
 only by the terrible struggle Biologos has had to get his 
 foothold in matter, only by the memory of the long 
 and bitter labor, and of how often defeat may have really 
 happened, and of how much more often it was averted by 
 infinite device, resolution, and exertion. The fact that 
 the labor of the primary step of incarnation was a hercu- 
 lean task, that it was at once a subjection of obstinate 
 enemies, and a watchfulness of surrounding enemies still 
 more uncompromising a true invasion into a hostile 
 world, gleams out upon us from every biological fact. 
 And chiefly from the astonishing observation that Biologos 
 always proceeds from his foothold gained, and never from 
 a de novo beginning. However useless and degraded and 
 lowly the speck of living plasm, it is the vantage-ground 
 of intrenched victory, nay, of a hundred victories over 
 the stubbornest of enemies, and no surrender is its sole 
 battle-cry. From this citadel and " base of supplies " the 
 army may go forth to the conquering of a world. This 
 says plainly enough : " No new attempts or experiments. 
 Like the telegraphic current of electricity, we can proceed 
 eastward around the whole world and reach yonder 
 western shore rather than jump this little space." Spon- 
 taneous generation and the creation of the homunculus 
 will not take place in the laboratories of the nineteenth or 
 of the twentieth century. No scientist ever saw the first 
 stirring of life in dead matter. Omne vivum ex vivo 
 implies that a difficult task once completed will not be 
 recommenced for the sake of curiosity or gymnastics. 
 
 And the difficulty of the task is the raison d'etre of " evo- 
 lution," defined as the gradual unfolding and develop- 
 ment of life on the earth. The only way to reach man 
 was by means of millions of years of endeavor and through 
 the millions of progressively preparative stages of prece- 
 
154 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 dent vegetable and animal types. There is a tendency 
 nowadays to sneer at the essential truth of the devel- 
 opment theory. " The theologians are now taking 
 courage," it is said, and, secure within their fortress, 
 the pickets of the scientists are indifferent to the bold 
 sorties of their enemies. Both furnish diversion for the 
 non-combatant spectator, who if the scientists were in 
 much danger from this little attack would whistle the 
 signal of alarm that would put the special creationists to 
 easy rout. Missing links, and all such, are only needed by 
 the minds whose processes, like bad machines, move only 
 with mechanical clank, clank. The slightest study of 
 our world proves that only from the present nov GTOO does 
 the hidden life proceed to develop distant types through 
 intermediate modifications and correlated stages. Back- 
 ward only do the lines lead to unity ; forward no type 
 fuses ; that way is everlasting diversity. " Phylogeny 
 is the repetition of Ontogeny " is a maxim based on 
 inexpugnable fact. 
 
 Mr. Spencer's unworthy and fallacious attempt to 
 smudge over the marks of difference between phenomena 
 that are purely mechanical and those that are meta- 
 mechanical, however necessary to his theory, is good 
 intellect wasted in a bad cause. A critic has justly said 
 that even Mr. Spencer's theory demanded a beginning of 
 life on earth. The early heat left no room for doubt 
 about that. Mr. Spencer's answer consists in placing the 
 prestidigitator's foulard of infinite time and infinite num- 
 bers of progressive stages, over the trick of creation. 
 When the delusive mysterious silk handkerchief is deftly 
 removed, the completed product of living form is revealed 
 to the gaping crowd. It would have been easy for some 
 " logic coach " to have disclosed the stupid fallacy of Zeno's 
 
"EVOLUTION." 155 
 
 paradox, even were it not de facto sufficiently evident 
 that the hare would catch the tortoise, if, peradventure, 
 he were silly enough to enter the race. The subjective 
 possibility of imagining an infinite number of fractions 
 between one and two, and the supposed consequent 
 impossibility of uniting two integers, does not weaken 
 the truth that one and one do make two, nor do the 
 infinite number of the stages imaginable between me- 
 chanical and vital phenomena do away with the fact 
 that the two orders are for evermore distinct and non- 
 identifiable, and that they always proceed from distinct, 
 unidentifiable origins. The lowest living cell and the 
 highest non-living molecule are separated by a chasm so 
 wide that no thought has ever legitimately bridged it, 
 and so deep that no sounding has ever fathomed it. 
 
 There is one phase of the relation of the cell to evolu- 
 tion to which I have not known allusion made. It is 
 admitted that " phylogeny repeats ontogeny," or that the 
 life history of the individual is that of the race, or vice 
 versa. Now every organic individual begins as a simple 
 cell, and therefore the first living matter on the globe 
 must have been that of a single cell. The primal and 
 typical mechanism of the incarnation of life was and still 
 remains cellular. There is no truth of science more abso- 
 lutely certain than that summed up in the maxim, omnis 
 cellula e cellula. Virchow has conclusively shown that no 
 cell is formed anew, i. e., out of or by a supposed plastic 
 lymph. Every cell springs from a previous cell by hered- 
 ity and continuity. There is no epigenesis or generatio 
 equivoca. Biologos can only work from the existing 
 mechanism of cell-formation, from the secured foothold, 
 outward and onward. The power to hold vast numbers 
 of subordinate systems of complex molecules about a 
 
156 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 common center is possible to the cell-mechanician only 
 with and through the great complex that has been once 
 established. There is no possibility of nutrition and fur- 
 ther outbuilding .of cell-life otherwise than by means of 
 the established mechanism. If one does not perceive a 
 difference in kind between this cell-genesis and cell-nutri- 
 tion on the one hand, and the formation of a crystal, 
 then it is useless to argue with him. The term organic 
 crystallization is an egregious contradiction in itself. It 
 is a myth of the illogician and of the materialist. The 
 formation of the crystal is the result of purely physical 
 forces of attraction and repulsion. Cell-genesis is a true 
 birth following growth, guided by a power using as tools 
 all physical forces of attraction and repulsion. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 REPRODUCTION. 
 
 A WISE man once said that whilst great philosophers 
 were learnedly speculating about the world, hunger 
 and love were producing and controlling it. It 
 is a profound truth. The role of hunger, as we have seen, 
 reaches down to the very essence of the process of incar- 
 nation. To establish the stable equilibrium of a complex 
 molecular system by bringing into it subordinated mole- 
 cules, and then exhausting them of their contained force, 
 this is the first and continuous work of every living cell 
 or rather cell-master. The problem of nutrition precedes, 
 underlies, and controls every other biological problem. 
 
 And even also that of sexual reproduction. The wise 
 man might have said that hunger alone ruled the world, 
 if he had seen what a spiritual-minded science has at last 
 begun to get glimpses of, viz., that the entire mechanism 
 of reproduction, together with all the influences and con- 
 sequences of sex and sexualism, are but factors and devices 
 of Biologos to overcome difficulties of nutrition and to 
 turn these difficulties into the very means of progress. 
 The last word of a careful and enlightened science (to 
 which result it is highly suggestive to note that the unpro- 
 fessional, the enthused amateur has contributed the most 
 living results and done the most patient work) is that, 
 from the lowest flagellate to homo the function of repro- 
 duction is to bring about rejuvenescence, or, what is the 
 
 i57 
 
T'8 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 same thing, to avoid senescence. Weissmann's theories, 
 and all the rest of the materialist and mechanical "ex- 
 planations " of heredity, are found unscientific, and science 
 is driven back straight to the acknowledgment of " conju- 
 gation " as a device to avoid deterioration and running- 
 down of the clock. This rejuvenescence of the running- 
 down or exhausting cell is effected in three ways: I. By 
 Rest, whereby the innate powers of recuperation, the 
 healing power inherently possessed by the cell, restore 
 and restock it with new vitality ; i.e., it takes time to 
 carry out anabolism even in the presence of an existing 
 food-supply. 2. By a change of a mode of life (as in para- 
 sitic fungi), whereby the cell or organism, again without 
 division or conjugation, recuperates itself in new condi- 
 tions. These new conditions can be thought of in no 
 other way than as those aiding toward improved nutri- 
 tion : it seeks new pastures. 3. By conjugation and fer- 
 tilization, i.e., by the fusion of complementing organisms, 
 that supplement each other's deficiencies, and double the 
 life-forces of the single and separate gamete. Scientifi- 
 cally, therefore, the origin of sex consists in the gradual 
 differentiation of gametes (uniting cells) into categories 
 of distinct size and habit, and the reunion of the diverse 
 (male and female) cells, each with diverse histories, de- 
 ficiencies, and excellencies, reinvigorates the resultant 
 organism by neutralizing deficiency and reinforcing 
 advantages. Whatever temporary exception seems to 
 break the force of the theory, endogamy (in-and-in breed- 
 ing) must finally prove bad for the type, and exogamy be 
 to its advantage. From all this is plainly apparent the 
 controlling influence of the cellular and organismal struggle 
 for nutrition, and against the running-down of the clock- 
 work of the physiological system or unit. It presupposes 
 
REPRODUCTION. 159 
 
 and rests upon the conception of a cytology that views 
 the cell-system as made and upheld by an extra-cellular 
 master, who is at once steam and engineer, keeping the 
 machine at work by ever watchful energy, and performing 
 the task, impossible to the pure mechanic and materialist, 
 of producing from two of his like-unlike mechanisms a 
 newer and better "rejuvenescent" one, to replace the 
 elder when these have been " worn out." The most ludi- 
 crous fancy of a baby locomotive, spontaneously growing 
 and born from two larger engines, is quite as sensible as 
 the materialistic world-conceptions of some " philosophers," 
 and gives one a realizing sense of the difference between 
 a living and a dead organism. 
 
 But I wish to pierce still deeper into the heart of the 
 mystery of reproduction. The word, rejuvenescence, does 
 not still quite reveal it. The labor of reproduction, viewed 
 as a cosmical fact, is plainly a tremendously expensive 
 and difficult piece of work ; it is clearly an ingenious and 
 roundabout way of obviating a worse result, and it is 
 clearly imposed by the material conditions of incarnation. 
 Like all things material the cell is liable to "wear and 
 tear." With all His incomprehensible ingenuity, Biologos 
 has been unable to construct a permanently durable cell 
 or organismal home. The unstable equilibrium with which 
 He is able to endow the cell lasts but a little time, and 
 the most noteworthy peculiarity that I find in this world 
 is that the new house that Biologos makes before the old 
 has become untenable, and into which he moves or trans- 
 plants Himself, is built precisely on the model of the old 
 ones. The ground plan and essential superstructure are 
 never changed except imperceptibly or slowly, and there 
 is seldom much sudden change in the unimportant details 
 of ornamentation, etc. There is slow change and progress 
 
l6o THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 everywhere. This is the " law " of the development by 
 types, and extension only along the lines leading out from 
 all the past. That each animal breeds its kind is so uni- 
 form a fact, that its strangeness strikes no one ; and yet, 
 exceedingly strange it is, and requires explanation. An 
 architect that makes his houses all alike is called stupid 
 and unimaginative. Now the Divine Architect is far from 
 stupid or unimaginative. Why, in the quite infinite spon- 
 taneousness of his imagination and power, does he not 
 create an infinite diversity of forms, not on type-lines, but 
 giving exuberant play to diversity within types, and at 
 will jumping the boundaries of genus and family, produce 
 from one set of conjugating reproductive cells, beings 
 utterly unlike the parents? To put the question thus is 
 to introduce the reductio ad absurdum that answers itself. 
 Such would certainly be a world far inferior in order and 
 interest to the one before us. Besides, in the multiplicity 
 of types quite beyond enumeration, each following its 
 own line of development, we have precisely the varie- 
 gated world we desire. But the deeper reasons are plainly 
 those of the nutritional necessities of his organisms once 
 that they have been created, whilst still deeper lies the 
 fundamental reason that the biologic Architect has to 
 make not only his own tools but his own material mech- 
 anisms, and that from an existing organism can be obtained 
 only germs of like chemically-constructed somacules and 
 cells. The new house grows out of the old, and in essen- 
 tials and within limits must be like it. 
 
 Digression passed, we return to the fact that the cell- 
 system, as well as the organismal unity, can preserve con- 
 tinuity of function for but a little while. There is some- 
 thing in the deterioration that suggests the simile of the 
 clock, not only needing both constant and periodical 
 
RE PROD UC TION. 1 6 1 
 
 " winding-up," but, despite all, finally wearing out. For 
 a time the cell-units as they die may be supplied by new 
 ones, and the organismal unity still preserved, but in time 
 the larger unit goes inevitably through senescence to 
 death. The very nature of life, and the desperate devices 
 taken to circumvent it, show that death is not a part of the 
 wish and plan of Biologos. It is clearly the hated condi- 
 tion imposed upon The Deathless One by His temporary 
 servant, matter, and with all His ingenuity He has not 
 yet learned to conquer it. In reproduction He compro- 
 mises and circumvents ; it is not a " victory in open field," 
 but is, as it were, a ruse de guerre against an impregnably 
 fortressed enemy. I am not at all sure but that with 
 permanency of condition, uniformity of nutrition, and tem- 
 perature, the planet made homelike in all its parts, and 
 God aided by man's intelligent loyalty, human death may 
 not be almost or quite conquered. It is certain that our 
 lives might be very much lengthened, and all that is really 
 desirable as to earthly immortality fully realized. With 
 some of these conditions attained the tree has learned to 
 preserve its beautiful life for thousands of years. Perhaps 
 the time has not yet arrived, but some time the scientific 
 study of the conditions and means of preventing senescence 
 and death will be of profound importance and interest. 
 Of course, the avoidance of harmful "wear and tear," 
 by hygienic measures will be necessary, but the encour- 
 agement of the unconscious vital nutritive process that 
 can replace old cells with new ones will constitute the 
 primary and principal means until the true immortality 
 of the cell itself shall have been secured by the renovation 
 of its parts. Not until railroads and steamships had been 
 perfected have the facts of certainty and uniformity in the 
 supply of the crude materials of nutrition become secure, 
 
1 62 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 and even now for but a limited number, so that the strug- 
 gle for temporary maintenance of existence and reproduc- 
 tion was dominant, and Biologos and His creatures could 
 give little or no attention to the indefinite lengthening of 
 individual lives. With civilization or nutrition secured, 
 the crusade against death itself may be, and even already 
 has been entered upon. The shameless Brown-Sequard 
 savagery teaches many truths wise and otherwise, but it 
 at least showed the hope and the pathetic appeal to Life 
 in the denier of life. If ever gained, the victory will, of 
 course, not be sudden : God's victories are never so ; there 
 may be cycle-long approaches and temporary failures, and 
 death will hardly be appeased by continuous death-sacri- 
 fices to him. Life loves all her children, not man alone. 
 Man is hardly cunning enough to play tricks with God. 
 
 In the meantime it is consoling to notice the inex- 
 haustible kindness and thoughtfulness of God in breaking 
 the force of all penalties and tragedies. Nothing so 
 arouses love and gratitude to Him as vision of the subtle 
 foresight with which He has softened all sorrows and pro- 
 vided compensations for all those who are loyal to Him. 
 The greatest tragedy in the world is death, and there is no 
 mitigation of the force of the blow in case of unmerited 
 and early death. But that is not necessary, nor is it in 
 His plan. We all know that the large numbers of those 
 that die young are solely due to the sin, perversity, and the 
 disloyalty of men. God is only waiting for help, waiting 
 for us to act up to the light we have already gained. But 
 the death of those who have lived out the " allotted 
 term " honorably and bravely, is to self and loving ones, 
 like sleep at the tired day's ending, none questions that 
 it is fitting and right. 
 
 The next greatest tragedy is the existence of the " de- 
 
REPRODUCTION. 163 
 
 fective classes." Here again God is waiting for us ; these 
 are of our making. When we are determined, they may be 
 prevented from coming into existence. The diseases that 
 cause so many, are preventable diseases, and the social sins 
 that cause so many more are likewise avoidable. The 
 hopelessly idiotic should be legally and kindly killed. The 
 insane may be made comparatively happy and inexpensive 
 by the wise kindness of their guided labor ; the blind and 
 the deaf and dumb may be educated, made happy, and 
 self-supporting with a little kind judgment and love upon 
 our part. 
 
 And while God waits upon us He is not forgetful even 
 of the slightest touches of affection, but is ever watchful, 
 the dear Father! to heal the physical hurts, to devise 
 sweet compensations and rests, guarding precipice-edges 
 with roses, or with thorns if we are heedless, with death 
 if foolish ; suggesting new outlets and ways, hiding past 
 griefs in present joys, and above all rewarding those who 
 love Him with blessings others cannot know or feel. All 
 good literature is certification of these facts, and in all 
 our lives are they exemplified each hour of every day. 
 
 But in three things especially has the divine kindness 
 shown itself most surpassingly : these are the beauty 
 of woman, the exquisiteness of love, and the sweetness of 
 child-life ; their presence and influence in our life are the 
 chief of its attractions, and the dominant notes of its 
 music. Each has a threefold glowing significance each 
 is the exultant proof of victory over death, the smile of 
 satisfaction reflected from the very face of God as He 
 beholds that His world still lives ; each is the divine bene- 
 diction upon His children who have been obedient and 
 loyal, because they are rewards given only to the good ; 
 and, finally, each is but a glimpse and promise of the rich- 
 
164 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 ness of the divine life, waiting only opportunity to be re- 
 vealed, and eyes appreciative of the vision. Because, if 
 such wonders are shown as the mere certificate and p^roof 
 of a difficulty only partially conquered, what must be the 
 unshown wonders awaiting revelation, when all difficulties 
 are fully overcome, and there is the unhindered way to 
 realization of ideals, hitherto postponed by the struggle 
 with fateful circumstance and obstinate material ? 
 
 Buddhistic and Christian asceticism, and, whether re- 
 ligious, philosophic, or sensualistic, pessimism generally, 
 has represented the beauty of woman and sexual love as the 
 baiting of the devil's hook. With unexampled clearness 
 and splendid analysis the great Schopenhauer has set 
 forth this view, and if he had but put God in place of his 
 diabolic will (blind, and yet, illogically enough, superbly, 
 even fiendishly, cunning), the exposition would have stood 
 as a marvel of physiologico-philosophic reasoning and 
 description. It is perfectly useless and philosophically 
 wrong to blink or ignore the evident partial truth of this 
 view. From the Iliad of Homer to the Iliad of to-day's 
 suicide the fact is exemplified, and the life of every one 
 of us has been either moulded or deeply influenced, 
 directly or indirectly, positively or negatively, by it. It 
 is the constant theme of all literature, the staple subject 
 of all joke, the secret and invisible hand ever leading to 
 all kinds of fortune or of misfortune. The philosophy 
 that leaves such an agent unobserved and unexplained is 
 simply no philosophy ; and the theology that leaves out 
 such a plain evidence of supernaturalism is no theology. 
 The majority of philosophies and theologies may indeed 
 be quite accurately described as characterized by their 
 failure of interest in what God is most interested in. 
 Their concern is in inverse ratio to His. 
 
REPRODUCTION. 165 
 
 To every adult it is perfectly evident and clear, this 
 purpose of the sexual instinct and mechanism. But with 
 the philosopher many questions arise : Is the entire 
 mechanism the best that could be devised ? Are the evils 
 resulting from its working chargeable to God or man ? 
 Do the good results more than balance the evil results ? 
 What about the future ? According to his standpoint 
 and the clearness of his mind, each person's answer to 
 such questions will be different. My own would be 
 something as follows : The mechanism is of course the 
 direct work of Biologos, essentially the same in plant, 
 animal, and man, the plain method of the intermediation 
 of reproduction. Reproduction in its entirety is a device 
 to circumvent death, and all indirect means of reaching a 
 distant end, all obviation of difficulties, are apt to show 
 the machinery quite too plainly, and reveal the quality of 
 the " makeshift." Now I have not the faintest desire to 
 minimize the truth of the " bait-and-hook philosophy " 
 neither must it be exaggerated. It must simply be recog- 
 nized and reasoned about with entire calmness and frank- 
 ness, and finally utilized improved, if you please, for the 
 evident ends, and according to God's plain directions. It 
 is an infinitely serious matter, despite the knowing " wink " 
 and leering smile. When one comes to ask the cunning 
 winker in what his self-satisfied secret knowledge consists, 
 the " open secret " is found to be solely a 'cute little trick 
 of stealing the bait and escaping the hook. But if God is 
 fishing for fools, as the routs and bachelors grin, the most 
 perfect specimens are the grinning bait-stealers themselves, 
 because, if the bad metaphor be allowed, the bait without 
 the hook is poison and death. And to folly is always 
 added wickedness, in the inevitable suffering and degrada- 
 tion of the victims. 
 
1 66 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 The problem for God, for man, for progressive humanity, 
 and for the philosopher, is the most perplexing and dan- 
 gerous. I judge it to be the crucial difficulty in humanity's 
 future. Civilization is more endangered in its solution 
 than by plutocracy, war, anarchy, and other evils com- 
 bined. France to-day is a progressive victim doomed 
 to extinction solely because of a failure to solve it, and 
 if cities were not recruited from the country's virtue, 
 civilization would be as plainly doomed as is that of 
 France. The problem is simple : to preserve and keep 
 progressive the human race by means of an instinct 
 thoroughly effective for non-self-conscious beings, but 
 ineffective for free and selfish beings who have not 
 learned to prefer the good of all and of the future to 
 their own selfish pleasure. In loyal monogamy the ac- 
 ceptance of the responsibilities and consequences of the 
 functional instinct perpetuates the race and advances its 
 civilization ; but not only is genuine monogamy a weaken- 
 ing base, but loyalty to and within it, I mean the accept- 
 ance of its natural consequences, is far from the rule. 
 The proportion of children to marriages is as steadily and 
 uninterruptedly declining as is the proportion of marriages 
 to population. It takes but a little general intelligence 
 or physiologico-medical knowledge to teach the secret of 
 the trick ; the veriest booby has learned it, and Biologos 
 is confronted with the terrible danger. Mankind must 
 through ! .Self-consciousness and freedom cannot be with- 
 drawn, selfishness cannot be transformed into love of the 
 future race at once, and the frightful gauntlet must be 
 run. Never was loyalty to God more needed, never was 
 it more absent, or, in this particular, inoperative. The 
 survival of the fit and the extinction of the unfit, even if 
 a " true law " does not hold here, because all are hastening 
 
REPRODUCTION. 1 67 
 
 to become purposely unfit, and because the chief object 
 of the process, the establishment of loyal intelligence, is 
 thwarted in the modern divorce of loyalty and intelli- 
 gence. The most intelligent refuse ; the most loyal are 
 not intelligent. The intelligent can instruct the loyal in 
 intelligence, but the loyal cannot instruct the intelligent 
 in loyalty. This plainly operates in extinguishing the 
 reproduction of the most civilized, and repeoples the 
 earth with the uncivilized. Has humanity (God) here 
 reached an impasse? 
 
 The problem is complicated by the evident breaking 
 away of this semi-automatonized mechanism from God's 
 control during the process of humanization. There can 
 be no possible question of our ascent into homo sapiens 
 from the condition of animalhood ; but the effectualizing 
 of the advance was evidently one of those great crucial 
 struggles of God, second only to that of gaining the very 
 first foothold in matter. What the exact nature of that 
 desperate struggle was, its length, its catastrophies en- 
 dured or conquered, of this we can only guess ; but its 
 scars and its dim memories yet mar our bodies and thrill 
 our minds. One of the most striking consequences of this 
 struggle was a change in the working of the reproductive 
 instinct that now characterizes man from animal. Held in 
 the leash of the divine control it had hitherto been abso- 
 lutely subordinate to its purpose. Single exercise was 
 only dreamed of for single result. But in man we sud- 
 denly find that the automatonization has broken from 
 control, and that the implement of purpose has elevated 
 itself into an object in itself, without restraint of season or 
 of periodicity. Was the process of humanization so long 
 and so desperately near failure that only by this emphasis 
 of the instinct, this surcharging it and making it override 
 
1 68 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 all control and restraint that only by this outrageous 
 exaggeration was wreckage saved ? In the animal the 
 engine had an unfailing and excellent governor, that per- 
 mitted just the inlet of steam required for the purpose of 
 the machine ; assuredly in man the governor has been 
 lost, and the uncontrolled mechanism goes pounding on 
 to self-destruction, some accidental utilization of " power " 
 being preserved where the "shafting" has not yet broken. 
 
 But I have great faith in the divine wisdom and inge- 
 nuity. As plainly as He is often hard-pressed and near 
 failure, as often as He may have failed temporarily and 
 by that route, failure, nevertheless, is not yet upon us. 
 The justification of all faith is present success : We are 
 here / And just as certainly as we see present realization 
 of purpose, just so plainly do we see unrealized purpose 
 being outworked. Let us meet the future bravely and 
 trustfully, and helpfully. How will the depicted danger 
 be met and the problem solved ? Perhaps by these means : 
 
 I. I do not think it fancy or fanciful to entertain the 
 hope of a final conquering of human death, in which case 
 the whole reproductive machinery would become func- 
 tionless and atrophied, presenting itself as one of the many 
 sets of organs found in the body, remnant and outlived, 
 the relics of ancient custom and use, preserved, perhaps, 
 in order to call forth the conceited scorn of future " scien- 
 tific " critics, who could have easily done it all so much 
 better.* Considered carefully, there is about the mechan- 
 
 * But a better and more sympathetic manner of viewing these organs is 
 coming. For example, " How reluctant Nature seems in some cases to undo 
 her own work ! How long she will allow a specialized organ, with the cor- 
 related instinct, to rest without use, ready to flash forth on the instant, 
 bright and keen-edged, as in the ancient days of strife, ages past, before 
 peace came to dwell on earth." HUDSON. 
 
REPRODUCTION. 169 
 
 ism a distinct adventitiousness of character, as if it were 
 all a temporary makeshift, a slightness of connection with 
 the vital organs, and a harmlessness of separation, that 
 more than hints at temporariness, after-thought, and final 
 laying-aside. The universal fig-leaf ; the universal shame 
 and secrecy ; the silent contempt of this self for that self ; 
 the disgust of soul at sense ; the commingled loathing 
 and yet doing such spontaneous emotions point to the 
 fact that God also feels that way too, and that illogic in- 
 satisfaction will some time and some way be resolved into 
 logic satisfaction. 
 
 2. The great harassing and all-controlling task and 
 problem of nutrition having become settled by scientific 
 agriculture and scientific intercommunication (railroads, 
 steamships, etc.), the constant care and labor and the fre- 
 quent tragedy of the child-raising of the past will disap- 
 pear, immensely over-balanced, as they will be, by the joys. 
 This means that moderate wealth, home-comfort, and 
 financial security, are fast coming within the reach of 
 multitudes, and, so soon as the temporary intoxication of 
 freedom and selfishness has passed, as it will pass, then 
 the little solicitude and sacrifice following the acceptance 
 of the responsibility will be gladly welcomed. It will be 
 as nothing compared to the infinite sweetness of young 
 life, renascent from one's own failing heart, self-revivified, 
 and heaven influshing and overflooding the new child- 
 wonder with the divine glory of its own incomprehensible 
 purity and beauty. 
 
 3. The hook-and-bait idea is the appropriate and char- 
 acteristic theory of the fisherman type of mind, /. e., of the 
 people who are tricking others by cunning device for 
 purely selfish use. They that are lurers see lures. Those 
 who always suspect others of deceit need themselves to be 
 
1 70 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 sharply watched. In any partial view of the working of 
 the function of sexualism the lure-aspect is quickly caught, 
 but by a larger and a higher view it is as quickly resolved 
 into larger issues and a higher unity. The salient fact 
 consists in the recognition of abundant reward, and also in 
 the progressive gradation of reward, in consideration of 
 the adoption by man of service to God's purpose. It is 
 plain enough that the beauty and charm of woman arouses 
 love ; but is not that beauty a splendid and almost 
 sufficient reward for devotion to her, and to what her 
 beauty means and what it stands for ? With unsurpassed 
 skill the arch pessimist has shown how every element and 
 attribute of that beauty points to and mediates one 
 supreme purpose and use. Is it not a proof of exquisite 
 kindness and love that it is there, yours, an evident 
 reward, rather than not there, and the end effected without 
 such delightful gratuity, by brute force alone, as is done 
 elsewhere, as could doubtless have been done here ? Grati- 
 tude, not criticism, is certainly the fitting reception we 
 should give both gift and Giver. " But the beauty fades 
 so soon as the hook is in our gills." Too often that is 
 true, and for you who do not learn the lesson that physical 
 beauty is but a beckoning and a leading onward to spirit- 
 ual beauty, the fact is sad enough. In further answer, sev- 
 eral things might be noted. The loss of physical beauty 
 by women is doubtless due to obviable accidents of the 
 " struggle for existence," to obviable disease, physical, 
 emotional, moral, and sociological, all temporarily incident 
 to our present form of civilization. We may look forward 
 to a speedy prolongation of the period of bloom and health 
 so fast as hygienic life of all kinds is realized. The pres- 
 ent woman who does not lead man to a higher delight and 
 a better heaven than a sensual one, brings to self and hus- 
 band a Pandora-box of evils. Under every other city-roof 
 
REPRODUCTION. 171 
 
 there dwell bitterness and wretchedness because one of 
 two, or both alike, have not seen gradation of reward and 
 progressiveness of heaven, and because they have set heart 
 on the lower good alone. If accepted gladly and grate- 
 fully for what they are worth, the charm of sensual beauty 
 and the deliciousness of sensual love are exquisite rewards 
 and indemnifications. But to right minds and loyal hearts 
 they surely and naturally lead to a better beauty and a 
 larger love that neither fade nor falter, and that bring 
 preferable rewards and a purer peace. 
 
 The chief of these rewards is childhood, in which heaven 
 itself is loaned unto life. In the child the human and the 
 divine parents clasp hands, and if the dream of abrogated 
 death should ever be realized, the ingenuity of God will 
 be taxed to the uttermost to devise a bewildering joy suf- 
 ficiently supernal to infil, and overflood the heart haunted 
 by the memory and the tradition, and brooding over the 
 grief and the void of childlessness. However bitter coming 
 death may be, we look down through tears of gratitude 
 into angelic baby faces and softly thank God that we do not 
 live in the deathless and childless time He may be preparing. 
 
 Next to beauty itself there is nothing so divine and of 
 such unearthly wonderfulness of charm as mother-love. 
 The mother and child are the inexhaustible model of 
 artist-joy, and no true heart can, without tears, watch the 
 lambent beauty and limpid warmth of mother-eyes, as 
 her babe draws from the God-made breasts the milk of life. 
 It is the very glory of God made flesh and dwelling 
 amongst us. * Motherhood, physiological and psychical, 
 
 * " Of all His creatures dear to God, the most beloved is the young mother 
 with her nursling boy. Of all earthly loves, the most holy is that of this 
 mother for her child. Of all human suffering, the most poignant is that of 
 the young mother struck by death and leaving her darling to a probably 
 tragic fate. 
 
 " This love you received, this love you gave, this grief you endured, for 
 
1 72 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 can tell more about biological philosophy than all the books 
 that have been written on " Evolution." Everywhere we 
 go the vision is before us, for what animal does not love 
 its young ? There is the same angelic benignancy in the 
 eyes of all mothers, animal or human, because both mothers 
 are filled and thrilled with the same divinity. One God 
 is in both hearts outworking one purpose by the same 
 emotion. And what grief so deep as denied motherhood ? 
 What sight so sweet as the stifled hidden love of child- 
 lessness finding opportunities for its outgoing? A child's 
 doll is a holy thing. 
 
 It is not only the mammae of the childless woman that 
 swell with milk at the cry of another's infant. I know of 
 an instance in which a little dog made a moving family 
 most miserable by its whining, moaning, and scratching, 
 all to reach a mewing kitten kept in a basket. After 
 several days of this torture dog and kitten came together. 
 The little doggie had had no puppies for several years, 
 but the kitten's mewing had aroused the glands to secre- 
 tion, and, in nursing the motherless kitten, the dog's satis- 
 faction was surely as great as was that of the foster-kitten. 
 I have seen an unsatisfied hen drive a cat away from her kit- 
 tens, guard, and watch them, fold them under her wings at 
 night until they were grown. Hudson tells a story of the 
 splendid heaven-exploring chakar. One had been domesti- 
 cated and made a household pet. It loved young chickens. 
 A few were given him, and so perfect was his care of them 
 that many were allowed him. " It was very curious to see 
 
 two years, and of these years each bitter day was an agonized prayer that 
 your life might become my life, and your Father my Father. 
 
 " Dear dead, undying. Mother, I would I had something better than this 
 poor book to offer as a sadly belated Amen ! to your prayer." 
 
 [From " A DEDICATION."] 
 
RE PROD UC TION. 1 73 
 
 this big bird with thirty or forty little animated balls of 
 yellow cotton following him about, while he moved majes- 
 tically along, setting down his feet with the greatest care 
 not to tread on them, and swelling himself up with jealous 
 anger at the approach of a cat or a dog." 
 
 4. Future sociology and government must undertake 
 a certain ordering and regulation of the reproductive 
 function. God is waiting to turn the task over to man. 
 He has brought man to self-consciousness and control, 
 and the sway of His instincts will hold the-race in being 
 until the deputization of His power shall have been 
 effected. Marriage and procreation must, by stringent 
 legislation, be absolutely interdicted to those without 
 physical and moral health. This necessary step should 
 be at once resolved upon and carried out by all civilized 
 governments. There is much to be said for the proposal 
 to deprive criminals of the procreative power. It is, per- 
 haps, good sociology and good penology. The taxation 
 of bachelors ; the control of the " social evil " by wise 
 and careful legislation ; the severe punishment, not of the 
 poor mother alone, or chiefly, for criminal abortion, a 
 fact, alas ! more common than is guessed ; the making 
 disgraceful the " legalized prostitution " of intentionally 
 childless marriage, these or other better methods of 
 controlling private selfishness for the common and future 
 good will be undertaken, and will help to work out the 
 salvation sought by Biologos, and which is directly denied 
 Him, because of the enormous difficulties of His means 
 and of His obstacles. Here as everywhere God is 
 calling, waiting, begging, for the sympathetic help of loyal 
 men. 
 
 5. Humanity is now in the beginning and press of an 
 advance such as is comparable in importance only to its 
 
174 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 spring out of animalism. The great unrevealed mystery 
 and glory we dimly prefigure and vaguely surmise under 
 the name of civilization, is pre-eminently an advance of 
 reason and of the common well-being. 
 
 General enlightenment and comfort stand out as dis- 
 tinguishing Occident from orient, and present from past. 
 The most untrue rant of anarchist, or wail of pessimist, 
 is itself proof of progress attained and unattained. But 
 all this is only the preparation of the groun^L I prophesy 
 that the " religion of the future " will be summed up in 
 the words intelligent loyalty ; loyalty, individual and 
 collective to God, and to the purposes of God, as revealed 
 in the scientific study of biology and history. Whether 
 this faith of the future will grow out of, or attach itself 
 to the historic continuity of Christianity, no one can say. 
 If Christian leaders were wise, the historic momentum 
 of that great and sublime faith could be utilized. The 
 ground is all prepared. Christ's teaching lends itself 
 easily to this utilization and application. But the plas- 
 ticity of old institutions is usually sadly deficient. 
 The Church should slough its trinitarianism, its credal and 
 aberrant characteristics, and grasp the opportunity that 
 for the last time is offered it. Christianity has been the 
 enemy of reason, of science, and of progress. Her spirit 
 has not been the promoting but the hindering spirit of 
 civilization. It is useless to say that this was not genuine, 
 that it was not the Christianity of Christ that accepted 
 asceticism, martyrized Galileo, and, if Luther had not 
 been a Teuton, would have quenched him with the ever- 
 ready fires of the Inquisition. The argument has no 
 force. Let it be admitted or denied. The question 
 returns, what of to-day and of the future ? With not the 
 faintest spark of antagonism, with perfect absence of 
 
REP ROD UC TION. 1 7 5 
 
 prejudice for or against, let one ask if on the part of pres- 
 ent-day official Christianity there are any signs of intel- 
 lectual grasp of, and Christlike devotion to, the real prob- 
 lems of civilization and the future? The Christ of Naz- 
 areth naturally and excusably knew nothing, betrayed no 
 slightest hint of knowing the uses of government in bring- 
 ing about the Kingdom of God on Earth, of the scientific 
 study of sociology and penology, of the incarnation of 
 God and revelation of Himself in the biological world, of 
 the power of education and of printing, of the glory of 
 Science, of the means of commerce, and especially of 
 modern mechanics and intercommunication, to help on 
 the realization of his ideal. But the Christ of to-day must 
 know and grasp these opportunities and work in and 
 through them. The simple question of the existence of 
 institutional Christianity lies in her possibility of plasticity 
 to adapt, and adopt, and in her vigor to seize upon these 
 things. Whether she do this or not, will not deflect 
 humanity from its evident onward march, and other insti- 
 tutional forms and spirit will take up the work. There is 
 no escape from religion ; the joy of human existence will 
 depend upon its vivid reality, the motive of true enlight- 
 ened hearts will consist in loyalty to God, the living God 
 that is working under infinite difficulties in and all about 
 Us. This intelligent and active loyalty to an intelligent 
 and working Father will catch life, and fill heart after 
 heart until it will become the renovating thrilling spirit 
 of coming humanity. With this enthusiastic loyalty the 
 dangers from the exaggeration and lawlessness of the 
 great instinct upon which our existence depends will be 
 slowly solved, order and control reinstituted, and the great 
 work of the overcoming of death itself be undertaken. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 CONCERNING EVIL. 
 
 THE origin of evil has been the insolvable problem of 
 all theologians, and there is little wonder that it is 
 so. There is absolutely no escape from the terrible 
 logical dilemma in which they found themselves placed. 
 One of three things must be acknowledged by any mind 
 not the most logically depraved : either God is incapable 
 of destroying evil, or He does not wish to do so, or no evil 
 exists. " The grinning atheist could not be answered " 
 from the " good father's " standpoint at least. To the latter 
 it seemed the worst sacrilege to question God's capability 
 or omnipotence. Hence all theological discussion has 
 centered about this insoluble question, concerning which 
 there has been even more hair-splitting and wrangling, 
 more intellectual bravery and cowardice, than over that 
 other sorry problem, the existence of God. The faith- 
 ful clung to their omnipotent and infinitely benevolent 
 God, as they should have done, and tried to minimize 
 and forget the frightful fact of evil. But it can hardly be 
 doubted that there has always been a large minority of 
 virile intelligences that were driven into atheism rather 
 than deny this appalling verity of evil. Busied with their 
 thought-spinning, all forgot the simplest duty and easiest 
 way out of the intolerable mystery. All logic choppers are 
 everlastingly hunting for their -spectacles everywhere ex-, 
 cept on top of their head. One minute's observation of 
 
 176 
 
CONCERNING EVIL. 1 77 
 
 the living world about them would have made clear the 
 plainest of facts : the fact that every organism is struggling 
 against difficulties to maintain its own existence and to 
 bring others like itself into existence. There is no 
 mistaking the meaning of these facts: God is working 
 under difficulties imposed upon Him. But to the poor 
 theologian this would have been impossible to see or to 
 acknowledge. It would have been too scientific an obser- 
 vation to make, i. e., it would require perception of fact, a 
 feat quite impossible to him, and it would have destroyed 
 his ideally conceived, far-away infinite God. Thankful are 
 we that our minds and eyes have been unbound and are 
 opened ; that facts and their meaning are our study, and 
 that the living, acting God is the object of our love. 
 Dreams and word-weaving, mental tyranny imposed or 
 chosen, dead gods and law-bound life, all are banished, 
 and with eager clear brain, fearless, and yet reverent, we 
 walk in freedom and among realities. 
 
 As to God's goodness, I would be perfectly willing to 
 see or acknowledge any proof or intimation of moral im- 
 perfection. I fear no truth, but love it above all things. 
 Neither critic nor apologist of God would I be, but a 
 knower. And still I say that a keen eye penetrates no 
 mystery, and that a balanced judgment ponders none, 
 that does not show benevolent love at work. It is per- 
 fectly possible, for example, that justice should be stronger 
 in Him than love, but I see little evidence in life or in 
 history whether biological or human, that God has much, 
 or indeed any, of what we call justice. He is not unjust 
 of course, if He were He would not be kind and good, as 
 He is ; but every indication of His character that I can 
 see shows beauty and love conquering justice, dragging 
 him to play as laughing children do a make-believe-serious 
 
1/8 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 dog or father. The Greek Olympus was an infinitely 
 better and truer idea of heaven than that of any Christian 
 painting I have heard of. The laughter, the fun, the 
 song, the play, and the spontaneous joy that breaks out 
 above the struggle for existence whenever this bitter 
 struggle may for but an instant be evaded or forgotten, 
 the children, the birds, the flooding of utility with the 
 sunshine of beauty, all speak of a God who Himself 
 laughs, loves, and ornaments, and to whom the morbid 
 imaginings of medieval hells and puritanical heavens are 
 alike repulsive. 
 
 There is no honest eye and loyal heart that can blink 
 the tragedy of death. To lose the suppleness and sense 
 of elation of strength ; to feel the labor of energy coming 
 on and growing greater ; to be compelled to watch and 
 guard against our little personal weaknesses and dangers ; 
 to feel the waning not only of physical zest, but of mental 
 and emotional verve and Man ("he begins to die who 
 quits his desires ") ; to know that the end is coming, yon- 
 der, soon maybe, a little later certainly, all this admits 
 of little mitigation, we shudder and brush away the tear 
 and the thought. Well ! I frankly say the shudder is 
 God's shudder. It is sad and tragical, and the tragedy of 
 it crept out of God's heart into yours. But it is not God's 
 fault, and He is doing all he can to circumvent, to obviate, 
 and to overcome it. To the circumvention of death He 
 has superadded a royal bounty of beauty and blessing in 
 the loveliness of love, of flowers, of maternal love, of 
 woman, and of all that rightfully pertains to reproduction. 
 Gratuity is heaped upon gift until the eyes are dazzled 
 and the heart sated, so kindly thoughtful has He been, 
 and so solicitous to make us forget the ugliness of His 
 enemy and of ours, and to recompense us for the pain we 
 
CONCERNING EVIL. 179 
 
 are put to in dying and in passing our life on to the child. 
 Death is almost unmixed evil, the price paid to matter for 
 a temporary service. Its scientific aspect is simply that 
 Biologos has been unable to maintain permanency of nutri- 
 tion of the individual organism. He has attained it for 
 the type by the device of reproduction. There is hope 
 that it may be yet attained for the individual. 
 
 The same difficulty of nutrition explains a large part 
 of the evil of disease. Every -pathy is at bottom a 
 trophopathy. Much disease is due to man's physical sin, 
 much more to his moral sin, and still much more to his 
 intellectual sin of improvidence. But there still remains 
 a large proportion that must be charged to the inherent 
 difficulty of the incarnating labor, /. e., it is fundamentally 
 nutritional, and for long will remain unavoidable. Disease 
 and subnormal length of life are appallingly evident in the 
 human being. Such is the expense, the difficulty of hu- 
 manization. 
 
 There is one aspect of pathogeny that needs to be 
 lighted up by some philosophical mind : diseases are 
 often hyperphysiological in absolute etiology, and their 
 prophylaxis will be found to consist in the laws and rules 
 of the best psychic life. I mean that the obviation of 
 disease and the progress of physical health are attained 
 only by means that obviate moral disease and insure 
 spiritual health. Take the entire class of crowd-diseases. 
 Too great crowding also produces psychopathy, and hin- 
 ders mental stability and progress. We must be much 
 alone for the best health, either of soul or of body. 
 Extend the term to include most contagious diseases, 
 typhoid, cholera, diphtheria, etc., because most such dis- 
 eases are crowd-diseases in a strict sense of the word. The 
 open sky, not roofs, above ; the pure ground, not pavements, 
 
ISO THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 beneath ; the free space, not poisoned air, about us, are as 
 necessary to the best spiritual as to the best physical health. 
 The intimate relation of all contagious diseases to unclean- 
 liness and of wound-healing to cleanliness, also points the 
 same lesson. There is a close, though not a rigid, and a 
 progressive relation, of cleanliness of body and cleanliness 
 of mind. In luetic disease the connection of moral and 
 physical evil is most true and most awful to behold, and 
 allows the suggestion to arise that here almost alone in 
 the entire range of biological phenomena does one meet 
 with a fact that suggests vindictiveness, or at least a puni- 
 tive character in God. As in regeneration one sees the 
 astounding evidence of His hand, in boldest miracle of 
 action, so in venereal disease, one seems to see the 
 clenched fist. Only the physician sees and knows what 
 may not be described, but to his keen and kindly eyes a 
 thousand mysteries are revealed, and a thousand tragedies 
 are justified, that stun the mind and heart of the ordinary 
 citizen. In pulmonary disease, tuberculous or not, the 
 ultimate causation-agencies are occupations, habits, and 
 conditions that kill the lungs of the soul and of the body. 
 There is a multitude of conclusive evidence that the 
 bacillus tuberculosis and most other pathogenetic bacteria 
 are powerless against properly developed and normally 
 vitalized tissues. If given proper blood and air and exer- 
 cise, the lungs offer no nidus or hostelry to the little 
 enemies, and proper blood, air, and exercise also bring a 
 power of mental and moral respiration that resists the 
 horde of psychic bacilli hovering to destroy the spirit as 
 well. If this is all true, then the healthy, full-breathing, 
 pure-air-loving lung is the standard, and the bacillus is 
 the agent that punishes the sin of falling below that ideal. 
 If this agent were not operative, the narrow-chested, city- 
 
CONCERNING EVIL. l8l 
 
 minded, deoxygenated degenerates would be the parents 
 of a progressively degenerating race, and a successful 
 Koch its worthy high-priest. Fortunately the " lymph " 
 did not fulfil expectation. How far the great historic 
 epidemics and scourges of the past and the diseases of 
 the present have been the result of moral sin, is beyond 
 our power to discover. That the brutal selfishness of 
 rulers and aristocracies has been a most potent agency in 
 producing famines and wretchedness, the prolific parents 
 of disease, is too plainly evident to question, and of which 
 the France of the past and the Russia of to-day are lurid 
 examples. Then, too, there are a number of diseases that 
 in a special sense may be called civilization diseases, scle- 
 roses of many kinds, cardiac and renal inabilities to endure 
 the strain put upon these organs, neurasthenias, psychoses, 
 hysterias, hypertrophies, hyperplasias due to alcohol, ex- 
 citement, physiological misuse and disuse, all flowing 
 from or intercurrent with ethical misuse and disuse. The 
 most incongruous absurdity imaginable is a materialist-phy- 
 sician. But the inquiry is too vast and as yet too vague, 
 for more than mere allusion to its possibility. In a world 
 in which the entire biological process, every inch of 
 ground gained or to be gained, is gotten by infinite watch- 
 fulness and ingenuity, ethics must necessarily be largely 
 hygiene, because every physiological question is ethical, 
 and every ethical question is physiological. God Himself 
 being the great physiologist, His power and means of 
 incarnation being physiological, moral evil and pathology 
 quickly reach approximate identity. 
 
 All of the evils attendant and consequent upon the sur- 
 vival of the fittest and the struggle for existence are easily 
 recognized as subordinate to the nutritional difficulty of 
 Biologos in getting and in retaining foothold, or to the 
 
1 82 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 ideal of progress that all sacrifices mediate. The bellum- 
 omnium-contra-omnes, and the nature-red-with-tooth-and- 
 claw philosophy, as all now recognize, has been greatly 
 over-emphasized. There is no doubt plenty of fact-basis 
 for the theory, but when seen in large and calmly, it is 
 all presently necessary to preservation of balances, and 
 brings about perfection of organism together with progress 
 of type. All things considered, the death of the super- 
 numerary, and of the less fit of the animal and vegetable 
 world, when it assures the realization of right purpose, is 
 itself right. The pessimistic finding that the process does 
 not lead to survival of the fit and to ultimate progress, is, 
 like many things, " critic and whipper-snapper," simply 
 untrue. 
 
 " The slow movement of history, the stagnant nations, 
 the dead levels, the non-progressiveness, or even back- 
 slidings," and all that ! Readily acknowledged ! But have 
 we realized His difficulties? Have we even acknowledged 
 the existence of them till now? Are we wiser or more 
 powerful or more ingenious than He ? Would He not 
 have hastened if He could? Is it not He that has brought 
 the present success about, even so late as it is ? Are not 
 we the results ? Nay, is it not in reality early, and has He 
 not truly hastened ? When so much that is good is seen, 
 may we not agree that the bad and unseen has been as 
 good as it could have been ? Not His the responsibility, 
 but the unconquerable irresponsiveness of His material. 
 No blame to Him, but infinite gratitude for a thousand 
 huge difficulties overcome, and for success now and yet 
 to be wrung from Fate and Death. 
 
 " But men are wicked and life is embittered by their 
 hideous selfishness." Sometimes, and too often true, but 
 not all men, and not any man irremediably or wholly. How 
 
CONCERNING EVIL. 183 
 
 often, if we will to see, do we not learn how good even 
 our worst enemies and the worst of men are, and how true 
 it is that only opportunity is lacking, the spring-warmth 
 of love and kindness from us, for example, to make good- 
 ness like a cactus-bloom burst from the very heart of thorns 
 and ugliness. Do not believe men are wholly bad, or that 
 they love evil. There is doubt in our minds as to what 
 things are evil, and what good ; conditions unhealthy to 
 body and soul have warped and stunted and deranged the 
 mechanism, but such conditions are in process of passing, 
 and man's spirit, a graft of the divine life, turns loyally to 
 the divine ideal, and turns just so fast, and just so far 
 as it may. 
 
 People flatter themselves with the illusory greatness of 
 their adversity, their martyrdom at the hands of niggard 
 fate or of cruel men. This heightens their little heroism, 
 and makes them seem greater to themselves. We are all 
 quite expert at playing the courtier to our own ego. But 
 after all we' well know in our hearts that most of the 
 really harmful evils of our lives are the products of our 
 own folly and wrong-doing. Another can harm us very 
 little unless indeed we kindly aid him. A little careful 
 introspection shows us that very often we love the very 
 faults in ourselves whence flow the conditions at which we 
 grumble. We do not desire to be better, and would be 
 sorry if we were forced to better ourselves. Perhaps 
 there is a subtle wisdom in this that smothers our smile. 
 Every character has its own laws of balance, and its 
 peculiar difficulties of function, known only to the silent 
 wisdom of " the unconscious," and our little obstinacies, 
 frictions, and malfunctions are often devices for prevent- 
 ing greater evils and of keeping well on the track. 
 
 Then how well we know that, if we could rob them of 
 
1 84 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 it, the wealth or the power that we envy in others would 
 be our own undoing. How few people there are that are 
 not injured by their prosperity. They may very rarely 
 use their money or their position to help others, but by 
 positive wrong or by negative non-doing, to self-injury 
 they add injury of others. For the present degree of 
 elevation of personal character there is entirely too much 
 exceptional and personal " prosperity." No greater kind- 
 ness could one wish most of his friends than misfortune. 
 The crude, hard, cruel plebeianism of " successful " 
 people ; the waste of their leisure ; their emulation of 
 people more disgusting than themselves ; their greedy 
 hunger for more ; their waste of what they have ; the de- 
 gradation of their petty imitators ; the hiding of their in- 
 terior poverty under the hollow show of luxury, and of 
 their irreligiousness under the impious hypocrisies of re- 
 ligion, ^all such things lead to the conclusion that without 
 accepted accountability deputed power ends in evil done 
 and evil suffered. Riches without character to use them 
 wisely either for self or for others is the consummation of 
 evil, and that government or that society that produces 
 this condition so easily as do ours is travelling a danger- 
 ous road. 
 
 Not only is wealth harmful to most people, but poverty 
 is a blessing to most. The majority, as regards the use- 
 fulness and excellence of their character, have all the pros- 
 perity " they can stand." If the poor could forget envy, 
 and fill their hearts with joy, how delightful their lot ! 
 Happiness, as any darkey or dog might show us, has little 
 to do with circumstance, but is instead a question of tem- 
 perament ; the most miserable of people, as we all know, 
 are the well-to-do. The " poverty of wealth," is the most 
 pitiable of all poverties. But there is nothing like want and 
 
CONCERNING EVIL. 185 
 
 struggle to make us sympathetic and heedful of others. 
 It is only through suffering that we see the mysteries of 
 life, and the goodness of our fellows, of the world, and of 
 God. There are few people that would not be the better 
 for a severe illness every few years. Of two sisters, once 
 alike in youth and health, how inexpressibly better and 
 nobler the one that has passed through trial and suffering. 
 Of t\vo boys, one the product of the city and of comfort, 
 the other, of the country and of aspiring struggle, how 
 infinitely superior the latter. Want and the overcoming 
 of want have given him eyes to see, a heart to feel, and 
 a hand to do, and upon these things the destinies of the 
 coming generation depend. First of all other attributes 
 of God must be placed that of activity. He is a worker 
 and therefore is He happy. The ennui of the divinity of 
 the old theologians must have been as insupportable and 
 as pernicious as that of a modern professional human 
 do-nothing. But the uses of adversity have been the 
 subject of homilies since preaching was, although its cor- 
 relate, the utility of much that is called evil, is hardly 
 acknowledged, and less still, its necessity. 
 
 The evils of the world are therefore divisible into two 
 great groups : 
 
 I. The unavoidable, or those inherent in the diffi- 
 culties of the incarnation process. Death, at least for 
 the present, must come to all ; many diseases belong 
 here; the necessary exaggerations of automatism, and the 
 hypertrophy of functions ; those unavoidably springing 
 from the agencies mediating progress, such as the animal 
 struggle for existence, the nutritional difficulties in a world 
 of physics, etc. Then, behind all, is the control of fate 
 and of accident. The whole incarnation-process, at present 
 at least, is an adaptation to and into a world whose large 
 
1 86 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 forces it cannot touch or control. The secret of that 
 process lies in the use of the infinitesimal forces of nature ; 
 only by the astonishing indirections of cytology and of 
 animal life can Biologos reach a slight degree of control 
 of the larger or molar forces, and only through man can 
 
 i He increase a little that power, and make its use serve 
 purpose. Thus the foundations of our earthly house 
 of life rest upon the shoulders of the giant forces of the 
 inorganic world. Every quiver from below sends a 
 shudder through all living things. Neither man nor God 
 has any slightest control of the size, the qualities, or the 
 supplies of atoms ; any control of the sun's heat, or of his 
 forces of attraction, electricity, and magnetism ; of the 
 composition of the earth's crust ; of such conditions as 
 earthquakes, tides, rainfall, or cold ; of the constituents of 
 the atmosphere, and so on, upon which are based the in- 
 finitely ingenious adaptations and difficult maintenance of 
 all living things. When the blows and tragedies of these 
 fates fall upon us we may uselessly blame dead forces, but 
 the truer attitude is to pick up the work again, help each 
 other, and especially rally loyally about our Great Helper, 
 who Himself suffers with us, and who is more able than we 
 to build victories out of the appalling routs and the most 
 chaotic ruins. 
 
 f 2. Finally we have the evils that are subordinate to the 
 mediate stages of the process. These are mostly tem- 
 porary and in time will be avoided. In the interim these 
 arouse our energies of life, condition our progress, and 
 are educative. Such evils are the wastage and wreckage 
 of young life ; the less fierce aspects of the struggle for 
 existence ; the preventable diseases ; the unequal and 
 unjust distribution of property ; the hypertrophy of ego- 
 tism and individualization (a consequence of the furious 
 
CONCERNING EVIL. l8/ 
 
 struggle into humanization) ; the tyranny of rulers, and 
 many such. The unrolling of the panorama of earthly life 
 is a process ; in a rigid sense of the word all imperfection 
 is evil ; but any motived process implies temporary im- 
 perfection and direction somewhither. Moreover, the 
 possession of freedom implies some misuse of that power, 
 otherwise we should be the merest tools and ruled by 
 external forces alone. To learn right use, presupposes 
 some abuse. We learn to stand by having fallen many 
 times. Experimentation and experience imply failure, 
 but they are the conditions of functional freedom. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 JUSTIFICATION OF THE INCARNATION 
 PROCESS. 
 
 FOLLOWING close upon the question of evil comes 
 the pessimist's conclusion that life taken in its en- 
 tirety is evil, and that no life is preferable to any 
 life whatever. This, of course, is unscientific, because it is 
 an abuse of induction. It posits a universal conclusion 
 upon a very limited gathering of facts. Even if all life in 
 the past and that the pessimist could know in the present 
 were not preferable to nonentity, it would not prove that 
 all coming lives would be thus condemnable. But the 
 pessimist's syllogism is an outrageous non sequitur. We 
 can excuse Buddha for assenting to the logic, but the 
 modern echoist is contemptible. We all know that with 
 the vast majority of people there is more happiness than 
 unhappiness. One proof is that they continue to live. 
 Though Schopenhauer wrote Nichts over the future, and 
 said Nichts was preferable to Wille, he nevertheless stuck 
 to Wille, and the whole machinery of Nirvana and the 
 struggle to reach it has little more raison d ' etre than an 
 excuse for continuance of what the creed said was un- 
 worthy of continuance. Every suicide who clinches the 
 pessimistic argument with the evidence of sincerity, we 
 also see, acts from poor reasons. He fails to perceive facts 
 in their proper relations, and to adapt his resolves so that 
 they shall be in harmony with them. Suicide is nothing 
 
 188 
 
JUSTIFICATION OF THE INCARNATION PROCESS. 189 
 
 but folly, a child's pouting, and / wont play, because one 
 cannot have things his own selfish way. 
 
 The question however, arouses the further inquiry as to 
 the ultimate reason for the whole process of incarnation. 
 Few people see any object in their own life, or in the life- 
 process of the world. The beliefs in the vacuous heaven 
 and the do-nothing God exaggerate the tendency, and 
 some day, like Dore's neophyte, the startled mind flashes 
 a wild glance of inquiry about itself, while cosmic fear 
 congeals the blood with the panic of discovered universal 
 objectlessness. It makes the heart stand still with curd- 
 ling horror to feel that blind forces and processes rule all, 
 and that our little lives are driven eddies of the dust of 
 chance in the gust of circumstance. Frightened by the 
 thought, countless numbers of minds have shrunk trem- 
 bling back into the consolations of an authoritative religion, 
 or dashed with brute bravado into the equally tragic death 
 of atheism and pessimism. If I should be the means of 
 showing one " neophyte " a third and infinitely truer 
 course, I would consider the sacrifices made to bring this 
 little book to his notice, and even those of my life itself, 
 as worthily rewarded. I would like to spare my unknown 
 brother the suffering of gaining the lesson in the way 
 that I have gained it. 
 
 The bounteousness and benevolence of the Father of 
 the living world is shown in the fact that whilst each form 
 or type of form is more or less dependent upon other living 
 things, each is so filled and lighted with satisfaction that 
 it is " its own excuse for being." It satisfies not only the 
 self, but it also satisfies the on-looker, even if there were 
 no 4< beyond." This is especially true of the vegetable 
 world. Whoever has stood in the center of a landscape 
 devoid of all animal and plant-life will always carry with 
 
THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 him a realizing sense of the homelessness, horror, and 
 void that our world would show without a living green 
 thing on its surface. Our own satisfaction and delight in 
 the inexhaustible loveliness of grass and grain and tree 
 cannot lessen while the planet is our home. But we 
 must not forget that it is also God's satisfaction and 
 delight, and that it was His before it was ours, and 
 that it is so to us because it was and is so to Him. 
 He taught us all we know of agriculture, of gardening, 
 and of forestry. As we look through a powerful teles- 
 cope at the dead moon we justify God's work of the 
 plant-world by our shudder at the desolation there, and 
 by our wish that it might be as rich with grass and tree as 
 our delightful home. If we may not penetrate the divine 
 mind or discover His motive as we may suppose Him pre- 
 pairing for the beginnings of living forms here, we may 
 rest content with the childlike thought that it is infinitely 
 better that our world should be decked and beautified 
 with green life as it is, rather than be as desolate as the 
 moon is. 
 
 For my part I would be quite contented to let the idea 
 of final cause rest, happy to know God's " most ultimate " 
 motive may have been simply the play of spirit, and that 
 creative activity is the natural inherent attribute of his 
 being. But every act of His looks to a beyond. Any idea 
 that our poor minds can shape as to " that far-off divine 
 event to which the whole creation moves," must fall short 
 of what that event will prove to be. The fact of process, of 
 the whole proceeding somewhither, is amazingly evident. 
 Some purpose is gloriously clear, but just what it is we 
 can only cloudily gather, and we know that in such far 
 visions all but the largest outlines must be dim. We dare 
 not be dogmatic ; even in our little scientific and mechan- 
 
JUSTIFICATION OF THE INCARNATION PROCESS, igi 
 
 ical discoveries we do not at first see what will be their 
 best and final uses. When we observe the mechanism 
 and functions of a grass-blade, of insect and of animal, 
 of man and the established harmony of the world of 
 these things, we may be more than certain that the Mind 
 that could do all this, and the unseen-more of the future, 
 is incapable of working aimlessly, and that purpose runs 
 through all and will so run to the end of time. 
 
 o 
 
 The essential secret of incarnation was discovered and 
 the fundamental problem solved with the plant. With 
 that was proved the ability to build living forms out of 
 dead atoms and mechanic forces. But onward presses 
 the hidden design ! The walking plant, the animal, is 
 evolved. By the secret of appropriating the products of 
 plant-life, the problem of the nutrition of the moving 
 mechanism is solved, and the higher sensations are born, 
 seeing and hearing being tools and aids of motility. Ever 
 onward ! Out of, and by further use of the animal pro- 
 duct comes man, with his new endowments of mental 
 vision, and his beginning purposive control of all 
 mechanic forces, but especially of molar motion. Civili- 
 zation is first a fixing and stabilizing of the certainty and 
 uniformity of nutrition, but it is already largely being 
 turned to ends beyond those of mere utility. Pure 
 science, higher knowledge, discovery and the control of 
 various natural agencies, are seemingly preparing the way 
 for a progressive mastery over the entire world of me- 
 chanic forces. Every discovery lured into being perhaps 
 by hope of reward or of its usefulness to man, seems 
 destined to pass beyond any simply utilitarian aspect, and 
 to be gathered to a higher aim. For example, every dis- 
 covery in mechanics was needed to perfect the best astro- 
 nomical instruments. But every discovery points to increas- 
 
IQ2 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 ing dominion by man over the physical universe. Inter- 
 planetary communication is not absurd, and even more 
 than that. Every study of life on the globe shows pro- 
 gressive power to build up living forms out of dead mat- 
 ter. More and ever more of the atoms of the physical 
 world are being caught up and pressed into the control 
 and service of Life. All below man attests progressive 
 control of molecular and atomic forces, and through this 
 and through man's science, there is dazzling proof of 
 coming control over masses of matter and oceans of 
 imponderable forces. 
 
 What is the dim but ever-clearing suggestion and indi- 
 cation? The vivification of a dead universe and the 
 purposive use of mechanic forces. Uselessness is to be 
 changed to usefulness, objectlessness to rational ends, 
 meaninglessness to significance, death to life. In His in- 
 finite love and activity God seems determined to transform 
 even the dead stones and dead worlds of a dead universe 
 to the living image of Himself. Without life and its at- 
 tendant purposiveness the physical universe has utterly 
 no use or meaning. It has always existed, perhaps with 
 the great pulse-waves of eternity long integrations and 
 disintegrations described by Spencer, but all the mere 
 empty play of mechanic forces, and, without life, leading 
 absolutely nowhither. With the intervention of Bio- 
 logos, however, entirely new elements are added, all is 
 suddenly changed and the world is "palpitant with 
 significance, interest, and purpose. Physical forces are 
 reined and ruled by intelligent design. The control of 
 matter and of its aimless forces is the summarization of 
 the primary function of both God and man. If by God, 
 then of course by man, because man may be defined as 
 first the tool, then the deputy, and finally the co-worker 
 
JUSTIFICATION OF THE INCARNATION PROCESS. 193 
 
 of God, steps. in the extension of the control of matter 
 by spirit. It is noteworthy that the conscious discoveries 
 and inventions of man already made are but the begin- 
 nings of imitations of God's inventions ; we are but redis- 
 covering new continents He had already surveyed. He 
 found Himself unable to clear and till the soil by direc- 
 tion, and hence He is indirectly doing it by our hands. 
 It is all at His suggestion. Science is His work of colon- 
 izing and civilizing His own country. There is not a 
 single mechanic discovery or art of civilization that has 
 not been used by Him first. Every application or prin- 
 ciple that we use in bridge-building, architecture, teleg- 
 raphy, motility in air, water, or on earth ; every use of 
 chemistry, heat, light, electricity, or magnetism ; every de- 
 vice of assault or protection; every tool or instrument 
 whatsoever that we have made all have their analogues in 
 animal or vegetable life ; all were His before they became 
 ours. Our works indeed are not seldom mere adaptations 
 of His mechanisms, and the fire of science is bright be- 
 cause we are only commencing to learn. If we only had the 
 knowledge and power over atoms and molecules, i. e., if we 
 were only such biochemists as He ! Could we but fly as 
 His birds ! We have not yet the faintest idea of the 
 mechanism of muscle-contraction. If even we but knew 
 the mechanisms of sensation ! If our artists could but 
 mould and color as He can ! What musical instrument 
 can compare with the human voice ! Our poetry is the 
 attempt to re-sing His songs; our tragedies are the poor 
 echoes of His griefs ; our joys the reflection of light from 
 His heaven ! 
 
 We can do nothing, could not live a second without 
 levying upon and often most ruthlessly using the inven- 
 tions of His hands. Think of what our lives would be 
 13 
 
IQ4 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 without the wood of His trees, used in every thing neces- 
 sary to our comfort and to our very existence. Even 
 the minerals v/ould not be attainable or manufacturable 
 without His help in wood, fuel, and mechanisms. There 
 is not an article of clothing that is not the appropriation 
 of His work, the most useful and serviceable being those 
 that have most occupied His care, and that have previ- 
 ously been of most use to His animals wool, hides, and 
 furs. If we come closer to our life and think of our food, 
 we are quite ashamed because the brutal selfishness of our 
 greed becomes painful, All our meats are the muscles of 
 His beloved animals that we have killed ; all our fruits 
 and grains and vegetables are the stored supplies of 
 nourishment for His seeds ; eggs are the material and food 
 provided for making and nourishing the feathered young ; 
 and milk, the purest, best, and loveliest of foods, has learned 
 the secret and beauty of life in the beating hearts of the 
 purest, best, and loveliest of His children. Surely our in- 
 debtedness to Him not only for our original being and the 
 upholding of it by the marvels of cell-life and nutrition, 
 but also for every instant's supply of tool and mechanism, 
 clothing, and food, truly these facts leave no excuse for 
 the doubting of our primal duty, or for not recognizing 
 His work in ours and ours in His. 
 
 From the lowest unicellular organism to the highest 
 human scientist and discoverer, all living function consists 
 in progressive control and intellectual use of physical 
 forces, and this is the characteristic promise of the future. 
 Already we are looking out into space to extend and to 
 see evidences of the extension of the same control and use. 
 If we judge correctly, but few of the planetary bodies of 
 our system permit Biologos to carry on His work on them. 
 In the sidereal heavens there are probably but compara- 
 
JUSTIFICATION OF THE INCARNATION PROCESS. 195 
 
 tively few worlds whereon He has been able to gain afoot- 
 hold. What a link our cosmic life may be in the whole 
 plan and progress of the universal life-system we cannot 
 guess. We may be the outermost colony of some swirl 
 and cluster of sun-systems, and from us it may be planned 
 to transplant to new solar systems beyond and ever be- 
 yond, the mechanisms of cellular or organic life without 
 the preliminary stages of our own past struggle for exist- 
 ence. The imagination may play with the beautiful 
 thoughts aroused, and strain eye and brain to catch 
 glimpses of the inter-related harmonies and purposive 
 adjustments of the future extension and progress of life, 
 but as to-day's realizations in civilization are infinitely 
 richer than the most superb forecastings of any medieval 
 fancy, just so, we are convinced, will the future transcend 
 the most dazzling speculations presumably possible. The 
 essential thing is hope and confidence and knowledge that 
 we are parts of a great system of purposive progress ; that 
 our duty is loyalty to the evident design and Designer ; 
 that the fundamental mechanism on which all depends is 
 spirit-control of physical forces ; that the condition and 
 motive of all progress is extension of that control ; that 
 the essence of all humanization and ethics is spiritual use 
 of these forces. 
 
 There is the plainest evidence of a progressive conquer- 
 ing of the nutritional difficulty in the future biological 
 process, and with this will come the double victory of 
 Biologos over the dead and stubborn world of crude mat- 
 ter, and over time itself. Only an infinitely small part of the 
 universe at present shows spirit in control of matter, but 
 the prospect opening to our view is that of a progressive 
 dominion of God in the universe until the loneliness and 
 death and uselessness of all the lifeless worlds of space shall 
 
196 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 be flooded and filled with the joy of intelligent life, and 
 of that life progressively perfecting and extending itself. 
 
 Something such, it appears to me, at least temporarily 
 and tentatively, is a sufficient justification of the incarna- 
 tion-process, and a sufficient atonement for the labor and 
 evil of its past stages as read by science, of its present 
 stages wherein we are the actors and observers, and of 
 whatever the future may bring. I find in this way of 
 thought a motive for all energy, an explanation of the 
 great mysteries, an ideal of all conduct and aspiration, a 
 principle and actualization of home-making in the universe, 
 that brings a blessed peace to my mind and heart that is 
 in most beautiful contrast to the tragic failures of past 
 philosophies and religions. 
 
 Wherever we look we see mentality and spirituality 
 extending their control over matter and shining through 
 organization with eyes ablaze with desire. To illustrate 
 how purely psychical or metaphysical qualities dominate 
 those that are purely physical, and thus give the victory 
 to the larger and better type of character, would be a 
 a work of supererogation. In every day of our life, too, 
 the lesson comes home to us that in the long run the 
 quality and motive of mind outvalue the degree and 
 power of mind. While the young Napoleon's mind was 
 plastic and patriotic, nothing could conquer him. Later, 
 although with more infallible judgment, with ripened 
 experience, with systematized powers and every prop of 
 government and objective force to aid him, he failed. He 
 ran headlong upon the world's moral sentiment, incarnate 
 in Wellington and his English boys. Why? Because 
 honor and a noble ambition had given way to selfishness 
 and ignoble ambition. The lower had displaced the higher, 
 and the physical ruled the spiritual. 
 
JUSTIFICATION OF THE INCARNATION PROCESS. 197 
 
 Examples are all about us : Even in such a purely 
 physical encounter as that of the prize-ring, Corbett whips 
 Sullivan ; which means that the better mind and heart 
 (character) more than make up for lack of pure muscle and 
 physical powers. Courage is etymologically a matter of 
 the heart, and of the psychical heart. The body follows 
 loyally where the mind commands strongly. 
 
 Paderewsky has inferior physical, even inferior (technical) 
 musical ability to other players, but his playing is soul 
 made into sound, and, expression being all, the large pure 
 beautiful character of the man inthrills and overfills tone 
 with the heaven incarnate of divinely psychic revelations. 
 
 Every noble physician knows that it is not absolutely 
 the most scientific man that succeeds best in luring the 
 departing soul back to the sick body, and holding it to the 
 work of life. Where one with all the therapeutic erudi- 
 tion of the world will fail, another, a simpler but holier 
 physician, will enter the patient's chamber, and lo ! on 
 the walls instead of the sentence of death there gleams the 
 legend of convalescence. The heart and morality often 
 reach intellectual vision that is denied to the strongest 
 intellect. 
 
 In politics, even, there are occasional promises and ex- 
 amples of the same law, the most striking of which is the 
 late peaceful revolution that the whole American people 
 have effected and seen. " Bossism " and the degradation 
 of principle have found that there is a political value to 
 probity and psychic valor. 
 
 It is only into the vilest walks of life, in the realm of 
 ignoble money-grabbing, that the law has hardly found an 
 entrance. Here one cannot say much more than the 
 prayer, How long, O Lord, how long ! Wherever else 
 we turn, in art, science, literature, or human intercourse, 
 
198 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 it is the quality of the psychic life that lends biological 
 things their value, and that endows them with charm and 
 durability. 
 
 Let us also not lose sight of the everlasting fact that 
 this peculiarity or quality of psychic life is moulded or 
 changed, like light passing through the sun's photosphere, 
 through the telluric atmosphere, or through a colored lens. 
 The pure light and the pure divinity are by the traversed 
 media changed only by subtraction of valuable elements. 
 Organization (sarcogenesis) is the lens or turbid medium 
 that allows the divine light of the life to shine through it 
 more or less with difficulty, subtraction, and distortion. 
 But the life and the light of heaven are always seeking to 
 reach us in all their pristine purity and strength. The 
 perfect physiological and neurological organization is that 
 that best transmits the life untouched and unclouded, 
 even, if possible, focusing it in a purer and warmer beam. 
 The problem of morality, of art, of heroism, and of saintli- 
 ness is the problem of achromatism. Let us pass God's 
 life through the atmosphere of our earthly life and the 
 lens of incarnation untouched and pure, and in character 
 let it be focused in the glory of the mind that is at once 
 both divine and human. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 FREEDOM. 
 
 AFTER the problem of evil, that of the freedom of the 
 will has been the next most puzzling difficulty of 
 theology and philosophy. It is, indeed, only 
 another phase of the first. On the supposition of an infi- 
 nitely powerful and good God it was impossible to solve 
 the question of the origin of evil : either evil did not 
 exist, or else language and thought were useless. Just so 
 as regards freedom : if omnipotence and omniscience 
 created the world, it is of course impossible for human 
 freedom to exist. Dishonest and cowardly intellects may 
 juggle with the question, and the record of past jugglings 
 is either pathetic, or ludicrous, or both, as one may look 
 at them. The splendid acrobatic performance of Calvin 
 and his followers is the crowning act of the tragical farce 
 or farcical tragedy. By dint of a frightful solemnity of 
 manner and countenance, and with a hypnotic fixation of 
 the attention upon a lot of words majestically intoned, 
 foreordination, predestination, and all the rest of the 
 pompous Latin polysyllables one comes near forgetting 
 logical facts for illogical fancies. 
 
 Hypertrophic or parasitic intellects, that is, those de- 
 veloped at the expense of hypotrophic or atrophic emo- 
 tion and perception, have always been deterministic in 
 belief. Such minds have no difficulty in disregarding the 
 ineradicable human consciousness of freedom, and the 
 
 199 
 
200 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 plain objective facts of life. They always prefer a sub- 
 jective process of thought to a recognition of objective 
 facts. Whether the logic-chopping machine be worked in 
 the supposed interests of religion, or of philosophy, or of 
 science, matters not. Calvin and Schopenhauer and 
 Spencer strike hands on this point. And when the logic- 
 machine butts against the immovable wall of fact, it turns 
 tail, and points the other way i. e., facts are ignored, 
 the belief continued, but much weakened and made foolish 
 by a useless persistence of wheel-turning without percep- 
 tible movement forward. Now according to my way of 
 thinking, God, evil, freedom, etc., are not alone or chiefly 
 matters of subjective thought processess, but if they exist 
 at all are genuine facts, to be perceived, studied, and 
 tested, exactly as one studies a chemical reaction or a 
 physiological process. They are true objects of scientific 
 investigation, and are to be submitted to the discriminat- 
 ing reason and perception with questions of how much, 
 how far, what qualities, and what degrees, precisely as we 
 approach any biological investigation. If trinitarianism 
 be a fact, it is a matter of scientific investigation, as are 
 all facts, and the articles of the Apostles' creed, or of the 
 Nicene creed, are to be considered as subject to the prov- 
 ings of historical and biological investigation, and in ex- 
 actly the same way, as Weissmann's theory of heredity, 
 or the influence of Occidental civilization on Japanese 
 development. And the onus probandi\\es, of course, with 
 the assertor. If one assertthat Japan developed its present 
 .governmental and social changes because of the influence 
 -of Aztec immigration and discoveries, it behooves him to 
 prove it by historical facts ; if the theory is an illogical 
 dream of the fancy or of superstition, let it so appear. 
 Just so with any one of the Thirty-nine Articles. 
 
FREEDOM. 201 
 
 It appears to me plain that every step, nay, every 
 creature, of the biological process shows adaptation to and 
 utilization of " the environment." Circumstances by no 
 means dictate the " reaction," but the organism, whether 
 plant, ameba, horse, or man, "reacts" to "external 
 stimulus or environment " in just that way that subserves 
 the object it has in view. The reaction is never purely - 
 mechanical, but is always hypermechanical, always one 
 of utilization, of selection, and of purpose. Now, 
 the entire being that uses, selects, and designs, is 
 something that comes into matter with the evident 
 attribute of spontaneity, choice, or freedom. Precisely 
 as an architect choses this or that plan, this or that 
 material, just as he changes, shapes, supports, ornaments, 
 or colors so does Biologos, in coming into His circum- 
 stance, and in using His material. And precisely as the 
 architect makes his building conform to the purpose and 
 needs of the occupant, so does He ; and precisely as the 
 architect is forced to conform plan, extent, character, etc., 
 to the materials procurable, and to the means at hand, so 
 does He; and precisely as the architect whenever he is 
 able, makes the appearance of the dwelling to others and 
 to the owner, beautiful and delight-giving, so does God 
 in all the works of His building. But the architect has 
 freedom, as houses good, bad, beautiful, and hideous 
 convincingly demonstrate. That God's creations are 
 always most perfect and beautiful, always so much so as 
 the poverty and obstinacy of his materials will permit, 
 and the winds, storms, and vicissitudes of circumstances 
 allow this is certainly no argument against His freedom, 
 but is evidence of that to which perfect freedom leads : 
 right use of freedom. The infinite multiplicity of device 
 
 to effect ends in view, e.g., the inexhaustible^ertfTTty an 
 
 ^ 
 
 AR 
 
 , 
 
 -'(/I . I r-i .-.<\ 
 
202 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 ingenuity of millionfold methods of defence in plant or 
 animal, shows the resourceful spontaneity, the glorious 
 extent or range of freedom. Every cell in its com- 
 position, function, and location is indeed an act of free 
 choosing on His part, to correspond with the ever vary- 
 ing object in view and the modifying circumstance. Con- 
 cerning God's freedom, therefore, its limitlessness is simply 
 astounding. 
 
 Organofaction, as we have seen, is simply the automa- 
 tonization and extension of function. Individualization, 
 or individuation, is simply the unitization of organs. Many 
 organs make an organism, or an individual. Function, we 
 must never forget, always precedes structure ; it is the 
 repetition of function that begets that cell-habit and dif- 
 ferentiation that form the basis of organogenesis and 
 organofaction. Freedom is seen in the structureless 
 pseudopod and in the developing ovum, and its character- 
 istic is that of a seeking and making means and tools 
 wherewith to realize its purposes. No living being can 
 ever escape the service of the necessity of nutrition ; it is 
 always the controlling and chief element of all biologic 
 process. In the lowest types, together with the regener- 
 ative necessity, it is the all-absorbing concern. So difficult 
 has been the task of incarnation that, up to the bringing 
 out of the human, scarcely any conscious function of the 
 individual is operative except these two. And as the re- 
 productive function in all below the human has been kept 
 below the threshold of consciousness, i. e., has been solely 
 controlled by Him without delegation to the creature, it 
 follows that all, or almost all, function below the human, 
 whether conscious or unconscious, has been nutritional. 
 Now all consciousness or individual choosing on the part 
 of the creature is merely the delegation of freedom by the 
 
FREEDOM. 203 
 
 Creator. With individuation came the individual's control 
 of molar motion, the first control of masses or of gravity, 
 thus indirectly gained by Biologos. But the organismal 
 origin and independent use of molar motion, as it were, 
 per se, created the responsibility and limited freedom of 
 the individual. The molecular function of nutrition has 
 never been given over to the creature ; it is not a matter 
 of consciousness or of delegated control ; with the food 
 past the mouth his function ceases, and His begins. But 
 within the necessary limits, the procuring of the crude 
 materials of nutrition (in which of course are included 
 those of protection, warmth, and struggle) is the product 
 of the free use of muscles or the control of molar motion. 
 Within the limits dictated by the nutritional difficulty 
 and necessity, therefore, have been confined the range and 
 power of freedom, or the consciousness of the vegetable 
 and animal. Even in these kingdoms there are millions 
 of degrees of freedom, according to the infinite diversities 
 and difficulties of the nutritional problem. The freedom 
 of the barnacle and that of the fox are vastly different in 
 degree, but that of the barnacle however restricted is never 
 absent. In the higher animals it is very extended and 
 rich, and in their play, humor, ornamentation, bird-song, 
 and the like we see ever-increasing freedom, and reachings- 
 out after freedom beyond the hard confines of nutritional 
 necessities. In dogs and domesticated animals, the will- 
 ingness of Biologos to emancipate, and the capacity to be 
 emancipated, is abundantly evident in the beautiful eager- 
 ness and expertness with which they respond to the kindly 
 teachings of spirit, imbibing freedom with hearty relish 
 and thankfulness, and using it with a loyalty that often 
 puts us to shame. 
 
 In the vegetable world to the careful and sympathetic 
 
204 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 observer two exquisite facts are clear: the dumb hunger 
 for freedom, and the patient self-sacrificing resignation and 
 fulfilling of the allotted task. Every plant in its lowly 
 beauty or conquered difficulty ; every tree in its firm- 
 rooted stability, or columnar dignity, and light-loving 
 aspiration ; all are humbly patient and silently successful, 
 all infinitely ingenious in seeking help of wind and bee, or 
 in guarding against inimical self-seekers, all silently and 
 incessantly asking of man a helpful bit of sympathy, pro- 
 tection, nourishment, and always quickly responsive with 
 instant gratitude and service to him when he answers 
 their call. Do not each and all ever speak to the kind 
 human heart a pathetic lesson and a sweet reminder of 
 our common essential brotherhood ? For our brothers 
 they are; God's own life is in them, and the beauty of 
 love is that it does not even stoop to the humblest, but in 
 its own humility walks and works among the humble, one 
 of them, grieving in their grief, glad in their gladness, help- 
 ful when they call, and grateful when they give. These 
 are the least of the children of the great Father, and, 
 like all children, they seek and repay all the interest that 
 we, their larger brothers and sisters, can give. In their 
 humble devotion to the duty of their dual task, the per- 
 fection with which it is done commands our admiration ; 
 but, as always and everywhere, how wonderfully God 
 rewards them for their exquisite obedience, by beauty and 
 satisfaction. If the flower were only to catch the bee's eye ; 
 if the fruit were only to catch the bird's eye ; if the chlo- 
 rophyll were alone for utility, dabs and blotches of unsym- 
 metrical and coarse colors would do quite as well as the 
 heavenly tints and groupings. But the dear, bountiful, 
 laughing, beautiful God is ever watching for opportunity 
 to reward, ever trying to burst through the necessary and 
 
FREEDOM. 205 
 
 the useful with His rich self-revelation of the Spontaneous 
 and the Beautiful. 
 
 The progressive delegation of freedom to the animal, as 
 we have seen, is limited almost entirely to that degree of 
 freedom that is conterminous with the nutritional problem. 
 With the breaking of the animal into the human the old 
 necessity persists but the limits are widened. Civilization 
 is the 'settlement of the nutritional problem, and the per- 
 mission of the application of consciousness to other than 
 purely nutritional questions. Control of power has ad- 
 vanced and its other aspect, freedom, has synchronously 
 widened. The human being of to-day, who by choice or 
 necessity is occupied solely with questions of nutrition, 
 with money, or the lack of it, with material luxuries or 
 necessities, with " society " ideals and pleasures, is simply 
 in the animal stage of existence, his freedom is that of the 
 powerful animal limited in its range to one problem. 
 
 He has not comprehended the object of civilization, he 
 ignores the greatest blessing ever offered man, the gift of 
 a new freedom, of an enlarged consciousness, and of a 
 mightier power than his worthless wealth has dreamed of. 
 For God has ever waited to give until the responsibility 
 could be used without too great danger to the general 
 process. Nothing seemingly pleases Him better than to 
 endow with freedom so soon as it may be safely given. 
 It is no pleasure to a rider to tame a stupid, headstrong 
 horse by the brute force of constantly-used bit and whip. 
 The pleasure is in the bright, responsive intelligence, 
 quick to see and loyal to act. To the loyal intelligent 
 human heart who never abuses freedom, there comes a 
 wealth of freedom and of power that makes the heart 
 swell with gratitude. Whereas the selfish, the cunning, 
 the unscrupulous, and the pig-headed find a thousand ob- 
 
206 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 stacles in their path, whilst enslaving and opposing enemies 
 rise up to obstruct and to dispute advance. " Ask and 
 ye shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you," 
 is a beautiful fact of freedom and responsibility. 
 
 There is no such enemy of freedom, nothing so narrows 
 and enslaves, as that outrageous form of selfishness, the 
 love of luxury. Those who misuse wealth, those who 
 ravenously seek it, and those who hate their poverty, are 
 alike lovers of their slavery, ignorers of the freedom that 
 would come to them if they would fill their hearts with 
 the old simple virtues of cheerfulness, kindness, and grati- 
 tude, and look out to understand and to love instead of 
 nursing their own deserved misery in ignorance and hate. 
 " Magnus inter opes inops." It is the fatuity of low char- 
 acters to enormously over-value what the world calls 
 success, and a further evidence of their wretched folly 
 consists in seeking it by chicane and fraud. For a while 
 they rise quickly, and in the dazzle of their progress the 
 knowing ask themselves, Is this really that sort of a world ? 
 Three mistakes are made : i. Dependence upon " sharp " 
 ways and means lessens one's knowledge and recognition 
 of honorable means; the real sources of power, intellectual 
 clearness and honor, are ignored, whilst the love and re- 
 spect of high-minded men slips away into silent, subtle 
 distrust. 2. With temporary success, one grows more 
 brazen and the natural limits of trickery are not seen. Soon 
 there is collision with an immovable obstacle in the shape 
 of honor and morality incarnate in some man or institution. 
 3. If united to a sufficiently strong intellect " shrewd- 
 ness " and selfish cunning may be quite early successful, 
 but whether so or not, the attainment of the long-sought 
 prize turns out to be a sad deception, the ashes of death. 
 Many a successful man or woman would give all their 
 
FREEDOM. 2O7 
 
 riches and luxuries and power for one fresh heart-thrill of 
 large joy, for \.\\e possibility of being kind, or good, or in- 
 telligent. But dead forever is the murdered heart, the 
 stifled honor, and the starved intellect. 
 
 The degree of freedom is therefore according to the de- 
 sire and ability to make right use of it. Every mechanism 
 and creature of the living world, that world-process itself 
 from beginning to now, is evidence and fact of deputed 
 power. Nothing is plainer than the present desire to still 
 further delegate responsibility so fast as trustworthy dele- 
 gates may be found. Here stands the splendid completed 
 engine of the entire biological world, together with com- 
 mand already gained of large mechanical powers of the 
 inorganic world, a gift to man by its Creator. That huge 
 fortunes are being made by individuals with its use and 
 abuse ; that city luxury and vice are expensive parasites 
 upon country hardship and virtue ; that governmental rule 
 and legislation are used as the tools for the greed of 
 classes and even of individuals ; that forests are being de- 
 stroyed, the balances of different orders of animal and 
 vegetable life thereby upset, and injurious climatic and 
 agricultural changes thereby caused ; that some of the 
 fairest of God's creatures are being barbarously and ruth- 
 lessly exterminated all these things and many more show 
 that responsibility and freedom have been delegated to 
 man too bounteously and too soon, rather than too nig- 
 gardly and too late. 
 
 I said delegated, but here arises the thought that it has 
 been a ruthless seizing rather than a receiving of gift. 
 Freedom is doubtless an acquirement, a method as well 
 as a reward of education. By the wrong use of it one 
 lessens the right use, and already we see the subtle mech- 
 anisms of forefending, compensation, education, and 
 
208 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 equilibrium being instituted and set to work. These 
 mechanisms are everywhere coming into play, and are of 
 most various and multiform nature. Preventive medi- 
 cine ; societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals 
 and children ; the science and art of forestry ; the sym- 
 pathetic study of the living world, great Science herself ; 
 astronomy ; democracy ; the growing detestation of sel- 
 fishly-used wealth ; and socialism, such are a few of the 
 agencies at work. Few know whither they are looking or 
 for what they are working. God makes agents and in- 
 struments even of His enemies, and, our compasses having 
 been lost, with His own winds he steers our vessels into 
 harbors unexpected and better than those we have sought. 
 But by the voyaging we have learned the sea, and a new 
 life, and we are henceforth better mariners than we were 
 before. 
 
 Finally, there arises the question as to possibility of 
 any thing that may legitimately be called freedom, con- 
 sistent with the biologic process of " incarnation." Every 
 cell of every organism being made and fed by His life, 
 how is it possible to find in the very work of His hand 
 anything but a mechanically obedient mechanism, and 
 where is there chance for freedom or responsibility ? The 
 answer to this very pertinent question is clear to my mind, 
 but it is difficult to put it in words, and almost impossi- 
 ble to do so for those who by mental habit have anthropo- 
 morphized their conception of God in such a way that 
 the truth becomes impossible for them to see or vividly to 
 realize. The question is* bound up with that of the na- 
 ture of spirit and personality. There is also a certain 
 intellectual expertness and power requisite to catch even 
 the faintest perception of the real nature of spiritual ex- 
 istence and life whether of the divine or of the human 
 
FREEDOM. 209 
 
 type. Occidental thought has had no gymnastic exercise 
 in comprehending metaphysical realities, and it is either 
 awed and bowed into the dust before God, or stupidly 
 denies His very existence. But whether adoring or de- 
 nying, it is non-understanding. Then, too, a very general 
 idea and ideal of freedom is that of freedom from respon- 
 sibility, instead of which, freedom in responsibility is a 
 much truer conception. The only true freedom consists 
 in obedience, not in disobedience, to use power rightly 
 instead of wrongly. The analogy of the horse may serve 
 us again ; an unruly, balky, stubborn animal will secure 
 from his owner less freedom than a bridlewise and gladly 
 willing one. One that would never be caught or be 
 broken would finally be killed. The more " vicious " the 
 more certain to get suffering, and to drift to the worst 
 and severest labor. The more humanized, the more free- 
 dom and love ; and, if intelligence and loyalty were: 
 sufficient, restraint, bridle, whip, and all bars to freedom 
 would be done away with. I find it exactly so between 
 God and His creatures. Joyful and intelligent accept- 
 ance of the role and duty assigned, courage to be and to 
 do, lead to a freedom no money-king or man-king can 
 ever have or can even understand. Loyalty and knowl- 
 edge combined are the only means of acquiring spiritual 
 freedom, and these things are impossible while money or 
 power is selfishly used. The very acquiring and holding 
 of wealth is itself unforgivable sin and wrong, is evidence 
 per se that self has been valued above all others and above 
 the purposes of God. The words and the truth of the 
 words of Jesus are perfectly plain as to the love and use 
 of money, but no modern Christian (unless perhaps it be 
 the "heretic," John Ruskin, one of the greatest charac-- 
 ters of these centuries) is at all likely to heed or to follow 
 
210 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 the command of his God, the " Second person of the 
 Trinity." A worshipper who in the week spends six days 
 in the porcine scramble for stolen money, and seven even- 
 ings in wasting it in self-gratification, who lives or bends 
 all energies in trying to live in affluence, and who gives 
 one hour out of one hundred and sixty-eight to the wor- 
 ship of a deity whose thundering repetitive denuncia- 
 tions of money and the love of money are the plainest 
 of His teachings, this is a spectacle reserved for the 
 blasphemous degradation of the nineteenth of Christian 
 centuries I 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 PERSONALITY. 
 
 THE telephone, the telegraph, travel, and increased 
 ease of travel, knowledge of geography, astronomy, 
 spectrum analysis, the study of gravitation, radiant 
 heat, light, electric and magnetic ether-motions, these, in 
 one sense, are athletic mental exercises in space-comprehen- 
 sion and in space-subjection. We are no longer appalled 
 and terrified ; instead, we understand and use. Mere 
 distance, however interesting, no longer inspires us with 
 cosmic horror. There is no comprehension of the world of 
 lifeless matter or of the work God is doing in and with it, 
 except through a diligent and an accurate study of phys- 
 ics, molecular and molar. These are the lowest stairs 
 that lead up to the temple of the knowledge of God. As 
 commonly understood worship is proof in itself that the 
 Being worshipped is not known ; it is often a lazy excuse 
 for not trying to know Him ; and even in its highest 
 aspects, it is only a combined admonition and humble 
 non-actualized desire to know. Mere blank wonder, mere 
 rapt adoration, mere dazzled awe, mere non-comprehend- 
 ing averment of God's existence and greatness, mere 
 emphasis of the creature's littleness, mere flattery and 
 praise of Him, however solemn and sincere, is, to be sure, 
 infinitely preferable and more gloriously true than the 
 prize stupidity and despicable nil admirari of fashion- 
 able agnosticism and atheism. But, frankly, it also is at 
 
 211 
 
212 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 last a little bte. Certainly there are degrees of knowl- 
 edge. Even the priests of the God Unknowable would 
 hardly deny that they themselves know a wee bit more 
 about Him than an African pigmy knows about Him. 
 Every church and sect is quite certain that its peculiar 
 worship is more right and is based on a better conception 
 of God than that of the other churches and sects. All do 
 tacitly admit degrees of knowledge. If God exists, what 
 thing could He more desire than to be understood and 
 known by His children. Instead of impiety, the attempt 
 to comprehend Him is true piety, and to increase and 
 praise the open-mouthed bewilderment of stupid contem- 
 plation is genuine impiety. Even a good man dislikes the 
 over-enthusiastic praise of his admirers, however sincere 
 it is. Certainly a good God must smile pathetically 
 and tiredly upon the " hocus-pocus," and He must long 
 for the coming of virile human minds that, without 
 losing love and respect, will still try to comprehend and 
 to know. 
 
 The knowledge of chemistry, of molecular and atomic 
 physics, and especially of microscopy, also complements 
 and completes the knowledge of the infinitely great and 
 far, and habituates the mind to a just comprehension of 
 the idea of extension. Knowledge of the ether and of 
 its properties has annihilated nihilism, the old bugaboo 
 of emptiness or vacuity, so that now we know that 
 wherever space extends it is filled with a medium that 
 binds the physical universe into a unity and comprehen- 
 sibility greatly aiding our sense of home-being and home- 
 making in the world. Waves of water that we can see and 
 hear, help us to understand waves of air that we can hear 
 but cannot see, and waves of air help us to comprehend 
 the attributes and waves of ether that we can neither see 
 
PERSONA LITY. 213 
 
 nor hear, and that are studied only by the scientific imagi- 
 nation. Rising from that completed study the mind is 
 trained to grasp the idea of an unlocalized intelligent 
 force, still less subject to the rule of space or of extension, 
 and operative throughout the universe. The uneducated 
 mind demands localization of spirit, and feels it is deprived 
 of its divinity if it is forced to think of Him as unlocal- 
 ized, or as at all points of space at all times. When that 
 intelligent force enters matter it becomes subject to its 
 laws, and as regards both action and thought there is im- 
 posed upon that specific organism the primal condition of 
 the law that no body can occupy two positions at the 
 same instant. Hence the necessity of our thought (at 
 least temporarily) is to make us localize personality ; and 
 if it be not so localized it becomes almost or quite non- 
 existent. Just here the simple perception of a fact corrects 
 our loss of comprehension, and gives us back the reality 
 of God by the reality of apprehension. At any one in- 
 stant and at all instants we perceive and know He is 
 actually forming and upholding every cell of every living 
 organism in ocean, in air, and on earth, all over and all 
 through the world. Our own attention must be upon a 
 single object at any instant ; His is equally strong and 
 accurate upon billions of millions at the same instant ; 
 and not only in this little world, but in others throughout 
 the depths of the universe. The fact we can perceive ; it 
 is beyond question ; and there is also an ability on our 
 part to grow into a progressive comprehension of the fact, 
 as we habitualize and progressively strengthen the mind 
 to such perceptional function. 
 
 In the same way we can accustom and exercise the mind 
 into a conception more or less true of the nature of time. 
 A knowledge of history, human and biological ; the con- 
 
214 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 ception of gravity, and of swift-flitting light ; the vivid 
 memory of our dreams ; the realization of the unity of 
 end, middle, and beginning, of our life-time ; the com- 
 parison of sluggish with brilliant minds ; the evident 
 compression of time by the life of a modern educated 
 mind, such things habituate us to the thought that time 
 is an attribute or condition of matter put upon the incar- 
 nating spirit. It is in the last analysis a sort of measuring- 
 stick of the nutritional difficulty. The biological process 
 is so slow because of its difficulty ; if nutrition were a 
 hundred times easier, our thought and our life would be 
 infinitely more rapid, and the present stage of progress 
 would have been reached long ago. Education and 
 scientific thinking in a measure annihilate time, and the 
 timelessness of God becomes to the expert intellect not 
 a frightful but a comforting conception. Fact, the simple 
 perception of an evident fact, again aids us: One purpose 
 and manner of work unites the earliest efforts of the in- 
 carnation-process with the middle that we are, and with 
 the coming perfection of that that is to be. There is here 
 a unity that could only flow from a cause lying outside of 
 time. The length of the unrolling is the condition of 
 difficulty of the process, and the length hides from the 
 undiscerning eye the design, patent to him who can over- 
 look and extinguish time in the perception of cause and 
 effect. Trained thought enables us to squeeze time out 
 of fact, to compress centuries and eras into minutes, and 
 to see that to God the process is instantaneous. To the 
 slow-travelling mind the outlines of the design of the bio- 
 logical process are blurred by the dreary journey, but he 
 whose spirit can travel by the wings of the educated im- 
 agination, crushes cycles of time-changes into seconds of 
 thought, and walks boldly out of the opened prison-win- 
 
PERSONA LI TV. 215 
 
 dows of time into the freedom of an eternity wherein past 
 and future are unified into the ever-present. 
 
 The limitation of God's omnipotence comes chiefly to 
 light in the nutritional difficulty of the cell and organism, 
 shown in death and in the impossibility of reaching ends 
 (the human co-worker, for example), except through the 
 millions of precedent and preparative stages that we see 
 in the earth's biological history. The human aspect or 
 generalization of that difficulty is our mental habit of 
 seeing things only in time-relations. And as that diffi- 
 culty of God was tremendous and incessant, the record of 
 it engraved in our minds is powerful and indelible. God's 
 space-difficulty has been slight or non-existent, and there 
 is a similar freedom of our thought from this slavery. 
 Light takes hundreds or thousands of years to travel to 
 us from some visible stars, even though it travel at the 
 rate of 189,213 miles a second. But our thought can 
 travel from here to there instantaneously. In the same 
 way our practical reduction of space by quick travel, by 
 telegraph and telephone, has been tremendously success- 
 ful, whilst life is not lengthened, and our control of time 
 is but little if any increased. In many such ways we see 
 that God's great difficulties are also ours, and that His 
 nature and capacities are also our own, with the obvious 
 difference of degree and perfection. 
 
 God's power to direct attention to all parts or points 
 at once is a natural consequence of his practical omni- 
 presence. Our development and history have been such 
 that it is quite impossible for the inexpert mind to fix clear 
 attention upon more than one object at a time. The 
 organist or locomotive-engineer has quite a high power 
 of divided attention. The ability to hold the attention 
 so aloof from any one point, and yet so alert and easily 
 
2l6 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 influenced that disorder in any one part will quickly 
 direct the attention thither, is observable in many, and 
 this power is doubtless the beginning of the process of 
 our infinitization, if one may so speak. Immense progress 
 in carrying many subjects "in hand/' is by slow degrees 
 leading the complex modern mind -into the capacity of 
 multiform synchronous attention. It is a distinctly im- 
 provable power, a matter of mental gymnastics and exer- 
 cise. If the Brahminic and Buddhistic mind, with its 
 splendid metaphysical suppleness and power, had but had 
 the actual world of matter and life, the scientific data of 
 the modern, to work upon and to balance it, its moon- 
 iness and pessimism would have been obviated. There 
 might also have been evasion of the distressing narrow- 
 ness and banality of the modern type of pseudo-science, 
 which, as it were, is forever content to study mysteries 
 profusely and strangely flung at us from over a wall, but 
 that never dreams of asking about the other side of the 
 wall. 
 
 The next most striking quality of the divine mind, one 
 that is perhaps more noteworthy and characteristic than 
 any of the preceding, is that of His ability to deal with 
 atoms, molecules, short ether-waves, and the infinitesi- 
 mally small. This is conjoined with that striking limita- 
 tion of his omnipotence that I have so often emphasized, 
 His inability to directly influence molar motion. The 
 entire fact constitutes the most astonishing and marked 
 difference between the divine and the human personality, 
 and, if we would understand the living world, needs to be 
 kept constantly in the attention. If one wishes to think 
 of God as " substance " or " matter^" it may be done, and 
 the knowledge of the ether greatly aids us in the attempt. 
 According to this suggestion we are helped to imagine 
 
PERSONALITY. 2 1 7 
 
 His omnipresence by the thought of an infinitely fine fluid 
 or body, like the ether, infilling all space. His freedom 
 from time-limitations has also a crude analogy in the in- 
 conceivable rapidity of ethereal motion, by the continuous 
 wave or mass never still, and also by ethereal permanency 
 and unity. 
 
 It is an interesting fact that, of all material substances, 
 the smallest, thinnest, slightest, and most physically 
 unknown of all the ethereal wave, is the only standard 
 of measure we have that is fixed and always and under 
 all circumstances the same. All other standards of weight 
 and measure are ever changing, and ever liable to change. 
 Is this a hint to us that the cruder the " substance " the 
 more untrustworthy and the less " standard " it is, and 
 that the substance we call God or Spirit is at last the 
 only absolutely durable and standard substance in the 
 universe? The more the density, the more unlike God. 
 The hint is proved by noting that substances of all kinds 
 are valuable to us in proportion to their smallness, fine- 
 ness, thinness, or gaseousness. The most useless thing 
 is a dead planet of crude inorganic or mineral matter. 
 The dead masses of rock that form the bulk of our world 
 are quite as useless and non-significant. The pulverized 
 rock or " ground " forms a rooting-place for plants, and 
 helps to furnish them an equable supply of water and a 
 few constituents of nutrition. Water is another release 
 from hated solidity. Although it forms some four fifths 
 of our bodies, its role is not vital ; it only forms a medium 
 of communication and of assimilation. It is a good slave 
 to bring and carry the letters of life, but it may never 
 read or indite them. It is the atmosphere, however, 
 gaseous and so near " nothing " that the savage does not 
 discover it, that feeds plant and animal, and is an instant, 
 
218 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 absolute, and vital necessity of every leaf and lung. With 
 this attainment of " thinness," also, begins the psychic life 
 and intermediation the necessity and spirituality of sen- 
 sation. The atmosphere furnishes the material basis of 
 sound and music, and all that follows therefrom. The 
 mechanism of the biologic process is nutritional, and all 
 nutrition consists in the use of atomic and molecular 
 forces. Of these man's mind has no direct or sensational 
 knowledge ; only by inference and mathematical reasoning 
 do we know them to exist, or know any thing about 
 them. It is certain that no eye, by whatever microscope 
 aided, will ever see a single atom, even of the largest 
 variety.* These atoms and molecular motions, however, 
 reach consciousness through the senses of touch, taste, and 
 smell. In the ether, however, we have the most valuable 
 and essential of all physical agents. It is the medium of 
 temperature-regulation and supply, by which and in which 
 every nutritional and sensational function subsists, and 
 persists, whether in plant or animal. Heat is the condi- 
 tion, index, and register of all forces, of biologic forces 
 especially. As the ether is millions of times more thin 
 than air, so is it millions of times more vital and essential, 
 closer, and more nearly in contact with our being. As a 
 light wave is millions of times smaller than an air wave, 
 so is vision proportionally richer and more psychic than 
 hearing. The letters of the alphabet are conventionalized 
 pictures, and on the physical side all human intelligence 
 is the product of vision. 
 
 * The smallest living particle visible under the microscope contains about 
 two million somacules (living molecules). About 85 per cent, of every proto- 
 plasmic mass is water, and a large part of each cell is not true living 
 matter, but is either food or dead waste product or excreta. Hence the 
 real directing and modifying part of the cell is composed only of from ten 
 to twenty million of somacules. 
 
PERSONALITY. 2ig 
 
 The inference draws itself : the " substance " we call 
 spirit, life, or God Biologos, this subtle fluid, as infi- 
 nitely removed from the crude ether as that is from air, 
 this is the life and heart and essence of us, it is the ego 
 itself. 
 
 I wish here to draw an inference of analogy, and to fix 
 it firmly in the attention : I believe the fact that God 
 can only affect matter through the infinitesimally small 
 forces that we call atomic or molecular, is from precisely 
 the same reasons that radiant heat can only so affect it, 
 and that His causative agency is accurately analogized by 
 the action of the ether on vibrating atoms. It is an easily 
 understood mechanical law that in order to move a body 
 a force must be proportional to the resistance or " weight " 
 offered, and if the body to be moved is vibrating or oscil- 
 lating, the instant of impingement must be timed to the 
 phase of the vibration. It is in accordance with this 
 necessity that ether waves can only affect a mass by affect- 
 ing the constituent molecules or atoms of that mass, since 
 they alone are small enough for so small a blow to have 
 effect upon ; and furthermore, their vibratory period must 
 be adjusted, synchronous, or nearly so, with that of the 
 vibrating atoms. One further observation is yet necessary 
 to make clear this conception of what may possibly be the 
 mechanism of God's influence upon and use of matter: 
 The ether is thrown into wave motions of all degrees of 
 rapidity or wave size. Waves much smaller than those of 
 the ultra-violet end of the spectrum have not been much 
 studied, though there is hardly any limit to their creation 
 or existence. But down through the light spectrum, and 
 for a dozen octaves below, the longer waves have been 
 measured, and lately Hertz and Tesla have shown us that 
 this limpid medium may be thrown into vibrations of any 
 
22O THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 length desired, these longer vibrations constituting the 
 phenomena of electricity and magnetism. So that, with 
 the same medium, there may be produced waves a thou- 
 sand miles long, and from this point all the way up to 
 those of perhaps one one-hundred-thousandth of an inch 
 in length. I argue from these facts, and especially from 
 the fact that Biologos can only control mechanical forces 
 so small as those of atomic and molecular vibrations, and 
 that these He does control, that His "substance" or 
 " body," inconceivably more fluid than the ether, influences 
 atomic and molecular vibration by its synchronous and 
 dominating vibrations. It is only the largest and strongest 
 of His vibrations that are sufficiently powerful or adequate 
 to the task of influencing the fine small motions of our 
 known atoms and molecules at the degree of temperature 
 of organic bodies. Behind and beyond materiality proper, 
 or materiality as we know it, the extension of activity of 
 the divine Being within Himself, by finer vibrations than 
 we can know, or by other undiscovered modes and forces, 
 leaves room for a superhuman imagination to play in, and 
 for the inexhaustible riches of His nature. 
 
 I see no reason for shrinking from such conclusions or 
 from such methods of reaching conclusions. It is more 
 truly reverent than the pure blank, non-comprehending 
 wonderment of the bewildered worshipper, and it is more 
 courageous and loyal than the lazy cowardice of agnosti- 
 cism and atheism. The danger to any but strong, clear 
 thinkers is that any endeavor to de-anthropomorphize 
 their deity seems to dissipate Him into " thin air." We 
 are so material, and so crudely and clumsily material, 
 that we have little trustfulness in this " thin air," of the 
 spirit, but which alone has stability and permanence and 
 use and beauty, whilst instability, impermanence, useless- 
 
PERSONALITY. 221 
 
 ness, and beautylessness increase with every increase of 
 density. To the soul the cry of religion and of science, 
 ay, even of physics, is, Trust your wings, the air is your 
 home ! 
 
 God's perfect kindness is shown by the existence of the 
 wings, and also of the muscles to use them, when the idea 
 and the desire of flying has come. Those who have no 
 spirit-wings will find such ideas ridiculous, and dangerous 
 desire will not be aroused. Such must longer rest quietly 
 in the nest of practical materialism or materiality, fed yet 
 longer by .the kind mother-love of the senses. 
 
 But to those who do trust this upbearing air, there comes 
 at once the consoling thought and the repeated perception, 
 that, though not localized, though freed from the binding 
 of time, though always here and there, though attentive 
 at all points and at all times, though most unsolid, He is 
 yet Person. No true element of personality is lost, 
 either to the pure reason or to the physical eye. And 
 most contenting of all is our likeness to him, nay, that in 
 very fact and truth we are His children, transplanted and 
 emigrated parts of Himself, set to the task of breaking and 
 tilling a new soil which has been provided for us, and for 
 which He has outfitted us. Intention, foresight, thought- 
 fulness, and a thousand thousand signs of Himself as 
 kindly, helpful, intelligent, and purposeful, are scattered 
 wherever we come or go. To the spiritually erudite eye, 
 the organic world is a palimpsest, and beneath the beau- 
 tiful modern writing of biology, there gleams in dimmer 
 characters the significant and beautiful revelation of an 
 ancient wisdom and the story of divine passion. 
 
 Perhaps there is no characteristic of God that so clearly 
 proves personality, or that more closely allies us to Him, 
 and that more boldly and repeatedly commands our sym- 
 
222 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 pathy and delight, than that of His ingenuity. If we 
 realize in thought a fraction of His difficulties, and if then 
 we seek to penetrate the secrets of the intricate mechanism 
 of any one organism or fraction of an organism, we are 
 astounded at the inexhaustible fertility of resource, the 
 infinite subtlety of cunning, and the perfection of ever- 
 varying device. All of this, too, with an undiscover- 
 able deviousness and indirection forced upon Him by 
 untoward material and circumstance. This recalls the 
 charm and pleasure of mechanic invention, discovery, and 
 use in our own world and work, and shows us whence we 
 derive our power, whence come our use and pleasure 
 in the power. The kinship is clear. A great mistake of 
 the religionists has been to think of God as a far-away, a 
 huge, and solemnly mighty being, hurling worlds and 
 great forces. But the most salient attribute of all is that 
 of His exquisite artisanship and of His mechanical genius. 
 Before all things is He a worker, and an infinitely deft and 
 expert one ; with a patience of constructive talent, a per- 
 fection of detail, and a consummateness of result, that are 
 the model and despair of every human workman. God 
 has nothing to do with, and has no power over, worlds and 
 giant forces. His is not the thunder, the storm, the plane- 
 tary movements, nor any molar motions. He deals only 
 with the infinitely small, but his mechanisms are the 
 marvels of perfection that we see. * 
 
 * As one of numberless instances, take this extract from a hunter's journal : 
 " Who could not tell a loon a half mile or more away, though he had never 
 seen one before ? The river was like glass, and every movement of the bird 
 as it sported about broke the surface into ripples that revealed it far and 
 wide. Presently a boat shot out from shore, and went ripping up the sur- 
 face toward the loon. The creature at once seemed to divine the intention 
 of the boatman, and sidled off obliquely, keeping a sharp look-out as if to 
 make sure it was pursued. A steamer came down and passed between them 
 
PERSONALITY. 22$ 
 
 And over all, in all, and through all, the smile and the 
 flush and the flashing of a divine beauty that thrills and 
 charms, but that eludes ! 
 
 And from what other source could our personality come 
 except from Him ? Can the lesser create the greater? A 
 literal incarnation implies, however, that we are not crea- 
 tions, but that we are creators. All our work in this world 
 is in small exactly the same work that God's work is in 
 large, and all our powers and capacities are also His powers 
 and capacities, seeking the extension, the perfection, and 
 the scope of His. All physical progress is approximation 
 toward His manipulative skill, and all spiritual progress is 
 approximation toward his mental and moral and esthetical 
 perfection. Any true progress whatsoever is progress in 
 Godlikeness. But only a large and deep study of biology 
 and anthropology can define what God is, and in what 
 likeness to Him consists. We are God deputed to the 
 work of incarnation, and in entering matter God must 
 devote attention to the work in hand ; hence the tempo- 
 rary restriction and limitation of our minds, their finiteness 
 and groping, ever clearing to a more definite conscious- 
 ness of essential unity and identity with all spirit. Our 
 
 and when the way was again clear the loon was still swimming on the surface. 
 Presently it disappeared under the water, and the boatman pulled sharp and 
 hard. In a few moments the bird reappeared some rods farther on, as if to 
 make an observation. Seeing it was being pursued and no mistake, it dived 
 quickly, and, when it came up again, had gone many times as far as the boat 
 in the same space of time. Then it dived again and distanced its pursuer so 
 easily that he gave over the chase and rested upon his oars. But the bird 
 made a final plunge, and when it emerged upon the surface again it was over 
 a mile away. Its course must have been, and doubtless was, an actual flight 
 under water, and half as fast as the crow flies in the air." Think, also, of 
 the physiological and neurological mechanism of the flying monkey that can 
 rush through high tree-tops faster than a man could run on the ground, yet 
 " with his head turned back and his eyes fixed on his pursuer." 
 
224 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 minds are temporarily weak and warped from the struggle 
 with matter ; we are more or less forced to see things in 
 time and space relations ; the all-ruling necessity of nutri- 
 tion is on us ; we are compelled to singleness of object in 
 attention ; to dealing with solidities and masses and molar 
 motions ; but every day shows us progress in freeing our 
 minds from these bonds, and in infinitizing our mentality. 
 In very truth, the genuinely personal is hindered by these 
 bonds and inherited experiences, and true personality is 
 that of God, not that of the spirit subservient to materiality. 
 We are coming to personality more and more, but it is 
 only as we cast off that which the deeply materialized 
 mind mistakenly holds as most personal. 
 
 I here catch glimpses of a divine tragedy that was sym- 
 bolized and exceptionally seized in the Christian theory 
 of the incarnation of Christ. The conception of the In- 
 finite Father leaving the throne of Heaven, and of Christ 
 taking upon Himself the human form, burying Himself in 
 matter or flesh for man's sake, this is all a prefiguring and 
 exceptional A hnung of the world-process. And as Jesus 
 gave the plainest evidences of his possession of the limita- 
 tions of our common humanity in the real suffering, mis- 
 takes, and misconceptions of his life and teachings, so in 
 the great incarnation of Himself in the biological world, 
 God resignedly blinds Himself to His more infinite charac- 
 teristics, and in devoting Himself to the huge labor,He tem- 
 porarily renounces their functions, and sees with the human 
 eye all things as we see them. This does not necessitate 
 a limitation of His infinity, the permanent or absolute in- 
 ability to devote attention without becoming " absorbed " 
 in his special work, but would imply simply a postpone- 
 ment of useless function until its play or activity shall not 
 detract from or endanger the hazardous process in hand. 
 
PERSONALITY. 22$ 
 
 In devoting Himself to the work of incarnation, God, as 
 it were, rendered himself temporarily unconscious, forget- 
 ting for the time His higher attributes. The higher con- 
 sciousness and the fulness of the divine characteristics 
 would have been hindering and disturbing elements, in the 
 early stages at least, of the limited function. In plants 
 and animals He is thus perfectly " absorbed " in His 
 work ;. but in man, even the savage, the hint and sugges- 
 tion of the divine is ever seeking clearer ways and work- 
 ings, whilst in civilized man, Godhood gleams out upon us 
 from all history and from all great personalities. In the 
 future the God in man is coming to perfection ; or, in 
 other words, God resumes His fuller consciousness .and 
 powers, while at the same time utilizing His new acquire- 
 ment, control of molar motion. Postponement and 
 temporary renunciation, made necessary by the rigor of 
 the nutritional difficulty, appear on the human side as the 
 temporal, spatial, and other limitations and imperfections 
 of our mentality. The end of that postponement is the 
 solution of the nutritional difficulty through civilization ; 
 the sudden blooming of science and art is the beginning of 
 the fact of once again taking up His disused powers, and 
 of accustoming Himself to entering upon His old-time 
 pleasures and exercises. The infinite Son is returning 
 to the home of the Father with the consciousness of 
 work well done and reward awaiting. The suddenness 
 of the present blooming of science and of strengthened 
 mentality shows how natural is divinity to us, how 
 promptly we can catch up our old work, even after a 
 million years of disuse, and of devotion to other tasks. 
 
 But, with unconscious truth the old creed said, " not 
 two Gods but one God." Father is Son ; Son is Father. 
 There is no genuine divisibility of the divine nature. 
 
226 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 And, moreover, the return to the Father is not renun- 
 ciation and leaving of the former work. The true Buddha 
 never enters heaven until the last of his brothers has 
 entered before him. In other words, heaven is not there, 
 but is here and now, and no work is ever quitted. The 
 process is still going on, the Son is ever returning to the 
 Father, because the Father is here, and progress so far as 
 we can see is infinite. 
 
 And finally, this plainly leads to the foreseen and 
 glorious conclusion, that the Son is not single, but that 
 we are all His Sons. Sin, suffering, slowness of progress, 
 disease, death, indirection, all these are the expenses and 
 difficulties of the process ; whilst stupidity, with all forms 
 of mental obscuration, are the temporary effects of tem- 
 porarily absorbed attention and renunciation of higher 
 life. If incarnation, as is certain, is a literal truth, then 
 we are not only sons, but the God Himself. Every possi- 
 ble thought or system of intermediation, of a hierarchy of 
 gods breaking the fall from the infinite to the finite, or 
 constituting the steps of the stairway from the finite to 
 the infinite, all must end in deserved and miserable 
 failure. Because we have not comprehended the finite- 
 ness and knowableness of God, or because we do not 
 recognize the infiniteness and unknowableness of man, we 
 baulk at the thought of the literal identity of the two. 
 We think of ourself as a body, but to the last atom our 
 body is our instrument. We are the supercorporeal being 
 that directs the body, uses it, receives by it, moves it 
 and effects purpose with it. And this true ego is abso- 
 lutely identical with the Ego that infills and stands behind 
 all living forms, lending them life, and making them serve 
 purpose and mentality. 
 
 Here, then, at last, is the final solution of the problem 
 
PERSONALITY. 22 J 
 
 of freedom and necessity. By no other theory that I 
 can conceive is it possible to slip the bondage of necessity 
 and determinism. Unless we be really possessed of the 
 divine freedom by the fact that we are sharers of the 
 divine nature and being, we are only self-deluded slaves. 
 Any sort of subordination at once throws responsibility 
 back upon the chief or highest authority, and thereby 
 automatonizes man. So long as man's foolish thought 
 made him desire an impossible sort of freedom, that with- 
 out accountability or responsibility, just so long was true 
 freedom impossible. We have wished to be irresponsible 
 tyrants instead of constitutional governors. God Himself 
 has no freedom of that sort. Freedom is not only, and is 
 not so much, release from restraints as it is choice of right 
 and necessary restraints. We are possessed of exactly 
 the same kind, and of a progressive degree, of the same 
 freedom as has God. His freedom, so far as the world- 
 process that we know is concerned, consists in utilizing 
 every means within His grasp and power, to incarnate 
 Himself in living forms to the greatest extent possible, to 
 humanize and to give to the human the control and use 
 of physical and subordinate biological forces. Our free- 
 dom consists in the recognition of our true origin and 
 nature, and in accepting and utilizing the responsibility 
 and the power as co-workers with the divine, and as 
 sharers both of His being and of His task. We are God 
 involved in the work of utilizing waste mechanical forces, 
 of spiritualizing matter, and of vivifying dead worlds ; and 
 with it all, educating and perfecting spirit, learning the 
 ways, the necessities, and the uses, both of matter and of 
 spirit, and of that new world arising out of the jointure 
 of the two, the incarnation-process. Your non-recogni- 
 tion, your rejection, or your misuse, your faultful or selfish 
 
228 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 doing of the duty and work, is both your failure and His 
 failure, is His mistake and your mistake, your loss and 
 His loss ; you cannot escape each other, for you are He 
 and He is you. With loyal loving adoption of His aims 
 and work as those of our own, we advance to a realiza- 
 tion of the highest personality and freedom, awe gives 
 way to love, and difference passes into identity. The 
 shadows of things, and the obscurations of materiality are 
 lifted, the wings of the spirit are grown strong : & Dieu ! 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 IMMORTALITY. 
 
 T^EOPLE generally cherish the delusion that their 
 hunger, pretended or real, for immortality is a vir- 
 tue and a thing to be proud of. Careful observa- 
 tion has convinced me that in many cases it is distinctly 
 and nothing less than a very narrow sort of selfishness. It 
 does not usually flow from a large love of life, or of the 
 things Life is seeking to bring about in this world. People 
 who believe most vindictively in the belief are such as 
 have done very little toward enlarging their own life or 
 that of their fellow-men. It is commonly supposed that 
 there can be no greater heresy and injury to both religion 
 and morality, than any negative attitude toward the belief, 
 or doubt thrown upon it. But I am convinced that it is 
 very commonly, if not usually, of distinctly pernicious in- 
 fluence upon character and society. If one believes in the 
 old-fashioned " soul," and in its " salvation," and that 
 one's own soul has a surety of heaven, nothing can more 
 effectually breed practical fatalism, laissez-faire, and 
 egregious conceit. The consummate ludicrousness of a 
 " sanctified " and saintly crank is only better concealed in 
 many who have been less clumsy in the self-cheating and 
 delusional processes of mind whereby they have erected 
 a very high wall to hide ugly truths and plain duties from 
 view. The perfervidness of the belief, moreover, has 
 always a plain smell of intoxication about it ; it is almost 
 
 229 
 
230 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 always an artificial emotion, whose strength is largely 
 dependent upon the amount of misery and poverty hidden 
 by the illusion of a false gaiety and a pretended certainty. 
 
 There was once a splendid scoundrel who defied govern- 
 ment and armies with a horde of invincible slaves to 
 whom danger was delight, and who sought death by un- 
 faltering obedience to their master. Their belief in after- 
 life, and in its disposal by their tyrant god, was made 
 incomprehensibly strong by the trick of drugging them 
 with a narcotic, and, while insensible, conveying them to 
 a mountain paradise where every delight of every sense 
 was drenched with satisfaction. After this foretaste of 
 heaven, they were again put to sleep and conveyed to the 
 world, and after this there was no doubt about obedience 
 to the commands of a master who had at his disposal such 
 a heaven as that. To get on the safe side, to win by ex- 
 cess of flattery or obedience the good will of a tyrant god, 
 has been too common a characteristic of religion ; and so, 
 alas, has the seeking of immortality often been a sharp 
 looking out for " number one " in the chances of life. 
 Just as the sacrificial aspects of much religion, scape-goat 
 sheep and scape-goat Christs, have been tricks, fine or 
 flimsy, to get rid of conscience and compound with the 
 devil called God, so the attainment of heaven has fre- 
 quently been a fine game to get the advantage of one's 
 enemies, and of those not so cunning. The rabidness of 
 the belief has usually depended upon the proportion of 
 the few saved and the many damned, and the frightful 
 immorality of any salvation whatsoever enjoyed, while 
 there was any damnation suffered, was a thought kept 
 well out of sight. 
 
 The unconscious power and origin of the belief, how- 
 ever, have, of course, come from larger and deeper 
 
IMMOR TALI TV. 231 
 
 minds and reasons than such self-seekers could fathom. 
 The arising of the belief in historical times and religions, 
 where it was heretofore non-existent, seems to me another 
 example of the breaking forth of the consciousness of 
 man's divine origin in nature, this consciousness and 
 belief having been kept in abeyance by the demands of 
 the nutritional struggle and progress in incarnation. 
 These early shapings of the doctrine are the crude plough- 
 ing and breaking of the ground for a better harvest. No 
 great religious truth comes so suddenly to perfection as 
 this, and the belief must yet cleanse itself of outrageous 
 crudities, and perfect itself to finer issues and more truth- 
 ful truth. After the establishment of the fact comes the 
 limitations of degrees, and the refinement of qualities. 
 Like all other deductive and religious truths, this belief 
 must be made scientific ; the rational systematizing con- 
 sciousness must take it in hand, and it must submit to the 
 calm estimation of proof, limit, and degree, of a sympa- 
 thetic but unbiased judgment. 
 
 " If a man die shall he live again ? " The very wording 
 of the question betrays the visible hope, the doubtful 
 longing. One feels the wavelet poised for an instant in 
 semi-independence, and the large ocean certain to draw it 
 back again. The wording also betrays the crudity of the 
 conception, and answers itself. There is shown an entire 
 lack of discrimination as to meaning of words, and extent 
 of facts. What is man ? What is death ? What is it to 
 live again ? To the unthinking the answers seem very 
 easy to give, but to the thoughtful they arouse profound 
 counter-queries. 
 
 In the ordinary and accepted definition of the word, " a 
 man " is understood to be any representative of the genus 
 Homo, whether he be a nameless African savage, or one 
 
232 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 of civilization's most cultivated scientists. If the fact of 
 possession of the human form implies the possession of an 
 undying soul-life, then no line can be drawn at the upper 
 limits of the animal or vegetable kingdoms. Everything 
 that lives is so strikingly filled with the same mental force, 
 that it is the veriest trifling to deny any animal and plant 
 the same right and necessity of future living as ourselves. 
 This brings into view the clear evidence of absurdity in 
 the common doctrine. According to that doctrine, heaven, 
 or the function of the future life, is to be one of enjoyment 
 and general objectlessness. There is here a withdrawal 
 of divine energy from use or work that is unlike anything 
 else known or thinkable in all the worlds of mind or matter. 
 If the possession of such "soul" divisible from body is 
 certain in man, it is, as I have said, certain in animal or 
 plant, and if by natural or divine ordering, this homo-soul, 
 at the death of the body, rushes away from earth and 
 work, so, precisely, must animal and plant-soul spurn 
 matter and life therein. Not to assent to this introduces 
 a new principle : either animal-soul and homo-soul are 
 essentially different, (which nobody would now be silly 
 enough to affirm), or there is introduced a stage of prog- 
 ress or a degree of soul only thus rewarded. To make 
 salvation or the heaven-getting of soul depend upon any 
 such indeterminate and indeterminable point of progress 
 or merit is, from that point of view, to land the whole 
 question in an immovable cloud of vagueness. To drain 
 off from earth and from functional activity the souls of 
 plant, animal, and human beings that die in one year 
 alone, would require an infinite inexhaustibleness of the 
 Source of Life. There is not the least reason to suppose 
 that the law of the conservation of energy is not as rigidly 
 applicable to Life as to any other form of force. To 
 
IMMOR TALITY. 233 
 
 attempt to conceive it otherwise lands us at once into 
 unthinkableness and nonsense. 
 
 We therefore see that any fact of immortality must be in 
 harmony with the fact of the life or soul of all living things, 
 and that functionless life or soul is quite as abhorrent 
 and unthinkable as functionless force of any kind. The 
 beauty of such a conclusion is the proof that the sort of a 
 soul and heaven commonly desired is as inethical and irre- 
 ligious as it is unscientific and impossible. " Salvation" 
 was a spoiled child's theft of the cake of happiness and 
 hiding in the garret of heaven to eat it alone. There may 
 be such a heaven of inactive enjoyment and selfish pleas- 
 ure, but God's Buddhas do not enter it while the struggle 
 of the world-process is still going on, and I have such a 
 firm conviction of His loving justice that if His Buddhas 
 beneficently postpone it of their own will, selfish laziness 
 will hardly be able to steal past His inattention. Parasit- 
 ism is, after all, a very small fact in the world, and even 
 that is usually made to confer indirect blessing. The 
 radiation of the sun's light into space is not lost or losa- 
 ble, and if there is such an irradiation of Soul into the 
 regions of space as the common idea holds, I suspect it is 
 none the less functional and utilized somewhere and 
 sometime. As neither can be annihilated, they must go 
 on until " absorption " does take place. What is the in- 
 fluence upon character of persistent enjoyment or rest- 
 ing, is plainly seen in the depravity and mental vacuity 
 of our social do-nothings. Life is a force, and Biologos is 
 of all things a worker : it is hardly probable He will excuse 
 His forces from activity, or His souls from work. Heaven 
 is quite the last and absurdest thing to think of. 
 
 As we daily see, there are two ways whereby soul- 
 activity is kept persistent, and immortality really at- 
 
234 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 tained : by heredity, and by spiritual influence. The first 
 is more physical in mechanism, and seemingly the more 
 powerful ; but the second, I doubt not, is, in a large way, 
 quite as real and more effectively strong. Marcus Aure- 
 lius sends his thoughts, the sample and ideal of his soul, 
 down the centuries, and procreates spiritual children 
 wherever his words go. But by heredity is the more cer- 
 tain and methodical manner, and no sin is greater than 
 that of large minds and hearts refusing or ignoring the 
 duty of child-raising. It is towards this that the world- 
 process has struggled for a million years, and the thread 
 of purpose, tirelessly and patiently followed through the 
 long labyrinth of development, is thus cruelly snapped in 
 an hour of weariness and waywardness. If there is any sig- 
 nificance and object in the incarnation-process, it is bound 
 up with the best type of civilized manhood and woman- 
 hood. Therefore, the very acme of sin against the Holy 
 Ghost is refusal to perpetuate that type. If the old idea 
 of a judgment-day were a truth, the first question asked 
 of the civilized sinner would be not as to murder or any 
 crime against present society alone, but as to the more 
 heinous crime of disloyalty to God Himself, to His work, 
 and to the future, by wilful disobedience to the second 
 law of the incarnation-process. 
 
 And if by circumstance or accident child-raising is re- 
 fused to one, it behooves him to devote the same energy 
 and self-sacrifice to the fundamental aim of Biologos : 
 orphans are to be raised, and the work helped onward as 
 evidently purposed. Or, if perhaps to such be given an 
 exceptional power of thought, or other means of after- 
 death influence upon the world, that function should be 
 exercised as a distinct atonement. " It is dangerous to 
 be believed," only when the belief inculcated contradicts 
 
IMMORTALITY. 235 
 
 the evident purposes of the subtle wisdom moving all 
 life. There is never much danger in simple kindness, and 
 much of our misery and sin come from lack of it. 
 
 The genuine " victory over death " and the grave will 
 come only in the persistence of continuity of the pliant 
 and progressive individual. In the meantime, the thought- 
 ful kindness of God is shown in the peace and silent ease 
 with which duteous souls slip the bonds of finished life. 
 To those who have completed their clear duties, death's 
 visage is no horrible one, and to them the final rest comes 
 as the night's sleep, which is indeed a daily warning and 
 reminder of it, and initiator into it. From His obedient 
 animals He has hidden the very knowledge of death, and 
 at life's proper ending His obedient human children have 
 become so wearied with the long day's work, and the 
 twilight of life's evening so softly and sweetly passes into 
 the night of death, that the silence of the unseen stars 
 only equals the silence of the tired-out heart. The body 
 has not been their chief love, nor things corporeal their 
 sole concern, and, in losing the body, self has not there- 
 fore been lost. But it is they who have not been loyal 
 to God and aidful in His work, they who have not found, 
 explored, and utilized their own spiritual natures, these 
 are they that fear death and shudder with horror at his 
 approach. Reliance upon the spiritual generates that 
 confidence in it that robs death of his terribleness. 
 They who have loved life for the body's sake, thinking 
 corporeality the end and not the means, such natu- 
 rally feel that in giving up the body, all is given up. 
 " The lack of evidence of immortality," of which the 
 complaint is common, seems to me a most wise provision 
 on God's part. The lack must continue until the task to 
 which we are set is completed, and the consciousness of 
 
236 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 one's own immortal nature is so clear that evidence of 
 the common sort would be positively needless, or even 
 repulsive. It is well that the evidence furnished by the 
 motley crew of spiritists is so valueless and inconclusive, 
 else the race in possession of such a certainty would be- 
 come as spiritually degraded and vapidly materialistic as 
 these precious folk. God would indeed be cruel to pro- 
 vide such a heaven for us, or to make us so convinced of 
 an undeserved immortality, that the lesson of corporeal 
 life would be utterly misused. Mankind are always seek- 
 ing and making for themselves the illusions of fatalisms 
 and certainties which excuse inertia and obviate the pain 
 and fact of progress. None such is more potent for evil 
 than this of an unfaltering belief in immortality, which, 
 even if the desired were obtainable, hides duty too 
 deftly, and neglects that preparation of spirit here that 
 alone would make a heaven anywhere. The doubt and 
 the doubtful hope arouse the startled heart to a study of 
 the conditions of immortality, and keep it plastic to the 
 ideas and influence of the spirit of God ever drawing us 
 subtly and kindly to the life of the spirit. 
 
 A little reflection will show us that what is usually 
 prized most as worth a life after death, are those things 
 least liable and least truly worthy to outlive the body. 
 It is individuality, peculiarity, or the specific difference 
 of self that is hugged with an exaggerated care and fervor. 
 But all spiritual progress is progress out of individualism 
 and peculiarity and difference. Reaching and gaining 
 true personality is leaving and losing true individuality. 
 As we approximate perfection we become nearer alike, 
 and the ideal of all perfection of character is that of God, 
 all imperfections of finiteness having been left and the 
 equilibrium of all attributes attained. The belief in any 
 
IMMORTALITY. 237 
 
 specific difference of essential being is largely begotten 
 and nourished by those differences of organization and 
 corporeality which are constituted by the accidents of 
 incarnation. It is almost impossible to think of them as 
 not rooted solely in matter. As we travel inward along 
 any or all lines of sensation, each organ referring else- 
 where for its raison d 'fare, and as we follow out the refer- 
 ence until is reached the last secret chamber beyond which 
 there is no reference, we find that we have long since left 
 behind us most that renders us recognizable, or individu- 
 ally peculiar. We have thus attained a purity and per- 
 fection of our deep inner being that is nearly or quite 
 identical with that of the essential being of everything 
 else that lives, and like that of pure spirit before clothing 
 itself with individuality and materiality. 
 
 Whether a spiritualized and noble personality can hold 
 unified, through and beyond death, the cluster of peculi- 
 arities and attributes which, if existing, are uncaused by 
 the accidents of organization, and that therefore do not 
 end with disorganization, this peculiar cluster that we 
 specifically distinguish as our friend this neither God 
 nor reason nor experience has certainly told us, and for 
 this doubtful, hopeful, blessed ignorance, let us thank 
 God, and seek not too curiously to raise the veil. Perhaps 
 our ignorance is proof of the comparative unimportance 
 of the question. As the highest souls value the distinct 
 and separate individuality ever less, and always seek the 
 perfection of non-individual personality, so our means of 
 the attainment of genuine immortality is in that power of 
 spirit over time "whereby the future is always present and 
 mortal life is merged into the immortal before death comes. 
 Such souls have long known that materiality or corpore- 
 ality is the scaffolding about the steeple of life (the tower 
 
238 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 supporting the scaffold as the spirit does the body), and 
 when the spire is completed, the workmen and death 
 remove the hiding framework of both buildings to allow 
 the self-sustaining column to stand forth in naked beauty 
 and aspiring strength. And as in everything else, the 
 beauty and strength, both of spire and of spirit, will ap- 
 proximate the ideal exactly in proportion as each has 
 escaped the peculiarities and defects of individualization, 
 and has realized the unique purity and perfection of the 
 divine Architect. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ETHICS. 
 
 THE intimate union, and what is more, the necessity 
 of a union of determinism and the various forms 
 of materialism that are popular, as Spencerianism, 
 agnosticism, or atheism is of course admitted. In a world 
 of pure mechanics there is no possibility of ethics, and no 
 use in talking about ethics. All things that happen are 
 necessarily so, flow rigidly from pre-existent causes, and 
 all attempt at influencing the course of self or of the 
 future is the silliest nonsense. The common degraded 
 form of " science " and the " logic " of popular " evolu- 
 tionism " seek to make morality a mere part of the great 
 physical grind of the great blind machine. All such logi- 
 cians make the everlasting mistake of confounding post 
 hoc and propter hoc. Because morality and the moral 
 sense followed, it does not result that it is derived from 
 the material used in the preceding condition. The truth 
 is that some aspects and ideals of ethics could find no room 
 or function in the early stages of the development-process. 
 All early stages were but preparations for it. Moreover, 
 what is evolved must have been involved. Properly 
 speaking " evolution " is development, emergence, or 
 the unrolling and outcoming of involved plantings. It is 
 a sad commentary on our logical acumen that the crude 
 atheists and materialists have been allowed to grab 
 44 evolution " and " science " as if these were their sole 
 
 239 
 
240 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 property, when in fact they have no earthly right to the 
 "stolen goods." True Darwinism leads to other conclu- 
 sions. As Wallace says : " The Darwinian theory even 
 when carried out to its extreme logical conclusion, does 
 not only not oppose, but lends a decided support to, a 
 belief in the spiritual nature of man. It shows us how 
 'man's body may have been developed from that of a 
 lower animal, under the law of natural selection, but it 
 also teaches us that we possess intellectual and moral 
 faculties which could not have been so developed but 
 must have had another origin, and for this origin we can 
 find an adequate cause only in the unseen universe of 
 spirit." 
 
 All questions as to the right use of life resolve them- 
 selves finally into two : questions as to being or doing, 
 the first relating to character, motives, and ideals, and the 
 second relating to conduct, use of power, and the like. 
 In a final analysis there is, of course, but one, because 
 action will more or less perfectly, and sooner or later, 
 depend upon character. Ideals are finally worked out 
 into practice, as the theoretical atheism of one century is 
 followed by the practical selfishness and immorality of 
 the next. What a parent secretly desired but showed 
 little evidence of, breaks in the child into most literal 
 actuality. For this very reason the distinction, while not 
 obtaining in a logical sense, has all the more practical 
 validity and use. The present-day disgraceful struggles 
 between " capital and labor " are not the last results we 
 shall know of the scientific doctrine of the " struggle for 
 existence," and the bellum omnium contra omnes so 
 zealously and exaggeratedly taught us for twenty years. 
 
 Systems of ethics are as numerous as systems of re- 
 ligion, the latter, indeed, gaining most of their power 
 
ETHICS. 241 
 
 and authority from their ethical quality or teaching. The 
 very multiplicity of the systems, and their diversity one 
 from another, together with the lack of any unanimity of 
 opinion or practice on the part of mankind as regards 
 highly important ethical questions, all show the want of a 
 perfectly satisfactory root-principle and accepted standard, 
 whence all ethical motives shall flow, and whereby all 
 doubt may be satisfactorily decided. All abstract rules, 
 commands, or laws, as e. g., those of the ten command- 
 ments, besides being negative in character, and so supply- 
 ing no incentive or motive, are by common law and 
 common consent disobeyed every day, thus showing 
 that a deeper unenunciated principle gives them authority 
 or denies them validity, by a right that is not visible in 
 the statement itself. Thou shalt not kill is legally con- 
 tradicted in the execution of criminals, and the reverse of 
 thou shalt not covet is the motive of all tradesmen.. 
 Examples are just as unsatisfactory ; to follow that of 
 Jesus would end in ludicrous instead of genuine tragedy, 
 and if all Christians were as sincere as Paul no civilization 
 would have arisen. All utilitarian systems are concerned 
 only with doing, not being, and would reduce life to as 
 inartistic and soul-deadening a process as that of a Shaker 
 village. The evident truth is that in the death of religion 
 the world is drifting with the winds and currents of chance 
 and passion, the self-interest of one being limited by the 
 self-interest of the others, legal practice and theory being 
 a sad jumble of historical precedent and experience, as 
 antiquated as its phraseology, and crudely dovetailed into 
 new conditions, problems, and necessities, that require a 
 broader ethic and a more certain perception of the object 
 of life. 
 
 The fundamental fault of all ethical systems has been 
 
242 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 that to the common work-a-day mind they have offered 
 no convincing raison d'etre for themselves and their com- 
 mands, no self-evident reason and appeal that could reach 
 the simple understanding, no positive incentive that could 
 move the sluggish or selfish heart. Translated by the 
 common thought, morality is a good thing for self to 
 preach, and for others to practise, and much of the inge- 
 nuity of mankind has been expended in encouraging ethics 
 in the practising simpletons, and in discreetly eating the 
 excellent chestnuts with unburned fingers. Everybody is 
 encouraged to be self-sacrificing with a wink to the wise. 
 Moreover, God or conscience has seemed to command 
 morality, without in the least practising it Himself, the 
 morality of the general biological world being apparently 
 quite different from that of the religious and didactic 
 teaching of the Church elders. 
 
 Buddha's religion of kindness and sympathy takes in 
 the animal world, but leaves out the vegetable kingdom, 
 whilst Jesus has no word implying the inclusion of either. 
 In the eleventh commandment, however, there is the won- 
 drous law of love to human brethren, which had it been 
 broader in application, and mentalized, not simply left as 
 a beautiful but impracticable emotion, or desire for an 
 emotion, might have served at least as an ideal dream 
 of life. 
 
 Sentiment, however, has outrun the logical and intel- 
 lectual statement or systematization, and in the modern 
 sympathy with animals (a subdominant in much biological 
 study) it has unconsciously (how often He does things 
 so!) reached forward toward a truth whose significance 
 has already made itself felt in legal statute and social 
 custom. The societies for the prevention of cruelty to 
 animals spontaneously springing up over the civilized 
 
ETHICS. 243 
 
 world are simply founded in obedience to an unconscious 
 recognition of the essential unity of all living beings. 
 Whilst seemingly negative in function, the emotion is 
 positive in character. But no formularization of the prin- 
 ciple, psychical or biological, underlying and stimulating 
 the emotion, has been expressed or recognized, and not 
 even t.he most tender-hearted has dreamed of suggesting 
 an extension of its application to the plant world. But 
 from a financial and civilizational point of view it is in- 
 finitely more important that Societies for the Prevention 
 of Cruelty to Trees should be formed than those in refer- 
 ence to animals. 
 
 As a general rule, needing some modification and ex- 
 planation, all rules and ideals of morality, both of action 
 or being, are perfectly included in the simple injunction 
 to imitate God, to do what God is doing, and to be what 
 He is. The idea of taking God as a model of action, and 
 especially of character, may seem to some impious, and 
 perhaps it will seem so to them whose Divinity com- 
 manded, " Be ye therefore perfect as your Father in 
 heaven is perfect." To adopt such an ethical principle 
 of imitation of God requires, of course, first the most abso- 
 lute conviction of the existence of God, together with what 
 kind of a being He is, and secondly, there will be required 
 a sympathetically intellectual science of what God is doing 
 or aiming to do in the world. The excellence and per- 
 fection of this ethical principle is that it is properly essen- 
 tially positive, but permits the easy negative. It is 
 applicable to the lowest immoralities, such as murder, or 
 adultery, whilst it also includes the most exalted ideals in 
 its comprehensiveness. It puts both a principle and an 
 example before us. It is adapted to the biological pro- 
 cess, extending a principle of conduct over the neglected 
 
244 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 animal, vegetable, and even physical world, and making 
 morality an affair not of sociology alone, but of physics, 
 physiology, and nutrition. It is progressive, and it sup- 
 plies a flexible but not breakable principle that may 
 command one thing to-day or in this instance, or the 
 reverse to-morrow or in another instance. Lastly, it 
 makes moral action partially dependent upon intellectual 
 progress and clearness, since to formulate the entire 
 motive and plan of God's action in the world is distinctly 
 though not solely an intellectual task, and in adapting 
 the principle to the strange diversities and conditions of 
 life, room is left for the educational play of reason and 
 enlightened casuistry. Thus are we not bound either by 
 a sorry jumble of inflexible rules and objective commands, 
 or by a subjective blind tyrant-instinct to do the right, 
 whilst we are left without a ray of light to know what the 
 right is. (It is useless to deny that the greatest crimes 
 against God and man e. g., the Inquisition, wars, and 
 murders have been done with the sincerest conscien- 
 tiousness.) 
 
 An ethical principle should be positive and exception- 
 less in character, the negative and qualifying aspects being 
 supplied by the application, the circumstance, and the 
 light-giving intellect. Biologos authoritatively commands, 
 Increase, multiply ! but experience and reason dictate 
 monogamic marriage, together with many other qualifica- 
 tions of the same not yet legally approved or disapproved. 
 The common intelligence and state of civilization will also 
 have to extend the application both of positive and nega- 
 tive command over the individual, because the common 
 is greater than the individual experience, the common 
 good and safety greater than the exceptional good and 
 safety, and the common wisdom is greater than that of an 
 
ETHICS. 245 
 
 average individual. The individual must square himself 
 with, if necessary be sacrificed to, the community, in all the 
 lower and fundamental aspects of ethics, because God's 
 incarnation-process is dependent upon " preservation of the 
 type." 
 
 If the fundamental rule of all ethics is that of doing what 
 God is doing and of approximating Him in character, 
 several things will follow, but notably this : they who do not 
 see and acknowledge the divine intelligence at work all 
 about and in themselves must, by the fact itself, be lim- 
 ited to the rule of God (for rule He will and must) by the 
 same methods He uses in the animal and vegetable world 
 that is, by instincts, the conflict of forces, the blind 
 working to ends unknown and devious, the control by the 
 lower factors, such as nutrition and sensualism, and by the 
 thousand indirect and subtle means that God has of mak- 
 ing His direct cell-controlled agencies bring about His 
 indirect larger and spiritual purposes. According to the 
 older theological phraseology, or an extension of it, they 
 must be held in obedience " to the law." Acknowledging 
 and choosing God as model is the advance into a new 
 kingdom of love, and at least when general, the fact itself 
 will constitute the greatest advance, biologically speaking, 
 that has so far been made. Because a thousand things 
 show the manifest awaiting for help on His part, the great 
 salvage of wasted force, the end of war and of luxury, the 
 unprecedented gain from order and systematization, that is 
 to come when the blind machine itself turns and becomes 
 the conscious and sympathetic helper. But the biological 
 or incarnational aspect is not the only, perhaps not the 
 chief one : there remains the profound change in character 
 that at once follows this free choice of the divine ideal. 
 The human animal, to whom has already in great part 
 
246 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 been given the control of the results of the incarnation- 
 process, the human animal, still unconsecrate deputy, 
 is by this sympathetic choice lifted into true personality 
 and co-partnership with God. 
 
 It seems to me that only in this way, and speedily in 
 this way, will be brought about the genuine Kingdom of 
 Heaven on Earth. This beautiful dream of Christ and of 
 many of His followers rightly consisted primarily in a 
 " change of heart," a recognition of the Father on the part 
 of the child, a self-consecration to that Father, and, so far 
 as conceivable, a conscious aiding in His work. But the 
 dream was necessarily dream-like and resultless because of 
 two or three unavoidably conditioning characteristics : it 
 was not only inceptionally, but it was throughout a matter 
 of sentiment or emotion, in which the intellect had no 
 share ; it ignored the entire subhuman part of the incarna- 
 tion-process that that we term science or biology ; and 
 even of this human part it would utilize only a fraction of 
 the agencies operative in society. All those of political 
 economy, mechanics, government, education, art, and 
 the like were utterly ignored. It lacked direction some- 
 whither, and also the very mechanics of progression. 
 There was a profound objectlessness of purpose that, like 
 the typical Christian movements of the Crusades, led no- 
 whither with fiery, useless, and tragic zeal. 
 
 This subjection of the human animal (or at best the 
 instructed deputy) by the indirect agencies God is com- 
 pelled to use with His children that remain obstinate 
 and unrecognizant of the Father's love and work, this 
 divine compulsion will in the future be progressively sup- 
 plemented by an unconscious subjection to the authority 
 of those human sharers of God's kingdom who willingly 
 consent to use their power for His purposes. Invisible 
 
ETHICS. 247 
 
 forces are distinctly at work to turn the world of selfish-: 
 ness to unselfish and public purposes, and to make the- 
 most disobedient and proudest self-seeker the servant of 
 the most obedient and meekest God-seeker. A thousand 
 examples quickly appear before the thought : conscience^ 
 stung plebeians devoting ill-gotten wealth to public uses, 
 founding libraries, universities, or observatories ; selfish 
 and narrow-minded men gaining legislative and executive 
 power for selfish ends, but forced to forego those ends and 
 to use the power for purposes better than they know by 
 men and influences they can only secretly hate, and can 
 never understand ; a tory or aristocratic party committing 
 suicide by " dishing the liberals," enacting measures of 
 democratic tendency ; money-seekers inventing and using 
 machines and labor-saving devices that help humanity, or 
 building railroads and telegraphs for purposes they as 
 little understand as they do the nature of nerve-currents. 
 I know many instances of bad men curbed, held in place 
 and utilized for larger and better purposes by good men 
 they hate, the good men never using their secret power 
 selfishly. There is a distinct modern growth of this fact 
 of holding lower personalities and powers to a larger and 
 impersonal use, and of making the private path of selfish- 
 ness lead to another's garden, or to the public highway 
 itself. This delegation to the unselfish of God's own 
 secret and subtle methods of rule is, of course, aided by 
 the ready perception on the part of those who understand 
 genuine values, that most of the ideals of men do not lead 
 to genuine power or happiness, and that consequently 
 what is usually called happiness is but a mockery and a 
 delusion with which men are enticed to throw the neg- 
 lected but real results of their lives into the lap of hu- 
 manity. Thus it comes about that minds that comprehend 
 
248 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 real values enjoy the parks of the rich more than the 
 owners, do not in the least envy the owners their sad 
 pleasures, read the books their grudging or tainted gener- 
 osity has supplied, and in every act utilize the labors of 
 the poor servants who were both incapable and scornful 
 of a proper utilization of the civilization they unwittingly 
 provided. This direction and control of the world by 
 unknown minds for unknown or public purposes is des- 
 tined to great extensions. God is only waiting for the 
 sympathetic and intelligent helper. The Napoleons are 
 to be fewer, the Lincolns more numerous, in the future. 
 The difficulty is to unite feeling and intellect, to emotion- 
 alize reason, and religionize science, and when this is done, 
 power awaits the user. The Kingdom of Heaven is indeed 
 at hand, but the Kingdom of Heaven will be an absolute 
 democracy, temporarily intermediated by an aristocracy 
 of the humble lords of life. 
 
 The extension and perfection of healthy life over the 
 globe is undoubtedly the plainest aim, and the most pri- 
 mary work of Biologos. Whatever aids in that is right and 
 whatever opposes it is wrong. To gain a foothold in 
 matter, to make this foothold secure, to extend and ever 
 perfect the simple fact of life, is the fundamental and, up 
 to now, much the largest part of His concern. The in- 
 carnation-process has been attended with such tremendous 
 labor, difficulties, and dangers, that the first of all sins is 
 murder, and the first of all commands is, Thou shall not kill. 
 
 In the working out of this incarnation-problem and 
 task, Biologos has had Himself to resort to a thousand 
 seeming contradictions of the law of life, because the 
 lesser has often had to be sacrificed to the greater. He 
 has had to kill in order that universal death might not 
 follow ; He has had to sacrifice the single or the few weak, 
 
ETHICS. 249 
 
 old, diseased, maimed, or defective, in order that all might 
 not be sacrificed : and He has had to make the struggle 
 for existence a great means of progress in animal mechan- 
 ism and diversity, (as all Darwinians are very fond of 
 telling us), death itself being one of the conditions of 
 greater and larger life. In the animal world or in the 
 human-animal world, if polygamy, sexual war to the death, 
 or whatever other strange mechanism of reproduction 
 best served the temporary exigency, and best insured the 
 stability and extension of the type, and hence of Life's 
 incarnation-work, this was grasped and resolutely carried 
 through. The fact was all important ; Life's foothold 
 once secure, correction and perfection could follow. The 
 entire biological process offers million-fold examples of a 
 compelled doing evil that good might come, or of sacri- 
 ficing an ideal morality to a present necessity. God's 
 transcendent freedom could see through means to ends, 
 and when our motive is as pure, and our reason anything 
 like as pure as His, we may safely adopt even His use of 
 freedom, or imitate His disposal of means. 
 
 But it must be remembered that His necessity is not so 
 stringent now as in the past, and that moreover His ne- 
 cessity is not ours. In human life the nutritional problem 
 is now so far solved that only in rare and exceptional 
 cases is killing a necessary means to the progress of human 
 life. But when killing is such a means, we ourselves do 
 not hesitate to do it, while as regards the animal world 
 we kill without a thought of sin, and we would laugh at 
 the charge of sin in unnecessarily destroying a plant. 
 
 Finally I must again emphasize the easily forgotten 
 truth that we are all His work, nay, that we are He. Our 
 highest ideals of the right are of His planting, and in His 
 soil that has been manured with a thousand deaths. This 
 
250 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 and many such things are quite as much divinely-caused 
 facts as two seal-bulls fighting for possession of the harem, 
 nay, they are more a fact, because the seal-war is a tem- 
 porary expedient, whilst in the pure human mind the ideal 
 is the true coming to light of the delayed fact, the bloom- 
 ing of the plant of the long-cherished exotic seed to which 
 all else was preparatory, the plant that could not have 
 come to fruition in the savage conditions of a more 
 violent age and clime. 
 
 The taking up of God's work in the world is therefore the 
 true ethical standard of human conduct, and the further- 
 ance or extension of healthy life is the chief and funda- 
 mental part of His work. But I wish to lay especial stress 
 on the truth that whatever difficulties may lie in the way 
 of making the principle the basis of a systematic and 
 theoretic ethic, there are few difficulties in the way of an 
 enlightened mind making it both the motive and standard 
 of a practical and every-day ethic. It is comprehensive 
 in its largeness, whether of positive energizing motive or 
 of limiting and qualifying application. Critic folk and 
 lordly logic-slaves may easily rail at it, but if a clear heart 
 and clear mind will seek to carry it out in practice it will 
 be astonishing how ethical doubt and perplexity disappear 
 and subjective difficulties are merged into objective neces- 
 sities and utilities. The mystery and vagueness of a blind 
 sentiment or propulsion of conscience are brought out of 
 the darkness of individual or racial experience, education, 
 inheritance, and custom, and set in the sun's light of reason 
 and intellect. Here they are adjudged and rated by a 
 divine and cosmic standard. We cannot go wrong if we 
 adopt God's rule of right as our own, and there can be no 
 doubt as to the value of the progressive incarnation- 
 process in God's mind. 
 
ETHICS. 251 
 
 It should also be carefully observed that however strange 
 the principle appear, and however unacknowledged it has 
 been, it has in most literal truth been the unconscious 
 basis and standard of all that was valid and good in ethical 
 systems, judicial rulings, and in religious and didactic 
 teaching. It would not be difficult to show that the neg- 
 lected laws, reversed rulings, ignored precedents, and 
 rescinded enactments that experience has taught men 
 thus to treat, or those that have brought ruin and wrong 
 in their fulfilling, have been bad solely and accurately 
 because they were not consistent with or were opposed to 
 the progress of the incarnation-process, i. e., to the exten- 
 sion and perfection of life in the world. ' Wherever the 
 most deep-rooted conviction of right, the most accepted 
 truths of religion, or the most profoundly ethical of prin- 
 ciples have clearly contradicted or placed obstacles in the 
 way of the incarnation-process, as has often happened, 
 they have been swept aside as cobwebs, ridden over even 
 with enthusiasm, and ruthlessly crushed beneath the un- 
 faltering hoofs of this spurred-horse of necessity. Strange 
 as it may seem, too, with sudden ability men have twisted 
 their prejudices into conformity with the necessity, and 
 have even made the unwilling priests of peace bless the 
 very battle-flags of war. All history is illustrative of this 
 fact. It not seldom offers a ludicrously sad spectacle of 
 human duplicity and self-deception, as, e.g., when a people 
 and church profoundly believing in the sanctity of mar- 
 riage and hating adultery authorize divorces, and encour- 
 age any form of legal adultery, rather than that lack of 
 an heir to the throne should make civil war probable. 
 The most heinous sins of one's own party are sniffed over 
 and ignored, whilst those of the opponent are most 
 frightful to behold. Each of two Christian armies on 
 
252 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 the eve of battle, with equal sincerity prays the God of 
 Peace to give self the victory, and to the enemy death. 
 
 Non-recognition of the difficulties and dangers of the 
 incarnation-process, and that the attainment of the end has 
 temporarily necessitated the adoption of any means there- 
 to best suited, have been at the root of much atheistic 
 or sensualistic misreading of biological fact and history. 
 Men have either exultantly or with deep pain seen a 
 supposably profound antagonism between biological and 
 divine morality. It seemed that there was an absolute 
 contradiction between the God of evolution and the God 
 of conscience. Hence irony and pessimism, a disobedi- 
 ence both of the Divinity in the world and of the Divinity 
 in the breast, or a shutting the eyes to one set of facts, a 
 scorn of conscience, or a scoffing at science, and in either 
 case a sad narrowing of character and denial of intellect. 
 
 I wish also to note that the acceptance of this as the 
 fundamental ethical principle of human conduct tremen- 
 dously and beautifully broadens our ideal and possible 
 attainment of freedom. The imitation of God is neces- 
 sarily coupled with the distinct sharing of His kingdom, 
 the according to us by Him of true autonomy, and, so 
 fast as possible, the extension to us of genuinely creative 
 or divine power. In any other conception of the divine 
 character, and of the method of His government of the 
 world, there is in the breast a consciousness more or less 
 clear and more or less hated, of the inescapable tyranny 
 of His all-comprising personality. The logic was irresisti- 
 ble that, consistent with the premises, no free subordinate 
 personality was possible, and that all other personalities 
 than His were necessarily servant-like. We all sympathize 
 with the child that perpetually wished there were some 
 room in the house where God could n't find or see her. 
 
ETHICS. 253 
 
 According to the idea I have tried to bring out, we are in 
 most literal fact children of God that is, in a last analy- 
 sis God Himself, devoted to a special task, and tempora- 
 rily renouncing those divine attributes not needed in His 
 work. Such a perfection of result in the special task has 
 now been reached that there is taking place a resumption 
 of the attributes of the pre-incarnate divinity. This re- 
 sumption of the Godhood is the process of the spiritual- 
 ization of character of civilized and educated mankind 
 upon which we are entering, and this I prophesy will be 
 somewhat sudden. At the end of the evolution-drama 
 man, the hero of the play, removes the tragic mask, and 
 lo, it is the benignant and smiling face of God behind ! 
 We are on the eve of a wondrous and glorious perfection, 
 a true divinization of the human mind, whose explanation 
 and characteristic on the divine side is this, that having 
 perfected the nutritional mechanism that was the funda- 
 mental problem in incarnation, having brought his incar- 
 nations to a power of control of molar motion, having 
 intellectualized that control, it is now to be spiritualized 
 and devoted to genuine use. Useless dead worlds and 
 aimless mechanic forces are to be utilized and devoted to 
 the purposes of spirit Having so far reached the object 
 of incarnation, absorption in the work is not so profound, 
 and there must now be an enlarging of the divine view, a 
 reclothing with the divine freedom. To us this is simply 
 a breaking-through of the divine consciousness into the 
 human, or rather a recognition on the part of humanity 
 of its genuinely divine nature, the acceptance of offered 
 sonship and proffered kingdom. 
 
 In a systematic ethic our duties or relations will phase 
 themselves somewhat differently in six groupings of facts: 
 I. Those to the inorganic world. 2. To the plant world. 
 
254 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 3. To animals. 4. To our fellow-men. 5. To self. 6. 
 To God. Taking God as our model, let us briefly in- 
 dicate some of the duties and aspects of our conduct 
 toward each of these classes. 
 
 The purely inorganic world constitutes the material 
 which the divine Architect uses in constructing his House 
 of Life. A human mechanic is not successful if he does 
 not understand every quality and power and " law " of 
 the material he uses. The study of physics (including 
 chemistry), therefore, lies at the foundation of all true 
 education, understanding, and use of the world. The in- 
 herent modes of action of every element and of all non- 
 living combinations of elements, under all conditions of 
 temperature, pressure, circumstance, and the like, should 
 be the primary part in any advanced course of study, and 
 especially in the mechanic arts and sciences. The clear 
 distinction between the use of atomic or molecular motion, 
 and that of molar motion, lies at the beginning of a com- 
 prehension of the mechanism of incarnation, and of the 
 use of mechanical force that Biologos reaches by the 
 combined cell-activity of muscular function. The pro- 
 gressive study of these infinitesimal forces is already reach- 
 ing toward a science of cytology that shall reveal to us 
 the secret of the mechanism of His entrance into and use 
 of matter. Aided by perfected thermo-chemistry and 
 physiological chemistry, the revelation at a not far-distant 
 date will be complete. It is our duty, therefore, to know 
 and understand the inorganic universe of the infinitely 
 great and extended, in order to orient ourselves and to 
 judge of the place we hold in the sidereal and solar sys- 
 tem ; also of the infinitely small, in order to understand 
 what He first must have known so well, that infinite de- 
 tail of work which has constituted the means and mech- 
 
ETHICS. 255 
 
 anism of His incarnation-process. But He not only knows: 
 He knows in order to use; and, as we are certain, He 
 uses for purposes of spirit, and to extend the reign and 
 power of Life. So must our control of the inorganic world 
 be devoted to a like end, not used only for selfish pur- 
 poses, not for the good of our own life alone, but for the 
 good of Life. Every victory of knowledge, every inven- 
 tion, every device for increasing our domination over the 
 dead forces of the world, should be turned at once to the 
 use and purpose of all life, the winning to Life's control 
 of hitherto unutilized forces, and that spiritualization of 
 the biologic process which is clearly the aim of the bio- 
 logic Father. The utilization of the molar motion gained 
 by muscles, and especially by mechanical inventions, is 
 the pronounced characteristic of this age, and this utiliza- 
 tion constitutes the systematization and firm safety of 
 the nutritional process by which the incarnation-process 
 is carried on. The overcoming of past dangers and diffi- 
 culties will now enable Biologos almost suddenly to bring 
 the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Patents on inventions 
 should therefore be short-lived, and on many things 
 patent-right should not be allowed at all. .The utilization, 
 for the purposes of Life, of the now-wasted forces of the 
 tides, water-falls, winds, sun's-heat, electricity, and the 
 like, should come about as quickly as possible. The dis- 
 coveries in " pure " or theoretical science, upon which at 
 last most practical inventions depend, should be furthered 
 by governmental and common encouragement, the re- 
 sults becoming the property of the people. Those who 
 simply make application of the great generalizations to 
 practical use, should not be given too great or too long a 
 monopoly. Profits above a certain percentage may right- 
 fully be restricted. Humanity's rights are pre-eminent in 
 
THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 all things, and especially in all such things as these. A 
 great reform in government should be that of gradually 
 turning it from what at present constitutes a large part of 
 its function, the means of aristocratic, plutocratic, or class 
 aggrandizement, and making it a means of furthering 
 original research in physics and biology. 
 
 Our relation to the world of vegetation is plainly dif- 
 ferent in one important respect from our relation to the 
 inorganic world : we have to deal with Life, and even in its 
 lowliest aspect this commands our respectful love and 
 reverence. The same spirit that lives in us lives also in 
 leaf and tree. The " angry tree " of Nevada, if disturbed, 
 shows evident vexation, " ruffling up its leaves like the 
 hair on an angry cat, and giving forth a sickening odor." 
 The " stinging tree " of Australia also emits a disagree- 
 able odor, and causes excruciating pain, even for months, 
 in any one who gets " stung " by it. " Dogs and horses 
 have sometimes to be shot " when thus wounded. A 
 strange protective device is that of the phosphorescence 
 of the "witch tree." In Taylor's The Sagacity and 
 Morality of Plants, there are described a thousand de- 
 lightful proofs of the mentality of plants. The plant ex- 
 presses its life as best it can with the means at command, 
 ever straining toward more perfect command of means. 
 The leaves of Dionoea require summations of stimuli ex- 
 actly like our own muscles, to effect contraction. They 
 are likewise fatigued by repetitive stimulation, just as is 
 muscle-substance. The only difference is in sensitiveness 
 i.e., a more perfectly acting mechanism. There is no differ- 
 ence in kind, only in degree. Under a pressure of three 
 hundred to six hundred atmospheres yeast and muscle 
 tissue react in an almost identical manner. The law that, 
 where food is denied and the struggle for life is hard, a 
 
ETHICS. 257 
 
 preponderance of males is produced, holds good in both 
 the plant and animal world. One spirit or life exists be- 
 hind all living things; all orders or types are bound to- 
 gether in a beautiful interdependence. The entire scheme 
 of incarnation depends upon the proper adjustment and 
 co-ordination of all the parts. The working of the engine 
 depends upon the integrity and action of the smallest 
 part. 
 
 Our use of this plant-world must, therefore, be not solely 
 as dead material, to which we owe no duty or respect for 
 its own sake. That it is for our conditional use is plainly 
 shown by the fact that it is necessary to animal existence, 
 its complex cell being the animal's necessary food. The 
 stored heat and energy of the highest cells perfected by the 
 plant are the raw material and means of that more bcwiU 
 deringly complex cell-life that constitutes the physical 
 mechanism of the animal economy. 
 
 It is therefore evident that man is interested in the 
 vegetable kingdom not for his own personal sake alone, 
 but the fate of all humanity and of all animal life depend- 
 ing upon the lower order, it becomes his interest and 
 duty to preserve and care for the lower in its entirety, as 
 he would the foundations of his house, and the integrity 
 of his government. The clearest evidence of the com- 
 mon duty of humanity toward the general plant world 
 consists in the sin of deforestation. That exquisite bal- 
 ance established by Biologos between the tree and the 
 still humbler orders of plants, and between the animal 
 world and the vegetable, is evidenced by the deserts of 
 the world, with changes in temperature, rainfall, and 
 other climatic conditions that endanger the very exist- 
 ence of life on the globe, all of which has followed man's 
 ruthless destruction of forests. Professor Buckland says 
 
258 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 there is no such thing as an original desert on earth, all 
 deserts being due to man's destruction of trees. The 
 whole question is of vastly more importance than any 
 that has occupied the attention of any congress or parlia- 
 ment in latter years. The repeated warning still falls on 
 deaf ears. Every government should at once make it a 
 crime to build a wooden-walled house. How far wood 
 may be used in the smaller parts and finishings of a house 
 should depend upon many circumstances, but sharp re- 
 striction must soon be -exercised even here. Life's labor 
 is great enough to fashion her necessary and lowliest 
 structures ; to sacrifice them for purposes better served by 
 a world full of stone and minerals ever at hand, is a 
 shameless squandering of precious wealth. But when the 
 sacrifice invites a second sacrifice to fire,* and when it en- 
 dangers agriculture, even civilized life, it becomes enor- 
 mously pernicious. What more consummate idiocy than 
 to encourage our own country's deforestation by a tax- 
 prevention of foolish outsiders from sending us their 
 murdered trees. 
 
 What a stupid shortsightedness is also that of our neglect 
 of plant diseases. The loss from " rust " in wheat is each 
 year a hundred times as much as has ever been spent in 
 all the experiments and study to prevent it. The loss 
 by " smut " in corn and oats is as much as ten per cent, 
 some years ; millions of dollars are thus wasted, and not 
 a dollar spent to learn how to prevent it. 
 
 But it is not enough to emphasize the negative aspect. 
 Trees must be encouraged, sympathized with, and helped 
 to realize their desires. Very few trees there are out of 
 
 * The average loss by fire in the United States is estimated to be about 
 $500,000 a day, i. e., half a million people are kept at work all the time ,to 
 recoup the nation for its fire-losses. 
 
ETHICS. 259 
 
 millions that do not bear as many evidences of their 
 struggle against difficulty and denied nutrition as of vic- 
 tory in life.* Very few there are that do not show desire 
 and beauty hindered and checked, pathetic exhibitions of 
 struggle against adversity f and of frustrated aspiration, 
 If with all our spiritual and mental life we were to be- 
 come a tree, we should act and show our life precisely as a 
 tree now does to us. One tree that has realized itself is 
 worth a journey of a thousand miles to see. God loves 
 His dear trees, and we should love them. They can teach 
 us many lessons that we need, as they are a result of the 
 loving labor of God, and of His delighted success in a 
 beautiful method of His self-incarnation. Their work in 
 transforming the earth into a home is so exquisite, and 
 their important influence on rainfall, climate, water navi- 
 gation, and agriculture is so indirect, that their own life is 
 allowed a self-expression and a perfection that is denied 
 to organisms whose work is more immediately or quickly 
 utilitarian. Nothing attests the greatness of the charac- 
 ter of Moses better than his order to his army that in 
 besieging a city no tree should be destroyed. It is 
 
 *The beautiful observations of my friend, Dr. Wilson (Contributions 
 from the Botanical Laboratory of the University of Pennsylvania, 1892) 
 show how intelligently responsive plants are, and how they adapt themselves 
 to the varying conditions of sunshine, darkness, cold, and heat ; we see 
 plainly that the plant has its own troubles, trials, needs, habits, and all, like 
 ourselves. 
 
 f As, e, g. , in the war with cold in cold climates, and with heat in the tor- 
 rid zone. The action of bark as a non-conductor is remarkable. Twigs 
 are not frozen in our winters, and in summer the temperature does not in- 
 crease with that of the surrounding air. Hooker mentions a fruit grown by 
 the Ganges in a soil having a temperature of 90 to 104 F., but that of the 
 juice is only 72 F. The action of trees rooted by crumbling banks, their 
 twists, turns, and desperate struggles to keep their footing and uprightness, 
 properly arouse in us pathetic and sympathetic emotions. 
 
260 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 strange how slow people are to recognize even the com- 
 mercial value of scientific forestry. How many men there 
 are that will work life out in cruder ways to make their land 
 valuable when a few planted trees would in time and with 
 no expense soon double the land-value. But we are in 
 such haste, we cannot wait for the tree to grow; its lesson 
 of slow and patient growth, reaching through several 
 human generations, has not been learned by the restless 
 human heart, that grasps at green fruit and creates artifi- 
 cial desires. 
 
 Every improvement in agriculture, and especially the 
 new and promising art of scientific agriculture, looks 
 toward both a happier farmer, the basis of all right civili- 
 zation, and toward a healthier and happier city. And this 
 not alone through an increased and more perfect food- 
 supply ; besides the raw material of food furnished the 
 city, the country must also feed it with healthy and 
 moral men and women. The decay of rural New Eng- 
 land is a sad and awful spectacle. To the sneer of his 
 big-ideaed brother returning from the West, the Yankee 
 farmer proudly answered, " We plant school-houses and 
 raise men." We have not yet more than begun to feel 
 the curse that is coming from our tariff sin of grinding 
 up the farmer in the city mills of the manufacturer. God, 
 it is said also has His mills, and they proverbially grind 
 slowly, but most exceeding fine. 
 
 One of the excellencies of agricultural and rural life is 
 the practical example of the fitting union of animal and 
 vegetable life. The trees along watercourses protect the 
 banks ; along roads they shade, protect, and beautify 
 them, and the cattle find resting-places for rumination be- 
 neath them. To make two blades of good grass grow 
 where before but one grew, or where there were only 
 
ETHICS. 26l 
 
 weeds ; to give healthy pasturage to healthy animals ; to per- 
 fect dairy science and art and thus provide better means 
 for Biologos to fashion man's best food ; to increase the 
 grain, vegetable, and fruit supply, to do all these and a 
 thousand such things is to imitate and to help God. And 
 He knows how to reward those who help and practically 
 love Him. Stay in the country, young man, but enrich 
 your life with all the results of city intellect ; the railroads 
 and books now give you the opportunity to do this. 
 
 If the plant is worthy of love and respect for its own 
 sake how much more so is the animal ; and yet it is only 
 with difficulty that our civilization is beginning to recog- 
 nize the rights of animals and our duties to them. Every 
 one with refined sensibilities of justice, and recognizing 
 the unity of animal and human life, shudders at the 
 butcher shops, and the slaughtering of animals for human 
 food. Should one be a vegetarian ? I think not. But if 
 the most complete cell-life and the highest development 
 of human life, as seems probable, need animal food, they 
 do not need it to the frightful extent now indulged in, 
 and the procuring it should not destroy any type or 
 species of animal. It should also be carried out without 
 suffering. Pain must be abolished ; our own nervous 
 system demands that, even if it were not evident that 
 God gave nervous pain to guard against suffering and 
 danger, not to continue itself. Any " sport " that requires 
 the useless suffering of our lower brothers must be stopped 
 by law, and with the sharpest penalties. Hudson's 
 thrilling and mournful words so well express my own 
 feeling that I again quote him : 
 
 "The rhea's fleetness can no longer avail him. He may 
 scorn the horse and his rider, what time he lifts himself up, but 
 the cowardly murderous methods of science, and a systematic 
 
262 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 war of extermination, have left him no chance. And with the 
 rhea go the flamingo, antique and splendid ; and the swans in 
 their bridal plumage; and the rufus tinamon sweet and 
 mournful melodist of the eventide ; and the noble crested 
 screamer, that clarion-voiced watch-bird of the night in the 
 wilderness. These and the other large avians, together with 
 the finest of the mammalians, will shortly be lost to the pampas, 
 utterly as the great bustard is to England, and as the wild 
 turkey and bison will shortly be lost to North America. What 
 a wail there would be in the world if a sudden destruction were 
 to fall on the accumulated art-treasure of the National Gallery, 
 and the marbles in the British Museum, and the contents of the 
 King's Library the old prints and medieval illuminations. 
 And these are only the work of human hands and brains im- 
 pressions of individual genius on perishable material, immortal 
 only in the sense that the silken cocoon of the dead moth is 
 so, because they continue to exist and shine when the artist's 
 hands and brain are dust : and man has the long day of life 
 before him in which to do again things like these, and better 
 than these if there is any truth in evolution. But the forms of 
 life in the higher vertebrate classes are Nature's most perfect 
 work ; and the life of even a single species is of incalculably 
 greater value to mankind, for what it teaches and would con- 
 tinue to teach, than all the chiselled marbles and painted can- 
 vases the world contains ; though doubtless there are many 
 persons who are devoted to art, but blind to some things 
 greater than art, who will set me down as a Philistine for so 
 saying. And, above all others, we should protect and hold 
 sacred those types, Nature's masterpieces, which are first 
 singled out for destruction, on account of their rarity, size, or 
 splendor, and that false, detestable glory which is accorded to 
 their most successful slayers. In ancient times the spirit of 
 life shone brightest in these ; and when others that shared the 
 earth with them were taken by death, they were left, being 
 more worthy of perpetuation. Like immortal flowers they have 
 
ETHICS. 263 
 
 drifted down to us on the ocean of time, and their strangeness 
 and beauty bring to our imaginations a dream and a picture of 
 that unknown world, immeasurably far removed, where man 
 was not : and when they perish, something of gladness goes 
 out from Nature, and the sunshine loses something of its bright- 
 ness. Nor does their loss affect us and our times only. The 
 species now being exterminated not only in South America 
 but everywhere on the globe, are, so far as we know, untouched 
 by .decadence. They are links in a chain, and branches on 
 the tree of life, with their roots in a past inconceivably remote ; 
 and but for our action they would continue to nourish, reaching 
 outward to an equally distant future, blossoming into higher 
 and more beautiful forms, and gladdening innumerable genera- 
 tions of our descendants. But we think nothing of all this ; 
 we must give full scope for our passion of taking life, though 
 by so doing we * ruin the great work of time ' ; not in the 
 sense in which the poet used these words, but in one truer and 
 wider and infinitely sadder. Only when this sporting rage has 
 spent itself, when there are no longer any animals of the larger 
 kinds remaining, the loss we are now inflicting on this our 
 heritage, in which we have a life-interest only, will be rightly 
 appreciated. It is hardly to be supposed or hoped that pos- 
 terity will feel satisfied with our monographs of extinct species, 
 and the few crumbling bones and faded feathers, which may 
 possibly survive half a dozen centuries in some happily placed 
 museum. On the contrary such dreary mementoes will only 
 serve to remind them of their loss ; and if they remember us at 
 all it will only be to hate our memory and our age this 
 enlightened, scientific, humanitarian age, which should have for 
 a motto, ' Let us slay all noble and beautiful things, for 
 to-morrow we die.' " 
 
 The death of those most exquisite of God's creations, 
 heaven's own birds, for purposes of ornamentation of our 
 female savages, is a disgrace to our humanity. It is 
 
264 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 grievously sad to think it has gone on so long. Let a 
 woman so cruel as to wear a dead bird be shunned as a 
 murderess. She should not be spoken to by good people. 
 
 The best of stabling, food, water, and care is certainly 
 due the animals that willingly work for us and give their 
 lives to us. If a very limited use of vivisection experiment 
 is necessary for scientific and medical progress, it must be 
 regulated by law, carried out with jealous guarding against 
 excess and against suffering, and the maimed animals 
 painlessly killed when the experiment is complete. The 
 practice carried on by conceited jackanapes to prove 
 over again already ascertained results, to minister to 
 egotism, for didactic purposes, these are not necessary 
 and must be forbidden. Every kind person should join 
 and help carry on the societies for the prevention of 
 cruelty to animals. 
 
 Every animal body is a product of marvellous skill, that 
 can always teach us lessons of interest and use, and every 
 animal soul is capable of education, sympathy, and rjro- 
 gress. Fashioned so exquisitely by Him who fashioned 
 us, His life in every cell, His spirit forming the essence of 
 the personality of each, it becomes us to call forth the 
 latent capacities of animals, and cover them with our 
 care. To our loving sympathy there is always on their 
 part an eager response, and many a man has been taught 
 deep lessons of soul-life by them. There is yearning in 
 their eyes for our teaching, invitation in their very art- 
 lessness, and the readiness with which they catch soul of 
 us tells how willingly their life will rise to meet yet 
 greater opportunity when it shall be offered. 
 
 Unto a few the exigencies, difficulties, and accidents of 
 the incarnation-process have given tremendous influence 
 over their fellow-men, and to every one some measure of 
 
ETHICS. 265 
 
 power. If the humblest will but think carefully he will 
 recognize how great and frequent has been his influence 
 either directly or indirectly upon others ; and by reflecting 
 more seriously he will see how much greater it might have 
 been, and how in future it may become much more 
 marked. The responsibility thus given to us is negatively 
 or positively ours, and whether we will or not, and our 
 use of it becomes the chief opportunity and duty of our 
 lives. In these matters sins of omission are as great sins 
 as those of commission. 
 
 The difficulty of deciding how to use the power given 
 us, or that might be ours if we but grasped it, the vague- 
 ness of ethical ideals and the impossibility of living up to 
 them, have served to make men withdraw into themselves, 
 throw away responsibility and opportunity, and drift with 
 the chance current of tendency and Zeitgeist. The aspi- 
 rations and ambitions that swell in our breasts when we 
 are truest, tell us what is the aim of our essential life, what 
 God would like to do with and through us. The impul- 
 sion of humanity toward progressively better life, and the 
 inherent tendency to progress observable in civilization, 
 both show us the simple ready duty ever at hand : to com- 
 plete the process of humanization ; to aid in the progress 
 of civilization ; to help men, through whom God is work- 
 ing, to realize the ultimate ends of the incarnation-process. 
 If this process have any meaning and final cause, it must 
 be outworked in and through humanity. Hence of old 
 the chief duty of man has been held to be toward men, 
 and however exaggeratedly this aspect has been empha- 
 sized to the sad exclusion of other duties, it must still re- 
 main the chief of all. And this is true principally because 
 the ability and opportunity are greater in this direction. 
 Every day we act upon and with others, and the great 
 
266 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 temptation and sin of each day is to use or to seek to use 
 others for our individual life's good, instead of for the 
 good of all life. It has always, and by all teachers of 
 morality, been clearly seen that selfishness is the predom- 
 inant sin. Why it was so was not clear, since self-love and 
 self-preservation is the almost invariable rule of all living 
 things. 
 
 It seems to me that this profound contradiction of the 
 altruistic conscience and the egoistic necessity, the oppo- 
 sition of ethics and biology, can only be explained by the 
 philosophy of life that I here suggest : The egoism is the re- 
 sult of the extreme or hypertrophy of individuation, which 
 under the circumstances was a necessary part of the incar- 
 nation-process; and the demand by the conscience for un- 
 selfishness is the notification of God that that extreme may 
 and must be merged into the higher truth of the good of all 
 life. Individuation had to be pushed to the last extreme 
 in order to make head against and conquer the imminent 
 dangers and catastrophes always before and close about. 
 Hence the mechanisms, mental and neurological, of self- 
 value and self-love had to be brought to the highest pitch 
 of perfection in order to avert, to preserve, to live, and to 
 outlive. Thus have arisen the sleepless, jealous, and exor- 
 bitant egoism and egotism of man. But the voice of con- 
 science at once and early began to speak to the humanized 
 animal that this was an exaggeration, and that this necessity 
 and rule of life is to pass. The clear command of all high 
 religions and true ethics, if not to reverse the rule of bio- 
 logical history, was at least to extend it to all our fellow- 
 men to love the neighbor as one loved self. Life's 
 foothold has been secured, the incarnation-process in the 
 human has reached such success and entrenchment that 
 the mechanism of an enormously exaggerated self-valua- 
 
ETHICS. 267 
 
 tion is not needed, hypertrophy must be reduced to 
 normality, and the higher value of the whole must be 
 recognized. The function of conscience in humanity is 
 thus primarily clearly biological, and leads the intellect to 
 recognize the validity of the common welfare, and also 
 spurs the emotions to effect it. Civilization in its biolo- 
 gical and spiritual aspects is thus at first negatively a 
 process of reduction or subordination of the individuation 
 mechanisms and products that have been born out of the 
 rigors and hardships during the past incarnation-process. 
 But positively, of course, it is infinitely more than this : 
 It is the spiritualization of the power and energy now 
 gained, a development of the latent and waiting ideals 
 and objects now first possible to come to light. The root- 
 ing of the plant, its growth, security, and stored nourish- 
 ment, must precede the flowering and fruitage. 
 
 One of the great reasons of the convincingness of 
 pessimism lies in the truth, however negatively stated and 
 neglectful of the positive truth, that unselfishness is, as 
 it were, good selfishness, a genuine wisdom, and an excel- 
 lent policy. What we gain in the long and wretched war 
 for self-advantage does not pay for the struggle. When 
 pursued as an end in itself, our little self is not worth the 
 pain and strain we put into life. We, indeed, are but one 
 tool in God's hands, that without solicitude He throws 
 away, when we become unfit or when that part of His task 
 is done. He seeks with us ends that are beyond any 
 individual ; His care was for a process, an object only 
 reached through and by millions of successively appearing 
 and disappearing individuals. The mad rush for the 
 delusions of life, for wealth, ambition, fame, power, as all 
 wise men know, leaves in our hands only burning ashes, 
 and in our mouth only bitterness. Hence arise pessimism, 
 
268 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 atheism, the theoretical Buddhistic and the commonly 
 practical Christian doctrine of renunciation ; hence the 
 frightful growth in recent years of suicide, and what is 
 worse, the wild debauch of sensualism and luxury, in order 
 to drown the voice of conscience. 
 
 Now to these pessimists and renunciationists there is 
 but one answer: What you say is true, so far as it goes. 
 There has indeed been an over-development of the feelings 
 and mechanisms of selfhood and of individualism. " It 
 does not pay " to rate self so highly ; there is nothing in 
 life to warrant or to justify such an undue valuation. 
 The individual is but a link in a chain ; there is a purpose 
 being worked out through individuals that is greater than 
 they. There is something better and higher than indi- 
 vidual identity, or than that persistence of partiality you 
 desire in all the self-regarding virtues and vices. Firstly, 
 however, be it well noted, your renunciation is a matter 
 of selfishness. If there were more value to the delusions 
 of life, you would not renounce. Your resignation is 
 therefore lack of virtue ; is not to be dignified by much 
 more honorable epithets than laziness and incapacity. 
 Secondly, your renunciation is simply negation, and you 
 affect to ignore the fact that there is a positive object 
 worth all struggle and energy. Your pessimism is a tricky 
 method of self-delusion, of hiding from the mind the 
 facts that make against you. To you it also needs be 
 said that self-delusion also does not pay. Pessimistic 
 pouting is a child's way of concealing the fact that the 
 game you chose to play was not the best one, and that 
 even that game you did not play heartily and according 
 to the rules. 
 
 But there is a game and an object of life that does 
 not end in tragedy or in disgust. God is playing the 
 
ETHICS. 269 
 
 great game with lives, and He will tolerate no rival 
 player except he play in the same spirit and with the 
 same objects as He uses. His chief delight is the game 
 of Life, and in this He loves rivals, because rivalry here 
 means co-partnership. In this He is always on your side, 
 since the only true opponents in this cosmic battle are 
 Fate, and Death, and dead matter. In this great chess 
 game selfishness is simply the ruled-out absurdity of seek- 
 ing to crown your own pawn before it has honorably 
 reached the king's row. Struggle manfully and legiti- 
 mately to attain the king's row with your little pawn, and 
 by the struggle you have learned true kingship, which is 
 likeness to the Great King of Life ; then at once crown- 
 ing and power are yours ! The essence of all sin is the 
 use of the personality of others for selfish purposes, whilst 
 the essence of God's rule and aim is to use lives for the 
 purpose of Life. If God exist it could not be otherwise, 
 and if you choose the reverse of His rule, disgust and 
 pessimism are inevitable. Choose His use of life and His 
 object as your own, and all is changed. Content and 
 hope and sacred satisfaction are henceforth yours, and 
 also power. Reach up and slip your hand into God's hand, 
 with a sincere prayer to be rightly led, and lo ! into your 
 earthward hand are placed the groping fingers of Life's 
 little children, they that are also seeking to be led to the 
 light. All history is lurid with warning or splendid with 
 illustration of this truth. Look among your friends and 
 see how the mystery and the seeming illogicality of their 
 lives, either in reward or punishment, stand revealed as 
 the outworkings of this fundamental truth. And this, 
 too, in a time when the vast majority of men are opposed 
 to God and utterly oblivious of His purposes in incarna- 
 tion. When a majority shall turn and adopt His purposes 
 
2 70 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 as their own, how manifest will then be the truth, and 
 how sudden the now frequently delayed judgment. Love 
 Life intelligently and heaven is yours ; love your life 
 recklessly and hell is your choosing. 
 
 It may be well to again emphasize the truth that this 
 ideal of human duty is so all-comprehensive as to include 
 even selfishness and unselfishness. It can explain why 
 either may temporarily be the exclusive rule, according 
 to the ever varying difficulties and circumstances that 
 beset us. Indeed, unreasoned and unqualified unselfish- 
 ness would almost be insanity, at least would speedily 
 defeat its own ends and the ends of the incarnation- 
 scheme. One has other duties, equally clear and modify- 
 ing such an extreme, and which are also subordinate to 
 the great law (a true law, a genuine superimposed neces- 
 sity) of aiding the realization of God's purpose in the 
 incarnation-process. Circumstances and conditions con- 
 stantly arise in which any one duty to self, to humanity, or 
 to lower life, must be subordinated to another duty. The 
 exigencies of life are often excessive, and even Biologos 
 Himself has had to sacrifice ideals, " duties," nations even, 
 and postpone final aims to the rigorous necessities, dangers, 
 and demands of the fatum of earthly accident and of 
 difficultly-subjugated matter. Herein lie the office of 
 casuistry, the flexibility and the plasticity of a principle 
 that shall be adaptable to all the possible conditions of 
 our lives, and the application of intellect to the deter- 
 mination of any rule of special conduct. All rules range 
 themselves, however, with perfect obedience and clearness 
 under the general principle, and in the most perplexing 
 condition the most primitive intellect can still act rightly, 
 if the heart but acknowledge the law and if the will but 
 obey it. 
 
ETHICS. 271 
 
 Money has become such a measure of all human values 
 that the ethics of economics is largely the ethics of social 
 life. But financially-valuable things are worth what they 
 are because human effort has made them so. Every 
 dollar is but the concrete representation of human effort 
 and thought, and everything called wealth is the product 
 of the work, the heart-throbs, and the mental powers of 
 others. Money is the tally-stick of muscle contractions, of 
 heart-beats, of lives worn out. From everything purchas- 
 able with money the dead eyes of the human souls who 
 fashioned it look out with significant demand. With every 
 board or brick that shelters us, with every woven thread 
 that covers us, with every morsel of food that we eat, or of 
 pleasure that we enjoy, the shadowy ghost of humanity 
 calls out to us, " Take, eat ; this is my body. Drink ye 
 all of this my blood which is shed for the many." 
 
 Our life is but the surface embroidery worked upon the 
 strong warp and woof of other men's services, and of dead 
 men's deeds. We have taken of the life of every soldier 
 of history who fought for the right and the liberty that we 
 enjoy ; we have taken of the life of every student and in- 
 vestigator who wore out life and mind for us ; of every 
 legislator and judge who by his own self-renunciation 
 kept pure for us the ideas and practice of justice. In the 
 smallest details of life the law is also absolute ; the coal with 
 which we warm ourselves is ours because men parted with 
 some of their life perhaps their whole life to dig it for 
 us ; a spiritual eye can see the bones of smothered and 
 buried miners glowing deep among the burning coals of 
 our hearth-fires. 
 
 The unity of all life, that of past, present, and future, 
 being bound by the laws of causation and heredity into 
 an indivisible organism, makes duty to humanity, in a 
 
2/2 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 biological and literal sense, inevitable. Moreover, there 
 is a cumulative action both to all sin and to all goodness, 
 that especially makes us the present responsible focus of the 
 struggle of the whole past, and the carriers to the future 
 of our inheritance. Thus nothing is truer than thevicari- 
 ousness of all lives, and our consequent obligation to wor- 
 thily hand on the torch of life, formed out of and burning 
 with the sufferings and sacrifices and heroisms of all past 
 men and women, and not selfishly to use it for our own 
 individual lighting, nor to burn it out in the dark ways 
 of private sin. 
 
 It is the recognition of the unity of the present and 
 future life, and the delight there is in participant work 
 with God, that give the saint, the hero, and the martyr 
 the courage to do their deeds and to live their lives. In 
 choosing as they do they know the suffering that will in- 
 evitably come to them the poverty, the non-success, and 
 the malignity of the selfish. But they are willing to work 
 for the future because to them the future is their own 
 quite as much as the present is theirs. Modern heroism 
 consists in daring to be poor, in quiet self-renouncing 
 labor to thwart and counteract the wrongs of the reck- 
 lessly selfish, and to help the Father of Life to transform 
 the evils of the present into the large goodness of the 
 future. It is not in the least a fantastic or unrealizable 
 ideal to renounce selfishness and to work for the better 
 future that shall rise after these our centuries have passed. 
 The religious philosopher recognizes that his own indi- 
 viduality must be enlarged into divinity, and that in 
 patient right-loving work for coming generations, he is 
 working for self, because self in its last and best analysis 
 is God. Suffering and renunciation are not felt because 
 of the anesthesia of duty, because of the enthusiasm of the 
 
ETHICS. 2/3 
 
 friendship of God that is vouchsafed to them, because of 
 the sweetness of the divine Being of which they are sharers, 
 and because of the joy of the divine task, to which as co- 
 workers they are called. The pain of personal tragedy is 
 lost in the smile of peace, and, with the steel in one's heart, 
 the lips calmly murmur, non dolct, Pater, non dolet ! 
 
 Men's lives themselves are ratable in money values. 
 Our greatest capitalist could but lately have gone to 
 Brazil and could have bought outright something less than 
 half a million of enslaved human beings. In the labor- 
 market to-day the average wage in our country is about 
 $300 a year, or an average life is worth about $6,000. 
 
 It Is plain that the extreme of wasteful luxury of our 
 rich citizens is an appalling sin. Without lessening the 
 stimulus of enterprise due to desired wealth, society must 
 legally demand accountability of its criminal rich, and must 
 undertake to limit the acquirement of great fortunes. A 
 sharp inheritance-tax is not only not unjust, but is better 
 for the heir himself. Fortunes drawn directly from the 
 labor and suffering of the many, by the Machiavellian cun- 
 ning of interested law-makers, are such outrages that they 
 should not be longer encouraged. The toadying to the rich 
 by the poor is one of the incentives of wealth-hoarding, 
 and when an enlightened general public shall by social 
 fashions and acts condemn the parasitic profligate, wealth 
 used solely for self-gratification will make the user so 
 ashamed that he will join the ranks of the good and those 
 of simpler lives. The infamy of a rich rout pretending to 
 be a Christian, and of millionaires worshipping a God who 
 condemned them and their riches as Jesus did, must soon 
 become too ludicrous even for themselves and their 
 worshipful priests to stomach. The sinfulness of mis- 
 acquired and misused wealth arises from the fact that 
 
274 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 the progress of the systematization and security of the 
 nutritional problem in civilization is thereby hindered and 
 millions are chained to the slavery of insecurity. If all 
 crops should fail, the world would starve to death in 
 about two years. That in some aspects and ways wealth 
 serves to increase the security, and that release of millions 
 from that slavery would frequently result in the misuse of 
 the freedom, is no valid argument against the essential 
 principle. There are many things that money cannot buy, 
 but which one cannot obtain without some money. So fast 
 as men become capable of using leisure for God's purposes, 
 so fast will the fact and misuse of wealth be limited. So 
 long, therefore, as the poor misuse their little leisure, they 
 have no argument to bear against the rich for misusing 
 their great leisure. 
 
 There is thus always a return to the truth of the spiritu- 
 alization of power and character, as being Life's end and 
 aim. The good man, whether rich or poor, will be he who 
 uses time, opportunity, and power to help men carry out 
 the extension and perfection of Life. The selfish rich man's 
 sin is greater than that of the selfish poor man, because his 
 opportunity and power are greater ; and, as the immortal 
 author of Unto This Last has incontrovertibly proved, a 
 rich good man is quite a contradiction in terms. If he is 
 good, he will soon become poor by aiding the aspiring 
 poorer to realize their hidden lives, and in helping on God's 
 evident purposes. The poor seek relief from labor, but 
 labor, even some physical labor, is the condition of health 
 both physiological and moral. It is excess of labor, impos- 
 sibility of rest, and labor in deadly conditions and circum- 
 stances, that are the real evils. 
 
 The care, guidance, and best use of self has peculiar 
 value from the fact that our body, mind, and life are the 
 
ETHICS. 275 
 
 powers and things in this world over which we have the 
 most complete control. Individualization is God's method 
 of dividing work, and of deputing responsibility. It fol- 
 lows that an object and a reality lie behind the process 
 that are far greater and more valuable than any part of it, 
 and thus arises the logical need of modesty and of a con- 
 stant guard against over-valuation of self. In making us 
 a deputy, and in setting apart for us a limited field of 
 work, the autonomy of self is created ; but even this gov- 
 ernment is a limited monarchy, never an irresponsible 
 autocracy. A ruler who uses his power with unselfish 
 regard for the good of his people will be given even un- 
 constitutional powers, and so, as we learn the right use of 
 this wondrous mechanism of self, the limitations of our 
 control and power with it are by God most willingly 
 widened. This He is glad to accord, and only men's dis- 
 loyalty and selfishness prevent a marvellous extension to 
 them of power and freedom. To every one are given some 
 peculiarity and uniqueness of capacity or of responsibility. 
 The chief duty to self therefore consists in utilizing the 
 gift for the benefit of Life's purposes. 
 
 The failure to thus improve the talent entrusted to us 
 comes from many causes ; for example : slavery to toil, 
 or the great necessity of nutrition. This may often be 
 lessened by wise renunciation of luxury, and by the en- 
 joyment and utilization of those simple things that at 
 last constitute the great good of life. Most people, even 
 the very poor, waste sustenance and leisure. To this end 
 a careful cultivation of the devising intellect, such as God 
 shows in every organism, would largely spare the pain and 
 friction of life. Man is almost the only wasteful animal 
 in the world. Another method of utilization of life lies 
 in the forethought and in the heroic energy to realize the 
 
2/6 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 essential work of life without sad experimentation and 
 preliminary failures. Toward the end of life we all see 
 how we could have come to our life-work quicker and 
 more certainly had -we but followed the more or less 
 clearly seen way thereto, instead of acting upon whim 
 and immature resolutions. We allow our young to 
 blunder and stumble into life, which is as bad as the 
 former method of driving them from birth into a cast-iron 
 machine of circumstance by parental authority or class- 
 condition. Cannot we learn the trend of character in 
 young minds, and by kindly sympathy and wise direction 
 get them at their proper life-work earlier and better? 
 Only few know how much the work of life and the eleva- 
 tion of civilization depends upon right education and 
 adequate training. We greatly need a class of good books 
 to put in the hands of young people, books that shall 
 aid them to a healthy self-knowledge, and teach them 
 how to make the most of themselves, how to decide what 
 are worthy aims and what is true success, and to keep 
 them from wasting their lives in futile attempts, self- 
 delusions, and ignoble desires.* It is the country lads, 
 the farmer's boys and girls, that need these most ; those 
 far removed from the influence of brighter minds, and 
 that are dumbly groping their way to an unseen light. 
 These need to be taught to see the world about them, 
 to understand it, and to utilize the wasted values and 
 
 * " Oh that I had known the art of life, or found some book or some man 
 to tell me how to live, to take exercise, etc. But I found no one and so 
 here I am." THEODORE PARKER (shortly before death}. 
 
 " It is not to die, or even to die of hunger, that makes a man wretched. 
 Many men have died ; all men must die. But it is to live miserable, we 
 know not why ; to work sore and yet gain nothing ; to be heart- worn, weary, 
 yet isolated, unrelated, girt in with a cold universal Laissez-faire." 
 
 CARLYLE. 
 
ETHICS. 277 
 
 opportunities slipping through their hands and past their 
 doors every day. 
 
 " This world is a world of joy to me, because I have 
 tried to do my duty." These are the words of a noble 
 man, and this is the experience of every normal-minded 
 person. Tragedy and suffering may in part result from 
 heroic adherence to duty, but they are more certainly due 
 to other qualities and characteristics too rigidly and mor- 
 bidly pursued. What we need to make us all happy is 
 easy renunciation of worldly ambitions in obedience to 
 serene and clear ideals of honor and duty. Dare to be 
 poor, and unfamous ! In all the world and in whateve 
 position one finds himself there is joy to be had, and 
 peaceful brightness. Almost everywhere there are sun- 
 shine, trees, grass, breezes, health, and delight in being. 
 And even where these are not, there is the possibility of a 
 fountain of subjective happiness that would spontaneously 
 bubble in lightsome laughter if we would but permit the 
 playful divinity at the heart of us to do His will. Give 
 the rein to God ! Take your little tragedy out of God's 
 way, and let Him flood your life with His rich love and 
 ample content. Do not be so selfish, so earnest, so mor- 
 bidly careful of yourself, and of the future. Let Him 
 have His way. Observe Him, and learn of Him. Let 
 the avaricious have the money, and let the ambitious have 
 the fame ; let us never give place in our own hearts to 
 envy. Why should we not live in the day and bask in its 
 brightness why not love even those that are hateful and 
 that are unjust to us? Our own happiness is too precious 
 to spoil it with hatred, and the world's happiness is too 
 easily lost to endanger it with our personal animosities. 
 Nothing is more apparent to me than that the dear 
 Father of Life is a calmly joyous and serenely happy 
 
2/8 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 Being. The tragedy and suffering of the world's past 
 have been the inobviable consequences of the struggle of 
 Life to get Himself firmly entrenched in the inorganic 
 world. The struggle is in large part now over. The 
 domination of physical forces is assured, and henceforth 
 the world is to blossom as a garden. Out from every 
 wondrous bundle of material atoms reined by Biologos 
 into a marvellous mechanism of organization out from 
 every swirling system of cells there shall gush the lark- 
 song of the visible-invisible, victoriously-happy God, sing- 
 ing because song and gladness are the very heart of Him. 
 Oh, if we would only ourselves be happy ; if we would be 
 aidful and kind to others ; if we would help Him, nay, 
 if we would only allow Him to be happy, Him in us ! 
 
 What we all need is loyalty, firmly seized and devo- 
 tedly adhered to, from childhood to the end ; Loyalty to 
 our aspirations, planted always in the young bosom by 
 God's own hand ; loyalty to purity, heaven's own light, 
 that we bring with us into life, that " lies about us in our 
 infancy," and that never need " fade into the light of 
 common day " ; loyalty to honor, that patrimony we too 
 soon barter for less, valuable things ; loyalty to reason and 
 intellect, that, if adhered to, would save us suffering and 
 tragedy, self-deception and will-o-the-wisp swamps ; loy- 
 alty to our true inner and higher self, which itself is 
 literally loyalty to God. If, as believed, the diffused yet 
 unitary being of God, while retaining true personality 
 and self-centering, is the infinitely divided life and gov- 
 ernment of every living cell, and the ultimate reality or 
 mind of every individualization, it follows that our duty 
 to Him is clearly that of carrying out the work we are set 
 to do, the work of fusing loyally our share of the labor, 
 all our powers and influences, into the greater work of 
 
ETHICS. 279 
 
 which we are, and are to perform, a part. The plainest 
 fact of individualization and incarnation is divided func- 
 tion, deputized responsibility, a work to be done by 
 infinite agencies, but all of them directly held of God. 
 The human being is the highest and most trusted of these 
 agencies, the one to which all others lead, and the divine 
 Father is clearly awaiting the ripening process of incarna- 
 tion and the recognition of their office by His highest 
 children, in order to hand over to them progressively 
 greater fulness of life and authority. To accept His work 
 and His aims as our own is the essence of our duty 
 to Him. In this loyal acceptance and righteous use 
 we come to an ever-increasing sharing of the divine nature 
 and personality, a likeness to and union with Him. 
 In this way we love Him, as the infinitely lovable; 
 sympathize with and help Him, the patient, ever active, 
 and kind ; revere Him as the holy and pure ideal to which 
 we draw ourselves and are subtly drawn. But we are not 
 abashed or overpowered by His presence, our faces are 
 not solemn, nor are our prayers groans. Laughter, humor, 
 and wit, at first hidden by the sternness and rigor of the 
 struggle with matter in the beginning of the incarnation- 
 process, break forth so soon as the serious work and sure 
 foothold is secure, break forth ever more in man, the 
 being nearest Himself. The brightness and gayety of 
 children fresh from His hand are perpetual intimations 
 that the divine Father of exuberant life delights in play, 
 and is Himself a glad and happy being. Finally, the 
 superb and elusive smile of beauty, gleaming through the 
 evolution-tragedy and lighting the hills of all life, tells us 
 that we are only at the beginning of the day and of a 
 revelation of Himself by new attributes of spiritual joy 
 and glory. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 THOUGH prevented from any extended discussion 
 of esthetics, I cannot forbear mention of a few 
 thoughts with which I have been impressed about 
 the beautiful. Here is something that should palsy the 
 tongue and pen of every atheist, materialist, utilitarian, 
 or necessitarian. Its existence confutes all philosophies 
 except those predicating a free and exquisite intelligence 
 in Life. It is the most convincing of all " arguments" of 
 God's existence, and of what is better than mere exist- 
 ence, of His non-utilitarian, non-solemn loveliness. It 
 appeals with immediate power to all those who have eyes 
 to see, or with logical power to conclude from perfect 
 premises to certain conclusions. Even if "accidental" it 
 is logically unaccountable to any except the God-per- 
 ceiver. But it is not in any sense accidental. It is 
 plainly introduced into the incarnation-process as a pure 
 ab extra gratuity, an often expensive luxury and adden- 
 dum to that process, thrust into it as if with conscious 
 purpose to throw a light of hope and joy into the bitter- 
 ness of the struggle, and to shoot among the darkness of 
 our materiality a brightening shaft of heaven's own light. 
 I wish particularly to suggest notice of the fact that 
 beauty is ready and waiting to endow all things whenever 
 the overmastering necessity of nutrition does not forbid. 
 Thus well-armed and stinging insects are usually endowed 
 
 280 
 
BEAUTY. 28l 
 
 with high colors. Drummond says that two families of 
 African butterflies are inedible, and these have brilliant 
 colorings and are bold in showing themselves. The 
 edible are neutral-colored and of hiding habits. The 
 beautiful-plumaged bird is not usually the sitter, which is 
 refused adornment in order while brooding not to invite 
 attack. The covered nest is an expense of the excep- 
 tional bright-feathered sitter. Birds that can escape danger, 
 as the lightning-like humming-bird, that superb incarnate 
 glance of God's eye at the flower (as if some one said 
 there is a single blossom not beautiful !), are at once robed 
 in effulgent beauty.* Woman was evidently endowed 
 with her splendid charm quite early enough to bring war 
 and tragedy into all history. The flower is not a 
 mere splash of color which would have been sufficient to 
 attract the bee's attention, but a symmetry of tint, 
 shading, and harmony, as if an angel's love-song had 
 been crystallized into the folded and rainbowed petals, 
 its perfume the breath of his sighing lips. A thousand 
 
 * " In their plumage, as Martin long ago wrote, nature has strained at 
 every variety of effect and revelled in an infinity of modifications. How 
 wonderful their garb is, with colors so varied, so intense, yet so seemingly 
 evanescent! the glittering mantle of. powdered gold; the emerald green 
 that changes to velvet black ; ruby reds and luminous scarlets ; dull bronze 
 that brightens and burns like polished brass ; and pale neutral tints that 
 kindle to rose and lilac-colored flame. And to the glory of prismatic color- 
 ing are added feather decorations, such as the racket-plumes and downy 
 ruffs of Spathura, the crest and frills of Lophornis, the sapphire gorget 
 burning on the snow-white breast of Oreotrochilus, the fiery tail of Cometes, 
 and, amongst grotesque forms, the long-pointed crest feathers, representing 
 horns, and flowing white beard adorning the piebald goat-like face of Oxy- 
 pogon. Excessive variation in this direction is checked in nearly all other 
 birds by the need of a protective coloring, few kinds so greatly excelling in 
 strength and activity as to be able to maintain their existence without it, etc." 
 
 HUDSON, Of Humming Birds. 
 
282 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 examples rush to the mind. Moreover, and this note well, 
 why the sensibility to beauty ? Why does it delight and 
 thrill us? No utility is served by it, and, if in scientific 
 jargon, it is " the reaction of the organism to the environ- 
 ment," whence did it get into "the environment," and 
 whence the percipient's pleasure? Only this alone can 
 explain the outer or the inner fact, this, that as we are of 
 God's own nature, and as He loves beauty, so there is the 
 necessary charm out there thrilling us in here. He can- 
 not hide Himself if He would, and even in the midst of 
 the greatest of His biological difficulties and dangers, no 
 leaf or hair or organism but is tell-tale of the artistic di- 
 vinity. I have never seen a living thing that was simply 
 and only useful. Like a lover's touch the esthetic caress 
 lingers warmly and clingingly to the last, and is the one 
 memory that does not fade. 
 
 And it is He that has given us those wondrous sense- 
 organs which make beauty for us even out of the un- 
 living world, like unto the fairy anointing of human 
 eyes that ever thereafter saw fairy-land in the most 
 vulgar of prosaic things. It is the eye that creates color 
 and light, the ear that makes sound and music. The 
 rainbow and sunset are not out there, as we well know, 
 but as we are always forgetting. Ethereal and aerial 
 waves are per se most uninteresting, mechanical, and 
 meaningless things. But these transforming and trans- 
 mitting living mechanisms deliver to the mind products of 
 unearthly beauty and supersensual significance. The 
 ingenuity and love of the glad divine Artist in thus 
 outfitting us with a responsiveness infinitely precious, 
 various, and charming, to such insignificant, infinitesimal 
 dead things as these oscillations of dead matter, call 
 forth from our hearts a limitless gratitude and love. 
 
BEA UTY. 283 
 
 What is the true and fundamental reason for the power 
 and charm of beauty, for the slavery we all give to the 
 beautiful woman, and for the pride she has in herself? 
 Why is there an inexplainable glory in the brilliant and 
 flashing eye, why a quivering sense of divinity in every 
 inch of the Apollo Belvedere, or in living human flesh ? 
 Is it not simply the satisfaction of God Himself in His 
 successful work? A million difficulties, fatalities, and 
 unavoidable accidents have prevented success in other 
 specimens, but, Here, says the divine Mechanic, Here, 
 behold success ! The successful ending of long human 
 endeavor always provokes joy, elation, and satisfaction. 
 God is just as glad to succeed as we are glad to succeed, 
 and our delight in the charm of beauty is simply His de- 
 light because we are He. Our ecstatic pleasure in beauty 
 is the flush of the divine satisfaction at divine success. 
 " And behold, it was very good ! " Beauty, it must be 
 remembered, is more than perfection : it is the smile of 
 God overflooding perfection, as sunshine and swaying 
 zephyr over hilltop or cornfield. 
 
 But after all, its greatest significance is that it is a 
 promise and hint of what is to be. All young things, and 
 especially children, are beautiful, because they are plastic 
 and fresh from God's hand. It is apparent that God is 
 trying to preserve this beauty into and through adult age, 
 and who can doubt that He will by and by succeed. Then 
 every woman will be a virtuous Helen, and every man a 
 moral Goethe ; perfect trees will laugh with the laugh- 
 ter of the skies, and all animal life will take up its line 
 of march toward humanization, whilst we " the eternal- 
 womanly will ever lure us on." 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 SLEEP, DREAMING, AND AWAKENING. 
 
 SOME ancient philosopher, I think it was Plotinus, with 
 deep feeling of the truth, said that " matter is the 
 true river of Lethe ; immersed in it the Soul forgets 
 everything." Now although this expresses a certain fore- 
 feeling or partial aspect of the truth, it by no means gives 
 any hint of the reason of the fact. The most obvious 
 thought at once arising in the mind of the ordinary reader, 
 the simplest objection to an acceptance of the incarnation- 
 theory, is this of the loss of the divine self-consciousness 
 upon entering matter in the incarnation-process, and also 
 the non-recognition of the divine character and self as the 
 essential basis of our own self-consciousness. This will 
 prove no difficulty to those who will sympathetically 
 ponder it, and with careful imagination conceive what 
 must necessarily follow from the conditions antedating and 
 synchronous with the incarnation-fact. It all becomes 
 clearer if we resolutely hold fast the knowledge of these 
 most obvious facts : that only by and through the cell- 
 mechanism can God gain control of matter and mechanics; 
 that individualization is the combination of cell-mechan- 
 isms for a specific purpose and function ; that the higher 
 or more complex cell-mechanism is dependent upon the 
 ingestion of simpler ones orhigher forms of individuali- 
 zation depend upon the lower ; that the control and func- 
 tion of cell-mechanism has never been given over to the 
 
 284 
 
SLEEP, DREAMING, AND AWAKENING. 28$ 
 
 individual, but has been retained entirely in the divine 
 hands. In other words, the control of the essential 
 mechanism of incarnation is by direct divine power, and 
 the cell and all that pertains to cell-nutrition and function 
 are mere dumb agencies of His clear grasp and intellectual 
 use as instruments, subject to the help of an automatoni- 
 zation or regularity of action that insures a desirable 
 relative uniformity of morphology, whilst it also aids in 
 the systematization or outworking of the process. 
 
 So long, therefore, as to us is not given the control of 
 cellular organo-genetic and nutritive processes, so long 
 necessarily must the purely intellectual perception of God 
 and of our divine nature be more or less defective. When 
 physiology and therm o-chemistry have solved the mystery 
 of cytology, the mind will begin to perceive God intellec- 
 tually, because by that solved mystery will come the 
 mathematical and mechanical demonstration of a super- 
 natural and metaphysical agency. There is in the cell an 
 as yet unestimated but certainly active foreign and non- 
 mechanical force. The distance apart, and the difference 
 of function, of the human and the divine mind are ap- 
 proximately estimated by this our ignorance of cell-life, 
 but is more strikingly shown by the fact of our present 
 inability to direct cytogenesis and cytotrophy i. e., cell- 
 production and cell-nutrition. The individual conscious- 
 ness is God's partial incarnation of Self, and must 
 necessarily be nearly conterminous with the needs and 
 functions of the organism as a whole. On the physical 
 side cell-function has not been given to the individual 
 control or consciousness, but only the direction of the 
 combined results of cell-activities, such as molar motion, 
 is thrown under human volition. On the divine side the 
 human consciousness has been limited simply by the status 
 
2 86 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 of the organism as regards comprehension of and loyalty 
 to the divine purpose. So fast as the individual has been 
 able to make right use of deputed responsibility, so fast is 
 it given him, and just so fast does the human conscious- 
 ness enlarge into and become one with the divine. A far 
 greater bestowal of the divine attributes upon the individual 
 than is proportional to his educational and intellectual 
 condition, or to the grade of perfection attained, would 
 result in two obvious misfortunes : first, misuse of the 
 deputed power, from ignorance or disloyalty ; and second, 
 unhappiness of the individual chained to a seemingly 
 ignoble task with a divine consciousness of greater capaci- 
 ties. I said " a far greater bestowal," because it is an 
 evident fact that in man knowledge, conscience, and 
 consciousness have outrun volition, possibility, and reali- 
 zation, and this has acted as a divine incentive to draw us 
 upward faster, to inspire us with a heavenly hunger and 
 with a heavenly hope. There would evidently be no 
 advantage to the incarnation-process, or to any individual 
 to outfit him with a divine consciousness immensely out- 
 running power and the duties of function. A grass blade 
 would have no more happiness or usefulness if given the 
 grade and degree of soul-life of a noble tree, nor would a 
 moth be the better off for having a lion's soul. If a 
 human mind were transferred to a horse's organization, 
 retaining the human self-consciousness, sensitiveness, and 
 knowledge, it would result both in wretchedness, and in 
 a very poor quality of equine function, at least until the 
 higher and useless attributes had atrophied. When the 
 parasitical sacculina fastens itself to the crab's tail, its eyes 
 and other sensory and motile organs become useless and 
 are soon lost. When the human being becomes a hermit, 
 or, in habits, an animal, the human soul also atrophies. 
 
SLEEP, DREAMING, AND AWAKENING. 287 
 
 The progress of consciousness and the grade of soul-life 
 are thus primarily conditioned upon (not caused by /) the 
 grade of individuation, the degree of perfection of organi- 
 zation, and the necessary function. In the educated 
 human being this individuation, or this subjection of the 
 world by knowledge, science, and mechanical ingenuity, is 
 fast reaching a comparative perfection that is denied to 
 the individual as such. Civilization is merely a great tool 
 or instrument, a new mental sense, and an indirect exten- 
 sion of body. Further progress of sense-making or of 
 bodily mechanization becomes therefore unnecessary. The 
 physiological (and with it the nutritional) problem is solved, 
 and organofaction is at an end. No new physiological 
 instruments will be developed, because none will be 
 needed. All that is needed is the perfected use of those 
 that have already been evolved, and the utilization of the 
 indirect extension of the neurological and psychological 
 instruments that we call science and civilization. 
 
 With a careful recognition of the singleness of aspect and 
 limits of the metaphor, the three stages of the incarnation- 
 process may be analogized by the facts of going to sleep, 
 of dreaming, and of awakening, and epitomized by Froebel 
 in the words, From Life, Through Life, To Life. In enter- 
 ing matter, God, in a sense, does enter a "river of Lethe," 
 in so far as there is evidently that degree of task-setting, or 
 allotment of the divine attributes required to carry on the 
 necessary work of the process. When we drive the cows 
 home we do not need or utilize our higher knowledge of 
 trigonometry or of astronomy ; and when we plant or train 
 a grape-vine we do not use the higher knowledge of ad- 
 vanced pedagogics, or the conclusions and powers we have 
 gained in sociological study and governmental adminis- 
 tration. There is, indeed, a plenitude of the divine attri- 
 
2S8 THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 butes, obvious or inferable, in the lower or lowest types 
 of individuation. But it is most plain in cytology, or 
 what is crudely called " the vegetative functions " of the 
 organism, which, according to the metaphor, go on in 
 sleep, and, as we should expect, go on even better in sleep 
 than with the somewhat disturbing action of the waking 
 personality. In the lower grades of the incarnation-pro- 
 cess, God, so far as relates to the direct implication of the 
 highest attributes of divinity, "goes to sleep," gives over 
 to the cytologic mechanism (never, however, or chiefly an 
 automatic or non-divine mechanism) the effectualization 
 of His purpose, and reserves the higher consciousness to 
 Himself. 
 
 A different sort and degree of the divine self-subdi- 
 vision, or deputization of Himself, is that sharing of 
 Himself that constitutes the mental or soul-life of the 
 individual. The extent of this Self-giving, or the degree 
 to which the higher attributes of God are grafted into the 
 individual (plant, animal, or man), depends, as has been 
 said, upon the perfection of organization, or upon the 
 power to certainly control, the intellect to infallibly di- 
 rect, and the loyalty to rightly use, qualities that rela- 
 tively develop pari passu. 
 
 The likeness to a dream of one's own life, the lives of 
 all men, and of the course of cosmic life, has been recog- 
 nized by the poets and philosophers of all ages. How- 
 ever like reality they were at the time, the objects we 
 so earnestly and passionately struggled for in the past, as 
 we now calmly smile at our old diaries, seem to be like 
 the soft delusions of our dreams. All history seems like 
 the phantom and aimless fancies of a slumbering dreamer. 
 There is much nightmare in the historical dream, but 
 there are also in it sweet figures, tender and sad, or light- 
 
SLEEP, DREAMING, AND AWAKENING. 289 
 
 some and beautiful : St. Francis, Marcus Aurelius, Buddha, 
 Beethoven, Heine, Goethe, one's mother, wife, or friend. 
 And then there are the dreams of dreams : Helen of 
 Troy, the Apollo Belvedere ; Arthur, Elaine, and the 
 Knights of the Table Round ; Dante's Beatrice, Siegfried, 
 incorporeal and unrealized desire, and unseen yearned- 
 for love, a hidden tragedy, a hunger for God. All we 
 have -done, and all that all men have done, seems like an 
 aimless search for an unknown good, with the Maia-veil 
 of illusion always withdrawing though never wholly with- 
 drawn. Humanity is busied with its own brain-phantoms, 
 delighted or frightened at the real-unreal visions sponta- 
 neously springing into the uneasy sleeper's imagination. 
 There is a sense of unreality over and in all life, a subtle 
 disturbing Ahnung that we are asleep, and that awaken- 
 ing is coming. 
 
 This sense of the dream-quality of life corresponds too 
 truly to a philosophical knowledge of life to be passed in- 
 differently by. All process, especially the incarnation- 
 process, leads somewhither, is itself a means to an end, 
 and to an earnest travelling soul the destination must be 
 always more than the road of life or than the vehicle of 
 the body. The dream-illusion of all living is the illusion 
 of attaching interest only to the route, forgetting that we 
 are definitely travelling somewhither and for an object. 
 The roadway of life is rough or excellent ; the physiologi- 
 cal carriage may be good or bad ; one's fellow-passengers 
 may be pleasant or not ; the scenery glorious or sadden- 
 ing; the journey long or short, comfortable or full of 
 pain. Dreams are all these, however, and a distant 
 church-spire or a chance philosophical pamphlet suggests 
 to the dreamer that there is an approaching journey 
 ending. 
 
THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. 
 
 If the poor dreamer love the journey more than the 
 home-coming, the dream better than the awakening, he 
 will turn to thoughtlessness, to selfish plans and amuse- 
 ments, to the thousand distractions of life war, money, 
 or ambition with which we poor travellers beguile the 
 way and with which the way beguiles us. The traveller 
 that finally turns with insatisfaction from all wayward dis- 
 tractions or amusements, reflects upon the outsetting of 
 self and of all living things, of the meaning and object of 
 the great journey of life, and of the coming return to the 
 home; such is the philosopher; and if in the little philo- 
 sophic dream of this book we have dreamed duteously 
 and wisely, the journey's end in death will not be a ruth- 
 less and sudden awakening among strangers, or to what 
 we know not, but it will be the eager and delighted re- 
 ception at home by our Father and our Friend. We 
 have already, indeed, had the truer and better awakening, 
 and death has nothing which we either fear or for which we 
 hope. 
 
 The best that may be said of " the world " is that it 
 is a letter direct from the Father's own hand, advising 
 us, telling us of Himself, and urging us to hasten our 
 return to Him. During the long journey we read it over 
 and over again, delighted at the kindness it witnesses, 
 and the beautiful suggestions it gives of His thoughtful- 
 ness and wisdom and lovableness. But, after all, the 
 letter is only to recall to mind the living Being who wrote 
 it, and it closes with the admonition to love Him and to 
 come to Him. Blessed are we if the dear letter reach us 
 long before our long journey's end, and thrice blessed 
 we that receive such a letter from a Father that by the 
 false message of a mistaken friend we had mourned as 
 dead! 
 
SLEEP, DREAMING, AND AWAKENING. 2C)l 
 
 Out of the unreality and illusion of our dream-life there 
 are two methods of awakening : the doubtful, mysterious, 
 and unknown one that lies in and beyond death ; the 
 other, by the emotional, scientific, and philosophic per- 
 ception of the significance of life, and our duty to the 
 Father of Life. I urge, I fervently urge, that we need 
 not wait for death to awaken us, but that here and now we 
 may come to vivid self-consciousness. All these materi- 
 ality-engendered dreams may be flashed out of the 
 aroused mind by the divine call that we awaken, by the 
 instant recognition of the meaning and the use of the 
 whole biological process which scientific thought gives us, 
 and that all religion has happily kept the mind open and 
 waiting to receive. With the banishment of dream, we 
 awaken face to face with the smiling God. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Absorption of God in His work, 
 
 224, 225 
 
 Achromatism, 198 
 Adversity, uses of, 184, 185 
 Agriculture, 260 
 Altruism and egoism, 266 
 Anabolism and evolution, 148 
 Animals, anecdotes of, 172 ; care of, 
 
 264 ; intelligence of, 264 
 Animal-world, 261 
 Appropriation of God's mechanisms, 
 
 193 
 Architect, likeness of work of Biolo- 
 
 gos to, 20 1 
 Asceticism, 24, 164 
 Assassins, anecdote of, 230 
 Atoms, 14, 26, 151, 192, 216 
 Atrophic organs, 96, 168 
 Attention, 213, 215, 224 
 Automatonization of cell-function, 
 
 94, 95, 97 
 Avatars, 22 
 
 Awakening from dream of life, 291 
 Awe, 211 
 
 B 
 
 Badness of men, 182 
 
 Bats, blinding of, etc., 107 
 
 Beauty, 223, 279. 280, 283; and nutri- 
 tion, 280 ; of woman, 163, 164, 
 170 
 
 Beethoven, quotation from, 112 
 
 Being and doing, 240 
 
 Biologos, attributes of, 1 6, 34, 213, 
 214 ; definition of, 16 ; purpose of, 
 248 
 
 Bird and feather ornaments, 263 
 
 Birds, songs of, 114 
 Blindness, 107, 109 
 Blood covenant and bloodshed, 124, 
 
 128 
 
 Blue color, 125 
 Booby's proof, 162 
 Books for the young, 276 
 Brahminism, 33, 35 
 Bridgman, Laura, 109 
 Brown-Sequard, reference to, 162 
 Buddhism, 32, 34, 35, 164 
 
 Calvinism, 199 
 
 Carlyle, quotation from, 276 
 
 Causes, ultimate, 4, 22, 23, 190 
 
 Cell-doctrine, 5, 61, 78, 99, 153 
 
 Cell, God's control of, 6, 67, 80, 84; 
 nature of, etc., 5, 61, 67,68, 78, 
 81, 99, 142, 158 
 
 Chakar, flight of, 10 
 
 Childlessness, 171, 172 
 
 Childraising, 234 
 
 Children, 163, 171 
 
 Christ, and Christianity, 38, 39 ; and 
 his followers, 38, 51 
 
 Christian feeling, 50 
 
 Christianity, 36, 174 ; and civiliza- 
 tion, 174,175 
 
 Christ's message, 39, 43, 44 
 
 Chronicity of evolution process, 150, 
 
 153 
 
 Chronophotograph, 108 
 Civilization, 287 
 Cleanliness, 180 
 Clinging to life, 152 
 Clock, comparison of cell to, 160 
 Cold and heat, 106 
 Color-sense, 130 
 
 293 
 
2 9 4 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Colors, origin of, etc., 121, 124, 126, 
 
 127, 130 
 
 Color, symbolism, 131 
 Commercialism, 197 
 Conscience, significance of, 266, 267 
 Consciousness, individual, 285, 286 
 Contradictions of law of life, 248 
 Corbett and Sullivan, reference to, 
 
 197 
 
 Cosmic horror, 7, 189 
 Crowd-diseases, 179 
 Cruelty, to animals, 242; to trees, 243 
 Cytology, 77, 155 ; is medicine, 86, 
 
 179; is theology, 77 
 Cytolysis, 88 
 
 D 
 
 Darwinism, 15, 240 
 
 Darwin's theory of pangenesis, 99 
 
 Deaf-mutes, 107, 108 
 
 Death, 168, 178, 182 ; fear of, 235 
 
 Dedication, 171 
 
 Deductive truths, 23, 176 
 
 Defective classes, 163 
 
 Deforestation, 257 
 
 Delegation of freedom, 207 
 
 Density, value according to, 217 
 
 Design in inorganic world, 3 
 
 Determinism, 199; and evolution, 
 
 148 ; and materialism, 239 
 De Vries' theory, 98 
 Diseases, of civilization, 181 ; of 
 
 plants, 258 
 
 Divinization of human, 253 
 Dog, anecdote of, 172 
 Dore's neophyte, 189 
 Dream, likeness of life to, 288 
 Drurnmond, quotation from, 281 
 Dualism of life and matter, 29, 30 
 Duties to world, groups of, 253 
 Duty and joy, 277 
 
 E 
 
 Eleventh commandment, 242 
 
 Endogamy, 158 
 
 Environment and biological process, 
 
 201 
 
 Ether, 26, 27, 216 
 Ether- waves, 116, 126 
 Ethical systems, faults of, 241 
 
 Ethics, 239, 243; systems of, 241, 
 
 251 
 
 Evil, 176, 185 
 Evolution, 145 
 
 Existence of God, proofs of, 51, 54 
 Exogamy, 158 
 Eye, functions of, 135, 136 ; history 
 
 and development of, 138; influence 
 
 of disease of, 138 ; reflexes of, 137 ; 
 
 and sexual beauty, 137 
 
 Faith, the logic of, 151 
 Famines, 181 
 Farmer, the, 260 
 Fate, 3, 30 
 Fire, 122 
 Flowers, 281 
 Forestry, 74, 260 
 
 Freedom, 199, 227, 252 ; in animals, 
 203-205 
 
 G 
 
 Game of life, 268 
 
 Gamete, 158 
 
 Gilbert a Becket, anecdote of, 10 
 
 Gladstone, reference to, 127 
 
 God, character of, 177, 178; finite- 
 ness of, 5, 19, 20, 29, 31, 60, 177 ; 
 in biology, 9, 59, 81, 84, 162 ; in- 
 genuity of, 222; justice of, 177; 
 kindness of, 162, 163, 177, 178, 
 189, 221 ; as substance, 216 
 
 Goethe, 36 
 
 Golden light, 123, 128 
 
 Goodness of God, 18 
 
 Gravity, law of, 4 
 
 II 
 
 Healing of wounds, 91, 93 
 Hearing, 112 
 
 Heat and cold, 106 ; of body, 88 
 Heroism, 272 
 Homesickness, 8 
 Homing instinct, 134 
 Hook-and-bait theory, 164, 169 
 Hudson, quotation from, 10, 114, 
 
 115, 261 
 Humanity, rights of, 255 
 
INDEX. 
 
 295 
 
 Humming-birds, 281 
 Hunger, role of, 157 
 
 Idealism, 24, 140 
 
 Imitation of God, 24, 250 
 
 Immortality, 229 ; lack of evidence 
 of, 235 
 
 Impiety, 19, 30 
 
 Incarnation, 58-65, 191, 219 ; pro- 
 cess, justification of, 188, 196 
 
 Indirect agencies of God's control, 
 246 
 
 Individuality, preservation of, 237 
 
 Individuation, 202 
 
 Inhnitesimally small, God and the, 
 216 
 
 Infinity of God, 16, 20, 21 
 
 Ingenuity of God, 222 
 
 Inorganic world, duty to, 254 
 
 Intellectual perception of God, 285 
 
 Intelligence behind living things, 3 
 
 Inventions and imitations, 193 
 
 J 
 
 Joy and duty, 277 
 
 K 
 
 Keller, Helen, 109 
 
 Key of mysteries, 93 
 
 Kingdom of Heaven on earth, 246 
 
 Kitten, anecdote of, 172 
 
 Laughter and humor, 279 
 
 Law, nature of, 34 
 
 Lethe, river of, 284, 287 
 
 Life, aim of, 5, 190, 192 ; nature of, 
 
 14, 15, 19, 60 ; origin of, 4, 21, 22 ; 
 
 work of, 23, 34, 69, 191 
 Light, 121, 123 
 Light-year, 13 
 Limitations and supplementations of 
 
 eleventh commandment, 46 
 Living and lifeless things, distinction 
 
 between, 3 
 
 Love, 157, 163, 164; anecdote of, 222 
 Loyalty, need of, 278 
 Luxury, 40, 206, 273 
 
 M 
 
 Magnus, reference to, 127 
 Marsh's The Earth, allusion to, 74 
 Material and worker, 12 
 Materialism, 24, 26, 28, 154 
 Matter and life, 12, 22, 28, 29, 47, 
 
 67, 78, 81, 1 86, 191 
 Matter, origin of, 4, 23, 31 
 Mechanicalization of cell-function, 94 
 Mechanics of incarnation, 65, 67, 
 
 104, 155, 159, 219 
 Medicine, 86, 92 
 Metaphysical, 14, 155 
 Mind, attitude of, as to mystery, 2 
 Molecule, 66, 67 
 
 Money, 271, 273 ; love of, 209, *io 
 Monism, 28 
 
 Morality and theism. 35 
 Moral law, 7, 8 
 Moses, order of, 259 
 Mother-love and motherhood, 171, 
 
 172 
 
 Music, 112, 113, 139, 197 
 Mystery, incuriosity concerning, I, 23 
 
 N 
 
 Nature and man, 74, 75 
 
 Nightmare of the dream of history, 
 
 288 
 
 Nutrition, 85, 103 
 Nutritional difficulty, 150, 157, 158, 
 
 160,161, 169, 179, 181, 195, 202, 
 
 214,215 
 
 Omne vivum ex vivo, 153 
 Omnipotence of God, 16, 29, 47, 48 
 Omnis cellula e cellula, 155 
 Omniscience of God, 17 
 Organic crystallization, 156 
 Organic life, unity of, 69, 73 
 Organof action, 94, 202 
 Origin of inorganic universe, 3 
 
 Paderewsky, 197 
 Pangenesis theory, 09 
 Pantheism, 26, 28, 61 
 
2 9 6 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Parker, quotation from, 276 
 
 Park, Professor, anecdote of, 115 
 
 Patents, 255 
 
 Pathogeny, 179 
 
 Personality, 211, 221, 224 ; origin of, 
 
 223 ; true, 236 
 Pessimism, 35 , 164, 182 ; truth of, 
 
 267, 268 
 
 Philosophic dream, 290 
 Philosophy and religion, 10 
 Physical and, metaphysical, 12, 154, 
 
 196 
 
 Physical world, 13, 25, 1 86 
 Physician, the, 197 
 Piety, 19, 212 
 Pineal eye, 134 
 Plaut-life, 71, 72, 124, 129 
 Plant-world, use of, 257 
 Plotinus, quotation from, 284 
 Politics, 197 
 
 Poverty, 184 ; of wealth, 184 
 Power, use of, over others, 265 
 Pressure-sense, 105 
 Prevention of cruelty to animals, 242 
 Progress, 223 
 
 Proofs of existence of God, 51 
 Prosperity, 184 
 Purpose of God, 190, 191 
 Pyrolatry, 122 
 
 R 
 
 Red color, 124, 127, 128 
 Rejuvenescence, 150, 157 
 Religion, 9, 40, 42, 44, 45; of science, 
 
 49 ; of the future, 174, 175 
 Renunciation, philosophy of, 268 ; of 
 
 divine attributes, 253 
 Reproduction, 85, 157, 165, 173 ; of 
 
 lost parts, 100 
 
 Responsibility, delegation of, 207 
 Retina, sensibility of, 120, 127 
 Riches, limitation of, 273 
 Riddle of life, 3, 93 
 Rights of humanity, 255 
 Rule of ethics, 243, 245, 250 
 
 Sagacity and morality of plants, 256 
 Scaffold and steeple of life, 237 
 Schopenhauer, 36, 164, 188, 199 
 
 Science, 9, 82 ; a failure of, 151 
 
 Self, duty to, 275 
 
 Selfishness and unselfishness, 270 
 
 Self-love, mechanisms of, 266 
 
 Senescence, 150, 158, 161 
 
 Sensation, 101, no, 140, 142 
 
 Sense-making, 287 
 
 Sense-organs, 282 
 
 Sex and sexualism, 157, 164, 165 
 
 Sin, essence of, 269 
 
 Sleep, dreaming, and awakening, 284 
 
 Smell, sense of, in 
 
 Solar system, 66, 67 
 
 Somacule, 67, 218 
 
 Sons of God, 226 
 
 Space, comprehension of, 211,212 
 
 Spectrum, divisions or rays of, 118, 
 
 121 
 
 Spencer, theory of, 154 
 Spiritists, evidence of, 236 
 Sport, 261 
 
 Standard of conduct, 250 
 Star-lit heaven, 7-8 
 Stars, motion of, 4 
 Success, 206 
 
 Suffering, exaggeration of, 183 
 Suicide, 188 
 Sunlight, composition of, 12 1 
 
 Temperature, and its significance, 87, 
 
 89, 90 ; of plants, 259 
 Theism and morality, 35 
 Theology, 77 
 
 Time, comprehension of, 213 
 Touch, 105 
 Tragedy, of the spirit, 9 ; the divine, 
 
 224 
 
 Transmigration, 33 
 Trees, 256, 259, 260 
 Trumbull, reference to, 124 
 Truth, best method of reaching, 2 
 Tuberculosis, 180 
 
 Vegetarianism, 261 
 
 Vegetation, world of, 71, 72, 124, 
 
 129, 204 ; duty to, 256, 257 
 Vegetative functions, 288 
 Venereal disease, 180 
 
INDEX. 
 
 297 
 
 Vibrations, the stimuli of sensation, 
 
 105 
 
 Vicariousness of lives, 271, 272 
 Victory over death, 235 
 Vision, 117 
 Visual opera, 139 
 Vivisection, 264 
 Voice, human, 115 
 
 Wagner, influence of, 139 
 Wallace, quotation from, 240 
 War, 125 
 
 Wastefulness of man, 275 
 Wave-length, 126 
 
 Waves, ether, 116, 126, 216, 217, 
 219 
 
 Wealth, 184 ; use of, 274 
 Weissmann's theory, 99, 158 
 Wilson, Dr., observations of, 259 
 Woman, beauty of, 281 
 Wood, use of, 258 
 World, likened to a letter from God, 
 290 
 
 Yeast and muscle, 256 
 Young, books for the, 276 
 
 Zeno's paradox, 154 
 Zero, absolute, 27 
 
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