---------------------------------------- -------------------------------- ,,where ,,science ,,and ,,religion ,,meet ,,where ,,science ,,and ,,religion ,,meet ,,by ,,william ,,scott ,,palmer ,il parat juste de voir dans la vie le trait d'union de la science et de la religion4 mile ,boutroux4 ,,hodder ,,and ,,stoughton ,,london ,,new ,,york ,,toronto ---------------------------------------- -------------------------------- ',we are still1 as in ,plato's age1 groping about for a new method more comprehensive than any of those that now prevail2 and also more permanent4 ,and we seem to see at a distance the promise of such a method1 which can hardly be any other than the method of idealized experience1 having roots which strike far down into the history of philosophy4 ,it is a method which does not divorce the present from the past1 or the part from the whole1 or the abstract from the concrete1 or theory from fact1 or the divine from the human1 or one science from another1 but labours to connect them4 ,along such a road we have proceeded a few steps1 sufficient1 perhaps1 to make us reflect on the want of method which prevails in our own day4 ,in another age1 all the branches of knowledge1 whether relating to ,god or man or nature1 will become the knowledge of the revelation of a single science1 and all things1 like the stars in heaven1 will shed their light upon one another4' ,,jowett3 ,plato1 ,introduction to ,meno4 ---------------------------------------- -------------------------------- ,,note ,i have not named my authorities or given references to any passages in their books4 ,my critics1 friendly or unfriendly1 may complain of this omission4 ,but ,i hope they will not4 ,i hope they will see that ,i have gathered my materials together for a clearly shown purpose with which particular references and frequent defined quotations would have interfered4 ,i wanted to build a wayside cottage for travellers who are in haste and will soon pass on1 not a museum for the leisurely student4 ,i hope1 then1 that my critics will criticize the cottage to their hearts' content--,i shall do my best to learn from them1--but ,i beg them not to treat it as a museum whose curator has either not had the sense or not taken the trouble to ticket its contents4 ,in place of references ,i have given in an appendix two short lists of easily accessible books which will give technical support to the substance of this little work4 ,i have learnt much from them and taken--all but quoted--much4 ,i make no apology for including1 among books from which ,i have learnt1 two of my own4 ,nothing teaches as solidly as trying to teach4 ,and the record of a learner sometimes helps learners1 when the oracles of the learned fail4 ,but ,i must acknowledge here my own great indebtedness to two of those learned1 my old instructors1 ,sir ,edward ,schfer and ,sir ,edwin ,ray ,lankester1 whose admirable lessons in the biological sciences of which they are distinguished professors laid a scientific foundation in me for all my subsequent study4 ,w4 ,,scott ,,palmer4 ---------------------------------------- -------------------------------- ,,part ,i ------- ,,chapter ,i ,the moon shines in my body1 but my blind eyes cannot see it3 ,the moon is within me1 and so is the sun4 ,the unstruck drum of ,eternity is sounded within me2 but my deaf ears cannot hear it4 ,kabir4 ,deep in every one of us there is a passion of desire to understand1 just as there is of desire to enjoy and of desire to be somehow or other 'in the right4' ,i say deep in us1 because we are in the habit either of burying these desires beneath a pretence of satisfying them or else of diverting our attention from them and thus letting them sink out of sight4 ,so we live our life in the pursuit of other ends than those likely to be reached through understanding and rapture and righteousness4 ,we falsify ourselves and our desires2 yet unless we ruin the life within us they persist1 waiting their hour4 ,there are moments when it becomes almost impossible for any man who has seen something of the marvel of every-day affairs to believe that he might spend time in vain if he were to try to convince his next-door neighbour that there was anything hard to understand about the crooking of a finger4 ,yet that is his experience when he tries4 ,just because every man who has a healthy finger in a healthy body and a healthy mind can and does crook it1 there is nothing to wonder at4 ,the whole affair is plain2 it is familiar1 happens every day4 ,familiarity lulls to sleep both the desire for understanding1 and the sense of not understanding4 ,consequently there is little that should provoke surprise on our part in the fact that not one man in 7say7 ten thousand is consciously puzzled by any of the deeper problems of life1 not one in 7say7 a hundred thousand has his imagination either stirred or stunned by the green blades of the corn1 the leaves of the tree1 the grass in his fields or the sheep and cows that are eating it4 ,there is nothing new about all this1 nothing strange2 it is familiar--therefore it is understood or there is nothing that calls for understanding4 ,yet in these green blades and leaves is the junction-point between the living and the not-living1 between the plant and animal on the one hand and what we call 'inert matter' on the other1 between the radiant energy of the sun and ourselves4 ,and we do not understand1 nobody understands1 how that junction-point works4 ,it is called chlorophyll2 it is found in little living bodies called chloroplasts2 and it is wonderful 'beyond all whooping'4 ,yet we do not even whoop4 ,we do not get even thus far4 ,we are not surprised1 we are not enraptured4 ,the thing is at once both too familiar and too obscure for us4 ,we cannot do away with the familiarity2 but at least1 as reasonable beings possessed of that passion of desire which is a cry of the spirit within us and which we so often do our utmost to suppress1 it will be well for us to make an attempt to find out how and even why this green stuff of the plant is so highly distinguished among the wonders of the world4 ,but first let us ask ourselves a searching and pertinent question--let us ask ourselves what it means to be alive4 ,a man is alive1 but so are the cells of his own blood1 so is the grass in the fields1 so are the small jellies we call amoebae and the still smaller rods and specks we call bacteria and 'germs4' ,can we say anything about life that will at once fit these and distinguish them from all else that does not live1 accepting for the moment the distinction between living and not-living that we ordinarily make8 ,there are several things that we may say about them4 ,for example1 they grow4 ,but a crystal grows and so does a heap of sand4 ,there are1 then1 different ways of growing4 ,the sand heap grows when the wind scatters particles of sand over it or the sea drives them2 or the river1 or a small boy with a barrow1 deposits them4 ,it grows by mere addition4 ,the crystal grows without any such aid and in a different way4 ,if you want to see an alum-crystal grow you must offer it more alum1 dissolved2 you must offer it its own material and it will then grow without other help4 ,it will grow by what we may call formative accretion4 ,on the other hand the grass and the corn and the trees grow neither by mere addition nor by formative accretion1 but by converting1 assimilating and incorporating nitrogen1 carbon1 and so on1 compounded either by their own effort or by the micro-organisms of the soil4 ,they are magicians1 these live creatures4 ,and of all their magic the magic of their green leaves is chief in our eyes4 ,for it takes the carbonic acid of the air1 a stable compound of one atom of carbon with two of oxygen1 and tears it to pieces1 using for that enormous work the radiant energy of the sun4 ,this carbon1 now potent with the potency of the sun1 is then united with other elements to make sugars that nourish the tissues of the plant4 ,in these sugars power is stored as it is stored in an explosive like dynamite or trinitrotoluol4 ,but in the plant1 power is under strict control2 it is liberated by degrees as it is wanted and is replaced as it is used2 it is controlled1 used1 replaced in a discriminating1 selective and determining way4 ,the ability to make use of physical power1 within a body1 in this discriminating1 selective and determining way and thus to grow is 7among other things7 what is meant by being alive4 ,the chemist in his laboratory can make explosives1 chemical compounds that will easily break down and in breaking down will liberate1 for good or ill1 great power4 ,he makes nitroglycerin and trinitrotoluol4 ,he can also make very elaborate and more stable compounds than a plant makes1 for instance1 indigo or madder-red1 though for such as these he does not usually begin like the plant with chemical elements2 he begins half way--with lesser compounds1 ready made--and thus1 or even sometimes by building up from the bottom1 from elements1 like the plant1 he makes what are known as 'organic' substances of many sorts and uses4 ,is it possible that he will ever make that organic substance protoplasm1 the life-jelly of living things8 ,he has not done so yet4 ,suppose he did1 suppose he went on from making indigo to make the indigo-maker itself4 ,there is nothing of a chemical kind in the indigo-plant which his laboratory does not contain2 there are just the carbon1 nitrogen1 oxygen1 salts and the rest1 with which he deals so successfully elsewhere4 ,he has all the materials to hand4 ,why should he not make its living stuff8 ,again1 suppose he did1 for perhaps he will4 ,what then8 ,will he have made life1 as well as built up the material substance of a living thing8 ,that is a question of questions4 ,we know life here only in association with its jelly4 ,what is the character of that association8 ,granted that life depends on the jelly1 in what way does it depend8 ,if we can answer these questions we may know how to answer the one about the chemist's making or not making life1 if and when he makes the jelly4 ,there are different ways of being dependent1 as there are different ways of growing4 ,the steam depends on the boiler and the boiler-fire4 ,in this case the dependence is one of being produced4 ,the boiler and its fire produce the steam4 ,so we say1 in the ordinary way of speaking of such things4 ,again--when ,i press the trigger of a rifle the bullet is shot out4 ,i have only pressed the trigger2 you can hardly say ,i have produced the bullet4 ,what ,i have done is to release an explosive power that drives the bullet4 ,that is another kind of dependence1 dependence on the release of power4 ,there may be still1 there certainly have been1 men who would tell you that life is produced by protoplasm as steam is produced by the boiler1 or that it is released from a chemical compound by some chemical or physical trigger action4 ,they might1 once they did in large numbers1 say that consciousness is produced by or released from the brain1 and that this must be so because it depends upon the brain4 ,these two assertions1 one about life and the other about consciousness1 stand or fall together2 and we can begin to see that they may be made to fall1 as soon as we see that there is a third kind of dependence to be considered besides the dependence of the bullet and the steam4 ,there is the dependence of light in a room on the existence of a window4 ,without window no light in that room2 with window as much light as window permits to pass4 ,there is a dependence of transmission1 and transmission may occur in many wide and fundamentally differing ways4 ,at a stroke you see the whole question and series of questions take on a new aspect4 ,if the chemist makes life-jelly he may have made not something to produce or to release but something to transmit life4 ,he may doubtless have imitated what there is good reason to think must have taken place on the earth's surface long ago and may indeed be taking place now2 but in doing this he may only have made a material substance capable of allowing spiritually potent life to be manifest in it and to endow it with a share in promoting the purposes of life4 ,he may have made for the peculiar potency of life a door of entrance to a house1 or rather1 since this house is not passive1 to a body in which it and the body will be distinguishable as a living being1 an example of life and matter living and at work together4 ,why not8 ,the supposition of some such dependence of the superior power of life upon a body seems quite as reasonable1 even at no more than a first glance1 as the other suppositions made by men who do not acknowledge the specific character of life4 ,and it accords far better with both knowledge and experience1 when these are taken at their widest and their most profound4 ,the other suppositions accord only with chosen parts of knowledge and chosen bits cut out of experience--the parts and bits cut out and chosen by the man who restricts himself to the specialism and the very right and proper superficiality of certain sciences4 ,even there they accord but ill1 because in their inception they trespass beyond the borders of all science4 ,living creatures are the subject of the mere biologist's merely scientific inquiry--not life4 ,when a biologist1 speaking as biologist1 tries to tell us both that life is and what it is1 he is philosophizing4 ,life is in fact an ultra-scientific problem4 ,we have to call in philosophy before we can even state the problem4 ,and when either the biologist or the physicist or the chemist talks of life as a mode of physical or chemical energy1 or as a product of things1 he is playing at philosophy1 not soberly working at his science4 ,the biologist shall teach us about living creatures1 the physicist and the chemist about physical and chemical things and powers2 but the philosopher must help us in our enquiry about life4 ,and this1 not because a man shall not be permitted to transgress boundaries we lay down1 but because his chosen methods preclude his walking safely except within boundaries they themselves build up4 ,of every specialist this is true4 ,we must transcend specialism if we would have 'all things1 like the stars in heaven1' shed 'their light upon one another4' ------- ,,chapter ,,ii ,time hath endless rarities1 and shows of all varieties2 which reveals old things in heaven1 makes new discoveries in earth1 and even earth itself a discovery4 ,sir ,thomas ,browne4 ,the green leaf of the tree1 the blade of the wheat that gives me bread--,i look at them and tell myself1 as many a man has told himself before1 that if ,i could read their secrets ,i should know1 as from the 'flower in the crannied wall1' 'what ,god and man is4' ,so ,i might1 but only as far as their secrets go4 ,if ,i could read my own ,i should go farther and know more4 ,i am man and hold far greater secrets in being man4 ,and ,i have the inestimable advantage of being inside myself1 of being alive1 besides looking on at living1 of both growing and watching growth4 ,there is no other live creature on earth who can possibly tell me as much as ,i can tell myself about what it means to be alive4 ,and if the blade of wheat is wonderful beyond words1 what am ,i8 ,think of it3 ,i have a history2 indeed ,i am a history1 ,i am time alive1 time that accumulates and lasts4 ,i have a past that is not past1 because it is at work in my present and is writing its indelible signature on my future4 ,there is no least action in my past that has not left its impress on me1 made me different from what ,i should have been without it1 and therefore will make my future different too4 ,my whole history is alive1 active and changing in my actions and my change4 ,the history of my forefathers1 too1 is alive in me and in my character and powers4 ,i have an inheritance from their living2 ,i am as and what ,i am1 in part because they were as and what they were4 ,but ,i have power and ,i use it to create myself and recreate my inheritance through an impetus transmitted to me in the transmission to me of my life4 ,therefore every moment of my life is a unique and original moment of a unique and original history1 mine and mine alone1 never to be repeated1 never to be wholly predicted1 even by me4 ,the evolutionist philosophy tells me that ,i endure1 ,i last1 and that all my changes and experiences endure1 last1 in and with me1 changing in themselves and among themselves as though they were alive to influence and interpenetrate each other4 ,indeed they are alive in me and in my life or they could not endure4 ,they would pass like the stages in the height of a sand heap as it grows1 as the little heap it was is merged and lost in the larger heap it is4 ,they would be lost as the flowing tide is lost when the ebb succeeds it4 ,such changes are mere successions1 displacements and replacements2 they are not history4 ,they enter history only in sharing that of the universe which itself endures1 lasts1 and within which they are parts4 ,i1 on the other hand1 have a life of my own2 ,i am a maker1 shaper1 creator4 ,i am a master-worker and freeman in a world of relative necessity4 ,yet my wonderful living body1 through which ,i do my work1 depends for its support on the green blades of grass and corn and the green leaves of the trees4 ,further--every cell of the millions and millions in my body is like the amoeba and the cells of the plant in consisting of protoplasm4 ,further still--,i began my own life as a speck of protoplasm1 and if ,i could trace all the steps of my pedigree to the first display of life on earth1 from which ,i am sure ,i am descended1 ,i should 7,i dare to say7 find another protoplasmic speck with which every one of the cells of the vast cellular republic whereby and wherein ,i live is in historical continuity4 ,bodily ,i am immensely complicated2 ,i am a congeries and a commonwealth of cells4 ,but the first cell was also complicated although it was but one4 ,nothing that lives is simple1 no1 not even if we carry the idea of life far beyond the arbitrary boundaries commonly set to it now4 ,there is unplumbed mystery in the conjunction of two atoms of hydrogen with one of oxygen to make a third and different substance1 water2 there is unplumbed mystery in every element and every happening of the world4 ,but some mysterious things are scientifically more complex than others1 and among the most complex is this thing1 protoplasm4 ,yet it seems that before life could be manifest in the world the molecular complexity of protoplasm must have been attained4 ,by storing power in building up the atoms of the chemical elements from electrons1 and making that power useful by the union of atoms in molecules2 then1 by a further delicate union between molecules 7much after the fashion of widely branching1 but only slightly tenacious1 magnets7 forming larger and ever larger groups1 a condition of such plasticity of matter and ready discharge and restoring of power has been attained as makes it fit for the rank of a recognized life4 ,the grouped and complicated molecules1 each charged with power1 are set as with a double-acting hair-trigger1 so ready are they to let go energy in heat and work as these are wanted2 so ready also for their rebuilding in the peculiar power of the life with which they are imbued4 ,there are examples of highly complex union to be seen in the chemist's laboratory and elsewhere which are never called living matter4 ,the chemist speaks of some of them as colloids 7we should naturally call many of these jellies1 or gums7 and he calls protoplasm a colloid too4 ,they have remarkable properties1 and the new bio-chemist thinks he may some day make that elaborate colloid with more remarkable properties1 which we know as protoplasm4 ,he thinks also that we do ill to confine the first production of life-jellies to the age of steaming seas and cloud-shadowed lagoons1 before the ,pre-,cambrian geologic times4 ,he tells us that in his opinion it may always be going on and always have gone on since the earth was cool enough to permit of it4 ,he thinks that if all the living creatures we are aware of were swept out of the world to-day there would still be living stuff remaining on it of which we are ignorant now2 and that in the course of millenniums this would people it once more4 ,the beginnings of the life-jelly must be so small as to be far out of the reach of our microscopes and every other tool we can bring to bear1 as yet1 he says4 ,and there1 doubtless1 he is right4 ,let us suppose that he is right1 too1 in his main contention4 ,let us look at inorganic matter with a new eye1 seeing in its evolutionary change the forerunner of greater change and greater evolution1 the preparer of the narrow pathway by which life approaches to its display1 and at last enters on possession of a body that in union with it shall be the germ of lives to come--enters the realm of physical forces and the relative necessity of material things1 where and by use of those forces it will subdue necessity to the purposes of freedom4 ,this indeed seems to be the manner and purposing of life as it extends from the single cell to the assemblage of cells that constitutes my body4 ,there is continuity from first to last2 and yet the differences between me and the primitive jelly-speck are even more striking than the resemblances4 ,students of the cell itself and students of my body as merely composed of cells are1 naturally1 cytologists1 histologists1 physiologists1 embryologists1 and the like4 ,but unless there are others1 unless students of psychology1 ethics1 aesthetics1 social science1 history1 and many more1 bring their minds to bear on me1 ,i am studied to little sense and in small part4 ,i am obliged to regard myself as not only physical but psychical2 ,i seek after1 and sometimes find1 goodness and truth and beauty4 ,i admire1 ,i hate or love4 ,i am a hero or a criminal1 or both4 ,i sin4 ,in the advance of life from the minute and primitive colloid lump to me amazing things have happened4 ,when ,i see life making its humble appearance by that speck of jelly1 ,i must in my mind's eye connect it with what ,i am1 and see there in its almost inchoate wonders the promise of myself4 ,and still ,i must look behind even that first living thing and consider matter as well as life2 for the physical potency of that thing was long of building up2 and this physical potency has its place in me4 ,the material pathway of life is the pathway of my powers1 and it stretches far back into cosmic happenings smaller or 7it depends how you look at these high matters and what you see in them7 greater still4 ,we have no need to stretch imagination unaided2 we may watch changes going on which indicate or1 maybe1 reproduce1 stages in the creation of our own world and of its very elements4 ,there are stars in which material elements are being either made or destroyed2 it is hard for us to say which4 ,in the constellation ,argo there are two suns--furnaces of immeasurable heat--in which hydrogen1 the lightest and simplest of our elements1 is either being born or disintegrated before our eyes4 ,there are other stars where hydrogen is in the same state as that in which we know it here1 and more complex elements 7for the elements of the chemist are in reality complex2 they are only elements for him1 because he cannot disintegrate them7 are being born or1 again1 are being destroyed4 ,there are stars in all stages up to the stage of our own sun and beyond1 in age and powers2 and there are elements of many degrees of complexity4 ,in the series of those stars there is a series of changes which1 taken together1 mark for us either an ascent of matter from the immaterial1 or a descent towards it4 ,there is iron in its very infancy to be seen in some--proto-iron we call it--which we are able to produce ourselves by exposing ordinary iron to the intense heat of the electric vacuum spark and there disrupting it into a simpler mode which the spectroscope detects as it detects it in a star4 ,we are entitled to say that in these changes material elements declare themselves to be things that somewhere and somehow are born and grow1 whether in any one stage that we watch they are moving in one direction or another1 from birth or down towards death4 ,indeed the most probable thing is that in the solar furnace-fires both movements are going on together2 elements are being born and elements annulled4 ,they have an origin1 these elements4 ,some scientific men suggest to us that they issue from the universal ether that fills the interstellar spaces and the spaces of the stars themselves1 of our own bodies1 of all things in all worlds4 ,here the first stones of the pathway on which life travels may have 7in their belief7 been shaped4 ,and neither chemist nor physicist can even guess at anything beyond4 ,we stop here1 as men of science only4 ,it is at a place full of marvels that we are arrested4 ,this ether is so marvellous that some rash men have deemed it competent to replace ,god4 ,they have asked what need we have of any other ,god4 ,and1 truly1 if the creations of worlds that are no more than physical were all a ,god was needed for1 this amazing source of worlds would seem1 not so unreasonably1 to be enough4 ,whether the ether is immaterial or not1 we might say the same4 ,there are those who hold that it is the first and finest of the elements of matter4 ,for men who know most about it1 it is no kind of matter4 ,but its power and fertility remain1 however this may be2 it is held to be the medium of communication everywhere1 between small and great1 distant and near2 and the womb of the worlds4 ,undoubtedly it may serve the pseudo-physicist-philosopher in place of ,god1 while he is no more than that4 ,the pathway for life has been traced back and back to the utmost of the regressive journey of science4 ,we have seen 7perhaps7 the first stones being fashioned in the fires of the suns2 at least we may believe that in some such place and way they have been and are being fashioned4 ,we know--radium has shown us and the proto-iron--how chemical elements can be disintegrated and brought down to lower states of material complexity4 ,in radio-active matter there is more than a hint that they may be brought lower still1 returned to the fecund mother from which they came1 restored1 let us say1 to the ether4 ,we may have learnt--that depends on our prepossessions--we may have learnt in studying this regress to see in what the chemist calls the 'affinity' of one element for another1 and in its 'valency' 7that is1 its ability to grip one or another and even several to itself and take part in building up compounds71 a likeness or a congruity with living stuff4 ,and we have seen a living thing as compounded physically of the compounds of the chemist1 though not1 as yet1 compounded by him4 ,unless our prepossessions form in us irrational prejudice we may gladly follow the clue science puts in our hands1 and confess a continuous advance in order upon order of nature from the womb of the ether to ourselves4 ------- ,,chapter ,,iii ,there the ,eternal ,fountain is playing its endless life-streams of birth and death4 ,kabir4 ,we have followed the physicist and the chemist to the farthest point they have reached in their research4 ,they cannot show us anything beyond1 and we1 unsatisfied1 must look elsewhere4 ,the problems of life remain4 ,we ourselves stand on the great pathway1 its continuous road of rising orders1 and from our place of vantage we contemplate the first living thing4 ,a profound discrepancy1 or what seems like one1 stares us in the face1 the discrepancy between our mastery over things and our self-conscious1 self-creative abilities on the one hand1 and1 on the other1 that first humble yet awe-inspiring revelation by elements generated1 perhaps1 within a white-hot star4 ,science has nothing to do with meanings and purposes and values in our lives or with our concern for them4 ,indeed it has nothing to do1 in strictness1 with meanings and purposes and values anywhere4 ,this is the business of philosophy and of all ordinary men4 ,we have learnt a lesson as we followed the men of science from step to step1 and heard nature respond to their questions with intelligible answers4 ,we have learnt that1 so far as it has been examined1 the universe1 like ourselves1 is rational and has a history4 ,it moves1 changes1 grows2 it is real and its history is real too4 ,and though science is not concerned with its meaning1 we are4 ,we hold fast to our science1 but we care for more than science4 ,we cannot help it1 for we are aware of meaning in ourselves2 as the man of science is when he is not being only scientific4 ,we are aware too of purpose and of values2 we are aware of making and shaping and creating2 we know what it is to choose and direct1 to arrange and rearrange1 to produce novelty4 ,both sides of our knowledge and our caring1 the scientific side and the personal side1 make a difficulty for us in regard to the philosophers with whom we shall put ourselves to school4 ,our chosen teachers must reckon with life as we know and possess it in ourselves2 but they must reckon too with every word of the scientific man4 ,nothing less will content us now4 ,the philosophers we shall follow must not be playing a game among themselves1 using thoughts like pieces on a board1 to be moved according to rules they have laid down4 ,neither must they resolve the great drama of real things and real history into a phantasmagoria of mind2 nor try to educe mind1 consciousness1 the spiritual activities of man1 from the interplay of parts of a material machine4 ,in our view both the material and the spiritual are real4 ,it is for the philosopher1 so we think1 to show us the real relation between them4 ,to do him justice1 the philosopher has been thoroughly aroused of late years to the importance of reckoning with science4 ,consequently he draws to his side thinking ordinary men as they have perhaps never been drawn before1 except when ,socrates at ,athenian banquets and in ,athenian streets 'made himself a fool that others by his folly might be made wise4' ,we have no difficulty now in finding a philosopher1 indeed many philosophers1 to our mind4 ,philosophy is alive1 sitting at our banquets1 walking in our streets1 even writing books that ordinary men1 living each his own extraordinary life1 can read4 ,we are able to call in our philosopher1 then1 as we have called in the bio-chemist1 knowing him to be one who reckons to the full with science1 that he may tell us what he can and will concerning life and living4 ,a philosopher of that mind and reckoning has presented us with a picture in which we see life coming 7may be from very far1 coming1 we may think1 although concealed1 by the material pathway from the ether that science has revealed to us7 as an enormous impetus which finds the first of its advantages that are discernible by us1 in that colloid assembly of compounded1 complicated1 delicately-strung1 hair-trigger-hung elements1 the protoplasmic stuff4 ,we plainly see a new beginning which1 in philosophic truth1 is a continuance in new manners upon this earth of that which has no beginning2 we see a living thing which lives because an impulsive and propulsive life1 not material but spiritual1 has raised material elements from the rank of dust1 and has found a means of using material powers to purposes and ends4 ,and this philosopher tells us that from its marvellous but humble first appearing in matter life advances1 not like the trickle of a single stream1 but like the bursting forth of a potent1 spreading fountain whose waters part in a thousand directions to make a thousand streams1 each purposive1 each at first seeking1 but many of them unsuccessfully1 to fulfil some part of the purpose of the whole4 ,and in regard to this frequent unsuccess1 we find the philosopher borne out by the palaeontologist1 whose 'general picture 444 of the evolution of the animal kingdom is accordingly that of an immense number of 444 lives which evolve parallel to one another1 and without coalescing1 throughout longer or shorter geological times1' each of which 'culminates sooner or later in mutations of great size and highly specialized characters1 which become extinct and leave no descendants4' ,at the heart of life1 as in the philosophic mirror we watch its advance1 there seems one guiding and supreme purpose1 which is manifest in the continuous effort 'to engraft on the necessity of physical forces the largest possible amount of indetermination1' that is1 of freedom in choice4 ,but this purpose is evidently very hard to fulfil1 and as we see1 often fails of being fulfilled4 ,we may in mind and imagination walk in company with these teachers of ours2 we may see the stages of the past of living creatures marked out in the geological strata1 learning thus how life has grown from less to more1 how its divergent streams have turned this way or that1 and how some have been frustrate1 as in the giant saurians and labyrinthodonts4 ,we may learn too from the biologist that in our own day others 7for instance perhaps those in the elephant and the ostrich and the whale7 are in like manner drawing near to frustration by that impressive wearing out and perishing of a race1 which is so clearly illustrated in the geological record4 ,we discover that when impulsive life1 seeking a free way1 finds advance only through an excessive increase in the size of some creature1 that creature's fate is sealed1 and that manner of advance is barred4 ,size extending much beyond a certain range normal in the particular kind of animal is 7perhaps in consequence of purely mechanical influences7 to all the main intents and purposes of life no better than a blind alley4 ,a like impulse1 finding its outlet in the elaboration of nervous apparatus ranging from an all but indiscoverable structure to that definite and complex yet indefinitely mobile organ of an indefinitely extending choice--that living instrument for overcoming mechanism1 that 'veritable reservoir of indetermination'--the human brain1 finds there and there alone a road to great and full success4 ,yet it finds a road to minor and circumscribed successes in the lives of plants and animals which1 interacting together1 become of immeasurable value for the whole realm of life and the well-being of its citizens--for that realm of interlacing purposes and ends1 where partial failure is so often converted to a new and a remoter triumph4 ,it seems as though in many1 indeed in most instances1 a life current1 instead of driving on towards either greater freedom or complete arrest1 met with a resistance able to constrain it1 as it were1 into eddies1 wherein it circles as creatures living out either in a relative independence or in a parasitic state 7sometimes of primary development1 at others of degradation from a higher mode7 their restricted lives4 ,they are being fulfilled according to their restricted wants2 they are needing no more of life than they have1 and therefore seek no further than they are4 ,and they have their co-operative value in the whole4 ,these are the minor1 yet many of them--and that in spite of dangers and pain and death--the delightful1 successes of life4 ,everywhere upon this earth now1 it seems1 except in man1 we may justly picture the life-currents as either coming to an end or circling round and round in some such eddy1 at most curving out a little way to change a little in shape1 to form new varieties within a species or1 rarely1 new species within a genus4 ,there is in lower animals than ourselves1 and in the plants1 a certain contentment1 on which tired men have sometimes been known to look with envy4 ,the realm of nature is well served by servants such as these1 and natural delights1 in spite of natural pains1 are won4 ,but not all that life can do and be is represented in those finished forms4 ,in the plants it seems to be asleep4 ,there the protoplasmic stuff has built a wall about its soft body1 the casing of cellulose behind which it sleeps1 working in sleep1 in great measure cut off from the varied stimulus and many-tongued summons1 the resistances and opportunities1 of an outer world4 ,and some of the animals that are now extinct owe their extinction1 not to their gigantic size1 but to their having sought safety rather than adventure1 and imprisoned themselves in their mechanical armour of defence4 ,they too were in their measure cut off from the stir and help and moving oppositions of associated lives4 ,in truth and in regard to the supreme purpose manifested in life1 all the non-human creatures of the earth have1 within themselves and for themselves1 in one fashion or another barred its advance2 although very many of them are furthering its purposes1 indeed giving them indispensable support1 elsewhere4 ,those which have not been extinguished and still maintain their place in the world are too complete1 too well-adapted to a satisfying but narrow sphere1 for progress to a wider4 ,life is not bearing them on2 their nervous organ1 that structure of inter-related cells by which they use their world1 selecting and determining this or that1 has not like ours capacity for indefinite change4 ,theirs is exactly fitted for their narrow use of it1 and they and it are constrained together4 ,when we look at man through the eyes of the philosopher we see life clearly as a spiritual impulse1 an impulse of a higher order than the animal1 at least as much higher as that is than the material1 and ever driving on4 ,man is not content2 he is not fulfilled4 ,he is fully awake2 and he is not only conserving his long past but peering into the distances of his future4 ,his brain is flexible1 and able to provide a multitude of new structural arrangements2 it is therefore an instrument of such choice as gives him leave to shape his future4 ,and it is an active instrument2 it brings to him through extending perception a field for his own spiritual activities that stretches out to match them1 and enables him to become a ruler among circumstances4 ,it allows him to worship beauty and even to create it2 and to seek and worship truth2 to adore goodness and be good4 ,it permits desire to grow and the spirit within him to reach limit after limit1 using each limit as an opportunity for further growth4 ,all this the brain of man allows and promotes2 and on this earth his brain alone4 ,there is nowhere so magnificent and marvellous a bodily organ2 for in it and by means of it physical things and physical laws are subdued to the purposes and ends of a free enduring creation4 ------- ,,chapter ,,iv ,listen to the moaning of the pine1 at whose roots thy hut is fastened4 ,kabir4 ,the divergent streams of that primaeval fountain of life as they spread out upon the earth1 in the earth1 in the air1 in1 under and upon the waters1 have given to it the endless variety of its creatures4 ,in this variety1 and of those streams1 there are three and no more than three main currents2 there are three directions and grouped characters and qualities of life4 ,each of these in its turn branches into minor streams and differences of creatures4 ,the main currents are those of the plants1 the insects1 and the vertebrate animals4 ,we have seen that one function of the life of plants gives to the whole world of living creatures access to the energy of the sun4 ,yet as regards intelligence and conscious relation with other creatures the plant may be said to be asleep2 it carries on its vital functions and builds up its manifold and admirable structures1 working as though in sleep4 ,its whole activity1 varied though it be1 is like that of a dreamer4 ,confined within a wall of cellulose1 the plant-cell works out its life as though1 for its awareness1 no other creature lived4 ,with the insect-world we enter on a widely differing scene4 ,there1 in the highest insects1 we discover what may well rouse a salutary discontent with ourselves4 ,the life-current which finds its eddying termination in the wasps and bees and ants has one1 and that its chief1 character pointing to grave but happily not irremediable deficiency in most of us1 if not to some extent in all4 ,the wasp seems to know other creatures' life1 to understand it sympathetically1 to touch and feel it from within1 in a manner that to us is marvellous4 ,life manifests through this little winged thing a power we call instinct1 perfected for certain uses to a degree not attained outside the insect-world4 ,there are wasps which sting caterpillars with admirable though not invariable precision in their nerve-centres1 so that they go on living but cannot move1 and thus are made to serve as living larders for the wasp-grubs4 ,observers have found that different wasps1 seeking different kinds of prey1 sting three times1 nine times1 in three or nine centres1 according to the number in the body of their selected victim1 and that the ,scolia stings the larvae of the rose-beetle in one point only1 just where the motor-ganglia are concentrated4 ,other observers have noticed some failures and occasional irregularities4 ,but listen 7it may be once more and after many times7 to this well-known story1 the story of the ,sitaris1 if you want to see what life can do in a fashion for which the intellectual work of man offers in his experience no parallel4 ,this tiny beetle lays its eggs in the doorway of the underground passages dug by a certain bee1 the ,anthophora4 ,when an egg is hatched the grub awaits an opportunity to spring upon the male bee as it comes out4 ,you may deceive it with a substitute1 and no doubt it often is deceived without your help4 ,nevertheless1 if not thus deceived it clings to the bee until the nuptial flight occurs1 when it seizes some chance of shifting from the male to the female4 ,now clinging to the female1 it waits until the bee-eggs are as usual laid upon honey4 ,then it leaps again1 this time upon an egg which serves it at first as a raft on the honey4 ,by degrees it eats up the egg2 then uses as its raft the empty shell4 ,it changes1 undergoes a metamorphosis1 and becomes able both to float and feed on honey1 where it remains until it changes for the last time into the perfect insect1 a ,sitaris ready in its turn to set going this amazing cycle of life4 ,it is a life that seems to involve knowledge of things which1 by any knowing such as our intellectual experience provides1 could not be known4 ,untaught1 unaided1 without previous experiment1 the creature displays what looks like1 but cannot be1 true forethought1 as well as ingenuity and adaptive skill2 what looks like1 but cannot be1 a continued adjustment of reflectively chosen means to reflectively recognized ends4 ,there can be no question but that all this1 under such conditions1 would be beyond the reach of our intellectual powers1 and beyond our reflective thought4 ,we may justly say that it is beyond the reach of any powers that are merely of reflective thought4 ,not thus does intellect carry on its conceptual work4 ,it analyses and reflects1 it separates1 compares1 and puts together4 ,that is not the way of the grub of ,sitaris1 neither is it the way of the solitary wasp4 ,there appears to be for these and for others of their tribe1 in 'perceptual consciousness1' some mysterious sympathy between the life of the creature using and the life of the creature used1 akin to that sympathy of digestive secretions with digestible food by means of which our bodies are nourished1 or the process by which the cell becomes the organized and completed creature4 ,there seem to be also motor-habits stored up by repetition in forbears1 which facilitate the active expression of this sympathy4 ,when the wasp stings the nerve-centres of the caterpillar as accurately1 as on the whole he does1 it seems to us as though in the mere presence together of wasp and caterpillar two congruous activities1 not two beings1 met--the wasp-activity perceiving rather than thinking about the caterpillar-activity1 perceiving it and attacking it through certain established instrumental means as though entering into a familiar relation to it4 ,you might be inclined to say that the sting of the wasp picks out the nervous ganglia of the caterpillar as a magnet picks out fragments of steel from the dust4 ,instinct no doubt means perceiving in sympathetic relation1 and has more than a mere likeness to reflex actions in the body4 ,like these it may find its bodily support in a motor tradition1 borne from reproductive germ to reproductive germ1 as a structural record of bodily movements ingrained by the incessant repetition of certain actions through many continuous generations4 ,but unlike these it may work with and for the intellect in all its grades4 ,we may well desire a sympathetic relation with other life1 a perceptive understanding keener1 quicker1 more direct1 more inclusive and more penetrating4 ,and let us hasten to assure ourselves that we may attain what we seek1 though in ways very different from the insect's1 and for ends very different too4 ,no life-current in any creature is of one character alone2 none but has in it1 in some proportion or another and with this or that degree of emphasis1 all characters4 ,the intuitive character and power of life in perceptive experience and perceptive consciousness1 which though highly emphasized in some creatures becomes narrowed to their instinct1 is not the exclusive prerogative of any one kind1 even of the insects1 though within their narrow bounds they have carried it almost to inerrancy of use2 any more than reflective thought is the exclusive prerogative of man1 though he has carried it farther and wider and deeper than any other creature of the earth4 ,the problem for us is in great part one of emphasis and proportion4 ,we have cultivated our reflective thinking more than our perceptive awareness1 our conceptual more than our intuitive power4 ,because thought exercised upon external things has given us what we most wanted in the external world1 and is giving us more and more1 we have over-emphasized it4 ,we have strained unceasingly to understand and to manage not life but those external material things4 ,we are great geometers and artificers2 we are great in our understanding of material things2 but there is another greatness1 a perceptual greatness1 to which most of us have not attained1 although it lies open to us1 in fulness matching the fulness of our intellectual endowment4 ,we are not without plain indications of the existence in ourselves of that intuitive power1 which as instinct is amazing to us in the accurate yet constrained lives of the beetles and the wasps4 ,it is amazing chiefly because it is not that which we desire and are aware of desiring or needing to use4 ,there is in every one of us1 latent or declared1 a true intuition of life1 a truly intuitive awareness1 a touch within1 a perceptual knowledge sympathetic in the pure sense of the word1 reaching far beyond the insect's4 ,we may know it for what it is because in us giving rather than gaining is its secret spring1 although gain1 assuredly1 comes by giving4 ,such1 for example1 is the knowledge of the artist1 won only in his giving of himself to the object of his worship1 in his placing himself by an artistic sympathy within it4 ,thus he obtains by sympathetic intuition an understanding that is like a spiritual touch1 that is perceiving not thinking about1 that1 by immediate contact with the individual thing1 is a knowledge of it in its own reality4 ,such again is the intuition of the true lover1 who gives himself to the beloved and in that giving wins a knowledge like the artist's4 ,they are akin1 these two1 artist and lover4 ,their kinship is grounded in their use of that intuitive character of life which for humanity as a whole has been cast into the shade by the more practically useful manners of intellect1 and which in the insect-tribe is confined to the immediate needs of a fixed and narrow mode of existence4 ,yet there is in truth a real difference1 in these respects1 between man and the insect or any other creature4 ,in the perceptive consciousness of the insect1 restricted by the fixed character of its nervous system1 the intuitive potency of life has shrunk and hardened1 as it were1 into a restrained power which deals1 and can deal1 only with a very small part of life and the world4 ,this power is forced to work in the windowless prison of a completed life4 ,man's life is not completed2 in him consciousness1 stretching out ever farther and farther1 has passed one temporary limit after another1 function impelling structure to match itself1 mind seeking to go beyond itself4 ,the consciousness of man has been always opening up for him new fields1 adapting itself to new objects1 moving among them1 making a way through them1 and in all its growth and change advancing in freedom4 ,to attain this freed human consciousness seems1 we may say1 the motive principle of the evolution of life through man's forerunners4 ,its driving impulse is both carried indefinitely further in that consciousness and revealed as what it really is4 ,herein lies the difference in order between every animal1 every plant1 the most skilful of the beetles or the wasps1 and man4 ,their way is closed4 ,his lies before him wide open4 ,he is the open way1 the one open way on earth for life in its harmony of intuitive and intellectual power both fulfilled4 ,and if hitherto we and our forefathers have in practice over-emphasized conceptual thinking and the intellect1 our over-emphasis and its practical results have set us in a place where sympathetic intuition in perceptive experience has a new advantage4 ,in us it will not1 or rather it need not1 be narrowed down4 ,it may stretch out into every field that discursive and reflective thought has opened up1 and it may pass beyond them to lead them on4 ,the attainment by man of his high calling and of the destiny of which he is capable depends in truth on this expansion of his life4 ,so the philosopher assures us4 ,so1 also--and this is noteworthy--does the psychologist3 'with the development of psychical integration both sides develop1 and their relation1 that is experience1 therefore expands into a meaning inclusive of more and more1 till1 in the human being1 it may be inclusive of all things actual and possible1 the universe in space1 and history in time from the remotest past1 and1 in imagination1 to the most distant future4' ,the psychologist too1 is not without his vision4 ------- ,,chapter ,v ,if any one should care to say that unless ,i have bones and muscles and the other parts of the body ,i could not do what ,i would1 that is well enough3 but to say that ,i act as ,i do because of them1 and that this is the way in which my mind acts1 and not from choice of the best1 why1 that is a very careless and idle way of speaking4 ,plato4 ,there are signs that the life of the body is even in the lower animals to some extent imbued with the free creative spirit4 ,there are creative efforts of determination1 changes of direction1 triumphs over circumstance1 that find their enlightening context in the more emancipated life of man4 ,a sea-urchin's egg1 for instance1 begins its development by dividing into two cells4 ,normally these cells1 by a like division1 share between them the making of the respective halves of the creature's body4 ,if you remove one cell after the first division of the egg you may expect 7you certainly should and will if you take your stand with the mechanistic theorists7 to find that you have mutilated the creature4 ,you may or will expect to see the remaining half of the egg grow to a half-embryo4 ,under some circumstances you will see what you expect2 but if you are very skilful and are acquainted with the new methods you will have the disturbing joy of seeing the half-egg--you may even see a quarter-egg--take on the work of the whole1 and grow to a complete though small embryo2 and not only to an embryo but to a larva4 ,you may do the same with a newt's egg or a frog's4 ,with your mind's eye1 then1 you may if you like1 and if you thus interpret things1 watch the sea-urchin's1 the frog's1 or the newt's life1 overcoming1 according to a 'primary purposiveness' of its own1 your effort to thwart its intention4 ,you may watch it determining new contrivances from within to meet an unexpected emergency that threatens to mar the complete whole it means to be1 changing a normal to an abnormal course of activity1 that it may still attain its end--in short 'working out its own salvation1' as a morphologist remarks1 'upon original and individual lines4' ,it would seem difficult not to recognize in these changes a likeness to what you know in yourself as intelligent action4 ,studying them it is hard for any but a confirmed mechanist to resist the contention of men who tell us that the vital is the intelligent4 ,whereas purely material changes1 if they are left to themselves1 follow the way of least material resistance1 life1 whether in the cell or in the organism1 moves in an opposite direction4 ,the living vegetable cell raises carbon and other elements from relative inertness to a condition charged with newly available power4 ,and in these developmental changes the organism seems to manifest itself as in very truth 'a living1 active1 responsive thing1 quite capable of relinquishing at need the beaten track of normal development1' like ourselves as we make our bodily1 intellectual1 moral and spiritual decisions4 ,the mechanist is ready with his retort when we say this1 but it is a poor retort4 ,he tells us of mysterious 'specific organ-forming substances' which are not ordinary chemical substances of any kind2 and which no research is able to detect1 except it be as pictured behind the very processes of growth that are telling us of the organ-forming determination of a specific mode of life4 ,for both us and the mechanist there is the same process and result4 ,he sees1 but only with his mind's eye1 these utterly mysterious 'substances' he has himself invoked2 we see1 with our mind's eye1 the sea-urchin's1 or the newt's1 life issuing in that purposeful endeavour which always and everywhere1 we say1 is a mark of the life we know4 ,we may even admit the possibility of the existence of his organ-forming substances1 but only as conditions of life's organ-forming1 not as effective causes--a distinction of fundamental importance for the careful thinker not content to be arrested by the look of things1 however scientific4 ,we cannot rest in a mechanical interpretation which at best only thrusts the problem one stage farther away1 as does the pseudo-physicist-philosopher's ether-,god4 ,life to us seems effective1 and under all conditions determining1 within the limits of those conditions4 ,organ-forming substances there may be2 but they are either the co-operative servants of life 7if they exist at all7 like other substances1 or they are no better than names for the modes in which life is at work4 ,to us life seems1 from its first entrance into possession of a body1 when it gave to material substances a higher status1 to have worked always towards dominance over the established laws and customs 7that is the habits7 of matter1 as no substances have ever worked4 ,at first it did little more with matter than lift physical or chemical elements upward in heightening states of energy1 within a body1 against physical or chemical tendencies that would take them downward to their physical or chemical equilibrium2 later it went on1 through the organizing of an ever more and more complex and variable nervous system1 to a man's brain1 where the control of intelligence over the living instrument that is its very active servant became strong enough to guide into ever-widening relations and possibilities an activity seeking spiritual advance4 ,an activity1 straining for liberation against some resistance by which nevertheless it was itself made effectual1 could--we are driven to think--do no other than find its way imperfectly and by slow degrees2 yet on its way it has shown even in very lowly creatures signs of what it really is4 ,that any 'substance' the mechanist can acknowledge has done this of its own motion and power1 we take leave to doubt4 ,and we have learnt to understand the mechanist4 99 99 99 99 99 ,if the train of reflexion thus suggested is followed up1 some of us will find ourselves compelled to readjust certain beliefs in regard to spiritual life as related to the life of the body1 and in regard also to bodily life as related to the life of the spirit4 ,we shall perhaps learn that in looking upon spirit as altogether separate from matter or as connected with matter only by some fortuitous or indeed unhappy link1 we may indeed have kept it safe from the attacks of the materialist1 but only at the cost of emptying it of value for ourselves1 except in so far as it is1 perhaps1 an all but invisible point de repre round about which our vague religious sentiments are grouped4 ,just as in the evolution of elements and compounds afterwards united in the marvel of life-jelly1 we traced the preparation of a pathway for life moving towards its first manifestation1 so we should trace in the successive phases of that manifestation a development of co-operative relations between spirit and matter1 a development rendering matter more and more plastic to spirit1 and spirit more and more responsive to the character of the far from inert instrument through which its purpose is effected4 ,the evolutionist philosopher has told us that we may picture life as a rising wave opposed by the contrary movement of matter towards stability4 ,the greater part of the whole volume of the wave1 after reaching one height or another1 is arrested2 and going no further it is at each several height converted into the whirling eddies1 the contented plants and animals of which we have already spoken4 ,at one point only1 where it rises highest1 does the wave find a free passage 7and of this too we have spoken7 along which it carries with it1 converted to its further purpose1 the material obstacle1 condition1 and means that will1 in a sense and for a time1 still in some degree encumber1 but cannot now arrest1 its advance4 ,the life-current continues to flow1 a gathering wave of conscious life grown to self-consciousness and world-consciousness4 ,it flows on from this point of conquest through generation after generation of men in and to whom its spiritual character is now plainly revealed4 ,for each man it is a rill from the great human river of life--life natural and spiritual1 spiritual because so fully natural--which has become his own and is indeed himself4 ,for each the material but living brain is the chief instrument and helper by means of which he himself stretches forth towards wider and wider relations1 not only with material objects but with other spiritual beings4 ,and as the spirit of a man thus expands1 amassing life and becoming1 by the sympathetic spiritual inclusion of other lives1 greater in its reach and in itself1 it is confirmed and consolidated in its self-ownership4 ,you may say that as a self-knowing1 self-governing1 creative being1 an owner of means and a seeker after ends1 man's life has at last taken possession of the kingdom of itself1 and that it has reached this all-important status through the medium and condition of a body and by the experience of an earthly world4 ,we will let the philosopher tell us the gist of this in his own words3-- ',while we watch the birth of consciousness we are confronted1 at the same time1 by the apparition of living bodies1 capable1 even in their simplest forms1 of movements spontaneous and unforeseen4 ,the progress of living matter consists in a differentiation of function which leads first to the production and then to the increasing complication of a nervous system capable of canalizing excitations and of organizing actions3 the more the higher centres develop1 the more numerous become the motor paths among which the same excitation allows the living being to choose in order that it may act4 ,an ever greater latitude left to movement in space--this indeed is what is seen4 ,what is not seen is the growing and accompanying tension of consciousness in time4 ,not only1 by its memory of former experiences1 does this consciousness retain the past better and better1 so as to organize it with the present in a newer and richer decision2 but1 living with an intenser life1 contracting1 by its memory of the immediate experience1 a growing number of external moments in its present duration1 it becomes more capable of creating acts of which the inner indetermination1 spread over as large a multiplicity of the moments of matter as you please1 will pass the more easily through the meshes of necessity4 ,thus1 whether we consider it in time or in space1 freedom always seems to have its roots deep in necessity and to be intimately organized with it4 ,spirit borrows from matter the perceptions on which it feeds1 and restores them to matter in the form of movements which it has stamped with its own freedom4' ,any philosopher1 after writing or speaking some such words as these1 may well ask us to consider--when we have watched the hard-won triumph of life over so great difficulties and so many obstacles1 when we have discovered what seems to us clear evidence that it has for age upon age pursued with immeasurable power and resource a purpose which the spiritual consciousness of man is alone competent to fulfil1 and that it has thus attained in man a position of supreme advantage for this fulfilment--whether we ought not to regard ourselves as paltering with reason if we expect that pursuit and that attainment both to be in vain4 ,is life1 just where it seems in sight of final triumph1 to be overcome at the last by death8 ,why should it be overcome by this when it has vanquished so much else8 ,why1 if the world is rational1 should we expect all the ages of preparation to be brought to naught1 and the splendour of man's promise to be laid low in the grave8 ,we have to confess1 ,i think1 that reason is against this1 and that when we allow ourselves to expect or to fear such an anti-climax we are influenced rather by prejudice1 conscious or unconscious4 ,prejudice is born of our every-day dealing with things and our every-day notions about causes and about bodies4 ,we think spirit is dependent upon matter1 not as upon a living and responsive instrument of transmission and self-development to a certain necessary point of self-consolidation2 but as most things we deal with depend upon other things1 which1 as we say1 cause them1 produce them1 or make them do and be and happen4 ,we suppose all too easily that just as steam ceases when the boiler-fires are drawn1 so when the body dies life1 its product1 ceases too4 ,we see the leaves fall from the trees to perish4 ,tout passe1 tout casse1 tout lasse1--it is the common lot of things and men4 ,it is familiar--what more need be said8 ,the burden of proof lies on the man who would tell us of exceptions to the rule4 ,yet1 if and when we come to examine things and men1 do we discover any such rule applicable to men8 ,are we not all but compelled1 reading the astounding story of evolution in the light cast upon it by its culmination in man1 to question every uncriticized and easily formed opinion on a subject so complex and profound8 ,if indeed there is evidence to show that life is neither produced by nor released from matter1 but is in some sort conjoined with matter1 lifting it from its own level1 and using its powers in a way altogether different from their normal material course2 if there is evidence that these powers are made to fulfil a purpose that can be no other than a purpose for life2 then1 obviously1 matter1 in the order of power and of nature1 is life's subordinate4 ,we must1 indeed1 as reasonable beings1 correct those easy opinions--these things being thus4 ,the similes and illustrations of every day do not fit the case4 ,intimate as is the relation between spirit and matter1 there is no more reason to think life is produced by a material substance than to think the boiler-fire is produced by the steam4 ,both thoughts are equally absurd1 and perhaps the chief cause of our thinking so easily the one and of our being quite unable to think the other is that we can see and touch boilers and the like1 and cannot see and touch 'spirit and life4' ',lamps burn in every house1 ,o blind one6 and you cannot see them4 ,one day your eyes shall suddenly be opened1 and you shall see3 and the fetters of death shall fall from you4' ------- ,,chapter ,,vi ,within this earthen vessel are bowers and groves1 and within it is the ,creator3 ,within this vessel are the seven oceans and the unnumbered seas4 ,kabir4 ,when the brain dies it is resolved in the ordinary way gradually1 or may be resolved in a laboratory quickly1 into its constituents1 which the chemist may collect as water1 carbonic acid and so forth1 together with1 roughly1 a few pinches of ash4 ,nothing is lost of what1 as we say1 it was made of4 ,after death it is left to fall from its temporary high estate of power1 and travel along the line of least physical and chemical resistance to the low estate from which life had raised its matter-stuff4 ,material necessity1 such as we picture it1 then resumes its sway2 physical laws1 that is1 let us say1 established physical habits1 dominate once more4 ,but this brain1 while human life employed and profited by it1 was in vital and structural continuity with the first life-jelly that appeared upon the earth4 ,you may trace1 in the pictorial scientific way1 all its many cells to the germ-cell or egg from which the whole body sprang4 ,again1 and in the same manner1 you may trace this germ-cell1 this egg1 to another from which it was derived4 ,some scientific men will tell you that in every developing egg1 during the very first stages of its division1 cells are set apart as germ-cells to continue the race in the next generation4 ,there runs1 they will say1 through the generations of men a continuous underground river-system of protoplasm1 a continuous streaming of cells from which are thrown up at intervals jets1 as it were1 of living material which become individual lives4 ,or we may put it that as in certain plants there is a creeping root-stock hidden underground and giving origin here and there to new specimens of the plant1 so there is 7according to this opinion7 a root-stock of germinative material passing on and giving rise to body after body1 through all mankind4 ,the source of this branching1 interlacing germ-structure is in the beginnings of the world1 and the beginnings of the world are--where8 ,in the ether1 the physicist may say4 ,in the place and state from whence my elements have come1 the chemist says4 ,at present we1 studying in these pages1 are content to say that whatever the scientific details may be1 the pathway of life that we see is one1 from wherever the chemist and the physicist allow of a beginning to the place where both must own themselves confounded1 the brain of man4 ,it is well to study that brain more carefully and try to relate it with the germ-cells of the protoplasmic streams from which it arose4 ,we have to consider how it is that the brain of a son comes to resemble the brains of his parents1 when the carrier of his parents' lives to him was only that fertilized germ-cell1 a jelly with a nucleus1 to all appearances no more4 ,here we must confine our study to one problem1 that of memory1 partly because we have no space for more1 but chiefly because memory is an ',open ,sesame' to many wonders4 ,we may if we please link it with heredity1 with that passing on of characters and habits from parents to child through the comparative1 but only comparative and very misleading1 simplicity of the germ-cell4 ',the man who could penetrate into a brain1' it is said1 'and watch what happens there would very likely see it full of sketched-out movements1 there is no evidence that he would see anything else4 ,he would have no more knowledge of what was going on in the corresponding consciousness than we should have of a play were we watching the comings and goings of the actors on the stage without hearing a word of it4 ,if the play were no more than a pantomime the movements of the players would tell us nearly everything about it2 if it were a comedy of life and manners they would give us next to nothing4' ,it has been said1 too--and the simile is illuminating--that the brain is like a sort of central telephone exchange1 permitting1 delaying1 or arresting communication4 ,it is an instrument of analysis1 of hesitation and of choice2 but its office is said to be limited to the transmission and division of movement1 movement started by things outside the body and movement started from within the body4 ,the body is the conductor of these movements to and fro between objects acting upon it and objects upon which it acts4 ,only in the form of motor contrivances do brain and body1 we are told1 store up the action of the past4 ,this is a point of great importance in regard to both our own lives and our inheritance from our forerunners4 ,we may distinguish two kinds of memory2 one graven as it were in the living stuff of our body2 another enshrined and active in the fluent personal history we ourselves most really are4 ,let us see what the evolutionist philosopher has to tell us about this4 ,let us illustrate our subject after his fashion4 ,in the matter of learning by heart1 for example1 there are two facts to be noted and two memories to be distinguished4 ,when ,i know a poem by heart and can repeat it ,i say that ,i remember it4 ,but ,i say also1 perhaps1 that ,i remember the stages by which ,i came to learn it4 ,i remember1 or may remember1 occasion after occasion of my more or less successful repetition of the poem while ,i was learning it4 ,i can recall1 or may recall1 step after step of my advance towards perfectly 'remembering' it4 ,when it is learnt ,i say that it is imprinted on my memory2 but ,i may also say that the steps of my progress towards knowing the poem are in like manner imprinted on my memory4 ,yet a very little thought shows that these are two kinds of memory1 not one2 and that there are two kinds of imprinting1 not one4 ,the memory of the poem itself has every mark of an acquired habit1 even that of the disastrous effect of an interruption4 ,when ,i have repeated a poem for the twentieth time without mistake ,i may be thrown out of my declamatory stride by the banging of a door1 and become unable either to tell myself how far ,i had gone in the poem or to pick up its broken thread4 ,about a memory like this there is the mechanical look of an ingrained and almost unconscious habit4 ,it is bodily1 like the memory of a sonata for the pianist as he is playing1 a memory which seems to him rather in his fingers than in his mind4 ,but the memory of the steps and process by which ,i gradually learnt my poem is quite different4 ,that is a history1 not a habit4 ,each stage occurred only once2 no one was graven into permanence by repetition1 indeed no one was1 or could be1 ever repeated4 ,each was unique and had its own date in the history of the process and of my enduring life4 ,here is a difference indeed to be reckoned with4 ,there is a kind of memory that represents our past to us2 and there is another kind 7if it is memory at all7 that acts it4 ,i say1 emphatically1 if it is memory at all1 this latter2 for it does not really preserve the past1 it only continues into the present an effect or a result of happenings of the past4 ,in true memory history is preserved2 the history of our whole lives is preserved in our true memory4 ,but only the effects or results1 only indeed certain effects and results1 of the living real happenings in our living and real duration are graven in the body stuff as habits1 as1 if we like to call them so1 habit-memories4 ,the establishing of these memories is an affair of training and practice4 ,the brain and body have to be forced into them2 structure has to be shaped and taught1 that it may carry on automatically1 or all but automatically1 some particular mode of action4 ,and we note that the more nearly automatic these habit-memories are the better they work4 ,when the nerve-paths in the structure of the brain and body are beaten smooth by treading and retreading the work goes easily and well4 ,there is nothing whatever of this kind about the true and unlearnt memory of events in our history1 the memory which represents them4 ,but just because the habit-memory is more immediately and constantly useful to us we notice it more4 ,indeed we frame on it our familiar conception of what memory really is1 and come to regard the true memory of spontaneously arising recollections as only a bad example of the other4 ',we ignore the fundamental difference1' so we are told1 'between that which has to be built up by repetition and that which is essentially incapable of being repeated4' ,no doubt the two intermingle in every-day life and are therefore the more easily confused1 not only by our every-day and usually careless selves but even by some careful thinkers4 ,the confusion is dangerous for the thinker and the thinker in consequence becomes dangerous for us4 ,out of it has come in great part the unreasonable belief that a material brain is the storehouse of immaterial recollections1 and that these after becoming either material or1 in the physical sense1 'energetic' 7as they must be to be stored in a material or 'energetic' way71 in some altogether miraculous fashion at times take on consciousness and1 as once more immaterial recollections1 carry us into our own past4 ,to say that motor-habits1 with which when they are established consciousness may have little to do1 can be registered in a flexible motor instrument and acted over and over again1 is reasonable enough2 but that conscious recollections can thus be registered is not only a gratuitous assumption unsupported by the facts of matter or energy or life1 but is strictly incredible by any man who really knows and faces those facts4 ,it is better to know and face them with the philosopher1 and confess the reality of a spiritual life in which history endures1 as well as the reality of a living instrument in which habits are established4 ,no doubt an effort is required if we are to distinguish between the spontaneous and the habitual memories1 between the memory of spirit and the habit-memory of its living instrument1 the brain and body which together with the spirit are the man2 but the effort is well worth making4 ,it gives us a key to unlock many close-shut doors4 ,when we try to learn something 7as we are now about to do7 concerning the problem of the transmission1 through the succession of germ-cells1 of the characters that mark out men--the problem of heredity--we find a conspicuous and very interesting use for it4 ,but it has many uses besides that4 ,we can use it with advantage in dealing with all the problems concerning the relations of spirit with matter4 ,before we go on to deal with heredity we should note the value for our own lives of our ability to establish habits at all1 to inscribe records of action in our instruments of body and brain which shall be capable of an almost automatic repetition4 ,that is the way in which intellectual and bodily skill makes progress4 ,we build a stairway too for our minds and spirits as well as for our bodies1 when we lay down step after step of habitual action1 handing over to it the carrying-on of what at first we had to think out1 and then by degrees learnt to do skilfully and well almost without thought at all4 ,that is the stairway by which the pianist advances towards a perfect execution of his music and the skater mounts towards perfect execution of a figure which at first was beyond his power4 ,throughout our lives we are handing actions over to be conducted by our bodies and brains as effects of work done consciously before1 to be acted over and over again and pass beyond the need of conscious intervention1 and in the end to be carried on the better without that aid4 ,a man skates1 or plays his violin1 or writes a poem1 or rides a horse1 or walks1 or dances1 all the better when and if he does not have to think about the appropriate movements of his hands or feet or legs1 or the necessary letters of his words1 to all of which he once had to give minute attention4 ,perceptive and creative consciousness is thus set free4 ,his mind1 in its originality of creation and perceiving1 is enabled to pour itself into the instrumental habit it has laid down and infuse it with his spirit1 his poetic1 musical1 or athletic spirit4 ,he may endow his motor instrument with his graces now that it works without his conscious aid4 99 99 99 99 99 ,we approach the problem of heredity from a new direction and with new eyes4 ,let us picture to ourselves 7as has been suggested71 instead of a succession of lives1 a single life which goes on like the continuous germ-plasm of some biologists1 and never grows old or dies4 ,this one continuous life would pass through every stage of the succession of lives from the jelly-speck onwards4 ,one immortal developing creature would accomplish 7in our picture7 the whole evolution from the original protoplasm to man4 ,and this development would be effected by forming habits and rising step by step in and through and upon them4 ,is this in fact what actually has been done along the path of the ascent of species8 ,that is the question which at once springs to our lips4 ,is heredity akin to the habit-memory which is preserved in our brains and bodies8 ,there are men who tell us that the best conception of heredity they can form is something of this kind4 ,they tell us that they think of individual lives as inscribing on germ-cells1 by constant repetition1 effects of what they have done4 ,they tell us that the habit-memory of ancestral and thus communicated experience enables the baby to pump food into its mouth with that accurate adjustment of muscular means to exterior conditions and the principles of hydrostatics which it always shows4 ,they go even farther and tell us that the development of any embryo from any egg is on the same lines of unfolding the habit-memories essential to its living as it does4 ,life in progressing from the single cell learnt1 they think1 by degrees1 and consolidated its lessons into motor-habits graven in living stuff4 ,sometimes they point to the nucleus of the germ-cell as possibly the instrument for preserving these habits for other members of the race as the brain preserves less established habits for the man2 sometimes they say that the cytoplasm acts in the same way4 ,and whether we accept these suggestions or reject them we may recognize with some satisfaction that throughout the whole plan there runs the belief 7or assumption--what you will7 that function is primary1 not structure1 though structure once organized is the instrument and condition that contributes to the shaping of specific character4 ,again we find ourselves both ready and called upon to emphasize the reality and the conservative office of matter1 yet to regard it as subordinate to the reality and the initiative of life4 ,we acknowledge once more the immeasurable import for life of its relations with matter4 ,when structure is organized for function1 when habit-memories become instrumental for life1 function and life are in turn shaped by their instrument4 ,hence1 probably1 we have that condensed and fragmentary representation by the developing embryo of stages through which life passed slowly in epochs long ago1 and during which 7according to this hypothesis7 it registered the fruits of its effort1 by repetition after repetition1 in the cell4 ,the embryo chicken1 the embryo child1 both show in the course of their development signs 7for instance the gill-clefts of the fish7 of stages through which life had to pass before it became chicken or child life4 ,but they pass very quickly from sign to sign4 ',it took thousands of years to produce the first chicken1 but the hen's egg reaches the same level in three weeks4' ,each is obliged to pass these stages1 it seems2 the 'organ-forming substances' 7as some say7 of the germ-cell compel it1 or 7shall we carry our thought farther and say7 the habit-memories recorded in it must be worked out lest the creature be brought to confusion2 as the habit-memories of a pianist are and must be when he gives aright his rendering of the music he had learnt4 ,the memory-hypothesis concerning heredity does not involve the idea of compulsion or doom1 it leaves room for the creature to work out its 'own salvation' on a basis inheritance supplies4 ,it does not of itself regard the creature as doomed2 whether the child or the chick is or is not doomed depends on what it is1 that is to say1 upon the character not upon the mode of its inheritance4 ,chick-character is one of doom2 not so child-character4 ,the child1 starting from the point his race has reached as a race1 may go on in virtue of an endowment of impulsive and creative power and a flexible brain and body absent in the chick4 ,he may build his house of life1 adorning or disfiguring his inheritance with a new-made character that is his own4 ,this fruitful and interesting hypothesis of memory-inheritance may or may not stand tests that are to come4 ,but we may accept it provisionally as what it is1 sure that if it is displaced its successor will be more welcome still4 ,that is the way of science2 we pass always from good to better1 from a guess that holds for one range of facts to another that holds for more4 ------- ,,chapter ,,vii ,and is this life but the child of death8 ,then blessed also be the word ,death1 the mother of life2 ,i will no more call thee ,marah1 but ,naomi2 for thou art not bitter1 but sweet2 more pleasant1 though swifter in thy gait1 than roe or hind4 ,henry ,montague4 ,in a world of creatures where the interests of each kind are focused on the preservation of the species1 and each individual's attention and powers are in the main concentrated on the pressing need for reproduction1 and for food and shelter to maintain life in itself and its young progeny1 conflict must ensue1 a conflict of both ends and means4 ,because1 too1 in these creatures the way of life is not open1 as in man1 habit-memories may be taken as being the chief agents for ensuring both species-life and individual life1 and as dominating both their history and their character4 ,indeed the contracted world and the completed character of such creatures with rare exceptions shuts out the interests of other species4 ,hence the struggle for existence4 ,hence a nature 'red in tooth and claw1' despite the general signs of a love that of itself is ample prophecy of an enlargement beyond the bounds of such restricted interests2 despite also a general and very obvious enjoyment of life for life's own sake4 ,we must not exaggerate either pain or its significance in creatures who have neither our sensitive nervous system1 nor our ability not only to look forward and see consequences and imagine our pain prolonged and growing1 but to increase that very pain by dwelling on it and exercising in regard to it1 more than it deserves1 the magical power of attention4 ,yet if we do not exaggerate1 neither must we ignore4 ,suffering1 conflict1 death are there and must be reckoned with4 ,that the biologists of the latter part of the last century should magnify beyond due measure the place of natural selection in one regard1 that of the origin of species1 was to be expected4 ,it was a great discovery2 it filled men's minds4 ,that they minimized1 where they did not deny1 the importance of the selective1 determining and creative power of life itself was also to be expected4 ,all this last was for the time obscured for want of evidence4 ,few men indeed1 and those not biologists1 then kept a level head4 ,it is for this century to bring about a much needed balance in reckoning and in esteem4 ,natural selection means for the most part a struggle ensuring the death of the weak and the 'unfit4' ,the survival of the fittest means that those creatures survive who are best adapted to all their circumstances1 whether these are favourable or unfavourable to the maintenance of a high standard of living4 ,that 'nature' may carry out selection it is necessary that there shall be no outside interference1 say of man1 able to stave off death1 whether of the individual or of the race4 ,death1 you see1 is the protagonist in this biological play1 or rather the mainspring of the machine4 ,and1 undoubtedly1 death is not only conspicuous in nature but is of profound significance for life4 ,is it or is it not also of value in a sense surpassing that which the biologist acknowledges8 ,ought we to look upon it as the enemy or as the friend of life8 ,one thing is plain4 ,those men of science who saw it as protagonist were right in thinking that by the death1 that is1 by the natural selection1 of the unfit from among the fit1 the survival of useful variations may be assisted4 ,death1 of course1 cannot have anything to do directly with the originating of better lives 7that is of better accommodated lives71 but once they have come into being it can help to keep them in the ascendant as begetters of their kind4 ,natural selection has its use--shall we say its value8--for the advance of life4 ,need we be surprised at this1 we who have a more than scientific sense of values and have discovered purpose8 ,need we be surprised to find death a friend to life1 seeing it everywhere8 ,matter is life's friend as well as means and hindrance4 ,so too is death4 ,let us consider the beginning of death on the earth2 that is1 of natural1 not of merely accidental death4 ,for it had a beginning1 not coeval with the coming of life4 ,there are living creatures now who normally escape it1 who die only by accident1 are1 in fact1 if they die1 always killed4 ,there are creatures alive now whose years are to be numbered by thousands upon thousands upon thousands1 yet who have never grown old4 ,the ,pyramids of ,egypt are of yesterday compared with the amoeba in the nearest pond4 ,the manner of life of a one-celled creature is this3 it grows1 and when it has grown to a size presumably inconvenient it divides into two creatures1 both of which1 obviously1 are the same age4 ,the creature itself becomes two instead of remaining one4 ,the two creatures who were one repeat the process and become four4 ,the four become eight and so on to the end of the earth4 ,none die naturally1 and when or if the end of the earth and of themselves is reached they will all be killed and every one of them will be of the same age2 but none will be aged4 ,they will be cut off1 these naturally immortal creatures1 in unimpaired maturity and the perfection of their structure and functions4 ,but1 you observe1 if life on earth had not passed beyond the one-celled condition it would never1 to our minds 7if our minds could have been arrived at in some other sphere71 have been worth living4 ,all the potency and promise of life which have slowly been revealed through the improvement of its creaturely medium would have remained hidden behind the screen of those immortal jellies4 ,life began to create a new engine of advance when cell and cell were built up together1 and the many-celled creatures started on their mortal and masterful career4 ,for1 note1 the aggregation of cells in an organized body precludes their individual immortality4 ,they become differentiated and associated for special purposes and they lose the opportunity of preserving life by continuous division4 ,they are mutually imprisoning1 they grow old1 in time they die--they must die4 ,life1 in beginning this advance1 embraced inevitable death4 ,death1 if you like1 is the price--if indeed it should be counted a price and not a boon--that we pay for freedom to live as what we are and to become what we shall be4 ,the immortal amoeba is after all a slave4 ,it is this creature that manifestly pays a price1 one at which no man of us would buy immunity from death4 ,there are many values and orders to be considered2 and for the highest values and order of living1 for the magnificent possibilities open to spiritual attainment1 who would not barter an earthly immortality which should erect a barrier that spirit could not pass8 ,but then we come to another consideration4 ,is death itself a barrier spirit cannot pass8 ,all that ,i have written hitherto in these pages is directed towards an answer to that question4 ,what should make us change the cumulative ',no' which our study of the processes and character of life forces to our lips8 ,already we human creatures1 incomplete though we are1 reveal life as an impulsive1 enriching and creative power given in us and become ourselves--a power by which we may continue the line of a direct advance and pass on in a creative evolution which reasonably should have no end4 ,what wonders may we not reveal1 what wonders may we not discover thus1 in that advance8 ,but only if for the true life that is ourselves1 the life which as ours is manifest in its use of body and brain and of the inheritance they bring1 there is a triumph over the last of the many obstacles it encounters upon earth4 ,for1 let there be no mistake1 the immortality of the race upon earth1 even if it be possible1 is not enough to satisfy reason and accord with the promise of every individual man as what he is for himself1 and in his own special relation and contribution to the well-being of the whole4 ,each man becoming as he should become has his own peculiar value1 each his own spontaneity and continuous creative power4 ,if he is lost all this comes to an end1 and the world of men is the poorer for want of what he might have given4 ,there is no shifting of our reasonable demand for the conquest of death from the individual man to his race1 even if 7as is not so much as probable7 his race does not die in the cooling or drying or heating of his earth4 ,after all1 what is 'this body of death' from which every man must part8 ,it is1 we declare1 his medium of transmission and the motor and sensory instrument and condition by means of which he had both inherited a foundation upon which to build his own life1 and entered into relations with an outside world of things and persons4 ,chemically and physically it is a stream of particles always passing away1 always being renewed1 at one rate or another4 ,the few particles unchanged during his life are not actively sharing his life2 they are only its physical supports4 ,whatever shares his life changes4 ,this stream that his food and the air and the water make1 he takes up1 transforms1 uses and dismisses4 ,all his life long he is dying bodily1 and is growing1 or should be growing1 spiritually4 ,death is for him the finishing of a process in his body that has always gone on1 the final casting away of material elements he has always cast away when he had done with them4 ,and meanwhile1 in the spiritual duration of his life1 its minister the body has consolidated his self-conscious unity1 so that he dies1 or should die1 a true owner of his real and true and valuable self4 ,for this end earthly life seems to the eye of reason ever to have been striving4 ,is its striving to be finally in vain8 ,everything that we have considered in these pages declares the unlikeliness of that4 ,is a man then to pass from this world bodiless1 as some of the ancients thought8 ,to be able to offer a tentative answer to this question we must go back to one of our earlier chapters and remind ourselves of the ether which1 the physicist says1 interpenetrates all the molecules of our body now1 and is the medium of communication everywhere through the systems of the worlds4 ,may ,i think of the ether1 then1 as being in my body the medium of communication between me1 as spiritual life and consciousness1 and the material elements and structures of my body8 ,if the comparatively coarse granular matter of the chemist's colloids and the protoplasmic speck shows such a congruity with my life as makes it fit to live in me and be the bearer to me of ancestral habits1 may ,i not think that a still closer congruity exists between this ether and my life8 ,and1 again1 is it not possible1 or even likely1 that it is through the ether of my body that ,i influence its matter and its matter influences me8 ,if these things are so1 then my ether-body is more fully mine and more closely bound to me than is my matter-body4 ,i think of myself passing at death into1 or discovering myself in1 an ethereal country where my ethereal body shall serve me even better than my matter-body serves me in this matter-country4 ,and if this thought seems the plain man's plain thought about the physicist's hypothesis and is condemned for that1 ,i retort that the plain man through his rejection of constraint by specialism1 and by ideal or abstract schemes which flout the wholeness of experience1 is coming now into his own in science1 in philosophy and in religion4 ,he has his rights and is taking possession of them in a new fashion and with new significance4 ,one thing more ,i think of4 ,the physicist says that what he calls 'bound ether1' that is ether within the spaces of a material thing1 differs in its character from the free ether of the interstellar spaces4 ,he has been able to prove this1 he says1 by experiments on the transmission of light through ether 'bound' in water4 ,what more do ,i want8 ,the ether changes in character from association with matter in a body4 ,i see it in my mind's eye changed by constant association with my brain and limbs and with my active consciousness as it could never be changed in water4 ,am ,i right1 ,i wonder8 ,shall ,i see some day how it has been changed8 ,shall ,i see my more intimate body revealed and know it and myself raised to high estate8 ,however this may be1 the life that made for itself body after body on earth1 conquering the habits and reluctances of matter that it might use it for a spiritual purpose1 is possessed of a creative and organizing power to which no man should dare to set bounds1 and which by me at least shall be trusted to the end4 ,that which builds from the egg the chicken1 and from the first jelly-specks all the races of the globe1 must still be capable of looking after me--if ,i am worth it4444 ,i am bold enough and plain man enough to say with the poet1-- ',into the audience hall by the fathomless abyss where swells up the music of toneless strings ,i shall take this harp of my life4' ------- ,,chapter ,,viii ,the soul needs only to open the door4 ,boehme4 ,by the establishing of habit-memories in the nervous structures of man consciousness is liberated for another and1 if the man will1 a nobler use4 ,the instrument may be forgotten1 the work goes on4 ,this liberation of the spirit from attention to modes of activity and actions that can be automatically or almost automatically carried on is among life's greatest triumphs4 ,and the triumph is indefinitely extended in man's peculiar relation to his tools1 and through the peculiar character of both his tools and his tool-making4 ,an animal's tools are parts of its body2 they are stings1 claws1 fangs and so on4 ,some of the tools of man are also parts of his body2 but there are others1 not his natural organs1 by which its instrumentality is extended--and that1 you may say1 without signs of coming to an end4 ,it seems as though life had a sort of prophetic instinct in this business2 for primitive man was driven to search for these new tools by his lack of organic armament of either the offensive or the defensive kind4 ,he had no protective shield like the armadillo or the crab2 and even the scanty covering of hair1 which contrasted so ill with the close fur of his cousins1 grew scantier still1 until it became altogether useless against rain or cold or storm4 ,he had no claws1 no tusks1 worth considering as weapons of offence2 but he had a desirous and adventurous mind1 and both by his necessities and his mind he was driven to the making of tools4 ,he owned also one very remarkable natural tool4 ,he had an archaic five-fingered hand inherited from his amphibian ancestors1 which had not been specialized into a wing or a shaft ending in a hoof or a paw--a hand plastic1 mobile1 delicate and sensitive1 a very 'instrument of instruments' for a creature opening wide the gate for life4 ,we are apt to think of this beautiful tool of ours as highly specialized4 ,it is not2 it was preserved unspecialized from the amphibian stage throughout a long pre-human history1 as though life had indeed foreseen just what was coming and knew that its versatility would make it the worthy partner of man's versatile brain4 ,let us put it that way4 7,or let us say that it was a happy accident4 ,as you please2 anyhow the fact remains47 ,the result was that man possessed a natural tool beautifully adaptable for making and using many and various artificial tools4 ,and there was not another creature upon earth that had not either spoilt its hand for those various uses by specializing it for some narrow use1 or like the monkeys and the apes1 had no brain to match4 ,man specialized his feet1 as the monkeys and the apes did not2 he left his multifarious hand alone4 ,by means of this hand he projected into space the powers of his body and his mind4 ,he began1 no doubt1 with sticks and stones2 he went on to strings2 and from sticks and stones and strings he passed to telescopes with which he reached new stars1 spectroscopes with which he saw what they were made of1 telegraphs and telephones through which his speech and hearing stretched out from land to land1 and destructive machines by which his delicate fingers shattered and blasted with the power of a thousand storms4 ,these things and more he has done2 and all the tools he has used are extensions of both his body and his mind4 ,so too are the industrial machines by which he manufactures 7note the word7 what his newly-complicated needs demand of clothes and food and furniture and the like4 ,so too are the astounding machines which make for him other and different machines4 ,and everywhere we see that in the advance of his tool-devising he draws nearer to making those which will work either without his aid or with very little of it4 ,his tools grow more and more automatic1 more and more saving of the labour of mind4 ,he makes1 you may say1 artificial habit-bearers1 motor-structures by which the devices of his mind are carried into action independent of his mind1 as other devices are through his nervous system and his muscular limbs4 ,thus he follows the example set him by life in its organizing of living tools4 ,and we ought to tell ourselves 7parenthetically7 at this point that the one reasonable and worthy use of all our machinery is just this--to follow the example of life not only in the actual organizing but in the purpose and meaning of organization4 ,we ought to acknowledge to ourselves that unless our machinery liberates the mind and spirit of man to serve better and more freely his spiritual needs it will of a certainty enslave him4 ,at present1 because most of us are in the dark as to the direction in which life strives to conduct us1 machinery is used to emancipate the few and to enslave the many4 ,we do not know what we are doing1 we do not understand what the primacy of spirit means or should mean for us all4 ,we do not know how we ought to grow1 every one of us1 in the natural1 that is1 in the spiritual way4 ,why do ,i venture to say that in the spiritual way we ought to grow8 ,and what in fact is that spiritual way8 ,do life and experience point out the way and emphasize the 'ought'8 ,here we come to the gist of our whole inquiry4 ,if in looking back along the road on which1 in these chapters1 we have been trying to pick out stage after stage1 we discern a governing purpose and the foreshadowing of an end2 and if we also discern not only the possibility but also the means1 through intellect and intuition1 through action and feeling and thought1 of identifying ourselves with that purpose and throwing the energy of our own lives into furthering it1 we shall see both the ought and the way4 ,we shall dimly discern1 too1 the promise of the end1 although we do not and cannot yet know what we shall be4 ,from the moment when the life-current driving onward and overcoming one by one the reluctances of matter along the genealogical ascent to man1 reached him--homo faber1 the skilful tool-maker1 homo sapiens1 the able thinker--from that moment the sublime purpose of all that had gone before began to be revealed4 ,the advance of life's main stream in all its variety of operation shows1 from the beginning until now1 one character and motive-principle4 ,it begins1 as we have said1 by subduing to its purpose the inveterate habits of material elements1 those habits we speak of as physical necessity and law1 raising their status that they may be servants in new power to a freedom foreign to themselves4 ,from subduing and assembling elements within cells it passes to the assembling of cells and lifts up these in their turn to higher place4 ,they play their part in a commonwealth2 they are servants whose habits1 like those of matter1 further the cause of a freedom they cannot reach4 ,their own relative necessity is subdued and used through their coperating4 ,they promote what they neither see nor know4 ,finally they reach their highest function in a man's brain1 where they coperate to carry power to an incalculably various use4 ,there it is that life1 by a very splendour of new emancipation1 passes1 as the philosopher says1 'through the meshes of necessity1' passes through that net the cords of which it has itself both spun and knotted from the refractory substance of material things4 ,man comes into his heritage4 ,he inherits1 we may allow ourselves to say1 from the habits of elements and from the habit-memories of cells1 single and corporate4 ,he inherits from the habit-memories of every living creature in his ancestry4 ,and each habit-memory of them all has contributed to his setting free4 ,now he is so far master that life has put into his hands the choice between a greater freedom still towards which its impulsive purpose has been directed from the first1 and a new slavery that the man himself is able to make for himself4 ,for--and surely we need to note this for our warning--the conduct and determination of life1 which is in some small measure in the power of every creature within its manner of life1 is given over to man2 and the next step in emancipation is for him to take or leave as he will4 ,he may dominate the whole chain of habits and go forward2 or he may wind it about him and entangle his spirit in its fetters4 ,matter1 his body1 the habits or habit-memories he inherits or makes for himself1 all these may either be instruments of his growing liberation or machines that turn him to the likeness of themselves4 ,the pianist who has wrought his music into the living instrumentality of his fingers may leave his fingers to work as mechanism1 or he may pour into their established habit the riches and beauty of an artistic soul4 ,thus it is with all the heritage and possessions of a man4 ,he may submit to them as to a constraining mechanism and grow mechanical himself1 or he may infuse them with his spirit and raise them and himself to that further altitude which spirit seeks4 ,we may well say of some men that they are the slaves of habit2 we may well think more than we do of the many kinds of habit to which men may be slaves4 ,to look on heredity as an affair of transmitted habit-memories is to discover our true relation with it1 once we have come to see what the spiritual memory of an enduring and accumulating spiritual life1 lived according to its proper meaning1 may be for man4 ,in the chick the inherited habit-memory of its race is as the boundary wall of cellulose is for the plant-cell2 in the child it is a standing ground from which1 while his creative spirit stirs within him1 he surveys the kingdoms of a world4 ,in the man1 like the habits he himself builds up1 it may come to be a hill-top from which he looks down upon all those kingdoms and their glory4 ,life incurred death when first the cells were summoned out of solitude to work together in a body4 ,and here1 too1 it is as though it foresaw what was coming1 saw in a vision a creature come to being who should have life in himself and be divinely discontent1 seeking to go on4 ,it is hard to think that a creative impulse beginning so low down1 so humbly1 and yet purposive enough and skilful and potent enough to reach the immeasurable wonder and promises of man1 should ever have been blind1 or in the last resort should be no more and no greater than himself4 ------- ,,chapter ,,ix ,the human animal desires to escape from its animal prison by means of all kinds of love1 by freedom of emotion no less than of action and thought4 ,and it attains to the freedom of emotion when it is aware of beauty4 ,it cannot be aware of beauty except in self-forgetfulness1 and it cannot produce beauty except in self-forgetfulness4 ,arthur ,clutton-,brock4 ,no doubt the great question for any man in regard to himself--if he is able and willing to put one so searching--is whether he is or is not on the way to aid in the fulfilment of the promise of life4 ,it is a question hard to answer1 for the promise of life grows ever greater in our eyes once we have begun to see it at all4 ,there was a time when for our ancestors of the caves it must have called for little more than strength and skill1 courage and perseverance1 in attack or in defence and in the procuring of shelter1 food and wives4 ,the bitter struggle in which they were engaged was a real struggle for existence in which every man must fight for his own hand1 or at best for his little group of near kindred4 ,there were not many differences then between the practical demands of the daily life of men and those of the daily life of the hyenas or the wolves4 ,but there were other differences1 and they were great and significant4 ,one in particular has left a wealth of evidence behind it1 evidence graven and painted in certain caverns4 ,there are bisons1 for example1 painted by some of the men whom we call primitive1 or savage1 which are of the truest art4 ,there is no such difference and no such likeness between those bisons and the artistic work of to-day as there is between the flint-headed arrow and the machine-gun4 ,the arrow and the gun are products of an intellectual ingenuity1 practising and becoming expert through practice and concentrated on the external relations of thing with thing2 the painting comes of a direct intuition of the reality and the essential beauty in a bison's life4 ,they are alive for us1 those bisons1 and they are beautiful4 ,their creator was a true artist1 able to throw himself into the object he wished to discover1 to feel and to depict2 and he was able to endow his picture with the bison's life and his own4 ,if you are in aesthetic sympathy with him you can feel the creature he paints as you feel the man painting4 ,the intellect that devised the arrow has always to travel onward by an accumulating process1 from step to step2 the intuition that felt the bison arrived at once4 ,no doubt there is not only intellect but intuition in the arrow2 and there is not only intuition but intellect in the painting2 but the emphasis and the proportion are contrasted in the two4 ,why did this primitive artist paint at all8 ,there are those who suggest that he had some practical end in view to be reached by the magic of representation--an idea perhaps of thus ensuring luck for his hunting4 ,but at least that can hardly be true of the graceful form and the conventional adornment he gave to some of his tools4 ,it is far more likely that even if he began with magic and a practical end he went on to paint for the pure joy of it1 the pure spiritual joy of inspired admiration glowing to a creative act1 and winning admiration in its display4 ,that is the manner of art--even to the delight in its being admired by those to whom it is made known--and this man's work is the work of an artist4 ,i should say these men's work is the work of artists1 for there were many of them in many generations4 ,there was not merely a single eccentric genius--though even one would have sufficed us for a revelation4 ,here then1 in these caverns1 we have a kind of work done by many men1 who1 however much they looked for admiration from their fellows1 worked in something of the self-forgetfulness of an artist2 so we may presume4 ,the man who pursued it did not in any lesser way profit by it 7unless his fellows were self-forgetful enough to pay him for the joy he gave1 and that only extends and strengthens the case72 but he assuredly profited in his spirit1 which there found its outlet as creative1 there showed its self-forgetting love of something beyond self1 there in consequence found its joy4 ,the true artist paints or sings for the love of it1 and because he must2 and wins his joy1 even though in and with the artist's pain1 and the man's self-seeking4 ,the spirit within him drives him on2 no outward necessity1 no carnal attraction1 no mere self-seeking1 is adequate to force or draw him4 ,art1 however skilled and taught1 however marred by human weakness1 is spontaneous as love4 ,we are in presence here of that of which only faint adumbrations can be discerned in any other creature than man4 ,there are adumbrations2 and there is at least a plain foreshadowing of love4 ,but full and lasting self-forgetfulness is to be attained only in man1 and true art and true love1 like true joy1 depend upon it4 99 99 99 99 99 ,the declared promise for the further advance of life in us demands and displays growth in self-forgetfulness4 ,the man who strikes us as being above other men is one who shows us powers other men either have not or do not use1 and uses them as other men very often do not use them4 ,he is always stamped with the stamp of spirit4 ,he is creative and he is self-forgetful4 ,we do not really1 or at least readily and spontaneously1 admire any man who does things from self-interested motives4 ,we may admire the things he does1 but we do not admire the man4 ,if1 for example1 we are religious ourselves1 and however much we wish other people to be so too1 we do not admire the man who1 we know1 is religious because he sees his profit in religion either for this world or the next4 ,we do not admire the kind of artist who clutches at beauty because it feeds that deadly appetite which is no other than aesthetic greed4 ,we want him to admire a beautiful thing for its own sake1 because it is what it is and is altogether admirable4 ,and no lover holds our respect if for him his beloved is merely a curio to be proud of or a satisfaction of the flesh4 ,we say justly that he is only a lover of himself4 ,to command our admiration a man must stretch out his desire and enlarge his interests beyond the boundary of self2 he must give himself1 not necessarily without reward--for the joy set before him often comes--but without making the attainment of it a motive spring4 ,that simple fact proves the spirits that we are4 ,and it is shown in strange places4 ,even the leader of the gang of thieves wins admiration by his carelessness of personal gain4 ,robin ,hood is always both honourable and honoured1 though he steals4 ,think then how much life had gained in power of expression when the painters of the caves were reached4 ,yet the philosopher reminds us that indeed this gain began with the beginning of love4 ,self-forgetfulness began before man came to show himself called by spirit and life to die daily4 ,yet in and by him they call with an emphasis and solemnity new in the tale of creation4 ,he is to die to the struggle and the desire to live2 he is to give himself and grow by self-giving4 ,that is his proper way4 ,not without reason does the philosopher tell us that the supreme secret of life begins to be revealed in the plant which surrenders its own life for its seed4 ,but if we ignore the far plainer voice of man1 how can we hear what has been whispered by the plant8 ,if we are made mechanical by slavery to our own tools how can we discern either8 ,and unless we listen with the ears of our intuitive soul we shall never hear what it is that they are saying4 ,unless we immerse ourselves in the current of the spirit1 unless we confide ourselves to the life that would bear us on1 we shall miss the fulfilment of our promise4 ,the whole long weary road of life has been travelled on our behalf in vain1 unless through the adventure of self-giving we become unceasing spiritual creators of greater selves than those we are now4 ------- ,,chapter ,x ,if thou hast union now1 thou shalt have it hereafter4 ,kabir4 ,without social life no one of the peculiarly human powers of a man comes to fruition4 ,he may chatter1 for example2 he cannot speak4 ,he has all the necessary organs and all the necessary power1 but man-language is part of an inheritance stored up for him in community life4 ,it is stored up there1 just as clinging with his hands and sucking with his lips are stored up ready for him at birth1 in his body4 ,society is for him an immense extension of his body1 and therefore a further means of extension for his spirit4 ,it is also an immense extension of the bodies and spirits of other men with whom he may enter upon relations4 ,you may look on it as supplying a brain common to all men which all may use together1 and in which their activities should find not only a recording medium but an unfailing stimulus and contributory aid4 ,but the social brain is in a peculiar sense men's own making1 as free and capable creators4 ,they have come to be owners of life and directors of its course in a degree they certainly had not attained when their bodily brains were slowly growing to be what they are4 ,this brain of theirs1 used in community1 is as truly built by their own efforts as are the houses in which they live4 ,the evolution of man has to all intents of spirit ceased to advance by changes in his body1 but it goes on by incessant change and enormous amplification in his community life4 ,here1 too1 in this many-bodied and many-souled community1 as well as in the individual man's life1 function determines structure4 ,but function has there become self-conscious and world-conscious1 aware of the many bodies and the many souls1 aware of their needs and dangers1 aware of their giving and their gaining4 ,men have societies within the community such as on the whole their conscious desires and purposes1 their attitude towards their fellows1 their sense of responsibility and obligations1 their aims and ideals1 demand4 ,we have indeed the societies we deserve4 ,we may well ask ourselves why we deserve to have them as they are2 we may well say to ourselves--',prisoner1 tell me1 who was it that wrought this unbreakable chain8' ,and the answer is clear1 convicting not only of error but of what some of us have learnt to know as actual sin1 sin against the call and promise of life4 ',it was ,i1 said the prisoner 444 when at last the work was done and the links were complete and unbreakable1 ,i found that it held me in its grip4' 99 99 99 99 99 ,there are other societies besides those of men4 ,some are far more completely organized4 ,the bees and the ants have carried social organization to a state of harmony and of adjustment to ends which is as strongly marked in its contrast with any that human societies present1 as is the triumphant surgery of the solitary wasp by contrast with the blunders of an untrained man4 ,in 'the civility of these little citizens' society is carried to a completeness corresponding with that of the life of the creatures who are its parts4 ,in an ant-hill or a hive we have before us1 some may say1 a model of what a society should be4 ,perfect co-operation1 complete subordination of individual to social ends1 the highest possible working efficiency of each and all--it sounds well1 and no one can deny that for bees and ants it works well4 ,would it work equally well for men8 ,the answer we give to this question will depend on two things4 ,it will depend first on whether we think that men are or are not competent to advance1 and are aided to advance1 as beings not only spiritual in essential character and purpose1 but self-creative and so able to reach both an efficiency beyond all constraint by institutions and machines1 and an enlargement of community-life which shall embrace society upon society in all their diverse modes4 ,secondly1 it will depend on whether we are or are not willing to organize any society by what used to be called biological methods1 that is by the methods of the arena--of the 'gladiators' show4' ,if we decide on the gladiators' show and a social efficiency with no further outlook than a highly superior human ant-hill's1 we pronounce ourselves believers that in principle the ant-hill manner of life with its isolation of society from society will work for men4 ,we may be wrong even in a short view or a narrow view of man's capacities and existence2 we are certainly wrong if spiritual progress lies before him as a glorious prospect not only for this man or society of men here1 or another there1 but for all men as members of an all-containing community made one only by an all-containing principle4 ,in face of the promise and adventure of life we are as certainly wrong in giving consent to the ant-hill principle for society as we should be if we consented to exchange our own pregnant incompleteness for the perfection of the ant4 ,yet we of the modern civilized nations of ,europe and ,america have been far too much influenced of late years1 not only by our animal inheritance and the passions that we share with 'ape and tiger1' but by what is now a powerful tradition and in the last century was a new force--the mechanistic conception of social life4 ,our reasoning about society1 our social science1 even our social practices1 have by this tradition been made not only more materialistic--many of us know that--but more plausibly mechanistic4 ,it has seemed to us that we have science and nature both on our side1 in trusting less to the initiative of life and more to its organization of circumscribed institutions and ordered means4 ,we have taken a biological hypothesis far too seriously4 ,and no doubt we have done this in great part because it has enabled us to leave uncriticized1 or even to justify1 habitual ways of acting and thinking which have about them still the taint of the pit from which we have been digged4 ,these ways of ours were laid down for us in the long effort of each man to keep his footing on earth for himself and for the few he recognized as his own2 but we have made them both more difficult and more dangerous by loading ourselves with a burden of perverted or artificial needs which not only call for perverted or artificial means to satisfy them1 but set us in opposition to other men from whom we wrest their satisfaction4 ,those ways and this burden are proper to a creature who in very truth is seeking so to encumber life as to prevent its carrying him on1 so to contract his own life as to prevent its intermingling with the lives of others4 ,in short they are proper to one who is arresting life in himself as it has been arrested in the tiger or the ant4 ,it will be arrested at a higher point--that is all2 and it will be consciously arrested by the conscious building up of an obstacle far more serious than death4 ,therefore it is no mere failure2 it is sin--sin against the true nature of human life4 ,the mechanistic theories of biology1 which have helped to confirm men in an evil course1 are fast being discredited4 ,with them will go a false philosophy which has been widely current of late and has had an influence reaching far beyond an acquaintance with its authors' names4 ,critical and careful biologists are now undoubtedly doing much to effect this salutary change4 ,yet1 may be1 we shall be driven to call some of their opponents 7as has been prophesied7 by the bad name of necrologists1 that we may perhaps shock them into self-knowledge4 ,it is a name only too grievously appropriate now1 since the picture of natural evolution they have1 all innocently1 drawn has not only foreshadowed1 but contributed to fill1 the grave-yard of the peoples dug in the great war4 ,we are changing this baleful picture2 we are learning too1 partly in consequence1 that the self-interest of utilitarian economists and the ruthless search for individual advantage which social mechanists have commended are not the mainsprings of evolution4 ,of far greater1 more lasting1 and more profound significance and effect than the self-interested struggle for existence among animals and plants has been the species-interest to which self-interest has been subordinated4 ,a creature must first eat and only afterwards reproduce2 but this in no way justifies us in thinking that competition for food is charged with more meaning in the long story of life than the protective care of parents for their offspring and the eminently natural self-sacrifice it involves4 ,progress among both animals and vegetables has been secured more by 'species maintaining' efforts than by a mere self-seeking struggle for self-restricted ends4 ,it is a recognition of this fact that makes a distinguished biologist say1 ',the ideal of evolution is thus no gladiator's show1 but an ,eden2 and although competition can never be wholly eliminated 444 it is much for our pure natural history to see no longer struggle1 but love as creation's final law4' ---------------------------------------- -------------------------------- ,,part ,,ii ------- ,,chapter ,i ,if the doors of perception were cleansed1 everything would appear to man as it is1 infinite4 ,for man has closed himself up1 till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern4 ,blake4 ,as we looked at chlorophyll1 at colloids and the sea-urchin's egg1 so let us look at ,christian habits and beliefs4 ,and in the first place we will fix our attention on the central 'mystery' of worship in the ,christian ,church4 ,all the world over and from the first days of ,christian apostles and brethren1 a man going into one of their places of assembly would at some hour or another find their devotion apparently gathered about common1 familiar1 bread and wine1 or1 sometimes1 bread alone4 ,they would tell him that this bread 'is no longer common bread4' ,nevertheless1 in the ordinary or the scientific sense1 it is1 just as much 'common bread' as chlorophyll is the common colouring matter of the green wheat4 ,they will tell him1 too1 that it is a 'sacramental' means of communion between ,god and themselves and between them and ,christ1 the ,anointed ,son of ,god4 ,just as we insist scientifically upon the fact that chlorophyll is the meeting-point between the power of the sun and our living selves1 so ,christians insist that the sacramental bread1 whatever else it is or does1 constitutes a meeting-point between them and ,god and his ,christ4 ,no doubt 7they may say1 if they understand such matters71 for the mathematical physicist1 bread1 like everything else1 may be finally reduced to a series of dynamical equations4 ,or it may be taken as ether and electrons2 or as hydrogen1 carbon1 oxygen and so forth2 or1 roughly1 as what it comes to be at last1 gases1 water1 and dust1 like the bodies of us all4 ,but each of these ways of looking at bread manifestly1 even to the mind of that scientific man1 leaves out something of its richness and fails to reckon with its use and purpose for life4 ,by ordinary persons it is known as the 'staff' of life2 and these ordinary persons1 when they say it is this1 are speaking poetry4 ,in fact if you are to do justice to bread you must be something of an artist2 you do it gross injustice--that is1 you leave out of your account the most valuable thing about it--when you do not go beyond the scientific man's idealistic or abstract summing up4 ,the poet's vision does better when he mates in the corn and the grape the glories of the sun and the expectancy of earth1 and sees the bringing forth and revealing and communicating1 through the grain and the wine1 of a concealed and straining life4 ,but the philosopher also has his contribution to a fulness of justice4 ,he insists1 after his manner1 on 'spirit and life'2 he disdains mechanism2 he opens gates that science cannot pass1 and shows that all real things have depth it cannot reach--a third dimension where it has discovered only two4 ,he solidifies the schematic diagrams of the scientific man and gives reasons for the faith of the religious man1 who goes further still4 ,here in the ,christian ,sacrament1 where the ,christian says that the fullest justice is done to bread and wine in lifting them up to be a means of communion between ,god and man1 science and philosophy1 religion and art1 may meet together4 ,for nearly two thousand years ,christians have seen in 'this bread' of theirs matter impenetrated by spirit1 and raised by it into another and a higher order4 ,they have held to a doctrine of both in which neither was despised1 or thought of as deceiving or unreal4 ,materialistic thought and theory1 abstract spiritualism1 all theories or doctrines that cut the world of experience in two with a rationalizing hatchet1 have been powerless to loosen their hold4 ,matter informed and transformed by spirit2 spirit pre-eminent over and including matter--these have been cardinal and inevitable implications in the sacramental worship of ,christians4 ,cardinal and inevitable1 too1 is1 in consequence1 their view of the world as an affair of order superposed on order in a nature capable of being raised to the height of that which they call the supernatural1 an earth that may become a new earth1 a city of men that should rise to the noble state of a ,city of ,god4 99 99 99 99 99 ,we look back on the chemist's colloid that becomes1 as protoplasm1 no longer common colloid but one from which a world of living creatures has arisen4 ,we see again a wonderful life informing and transforming matter1 pre-eminent over it yet dependent on and manifesting through it4 ,we see the chlorophyll of the plant raising chemical elements to a new order of being1 and life in its onward march from order to order of manifesting consciousness1 attaining at last man1 creative in his spiritual freedom and dominance4 ,we see that a ,christian might point to man himself as the summing up of outward and visible signs and an inward and spiritual grace which science has made known1 as reasonably as he may take bread as the central symbol of his worship4 ,and he may tell us1 or we may tell him1 that these things are one--that there is everywhere 'continuity of process with the emergence of real differences' in a world that is 'sacramental' from its lowest to its highest order1 from the speck of jelly to man4 ,he and we both may see it as a world of outward and visible signs1 each manifesting what the ,christian names 'an inward and spiritual grace1' and we name--how do we name it8 ,so far1 only life1 mysterious and mysteriously potent1 communicating and communicated life4 ,we are encouraged to consider1 further1 this name and its meaning for us and above all in us4 ,in us1 we justly say1 life is really different from what it is in the plant4 ,we are 'persons'2 plants are not4 ,life in us is personal1 in the plant it is less than personal4 ,but it is life1 all the same and all through1 from the impersonal to us1 different though we assuredly are from the impersonal4 ,and we can hardly escape asking ourselves whether1 as they are now1 men are of the highest order of real difference among the different orders embraced in the potency of life4 ,can life do no more and better1 seeing that it has done so much8 ,is it1 in itself1 no more and better8 ,the ,christian answers these questions without one moment of hesitation4 ,he says that 'the ,holy ,ghost1' the divine ,spirit and ,lord1 is the ',giver of ,life'2 and that there is an order of life in which this ,lord and ,giver is brought into personal relations with us1 communicating with and communicated to us2 so that by this communication we are raised beyond the state of children of earth and of the merely earthly life1 to the high place of ,sons of ,god1 who know their ,father and are at one with each other and with him4 ,if there is a thorough-going evolutionist anywhere it is the ,christian4 ,and it is his sacramental doctrine that gives consistency and persistence to his evolutionary convictions1 if and when they are consistent and persistent4 ,at times they are neither4 ,at times the ,christian1 like the rest of us1 fails to see the grandeur and universality of his own deepest principles4 ,and then he belies them in word and deed2 and his picture of the world of men and things is false to them and to himself4 ,it is these deepest principles that the enquirer should search out4 ,when he has caught one glimpse of them he should thereby be strengthened against the falsifications that are offered him either by ,christians or their contemners4 ,great principles are there1 for his vision and enlightening4 ,and in them he will find his own raised to a higher power4 ,his evolution is then carried beyond the point where it so abruptly and unsatisfactorily breaks off4 ,his potent life is there borne upward to the meeting-place with a ,lord and a ,giver of life4 ,his personal1 self-conscious and world-conscious1 loving and self-sacrificing man1 the crown of his evolutionary process1 comes face to face with the source and fulfilment of all that he is and all that he so brokenly promises to be4 ,man himself crowns the sacramental world and is its greatest sacrament1 revealing as in a glass darkly and by foretelling1 the fulness of beauty and glory in all its grace4 ,and the ,christian points to one man as above all other men in the revealing office of mankind4 ,he says that this man in no way distorts the beauty and glory given him2 that in him very ,god is made known in and as very man4 ,here1 plainly1 the sacramental principle reaches its supreme height1 and is taken beyond detail after detail to a wholeness covering every detail4 ,if any one man is thus the unclouded revelation of ,god in terms of man1 then it is true--as the ,christian says it is--that the whole world of men and things is best1 most faithfully and fully1 stated1 reasoned about1 interpreted1 through this man4 ,every particle of the bread we eat becomes for us no longer 'common bread4' ,it is bread shown for what it really is in the plan and process of ,god as these are made present to us1 alive1 pregnant of glory and beauty and power1 in the living revelation of ,jesus ,christ4 99 99 99 99 99 ,the ,christian sets his consecrated bread apart from all the rest of bread and things1 and1 we must own1 he does well4 ,for men see all things as in a glass darkly1 and we are1 most of us1 the slaves of habit and victims of familiarity4 ,what is everywhere and always soon comes to be nowhere and never for our interest and our attention4 ,if the ,christian had not kept as a rare thing1 a thing enthroned1 the bread that is for him no longer common bread1 he would of a certainty often1 if not for ever1 have lost hold on the sublime principle it enshrines for him and for the world4 ,the conflicting currents of speculative thought1 as well as the weaknesses of his mental grasp1 would have made him loose his hold upon it4 ,just because it stands there as the central symbol gathering up and establishing his worship and its sanctifying associations1 it has lasted through the centuries1 preserving its own great principle1 a witness1 a token and a sign not empty but 'effective'--signum efficax not only for thought but for all human life in its amplitude4 ------- ,,chapter ,,ii ,can you think at all and not pronounce heartily that to labour in knowledge is to build up ,jerusalem1 and to despise knowledge is to despise ,jerusalem and her builders8 ,blake4 ,for the ,christian a man is a being capable of receiving and assimilating life as no other creature can1 and as the biologist has no biological reason to believe4 ,the ,christian declares that he has reason1 good and ample4 ,he knows whom he believes4 ,this is a matter of living religious experience to which generations after generations have borne witness4 ,there is a ladder of spiritual reality1 he says1 up which men are climbing and upon which some have reached great heights4 ,the biologist's ladder1 despite its many steps and its length along the ages1 is too short for him4 ,or rather 7so he will tell you when he understands what the biologist means7 his own ladder is a legitimate and even a natural extension of that1 as of all others of the sort that men have anywhere set up4 ,is this advance of man1 then1 an affair of a single departmental business--the religious business8 ,or1 let us ask1 can there be kinds of knowledge that are not really knowledge of ,god8 ,is it reasonable to regard biological knowledge1 or chemical or physical1 as knowledge of some alien reality not embraced in ,god8 ,the supposition is monstrous4 ,if ,god is1 then all truth attained by man is truth of him4 ,if ,i learn that the world advances from the ether to my brain ,i shall have learnt something about ,god4 ,so the ,christian should maintain1 if he is true to his ,christian principles4 ,the advance of man towards communion with ,god in knowledge is not a mere affair of some one department of knowledge called religious1 although it is now for the most part carried on departmentally4 ,although men separate off for their practical convenience the study of plants from the study of animals1 and a specialist may separate off the egg of the newt and study nothing else1 and even think1 at least seriously1 of nothing else2 although we may not only speak of religion1 or knowledge1 or philosophy as separate one from another but act as though they were1 yet if the ,christian and the philosopher and the scientific man are right in holding that there is a unity in the multiplicity of things1 a 'uniformity of nature1' an ',absolute1' or ',one ,god1' then religion and science and philosophy are only separated1 if separate at all1 by an artifice or a convention4 ,you cannot really separate knowing1 in a man's activity1 from his feeling and acting1 nor his feeling from acting and knowing1 nor his acting from knowing and feeling1 nor his activity from himself2 although you can distinguish each from the others4 ,they are different1 but their difference is embraced within a oneness4 ,so it is with religion and science and philosophy4 ,they are all results of man's activity in relation to a reality of innumerable aspects and unfathomable depth2 and they may all be means by which he ascends the ladder of his experience of ,god4 ,therefore the ,christian does his own sacramental and incarnational principles a grave injustice if and when he tries to turn away from science and philosophy4 ,not only this--he cannot really do it4 ,when he succeeds in turning away from that which he believes to be all there is of science and philosophy1 he does not cut out from his creed and his theology the science and philosophy incorporated in them--a science and a philosophy which undoubtedly need correction that they may move and grow with the movement and the growth of experience4 ,it is only the science and philosophy grown to new ripeness and new truth since the day when the great bulk of his ,christian tradition was laid down in written words to be transmitted to him1 that as a matter of fact he is rejecting4 ,and he is able to reject these just and only because he has already in this tradition such science and philosophy as serves to make for him some sort of a ,weltanschauung1 a world-picture1 you may say4 ,it is useless to protest that a man can be religious without having a world-picture2 he cannot even be a man without one4 ,and the only question for him is whether it shall or shall not be as wide in its extent and as good as he can make it1 whether he shall or shall not include within it all the knowledge and vision of ,god he might include4 ,plainly--that is1 plainly to the ,christian--if the scientific man or the philosopher does not include in his view of the world what the ,christian knows and sees1 he is the loser4 ,his picture is not all it might be4 ,but the same1 mutatis mutandis1 is true of the ,christian4 ,for all is ,god's and of ,god4 ,and if we never before discovered this1 we see it when we discover the point where science and religion meet1 where the scientific knowledge of the world passes into the sacramental1 and the scientific knowledge of man1 as part of the world1 passes into the incarnational2 each to be crowned there1 each to be interpreted and fulfilled4 ,to this discovery there is only one theoretic obstacle which is insuperable4 ,it is the acceptance of mechanism as a root-principle in either science or religion4 ,i say nothing of philosophy1 because there is now-a-days no mechanistic philosophy 7that is1 no materialistic philosophy7 that need be feared4 ,but in science and in religion mechanism is still a danger1 and the acceptance of it as the fundamental principle of working and construction in a world-picture is an obstacle that cannot be passed4 ,there is nothing to be done except to overturn it4 ,in regard to science much 7as we have seen7 has already been done2 more is being done4 ,how is it in regard to religion8 ,what about mechanism there8 ------- ,,chapter ,,iii ,the religions of all nations are derived from each nation's different reception of the poetic genius1 which is everywhere called the spirit of prophecy4 ,blake4 ,the ,christian has not escaped the dangers of the common lot4 ,he too1 despite his own contrary principles1 has1 from the beginning of the ,christian ,church1 been tempted as we all are to trust to mechanism and even to sacrifice in its favour the powers of life4 ,we ought not to be surprised2 what else can reasonably be expected8 ,a good machine1 whether it be made of steel and brass1 or of language1 or of settled formulae and plans1 or of any other product of life1 is an admirable servant4 ,it is convenient2 it brings satisfaction to widespread and deeply-rooted needs of life itself4 ,moreover there is nothing mysterious 7so it seems71 or even problematic1 about it4 ,the plain man is not called upon to question or wonder or speculate in regard to anything behind it1 any powers or vague connexions with powers1 not understood4 ,the good machine does what it has to do and there's an end of it4 ,a man knows where he is when he has such a thing--or when it has him4 ,there is even a sense of comfort and security in being ruled and cared for by it1 as1 for example1 in the case of the machinery of a ,state4 ,in this difficult world there seems1 indeed there is1 need for something of the kind to supply a considerable part of our religious demand4 ,we are social beings2 we are1 as we are beginning to see more plainly1 brothers in a community2 we must organize our religion as we organize everything else in which the community of persons has its common interest4 ,and ,god1 the ,christian may say1 and has said1 would not leave us1 has not left us1 to uncertainty and to our questioning and wondering and speculative adventure4 ,he has provided answers to our questions1 facts in response to our wondering1 an open view for our speculation4 ,or1 to put it in another way1 he has given us a 'plan' or 'scheme1' or an ecclesiastical apparatus1 of salvation2 he has revealed religious truth to us and marked out an established method of approaching him and securing our own safety in respect of his judgement and our destiny at his hands4 ,nothing of so great importance has been left1 could have been left1 in the hands of men1 to find out or not find out--poor creatures that we are4 ,now1 there is truth behind this1 both as to the part of ,god and as to the part of man in the matter4 ,we are social1 we are brethren1 we must organize4 ,god1 so all ,christians say and many philosophers1 no more leaves us to ourselves than he leaves to itself any part of his worlds4 ,but ,christians formally declare in their ,creed that he is no machine-maker2 he is ,lord and ,giver of ,life4 ,they complain1 too1 against science on the ground that 7as they have come to believe7 it must of its constant character set material mechanism above life in the order of the world4 ,they are pledged to oppose this2 and when they complain against science for a fault and failure which is soon--so many biologists and philosophers declare--to be a fault and a failure of the past1 they are faithful to their pledge4 ,but they are men1 with the faults and failures of men4 ,habit has its snares for them2 the complication of needs that meets them in their effort to maintain themselves1 body1 mind and spirit1 in the world1 entangles them4 ,the short cut1 the provided means1 everything and anything that seems to make matters easy or safe--in short1 the logical or legalistic or institutional machine--is attractive4 ,and for most men this machine in any of its protean forms1 is perhaps only the more attractive the more valued is the treasure it seems to ensure or to protect4 ,the faith once for all delivered--how precious that is6 ,salvation in this world and the next--can anything be of greater import for man8 ,let us make these things secure1 whatever else we risk4 ,only fools or the reckless would embrace chances of adventure where so much is at stake4 ,so1 in spite of the ,christian avowal of the superiority and the supremacy of life over its instruments1 ,christianity has everywhere given disastrous place to the letter and the tool4 ,against this the first prophet and the last1 in every religion1 must always protest4 ,it is the enemy of enemies for all prophets4 ,you can see war waged against it in the ,old ,testament2 you can see that war carried to the utmost in the ,gospel of the ,new4 ,now the challenge rings among us more clearly than it has rung for this long time4 ,and1 as ever1 it has new notes and a new phrasing of its music4444 ,that1 perhaps1 is why so many of us fail to recognize it for what it is4 ,that1 certainly1 is why the due honour paid to prophets of the past does not prevent men from stoning or neglecting those of the present4 ,the voice is always different1 because it is the voice of life4 ,the use and need for the prophet is a fact not only in religion but in all the arts and in philosophy4 ,he alone keeps any one of these in touch with life1 or rather recalls it to life when it has been encumbered or perhaps even arrested by that which life has made4 ,he is1 in very deed1 the voice of the encumbered spirit making itself heard1 proclaiming in one fashion or another that the pursuit of beauty and truth as well as of holiness is of the spirit1 and must have the spirit's liberty or it will altogether fail4 ,in the arts and in philosophy we do not call him a prophet1 but often1 in the arts1 we speak of him 7when we have recovered from the shock he gives7 as 'inspired1' and in philosophy we call him 'great4' ,great he is and inspired--we could hardly choose better and more deeply significant words4 ,he is the enlarger of life and the bearer of the spirit1 whether he uses the language of philosophy1 of poetry1 painting or music1 or of religion4 ,but always he comes waging war upon our superstitious devotion to the things that have once been made1 proclaiming either divine truth or divine beauty or divine holiness 7according to his mission71 as that for the sake of which they must ever be remade4 99 99 99 99 99 ,we who have learnt our lesson from science as well as from philosophy should be sure friends to the prophet4 ,we have learnt enough of the story of life to see that from its beginning on the earth it strove towards liberty1 towards the indetermination by circumstance and the freedom of choice that man has reached4 ,we have seen life lost in mere material size and crushed by the weight of material protective armour2 and we know what these things mean4 ,we know1 too1 what entanglement in habit means for our own selves4 ,we are good and sure friends of the prophet4 ,or we may be1 if we will4 ,it is high time that he should find such friends--men ready to meet him with that in their minds which prepares his way before him4 ,he has too long been the voice driven to cry in the wilderness4 ,too long and too often he has found men opposing him with a settled prejudice in favour of the vested interests--the sanctified1 it may be1 and glorified vested interests--of law and order and creed1 of institution and crystallized opinion4 ,it is time that a new atmosphere should be made about him and that these things should be visibly set in their right place and held at their right value4 ,when this is done the secret materialism of his opponents will be brought to light4 ,for1 however it may be disguised1 all overvaluing of the instrumental product of life's activity comes of the undue depreciation of living spirit and the undue appreciation of its means4 ,science and philosophy1 in teaching us now to seek for the true relation of matter and spirit1 are also teaching us to lend a willing ear to the prophet4 ,when we have learnt to see in man the beginning of a synthesis of order and freedom in a vital harmony not manifest in those starry heavens to which men point as the standing witness of ,god against prophets of new freedom1 we are ready to confess1 if we have found our ,god1 that in him that perfect synthesis is declared and in man it is foreshadowed and to be pursued4 ------- ,,chapter ,,iv ,hearken to me1 ye children of the ,immortal1 dwellers of the heavenly worlds1 ,i have known the ,supreme ,person who comes as light from the dark beyond4 ,isha ,upanishat4 ,studying at its best the ,christian view of the world of life--and it is not worth any man's while to study it at less--we find that ,jesus ,christ stands there always as greatest among prophets1 though 'more than a prophet4' ,he is in the line of the prophets but at their head2 he is their culmination and their fulfilment4 ,he knew himself to be a prophet1 and to have the lot of one who 'is not without honour save in his own country4' ,he lived and taught1 and he and his teaching were received1 after the manner of the prophets that had gone before4 ,like ,isaiah and ,jeremiah he spoke the language of drama and poetry1 and gave body in parable and pictorial visions to his message4 ,like them he spoke and preached always with passion and as being conscious of a very wall of opposing forces4 ,for him as for them the exaltation of religious machinery above religious life1 and all self-satisfaction through mere forms and ceremonies1 meant an onset of spiritual death4 ,to use these things as a shelter within which a man might follow his self-seeking bent1 whether of greed or of fear1 was the worst 7but one7 of sins4 ',hypocrites1' that is1 'play-actors'1 'generation of vipers1' he said of the professionally religious of his time4 ,that there was for him one sin greater than such play-acting is of his own supreme greatness4 ,no other prophet recognized and denounced as he did the sin that cannot be forgiven2 for no other prophet had as he had the full personally realized revelation of an indwelling ,god whom man1 consciously1 might cast out4 ,this1 with his marvellous balance of judgement in regard to the letter or the machine and the spirit--the organ and the life that shapes and uses it--is a marked element in his differentia among prophets4 ,and we1 who are friends to them all in so far as they protest against depreciation of spirit and life1 and against men who make of the products of life from which life has departed obstacles to the urgency of the present1 have to consider whether we can go with him as far as he goes1 or whether this element of difference between him and the rest is in any way to weaken our alliance with him4 ,he is not only one among his fellows2 he is also unquestionably different from them4 ,is there anything about this difference that should make us who are friends of the prophets quarrel with the ,christian who accepts and welcomes it8 ,first1 let us look at his attitude towards the instruments of religion as compared and contrasted with that of other prophets of his race4 ',your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth1'--that is the note of the elder prophets4 ',the ,sabbath was made for man1 not man for the ,sabbath'--that is his4 ,the prophet of old was contemptuous of institutional and ceremonial religion2 he suffered1 as we say1 from reaction and went to extremes1 reprobating the instrument as well as the spirit that misinterpreted and misused it4 ,jesus taught in the synagogue1 cleansed the temple from those who had made the historic house of prayer to be a den of thieves1 sent the leper to show himself to the priest1 and in general accepted the institutions of religion1 and the hierarchical organization1 of the place and people that were his own4 ,yet no man can say he overvalued these4 ,his insistence on the spiritual freedom of man and the pre-eminence of spirit and life was both constant and passionate4 ,the institution he accepted1 as he accepted the tools of his carpenter's trade1 the food and furniture of life as he found it1 the language and the manners of his people4 ,freedom and unity1 love1 truth1 beauty and holiness1 as realities in the life of ,god and man1 for these he pleaded1 preached1 worked1 suffered and died4 ,yet those other things were not to be despised or left undone4 ,he came and he lived not to destroy but to fulfil4 ,in this he is pre-eminent among1 apart from1 the religious prophets who went before him4 ,his piercing and balanced judgement was the primary source of ,christian sacramentalism4 ,he despised nothing of the earth and the body2 he found a place for all in the life of the spirit4 ,he was the first preacher to point to loveliness in the flowers of the field2 and for twelve hundred years no other1 in any nation or kind of religion1 did the like4 ,then ,francis of ,assisi1 his true follower1 sang the ,song of the ,sun4 ,the long history of ,christian sacramentalism spreads out far and deep and gathers up in itself from all quarters the pursuit of beauty is well as the hunger and thirst after righteousness and truth2 but its pure source is plain to see in the ,gospels4 ,there the fine adjustment of the relation between matter and spirit1 life and its organs1 is maintained4 ,there the value and the meaning and pertinence of life's own instruments to its user1 of the body to the soul1 is as clearly insisted on as is the supremacy in both meaning and value of life itself4 ,there is none of the abstract spiritualism that is one of the prophet's most dangerous snares4 ,there is none of the contempt and the blinding reaction which so often disfigure and discredit his utterances4 ,and for this1 we who have come fresh from learning our new lesson about the movement of organic life and its difficult striving upon the earth may dare to praise him4 ,it is a beginning for us4 ,not in this respect1 at least1 shall we stand aloof from him or complain that science or philosophy has built a barrier against him4 ,that ,christians the world over have lost touch with him in this regard as in others is for the moment nothing to us4 ,we know that they are feeble and fallible like ourselves and that his way of judgement is hard4 ,to keep the balance even1 never to allow a secret materialism to be brought into the scale1 or a protest to sink into repudiation--this is hard indeed4 ,and we know that a thousand other temptations have beset the ,christian during the centuries that have gone by and that1 being as he is and just as we are ourselves1 he has succumbed to not a few of them4 ,we know all that2 but we are seeking to find out what greatness it is that lies behind all the faults and follies1 the absurdities1 the crimes even1 of ,christians1 and keeps ,christianity alive and potent4 ,we begin to see1 perhaps1 that this greatness is ,christ--that it is ',jesus the prophet of ,nazareth in ,galilee4' ,of this greatness and its character he himself had an unique consciousness which was a most important and most marked element in his difference from the ,hebrew prophets before him4 ,he 'spoke with authority and not as the ,scribes1' not as those theologians and jurists whose strength rested on tradition and the letter of the past2 he spoke1 in short1 as a prophet4 ,so the people discovered4 ,the voice of the prophets was characteristically authoritative and neither showed respect for tradition nor claimed its support4 ,but the note of the prophets of old was ',thus saith the ,lord'2 and the note of the prophet of ,nazareth was ',i say unto you4' ,both came among men with an authority lacking to the followers of tradition2 but by the first it was thought of as delegated1 in the second it was recognized as inherent4 ,not1 'the ,lord said unto me1' but ',i say unto you4' ,the difference is enormous2 it is also profound in significance and implications4 ,it means1 to begin with1 a different knowledge of ,god4 ,no longer is ,god only speaking to his messengers across a dividing space1 speaking as a king upon his throne might to a subject at his feet1 charging that subject with a mission4 ,the message is no longer carried and reported by a man2 it is originated in him and given by him4 ,jesus is conscious that the life and spirit of ,god are become his own life and spirit4 ,he knows the indwelling ,god given to be made man in co-operative union with man1 knows him in and through and as himself1 the prophet of ,nazareth in ,galilee4 ,he does not need to refer either to a ,god1 or to a tradition1 that is extraneous to himself4 ,therefore his prophetic authority exceeds not only that of the ,scribes but that of all the prophets4 ,it gave this impression to those of his contemporaries who had eyes to see and ears to hear4 ,to such men it gives the same impression now4 ,and if there are ,christians who explain the impression and reason from it1 erroneously1 have we any right to be surprised8 ,consider the height to which we have been carried and the problems that open up before us as we survey this man4 ,consider the habits of interpretation most usual among us4 ,consider the tangibility and conspicuousness of things1 the intangibility and1 to the senses and the mind itself1 the elusive mysteries of personality1 of nature1 of consciousness1 even of knowledge and every other manifest activity4 ,we cannot fairly blame ,christians for what has been done among them in an attempt to explain and reason about ,jesus ,christ4 ,the attempt has been honest enough and successful enough to hold the allegiance of thinking men for generations4 ,the truth is that we are learning1 as we never learnt before1 to question the manner of our own thinking about these high matters4 ,we have become aware1 as we were not1 of the insidious materialism of our instruments of thought4 ,we have learnt that to apply a logic of things and their qualities to problems of the nature of ,god and man is to ensure misunderstanding4 ,so when ,christians tell us that the person of ,jesus ,christ is divine and that he had1 or was1 or is1 a human nature and a divine nature1 and a human will and a divine will conjoined in the divine person1 we see plainly that they are applying to the truth of him that logic of things and their qualities which they have acquired through dealing easily and habitually with things4 ,they are trying to explain him by taking human nature as one thing or set of qualities1 and divine nature as another1 and they are joining them by a third4 ,you see two vertical stones and one across the top4 ,and if the stones are alive and the top one 'hypostatically' effects the union between the other two1 stones they still are2 or sets of qualities conceived as things1 which is all the same4 ,the mighty consciousness of ,jesus escaped entanglement by these logical1 spatial1 materialistic nets4 ,he knew by experience the activity of a will in which the will of ,god and the will of man were united and engaged at once in one purpose4 ,he knew1 felt1 lived1 ,god and man as one in himself4 ,and in the fulness of this he differed from all other prophets1 for whom it was at best1 and that but rarely1 an unrealized ideal4 ,shall we say1 then1 that for us and for ,christians it is well not to reason about the problems he presents to thought8 ,even if we do1 we shall reason and so will they4 ,neither we nor they can help it4 ,but we may put our reasoning together1 and learn each from the other4 ,there is a meeting-place here1 inviting us to join hands4 ------- ,,chapter ,v ,where ,love is the ,lover1 ,love streaming from the ,lover is the ,lover2 the ,lover streaming from himself1 and existing in another ,person4 ,traherne4 ,aut ,deus aut homo non bonus--so ,christians have said and believed4 ,the dilemma1 though comfortable for not a few among them1 and having about it a certain truth1 often involves a false conception of both man and ,god4 ,the truth it holds is not their comfort2 they do not know that4 ,what most people mean when they use the dilemma is that the prophet of ,nazareth was either as a person ,god and not as a person man1 or he was as a person man and a bad one4 ,it seems conclusive1 this either-or4 ,but there is no logical weapon more fatal to our discovery of the truth of spirit and life4 ',either-or' comes from a field of interest where things stand out conspicuous and apart1 and cannot be thought of as communicating virtue and riches and themselves one to another4 ,it brings with it an insinuating suggestion1 if not assertion1 that the affairs of spirit and life are in the same case4 ,personality1 which is an affair of spirit and life1 seems no more to admit of such intercommunication than does materiality4 ,two persons can no more communicate themselves to each other than two stones4 ,which1 on the crude exposed face of it1 is nonsense4 ,they can1 they do2 and we know it4 ,unquestionably the great prophet spoke with the authority which lesser prophets attributed to ,god4 ,he made claims1 very high claims4 ,was he only an arrogant and blasphemous man8 7,he might1 perhaps1 have been deluded1 though the dilemma ignores that possibility--as well it may47 ,or was he ,god8 ,there is no half-way house of vital identity between man as person and ,god as person1 any more than there is a half-way house of material identity between a diamond and a pebble off the beach4 ,either-or4 ,so this dilemma goes4 ,it is very simple1 all too simple4 ,it applies beautifully to pebbles and diamonds2 why not to living persons8 ,particularly and excellently1 why not to man and ,god8 ,now1 as a matter of fact1 ,i am trying to communicate to you at this very moment something that is mine4 ,my knowledge 7or my ignorant opinion7 is written down on the paper before you1 and you will or may receive it--to do with it what you choose4 ,henceforth it is1 or may be1 yours as well as mine4 ,again1 ,i try to communicate to you the content of my will for you4 ,you know and feel that ,i want your will to be brought to coincide with mine1 so that my will and yours shall be vitally identical in regard to what ,i am writing about4 ,in some degree or another you and ,i may become one in this regard4 ,i shall then have communicated my knowledge 7or my ignorant opinion7 and my will to you and they will to some extent or another be both yours and mine4 ,this communication and co-operation is a matter of our choosing to enter into it and be and work together4 ,we have it in our own hands4 ,it is quite different from the relation we have to each other as being parts in the universe1 or elements in ,god looked upon as the pantheist looks upon him1 which makes him no more than the universe4 ,we can't help that relation4 ,we share it with the stones as well as with each other and with ,god4 ,it is a purely abstract business and belongs to 'the night in which all cows are black4' ,our cows1 on the other hand1 are of every sort of colour2 and we find1 we actually do find1 that we can pass on our colours to each other1 dye the different cow to our tinge and in turn be dyed4 ,we are concrete1 not abstract2 and our vital identity one with another is concrete too4 ,it may be and might not be4 ,we choose whether it shall be or not4 ,and1 happily1 we choose that it shall be1 up to a point1 far more often and more steadily than we choose that it shall not4 ,hence the existence of a human community in common knowledge and reason and common will--up to a point4 ,i give you here in these pages1 or at least proffer you1 as ,i have said1 'something of mine4' ,that is what it looks like4 ,but1 enquiring further1 ,i ask whether as a matter of fact ',i' am separate from 'something of mine1' as1 let us say an engine is separate from the power it produces and the work it does4 ,do ,i produce thought and knowledge as an engine produces so much horse-power8 ,is my will or my reason a sort of thing that produces activity as a flower produces its scent8 ,the scent is not the flower2 the horse-power is not the engine4 ,there is always a producing thing behind such products4 ,is there a producing thing behind my knowledge and activity8 ,and the only reasonable answer we can give to this question is that there is not4 ,in my spirit and life there is nothing in the least like a thing or a machine2 and when we reason about spirit and life as though there were we plunge into a very sea of confusion4 ,my reason and my will are myself4 ,i am not a thing and ,i do not produce like a thing4 ,i give and ,i communicate my very self in giving and communicating my knowledge1 my purpose1 my will4 ,and in so far as you receive these and take them into yourself you receive me--spirit and life--as person4 ,by harmony between us our wills and reason1 our selves1 coalesce2 they become identical in the concrete1 vital identity peculiar to persons1 impossible to things1 and dependent for its maintenance on the maintenance of harmony by their own free activity4 ,very partial it is1 no doubt1 seen by all of us 'as in a mirror darkly'2 but it points1 with a finger that should draw all eyes1 to a great fulfilment4 ,that fulfilment is 'the goal1 not the starting-point of human endeavour4' ,the blank identity of co-existence in a universe is1 you may say1 a starting-point for reflexion2 but real concrete mental coalescence between each and all of us is a real concrete starting-point of life in a personal world4 ,the goal lies far ahead1 where that union of persons foreshadowed in our fragmentary intercourse and the low beginnings of our community of life shall be won through that which alone can give it1 our union and communion with ,god4 ,this is more or less a philosopher's way of putting the matter2 but it means the same as the ,christian's4 ,now there is a question that forces itself upon us here4 ,can there be a coalescence of mind and will1 an identity1 between ,god and man1 of this living1 spiritual--that is1 real1 concrete--kind8 ,or is ,god so different from man as to be incommunicable to him8 ,is he remote from man in his own nature or1 indeed1 not only remote but alien8 ,the answer to this is that if he is even remote1 not to say alien1 he is nothing to us and we may ignore him4 ,the ,christian's ,god certainly is not remote2 he is all men's lover and father and they are all his beloved and his sons4 ,the philosopher's ,god is sometimes made blankly1 abstractly1 identical with us1 and then we may ignore him2 because a blank identity simply is1 as conceived in thought1 and like the alien ,god it means nothing for us4 ,but more often nowadays the philosopher's ,god is like the ,christian's in that he both transcends his universe and indwells it2 for the philosopher has begun in good earnest to reckon with life and with science and human experience at large4 ,god indwelt ,jesus ,christ1 and he knew ,god as lover and father both4 ,he spoke as though ,god had communicated himself to him in a fulness we do not know among ourselves4 ,there was an identity of will1 it seems1 recognized by him1 between himself and ,god1 and an identity of reason and knowledge4 ,and if ,god is ,spirit and ,lord and ,giver of life1 then1 if the prophet was right1 in this identity by fulness of communication1 this personal coalescence of reason and will1 ,god1 very ,god1 gave himself to very man1 and very man entered into personal union with very ,god4 ,the transcendent ,god indwelt the man1 was immanent within him as the man's own self2 and the man's own self was lifted up into the self of ,god4 ,the intercommunication of person with person1 which we see as the prerogative of persons1 was complete4 ,we have confessed this to be the goal of human endeavour2 let us allow ourselves to think that in regard to us it may be the goal1 also1 of divine endeavour1 and that in the man who offered no opposition to ,god it was attained4 ,as long as we do not indulge in the secret materialism of regarding a person as a thing producing knowledge or activity1 instead of as being that knowledge and activity1 we shall have no difficulty in recognizing the fact that where knowledge and will in two persons coincide1 there also the persons coincide4 ,we shall be able to see that a man is identical with ,god1 in the only sense identity can have for personal beings1 when he fully knows the mind of ,god and his will is bent on the same ends as the will of ,god4 ,then this man is both man and ,god in one1 for ,god indwells him by that activity which he truly is4 ,if we object1 as we frequently do1 that no man can fully know the mind of ,god1 we must tell ourselves that if a man knows the essential1 permanently valuable truth of life which wise men have ever sought as wisdom1 then all that is worth while in knowledge1 all that upon which parts and kinds of 'knowledges' must be built up1 is his1 included within his ,weltanschauung1 his living view of the world4 ,the principle1 the ground1 of all truth1 and therefore of all knowledge1 he knows and has4 99 99 99 99 99 ,we think of the writer of the ,fourth ,gospel giving us1 as a prayer of ,jesus1 the aspiration that 'they all may be one1 as thou1 ,father1 art in me and ,i in thee1 that they also may be one in us4' ,he has the goal of our endeavour in plain sight2 he must have felt that impulse of the spirit towards it which is not exhausted1 never can be exhausted1 by any one man4 ------- ,,chapter ,,vi ,thy judgment is in the mute pain of sleepless love2 ,in the blush of pure hearts2 ,in the tears of the night of desolation2 ,in the pale morning-light of forgiveness4 ,rabindranath ,tagore4 ,we are going far with the ,christian4 ,life is indeed a bond2 it is materialism that divides the seekers after truth4 ,the secret materialism of the ,christian and his trust in religious machinery must bring him into conflict with those who put their trust in other kinds of machines4 ,we who are trusting life1 and are trying not to interpret it in terms of the logic of things1 find ourselves side by side with those ,christians faithful enough to their supreme leader and their own principles to do the same4 ,so we may walk willingly with them and hear what they have to say in more intimate talk than there can be when the spirit of community is wanting4 ,in this matter of personality and its self-communicating power they have been beforehand with us1 as in so many other matters4 ,jesus has been for them a fountain of wisdom and insight1 and while they have kept close to him his wisdom and his insight have been-imparted to them4 ,he has been in them a well-spring wanting to the negligent world4 ',whosoever drinketh of the water that ,i shall give him1' the disciple hears him say1 'shall never thirst2 but the water that ,i shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life4' ,that is what it means to be indwelt by ,god1 'the fountain of living waters1' as the older prophet calls him4 ,and we think of what we have learnt about personality and the inseparability of the spirit from its own content of knowledge and volition1 of love1 too1 and righteousness1 and joy in beauty and truth4 ,we think of the intercommunication of man with man and of men with ,god and his ',christ'--that is1 the man 'whose individuality1' as a ,christian philosopher says1 'is identified with ,god in the unity of all his thought and action with the divine knowledge and the divine purpose4' ,all these come to mind when we hear of a fountain of living waters becoming a well-spring for those who drink of it4 ,but it may be that we turn away with a sigh from such intimate talk1 knowing how far we are ourselves from the union with ,god which the ,christian depicts4 ,and it may be1 too1 that there dawns upon us the thought that when this ,christian speaks of 'atonement' he means1 most likely1 some process of ,god by which that union is accomplished1 and the neglect or opposition of men is overcome4 ,what difference is there1 we may be inclined to ask1 between divine incarnation1 as the ,christian sees it1--,god's communication of himself1 the fountain of living waters1 to men--and an atonement between him and them8 ,is not the union of incarnation the very act and process of atonement8 ,is not the redemption of man effected in and through the self-expression of ,god in him8 ,when he is one with ,god he is 'redeemed' from the neglect and opposition of sin1 and of the rejection of ,god2 and then ,god is manifest and expressed in him4 ,is this a question of words8 ,perhaps1 rather1 it is a question of emphasis on one or other side1 man's side or ,god's4 ,but if1 for the moment1 we lay emphasis on the side of man and speak of atonement and redemption instead of speaking of incarnation and our communion and union with ,god1 there are certainly elements of special difficulty to be encountered4 ,the explanations of ,christians are by no means as trustworthy as their insight and the knowledge they derive from their great ',redeemer4' ,they explain in legalistic terms1 or materialistic1 or in terms of a despotic rule1 a process and an act of life given and received4 ,they are prone to ignore the prophet in favour of the ,scribe or the ,pharisee4 ,and once again the prophet may justly put into the mouth of ,god the old reproach--',my people have committed two evils2 they have forsaken me1 the fountain of living waters1 and hewed them out cisterns1 broken cisterns1 that can hold no water4' ,they build up their inventions and hide beneath them the sublimity of living fact2 and we who ask them concerning the fact are shown the ruins of those inventions4 ,we ask them for bread and they give us the stones they have put together4 ,there is hardly a religious problem or question1 or fact and process1 more encumbered than this with that tradition which makes the word of ,god of none effect4 ,no doubt there are ,christians who are both able and willing to help such men and women as are likely to ask their help2 the difficulty is to find such ,christians4 ,let us see1 now1 how we can work out for ourselves an understanding of what is really meant by atonement between men and ,god1 what ,christians really mean when they express themselves so ill about it1 what it really is that really happens4 ,atonement between ,god and men undoubtedly implies the forgiveness of sinful men by ,god4 ,they cannot possibly enter into union with him unless they are forgiven4 ,when they sin against their fellow-men they cannot be united or re-united with them on any other condition than that their fellows forgive them4 ,but1 we must insist1 it is immoral to forgive them unless they at least will to cast away their sinfulness4 ,it is always immoral1 too1 not to punish1 that is1 not to condemn1 sin and sinfulness2 and therefore 7since a man and his activity are one7 the sinner4 ,how then can ,god at once condemn 7or punish7 and forgive the sin1 sinfulness and the sinner8 ,are not condemnation 7or punishment7 and forgiveness mutually exclusive8 ,if we condemn or punish do we not fail to forgive8 ,if we forgive1 must we not remit punishment and cease to condemn8 ,now here is a difficulty that reflexion should remove4 ,for it comes of what happens in the lower stages of man's social relations and spiritual growth4 ,we think of punishment as somehow the expression of vindictiveness1 while forgiveness alone is the expression of love4 ,so it is in us beginners4 ,so it begins to cease to be1 even in us1 as we grow into new life and a new spirit4 ,let us think how we should behave to an evil-doer if we loved him to the utmost of our power of love4 ,should we condone his evil-doing by withholding that condemnation which is expressed in punishment1 whether of look or word or deed 7as circumstance demands71 and extend to him an artifice of forgiveness in which the moral disunion between him and ourselves shall be concealed8 ,would that truly represent our faithful love for him1 that love which must seek not an appearance but a reality of harmony1 and for his sake tolerate no encouragement1 not even the slightest possibility of deriving encouragement1 for his evil doing8 ,obviously it would not4 ,for his sake we should unmistakably condemn1 making known to him in look or word or deed our condemnation4 ,it would be the expression of our love and1 with forgiveness1 is of the nature and property of love4 ,we should feel no shadow of vindictiveness4 ,in our relation with him the forgiveness and the condemnation of love would be one4 ,we encounter here a false antithesis in a matter of spirit and life4 ,forgiveness and punishment in ,god or in the man of ,god can neither be antithetical nor need to be reconciled4 ,in the life of love they are not divided4 ,god1 who is love as he is spirit and life1 forgives and condemns by one consistent act of love4 ,there is no immoral condonation in his forgiveness1 no vindictiveness about his punishment4 ,and this the ,christian knows both by his own experience and by the life and lessons of his redeeming ,lord4 ',whom the ,lord loveth he chasteneth1 and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth4' ,no true ,christian would have it otherwise4 ',if forgiveness means--as it properly does--the wise and patient care for the criminal's welfare1 for his regeneration and recovery into the life of a good society1 then there is no distinction whatever between forgiveness and punishment4' ,that1 precisely1 is what forgiveness ought to be made to mean1 and punishment likewise4 ,but again we see in a mirror darkly and are confused by our history and our own shortcomings4 ,therefore even ,christians misjudge ,god1 or make for themselves 'broken cisterns'--a false ,god who is no fountain of living waters1 pouring forth a never-failing1 self-consistent1 self-giving love2 but a judge1 a king1 a despot1 after the pattern of the world1 a ,god aloof administering punishment or forgiveness1 both alike unworthy and misplaced4 ,there is no difficulty at all in this question of punishment and forgiveness if we remember perfect love and its aim1 as ,jesus shows them4 ,moreover1 we must bear in mind1 nothing about ,god who 'is spirit' is either an artifice or a machine4 ,so his punishments1 his expressed condemnations1 are never artificial1 never mechanical4 ,they arise 'naturally1' as we say2 and in large part we provide them1 we men1 ourselves4 ,there are certain 'natural' consequences1 miscalled punishments1 which are entailed upon the body as1 for instance1 when a child puts his hand into the fire or a man disregards what we call the 'laws' of health4 ,the due and true moral punishment of persons by persons is just as natural4 ,the nature of persons is spiritual in the order of their uplifted life1 and is one with that life4 ,their nature is1 in fact1 no other than that life and those persons4 ,we cannot separate1 though we may sometimes in word distinguish1 between the man and his nature4 ,consequently all due and right punishment by persons 7punishment by love1 which is the same as forgiveness by love7 is wholly natural4 ,it is a natural consequence of sin1 the reaction against sin with which good persons or a good society must encounter it4 ,there is no arbitrary infliction of punishment1 and no arbitrary forgiveness1 by the good man1 the good society1 or the good ,god4 ,nor should there be in regard to his own sins or sinfulness by the man who newly rejects them1 the newly penitent man4 ,he1 the new man1 reacts according to his new nature1 and in one and the same activity should condemn and forgive himself4 ,he must be penitent but he should not be remorseful4 ,if he does not forgive himself as well as condemn himself1 it may be because he is not humble enough and penitent enough to bear with the fact that he has deserved his condemnation4 ,we must remind ourselves1 however1 that it is of spiritual nature in ourselves to choose4 ,the activity of love is chosen and determined by the good man1 with its forgiveness and its punishment4 ,and although the perfection of ,god must preclude choice between alternatives1 although for perfect wisdom there can never be more than one course open1 yet there is no automatism1 there cannot be automatism of the mechanical kind1 in ,god who1 as the ,christian maintains1 is love4 ,his love is willed though not chosen4 ,it is of the vital1 intelligent1 voluntary activity of a spiritual being4 ,and so both punishment and forgiveness are willed1 in ,god or in man2 and as the man approaches full union with ,god so does his choice approach that inevitable wisdom for which there is no longer consciousness of choice4 ,this is the manner of spirit and life2 that which is personally real in any man1 all that is in ,god1 is not merely consented to or assented to but is always actively willed1 never compulsorily or mechanically apportioned4 ,so it is right and reasonable to say that ,god or the man of ,god punishes and forgives4 ,it is not right to say that the punishment and forgiveness of either1 though it is wholly natural1 is in any kind of way automatic with the automatism of a machine1 or even with that relative automatism of material things which we speak of as natural law4 ,without the activity of love there can be no true punishment and no true forgiveness2 there is only vindictiveness or condonation4 ,the treatment we have given our wrong-doers in the past is not fitted to throw clear light on ,christian atonement and the ways of ,god with man4 ,on the contrary1 it has obscured both4 ,but we are learning4 ,truth1 experience1 and the ,gesta ,christi work for our learning4 ,or1 as the ,christian says1 the divine spirit works for it and 'strives' with us1 that is1 works with us that we may work out our own salvation4 ,we have begun to say to the children we are training--',come now1 this is wrong2 let's see how we' we1 mark you 'can set it right4' ,we have discovered that unless the child works with us our punishment fails1 and our forgiveness fails1 of any real effect for goodness4 ,but ,christians knew this from their beginning1 though many of them forget they did4 ,in the last resort it is why ,christ died4 ,when1 carrying with us our new method1 we have passed from the child to the criminal1 and extend to him that 'wise and patient care' for his welfare1 which is forgiveness and punishment in one1 we shall be in a better position for seeing what ,christian atonement really means and is--how real it is and how it depends on co-operation between the ,saviour and the offender2 how1 always1 the ,saviour must win the offender first if he is to save him4 ,then we shall read the ,gospels of the ,christian with new eyes and a new understanding4 ,if you want to see punishment and forgiveness both in one1 turn to the parable of the prodigal son4 ,could any punishment be more salutary or more piercing to the man whose penitence had shown him his utter unworthiness8 ,could forgiveness be more complete1 more gracious1 than that which he received8 ,consider how his penitence must have been deepened1 and his sense of unworthiness increased1 when he found himself in his father's arms1 and his father's house1 honoured1 rejoiced over1 feasted8 ,in proportion to the depth and fulness of penitence do these two1 punishment and forgiveness1 given in love1 become distinguishable only by the reaction to them of the penitent4 ,he alone knows how love hurts and heals in one and the same act and moment4 ,then1 if you want to learn the many forms punishment may take1 seek further4 ,look at the story of the woman taken in adultery4 ',hath no man condemned thee8' 444 ',neither do ,i condemn thee3 go1 and sin no more4' ,punishment and forgiveness imparted in one profound paradox of love's judgement4 ,what do you think was its effect on the woman who had looked into the prophet's eyes as he lifted them from the dust8 ',hath no man condemned thee8' ',no man1 ,lord1' she said2 and they were the words humility and shame would choose4 ,a degree further--consider the picture of a final judgement1 with the ',son of man in his glory' and the nations gathered before him to be shown their union with him1 or their disunion1 in a clearness none could mistake4 ',come1 ye blessed1' he says1 'inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world'--the kingdom in which all men are one with the ,holiest1 with the living ,truth himself and ,beauty 'in his glory'--come with me4 ,for ,i was an hungred1 thirsty1 a stranger4444 ,naked and ye clothed me1 sick1 in prison1 and ye came unto me4444 ,and yet these blessed had never known what they did4 ,it was not he1 so far as they knew1 that they had succoured4 ,not for his sake but for love's they had done it2 not even1 indeed1 at the heart of it1 for love's sake1 but because they loved1 because in them the well-spring of love streamed forth and they gave their very selves to those others who had only need of them4 ,they were of love and were love's own4 ,love as shown to these who needed it was not distinguishable1 even by their reaction to it1 into punishment and forgiveness4 ,it was but love4 ,then those others--',depart from me1' he says--and there was a vision painted of the unutterable horrors of a state of separation and loneliness and self-embittered remorse--',i was an hungred and ye gave me no meat4' ,they also1 had not known--',lord1 when saw we thee an hungred8' ,if they had known they would assuredly have hastened to him with their meat1 asked him to their feasts1 lavished all upon him4 ,but for what sake8 ,for no other than their own4 ,love had no place in their hearts1 nor had the ,lord4 ,only self-seeking4 ,they were their own ,lords and ,gods4 ,and thenceforth they had to know it4 ,in their impenitent1 disappointed1 cheated 7they would say7 and remorseful hearts there was no room for anything but the sense of punishment4 ,their inevitable reaction to the voice of love1 as it reproached their lack of love1 shut out both forgiveness and all possibility of the sense of it4 ,so we come to the extreme of distinction between the ways of the showing of love4 ,here is all punishment1 it seems1 to the sinner4 ,but it is he who makes love so4 ,it is very love that punishes1 a consistent1 unwavering love which1 in the sinner's last extremity1 shows itself to the utmost he can receive and in the only way he can receive4 ,what1 ,i ask you1 would a man like this make of a love that should express itself 7if in the nature of love it could thus express itself7 as condoning the want of love and professing oneness in so complete an alienation8 ,not only does the nature of love forbid such an expression1 but the nature of the self-worshipper1 who cannot receive it4 ,there is a very marvellous knowledge of the hidden heart shown in these prophetic teachings4 ,as we converse with the ,supreme ,person of the ,gospels we feel him searching out our bones and marrow4 ,to him there lies open the secret of disunion among us personal beings and the secret of the utmost furtherance1 and the means towards furtherance1 of the conversion of our will from self-seeking to love-finding4 ,this utmost furtherance necessarily falls short of the compulsion love can never even contemplate or man endure4 ,a man compelled to love is unthinkable4 ,words1 mere empty words these are that so speak of him4 ,he cannot be4 ,if he could be compelled he could not be man2 if the semblance of love were forced upon him it would not be love4 ,but the atonement in which the ,christian believes shows the love of ,god working to further love in man to an utmost ,god alone can reach4 ,punishment and forgiveness work together as that love1 and the life of ,jesus and the ,cross on which he died are at once their final showing-forth1 their clearest call to man1 and the tremendous acceptance by man of all that they entail and are4 ,here1 indeed1 is the fountain of love in its fulness4 ,we need not wonder that the disciple1 having in mind his living and triumphant ,lord1 hears him say to us who desire to drink of the waters of love--',whosoever drinketh of the water that ,i shall give him shall never thirst2 but the water that ,i shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life4' ,christian atonement means restoration to the only real and full union and communion of persons1 that of divine love4 ------- ,,chapter ,,vii ,nature1 in a fashion whose details are still only faintly hinted to us men1 constitutes a vast society4 ,royce4 ,the ,christian shows in his root principles1 we are bound to confess1 a profound sense of personality and of the relations of persons4 ,that this comes of his relation to the ,supreme ,person from whom he has derived them can hardly be denied4 ,it is in a person1 ,jesus ,christ1 that he has seen ,god and learnt about him2 and the judgements and love of ,god that he discerns he discerns in ,christ4 ,as the spirit of ,christ becomes one with his spirit so do his own judgements and his own love become those of ,god in him1 and his principles are embodied in his life4 ,all wisdom is divine1 and all love1 the ,christian says4 ,and1 undoubtedly1 men who are earnestly and disinterestedly seeking these1 and discovering how in that search they penetrate into the truth and reality of moral and practical affairs of life1 must find that the ,christian is worth listening to1 perhaps even worth watching4 ,that is1 when he has 'the mind of ,christ4' ,otherwise he confuses judgement and blurs1 if he does not efface1 his principles4 ,in 'the mind of ,christ' he is for us 'a well-spring of water'2 without that1 if he only calls himself by the name and is either the ,scribe1 the ,pharisee1 or the false prophet1 he is far more helpless1 far more misleading and misled1 than they are who honestly seek truth and know they have not found it4 ,in the last chapter we heard what the man with the mind of ,christ had to say about punishment and forgiveness as between persons4 ,and one difficulty that disturbs others1 many others1 besides those who approach the ,christian religion from the direction of science1 has surely been lessened by him4 ,but besides this1 in that chapter we referred1 in passing1 to the calamities of what we narrowly call 'nature1' the burnt child1 the man of ruined health2 and we said that these were not strictly affairs of punishment4 ,but1 undoubtedly1 they are often regarded as punishment by religious men1 by ,christian men4 ,we may turn to our ,christian1 whose best has been so good1 and ask him what the mind of ,christ is on this matter4 ,does the ,lover and ,father of ,jesus inflict plague and pestilence1 earthquake and fire1 on evil-doers1 as a human judge inflicts prison or the hangman's cord1 and once inflicted mutilation and torture8 ,the ,god of the ,old ,testament1 so his prophets said1 was not unlike our judges4 ,what is the ,god of the ,new1 as ,jesus showed him8 ,the answer is not far to seek4 ',ye have heard that it hath been said'--',but ,i say unto you4' ,he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good1 and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust4' 444 'those eighteen1 upon whom the tower in ,siloam fell1 and slew them1 think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in ,jerusalem8' ,and then the warning words--',i tell you1 ,nay3 but1 except ye repent1 ye shall all likewise perish4' ,warning1 these last words are1 and1 it may be1 puzzling4 ,they seem to imply punishment1 doom1 in this falling of a tower1 though no sinners were specially selected from others for the death it brought4 ,what is there behind this8 ,let us think1 and bring to bear on the problem what we have learnt about the world 7and therefore about ,god7 elsewhere4 ,and let us consult with the ,christian4 ,he is our authority now on his own affairs1 as the philosopher and the scientific man are on theirs4 ,well1 in the first place it is plain that no one of our authorities countenances arbitrary enactment4 ,thus much is plain about the events of nature 7usually so-called71 that they are no more arbitrary than the judgements1 or the punishment and forgiveness1 of a just man or a just ,god4 ,what we want to know is the way in which their order is related to the order of justice between persons4 ,that a tower falls on eighteen sinners who are not worse sinners than those upon whom it does not fall looks bad for justice and consequently for love4 ,but is it bad8 ,we are opening up one of the most formidable of problems4 ,let us bear in mind1 however1 that we have seen one thing precluded by the mind of ,christ--a belief on our part that the man who suffers or dies from an 'accident' or catastrophe of nature is thereby pointed out as punished by ,god4 ,the selective1 though equally natural1 punishments of ,god are of quite another order2 they single out unerringly1 with the utmost subtlety and fineness1 man from man4 ,they are determined for himself by each man2 he works out his own damnation as he works out his own salvation1 ,god working with him for both4 ,and that is why the adjustment is so accurate between the man who will not be saved and the doom that falls upon him4 ,the calamities of earth are far too rough and ready to be ,god's instruments of selection4 ,when 7or if7 one ,grand ,duke is the sole survivor of a wrecked ship and a ,te ,deum is sung in thankfulness to ,god1 the mind of ,christ is ignored1 his plain words are ignored4 ',think ye that this ,grand ,duke was a man of ,god above all men that were on that ship8' we hear him ask4 ,and we do not hear him say that if we all repent we shall all likewise be rescued4 ,the kingdom of heaven is neither bought nor sold1 and no repentance will purchase safety upon earth4 ,all this lies on the face of these illuminating words spoken from the mind of ,christ4 ,but there is more to be learnt about them and from them4 ,we are thrown back upon the mystery of the fundamental relation between matter and spirit4 ,and if we cannot do more1 we can at least consider what experience shows us every day concerning that relation and what we find when we reflect upon it4 ,there is that tower now4 ,towers may be built to stand for centuries1 perhaps thousands of years4 ,there is no indication that the fall of this particular tower was due to an earthquake1 against which its strength would have been useless4 ,we may reasonably suppose that it was not strong1 that there were faults in its design1 or building or material1 or all three or any two4 ,a tower well designed1 well built and of good materials may1 perhaps1 outlast mankind upon this earth4 ,and at least it will not fall2 it will only wear away and crumble4 ,this tower fell through the fault of sinners4 ,was the fault moral1 or was it1 as we say1 merely intellectual8 ,was there anything of the spirit about it8 ,and we must answer that as it was fault in a human being1 a spiritual and moral person1 there certainly must have been moral fault4 ,the intellectual element is not separate from the moral4 ,think--if all the men concerned in building that tower had been disinterested seekers after goodness and truth and beauty1 would it have fallen as it did8 ,what1 you may say 7but ,i am assured that you will not1 if you have read thus far71 what is the connexion between a love of goodness1 truth and beauty1 and the building of a tower8 ,what1 in fact 7and this you may well ask71 is the true relation between spirit and life on the one hand1 and the successful use of material things on the other8 ,does a man use them better1 that is1 more successfully1 because he is as ,god would have him be1 morally and spiritually8 ,the narrow outlook of some religious men1 and their abstraction of religion from the wide range of its concerns into the narrowness of theirs1 blinds them to the wide range of goodness1 of beauty1 and of truth4 ,the man who is as ,god would have him be 7according to the mind of ,christ71 if he had to build a tower1 would seek as he seeks salvation to find out the truth of towers1 of their materials1 of their design and of their building4 ,he would not only know that this was his duty1 but he would know or feel that it was his heart's desire4 ,he would throw himself into the pursuit of this truth because he was a lover of truth4 ,and in loving truth he would show his love of ,god4 ,therefore he would use good materials1 not bad1 good stone1 good mortar1 and he would put these together with due regard to their characters1 their truth4 ,and his love of beauty would conspire with his love of truth to bring about the strength and stability of his tower4 ,beauty in these things is a guarantee of truth1 or rather its evidence4 ,so closely are the three linked in the love of them and the realization of them1 that we may know them to be one4 ,they are to be distinguished1 but they cannot be separated1 one from another4 ,and so those builders of our tower who should be disinterested in their worship of the three in one1 would 7we may well say7 have set up at ,siloam a tower very different from that which fell4 ,it might have endured1 like the ,tower of ,david1 to this day4 ,sin1 then1 that is1 the refusal to follow after truth1 beauty and goodness1 and thus after ,god made known to the soul1 had a very real connexion with the fall of that tower4 ,but in this respect of sin its builders were no worse than other men 'who dwelt at ,jerusalem4' ,all these men had come short of full devotion to ,god as they saw ,god1 to the light they perceived1 the truth they might attain1 the beauty that summoned them and the goodness that should have been theirs4 ,not in this regard is the fall of the tower selective4 ,indeed there is nothing to show that it fell upon a single one of its builders1 any more than that it selected the worst of the sinners4 ,it may have caused to 'perish' a party of mere sight-seers4 ,only through that solidarity of man which links 'the crimes of each to the sorrows of all' is the fault of the builders linked with the perishing of those eighteen4 ,and again we have testimony against any selection of the bad from the good by the calamities of earth4 ,not even the retribution of the kind of badness which bad building is falls1 by ,god's determination1 upon the evil-doer1 through instruments of the earth4 ,they are far too rough1 these things1 too indiscriminating4 ,they do not pierce to the joints and the marrow2 they hit like a blind man's bludgeon4 ,yet this they assuredly are not4 ,as the personal punishment and forgiveness of ,god seek and find the sinner himself in the depths of his being and to the utmost of his activity1 so these things1 ,towers of ,siloam1 ,armageddons1 plague and pestilence1 search out our corporate sin and sinfulness1 reach the community of sinners in their interaction4 ,by pain and sorrow for all1 they bring to light both the sins and the shortcomings of each4 ,our responsibility for ,armageddon extends over the devastation it has wrought1 as the responsibility of those builders of the tower made the deaths of the eighteen it killed their own work4 ,in the community of life is community of crime and suffering and all their consequences4 ,there is an identity one with another among men1 which they cannot escape4 ,they are one body even when they are not one spirit1 and every member of the body may entail disaster on the rest1 as he may bring redemption4 ,if we could not hinder life we could not help it4 ,and therefore that word of ,christ which was no doubt primarily addressed to those men of ,jerusalem whose sins were inviting doom1 has other points of significance we need to note4 ',unless ye repent1 ye shall all likewise perish4' ,all--the community2 likewise--through aid from the calamities and catastrophes of that outer world of things and persons with which we are so closely bound1 as well as from the snares and the beguiling1 the temptations and betrayal1 we make for ourselves in our misuse of it4 ,we are one with the earth--let us remember that4 ,and even those catastrophes of earth for which we seem to have no responsibility1 storm and flood and earthquake1 are not cut off from a relation with ourselves that may some day be more clear4 ,we are but beginners in the task of entering upon our heritage of earth4 ,and when we try to look deep into the mystery of matter and spirit what we see makes us think that they are not unlike the red and violet ends of a spectrum1 which between them passes from colour to colour1 but which1 when our analytical stretching out is over1 returns to the multiplicity in unity of white light4 ,the ,christian1 by his sacramentalism and his emphasis on incarnation1 confesses their kinship1 as does the artist when out of three sounds he frames 'not a fourth sound1 but a star1' and out of mud or marble1 a vision4 ,we cannot penetrate this mystery2 but when we recognize the solidarity of man with man1 we may try to remember that it must reach beyond man1 not only above him but below4 99 99 99 99 99 ,when the ,christian sends us to the tower of ,siloam he does us good service4 ,if all ,christians had learnt their lesson from that instead of from an older tradition and many superstitions1 there would have been no need to send us4 ,we should have known long ago what it tells of the judgements of ,god and the heavy responsibilities of men4 ,and if the objection is made that the immediate application of the words of the prophet was far narrower than this to which we have carried it1 our answer is that the mark of prophetic teaching is its inexhaustible richness of meaning and its proof that wisdom1 of its essence1 applies to life in every aspect and mode that life may display4 ------- ,,chapter ,,viii ,notre libert1 dans les mouvements mmes par o elle s'affirme1 cre les habitudes naissantes qui l'toufferont si elle ne se renouvelle par un effort constant4 ,bergson4 ,it is quite true that to be popular a religion must be corrupt4 ,the fact is noted both by its critics and enemies and by its friends and devotees4 ,they express their minds in different terms but they agree4 ,there is1 however1 a difference running through their agreement1 at least in many cases4 ,the critics who are also enemies regard the corruption not strictly as corruption but as the clearer manifestation of the true character religion has from the beginning4 ,the religious man means precisely what he says when he calls it corrupt4 ,there is a reality1 true1 beautiful1 good1 which men in the multitude do not find attractive1 but which may be adapted1 one way or another1 overlaid1 delicately or barbarously perverted1 to suit them4 ,jesus ,christ was not popular1 nor were his principles4 ,for a time1 no doubt1 people heard him gladly4 ,he went about among them doing good1 healing1 compassionate4 ,but when they realized how discordant with themselves his prophetic message really was they hounded him to death4 ',not this man but ,barabbas1' they cried4 ,barabbas was far more popular than this prophet without honour in the country that should have known him best1 and did know enough of him to be sure that he and his interests were alien from them and theirs4 ,it is this that stands in the gate of popularity over against an uncorrupted ,christian religion1 this separation from the people and their interests as they commonly are4 ,the kingdom for which ,jesus lived and died1 the community of wisdom and love and self-giving1 is not desired by the societies in which narrower self-interests reign4 ',change your minds1' the prophet must always say to his people1 'repent1 change your minds about everything in the world1 about yourselves1 and about ,god4' ,can we wonder that bit by bit compromise creeps in8 ,anything so subversive must be accommodated here and there to things as they are1 for things as they are have to remain--somehow4 ,the popular conception of right government and right morals1 the popular craving for magic and for royal roads and easy-going machines1 for an assured salvation or an infallible guide1 permeates insensibly the religion which a poetic religious genius has revealed4 ,the divine voice is drowned in the shouting of men who will be heard and listened to4 ,so1 whether great ,rome or the little ,bethel be established in popularity1 the ,christian religion must have been corrupted in it to meet the desires and condone the sins and errors of the people who have so disastrously been won without being transformed4 ,christianity became popular4 ,shall we1 then1 look for its truth in popular presentations of it8 ,if science were popular1 should we seek its truth that way8 ,or do we take popular philosophy1 or the view of the world or of the ,british ,constitution presented in newspapers1 as our guide to the truth of these things8 ,yet it seems that when a man studies the ,christian religion he does just what he would regard himself as a fool for doing in regard to any other serious matter4 ,he takes it in its established and popular or once popular guise1 and then says--'this1 this1 is what the ,christian religion is4' ,and if another presentation is offered him1 say that of the ,gospels or the great mystics1 prophets1 saints1 who have been nurtured in the true faith1 and fed by the divine wisdom of ,christ1 he says it is not ,christianity at all1 because ,christianity is and must be taken as the religion of ,christians in the multitude1 not as the private discoveries or inventions of certain gifted or peculiar men--those saints1 prophets1 mystics--or even as ,jesus ,christ himself1 living1 dying1 living for ever1 whom ,nietzsche took to be the only ,christian4 ,if a man is more careful1 he seems to himself to have been as careful as he need be when he goes to the official presentation of religion by theologians and doctors1 and in the organized procedure of religious government and institutions4 ,that1 he says1 must show me what ,christianity really is4 ,that is ,christian orthodoxy4 ,and1 undoubtedly1 if he carries his investigations far he will find there much that is more valuable and more difficult to dispose of easily1 than what he finds current in the multitude4 ,yet here he needs more caution than he usually shows1 however careful he is to distinguish between the official orthodoxy and the unofficial representation of it4 ,he needs to learn or to recall continually the manner of life and thought everywhere in regard to life's effects and tools and products4 ,he needs to tell himself that just as in the monsters of bygone epochs on the earth life was overwhelmed in monstrosity1 and in the armoured beasts it was checked by the very instruments that seemed its best protection1 so in all human organizations 7and every ,church1 whatever else it may be1 is a human organization7 there is an ever-present danger to the spirit and the life they have been designed1 well or ill1 to serve4 ',automatism dogs our steps2 the formula crystallizes the living thought that gave it birth1 the idea is oppressed by the word1 the spirit overwhelmed by the letter4' ,and if to this ever-present danger to religion there is added1 as there very frequently is1 the insidious influence of the worldly-world1 of ambition1 political intrigue1 the pressure of popular demands and of a narrow but immensely powerful self-interest1 the religious institution1 if it persists unchanged1 easily--one may dare to say inevitably--ceases to bear faithful witness to the religious life4 ,again1 the procedure of theologians1 and above all the procedure of 'theologizers1' is open and always has been open to serious question4 ,they are aware that their work is one of science2 but as it began in a time when science had not learnt its best methods1 nor the necessity of ever relating itself anew to living experience1 theirs is a science very far from being what we have come to know and trust as scientific4 ,moreover1 although it does change and move and grow1 far more than most of us or of its professors see or acknowledge1 it has never formally adopted change and movement and growth as in principle and fact necessary for its well-being4 ,the theologians who claim to represent the orthodoxy of by far the great majority of ,christians1 those of the ,church1 ,eastern or ,western1 are in the main determined to make every effort to abide in the old paths1 and with more or less ingenuity accord themselves with a past supposed unchanging4 ,that the present changes1 they too often deplore1 that in and by their own work the past has been changed1 they seem not to know4 ,and their own reluctance to change both disguises the fact that despite themselves they have done so1 and militates against the value for other people of their change4 ,the man who looks to them as representing the ,christian religion takes them at their own estimate as in the main unchanging1 and judges what they give him as being 'that which was from the beginning4' ,along the ,christian ages ,christian theologians have changed into their own likeness the 'faith once delivered to the saints' and they have but rarely been saints4 ,it is to the saints and the prophets that we must look for the ,christian religion1 rather than to its doctors4 ,but more than to any of these it is to the ,supreme ,person1 ,christ himself1 saint and prophet above and in all others4 ,we have already found our advantage in this for the discussions of these pages4 ,we have caught glimpses of the depth and range of some of the principles embodied both in the teaching and in the life of ,jesus4 ,the ,gospels have brought us riches1 although we have only taken grains of gold from their mine here or there4 ,the ,christian whom we are using as our authority for the time being is one who has sat at the feet of ,christ and has the mind of ,christ4 ,he is one1 happily1 among many of all ages4 ,and if for us he has no name1 no concrete existence1 nevertheless1 as he is he is a witness whose testimony we can put to proof4 ,he brings his documents1 and better1 he appeals to the witness in ourselves as truthseekers4 ,he makes an appeal to which some of us at least find response within us4 ,there are moments when what he says appears to be self-evident1 so firmly rooted in us is a belief in those living facts of freedom and dependence1 holiness and sin1 love and its rejection1 of which he speaks2 so little is there1 if there is anything1 in what we have learnt from science and philosophy1 that disputes them4 ,as to his documents--they too both carry and call forth their witness4 ,we have those ,gospels from different men2 they speak in different voices and each with its own predilection1 even prejudice1 and its own colouring of thought1 of knowledge or ignorance1 of desire4 ,yet which among these writers could invent his subject8 ,which has succeeded in seriously defacing it8 ,behind them all he stands1 the prophet of ,nazareth1 ,jesus--,god and man1 the ,christian says--and draws men to himself4 ,no doubt the ,christian has much more to tell us than we can ask him for just now1 or admit to our discussion4 ,he has a great deal to say in defence of his institutions and his theologians1 which may well be said and listened to4 ,but it remains true that for us who are now asking1 not for justification of these though ample justification there may be1 but for the deepest principles of the ,christian religion1 it is to the mind of ,christ and to him who has that mind that we must turn4 ,jesus built up no institution1 gave no laws1 announced no established plans1 erected no infallible authority4 ,he gave principles1 living and spiritual principles4 ',the words that ,i speak unto you1 they are spirit and they are life4' ,so his great mystical interpreter hears him say4 ,and men have indeed found response to his words in the opening out of their own life and spirit4 ,we seek the truth and reality of spirit and life1 we who are seeking here4 ,and in this search we find ourselves more and more at one with the ,christian4 ,the view that he and his fellows take of the ,christian ,church1 that organization which is at least meant to foreshadow the kingdom ,jesus preached1 lies beyond the scope of this enquiry4 ,all that needs to be said here is that we must not and do not foreclose an enquiry that shall include it4 ,we stand now upon the very threshold of the kingdom2 and1 may be1 we look with longing eyes4 ------- ,,chapter ,,ix ,there is nothing said of man throughout all scripture but what supposes him to stand1 in nature1 under a necessity of choosing something that is natural1 either life or death1 fire or water4 ,william ,law4 ,so far-reaching a confession of the spiritual freedom and the spiritual dependence of man as is shown in the principles of ,christian incarnation and atonement has never been popular4 ,as they passed through the popular mind incarnation was often and widely made to seem a thunderclap from on high and atonement a transaction of the heavenly courts4 ,all generations have clamoured for signs2 and because none1 such as they desired1 has been given they have invented signs for themselves4 ,the spiritual union of person with person in a coincidence of knowledge1 will1 aims1 and mutual love1 is at once too natural to be remarked in ordinary life and too remote from what is remarked to focus attention4 ,it is much easier to think of a ,god disguised in manhood than of one who has taken manhood into himself and is 'made man' by a communication of himself to the man's own self4 ,a king can masquerade as a beggar--that is a simple affair2 but for the king to become a beggar and the beggar a king1 the one remaining1 nevertheless1 beggar and the other king1 is beyond belief by men whose belief is bounded by the behaviour of things that can be seen and handled1 and by the logic of space4 ,and it is much easier to think of salvation as bargained for1 or bought1 or handed over1 than as attained only in the union of love and the co-operation of persons4 ,in this corruption of religion human freedom has too often either been lost sight of or made a fixed character of man as man1 a mark distinguishing him from other creatures and things4 ,he is supposed to be free1 but not to have the capacity to grow in freedom4 ',freedom of the will1' according to this1 is like the right to a vote4 ,it is a thing-character1 ready-made1 in a man1 as the right to a vote is a thing-character assured to a man of a certain age and standing4 ,a man does not advance towards spiritual freedom and grow in it2 he has it as a diamond has a degree of hardness that enables it to cut glass4 ,it is1 in fact1 a natural quality1 not a growing achievement of growth that still goes on4 ,therefore it does not need to be fostered either by the man himself or by ,god4 ,and it cannot be lost4 ,so men too often have said4 ,on the other hand we have seen1 in our enquiry1 that life in its progress from its first entrance upon earth seems to have had as its aim growth towards and in spiritual freedom4 ,the force of life1 in the channel that led to man1 seems to have been directed towards securing the maximum of choice and of field of choice for him1 the minimum of determination and of hindrance from without4 ,we said that the brain is an organ of indetermination2 we might have said that it is the organ of a spirit seeking its fulfilment through freedom in growth1 and growth in freedom4 ,no religion which does not show congruity with what we have learnt about life can seem to us in truth of touch with it4 ,the popular forms of ,christianity do not show this congruity4 ,even the officially instituted forms have1 according to the manner of institutions1 overlaid that truth and encumbered spiritual and moral life with tradition1 habit1 heritage that are become its burdens instead of its instruments of expression4 ,therefore we have to go to the prophet and learn of him1 drink from his clear fountain of living waters4 ,there1 unquestionably1 we find what we seek1 religion in touch1 in more than touch1 with life4 ,it is one with life1 this religion given and shown us in the prophet of ,nazareth4 ,then and there we see that the ,christian doctrines of incarnation and atonement should properly have an unmistakable connexion both with our own lives1 their needs and aspirations1 and with truth we have come to know through men of science4 ,those doctrines are1 to begin with1 an explicit recognition of a promise of freedom which the force of emergent life has striven for and secured1 and which men are called upon to realize for themselves4 ,that men shall fulfil their destiny more and ever more of life1 it seems1 must become theirs4 ,that is1 more and more of the spirit and life of ,god must become in very fact1 not merely their own1 but themselves4 ,this the ,christian speaks of as the incarnation or the extension of the incarnation of ,god in man4 ,and1 plainly1 there is nothing in the teaching of ,jesus1 or in his work and person1 which implies that this process is mechanical or that1 being spiritual1 it can be inevitable4 ,god in the nature of things1 of himself1 cannot--will not1 if you like1 it is the same--compel union with him4 ,therefore men can escape their destiny of union with ,god by rejecting his proffer of more and greater life4 ,they have their fate in their own hands2 they may choose amiss4 ,then1 the ,christian says1 that other aspect of the love of ,god1 which in fact is only other because we speak of it as though it were and look at it in a special point of view1 his atonement or reconciliation of man with himself1 comes into play4 ,here1 too1 love seeks to win love1 will invites the co-operation of will1 and wisdom pleads4 ,no mechanism1 no compulsion1 nothing arbitrary or even commanding4 ',come unto me1' he says4 ,and every effort love can make that man may be won is made1 even to that of the agony and death of the lover that the loved one may be rescued from slavery to self1 and brought into the life of love and the liberty wherewith ,christ would make him free4 ,a deepening enslavement by sin1 or a growing liberty in vital union with the ,christ of ,god--these are the alternatives put before us in the ,christian religion4 ,and again we see life--or shall we say ,god8--striving to give freedom1 yet with no preordained success4 ,as in the plants and beasts life found no open way for that advance1 so1 although in man the way was found1 men can bring it to an end merely by desiring and seeking no more than gratification of the narrow interests of a self that is bounded by self-seeking4 ,it seems that life can be as effectually checked by this as1 in a lower order1 it was checked by the coating of cellulose on the vegetable cell4 ,it is possible for a man so to imprison himself in self as to shut out ,god1 so to build a wall about himself as to cut off from his life that fountain of living waters on which its advance and true continuance depend4 ,he contracts into an eddy1 a circling stream narrowed within set boundaries of himself4 ,he becomes as the lower beasts1 but worse than they because he is no beast4 ,the ,christian says that when this process of cutting off and shutting out reaches completion1 the man is in hell4 ,and the language of symbol and pictorial imagination has spent itself in trying to express what that really means4 ,naturally1 the symbolism and the painting have varied with the character of imagination at different times and in different nations4 ,what we must tell ourselves is that they are no more than this1 and that they may well both falter and fail before a horror so extreme4 ,the shutting-down1 the extinction1 of a man--for this is what it amounts to--who is capable of an indefinite advance in freedom and life1 in love and wisdom and knowledge--that is1 in ,god and fellowship--is a catastrophe with which the blotting-out of all the mighty beasts of the past is incomparable4 ,consider1 if he were the only man8 ,yet is he the less what he is because he is one of millions8 ,for one man1 the ,christian says1 ,christ would die1 though it is for all men that he died4 ',the very hairs of your head are numbered4' ,one man in hell--think of it4 ,one man who might have been united with ,god in an influx of inexhaustible new life lifting him from order to order of glory--that is what the ,christian sees and what leads him1 or has led him often1 to describe such a loss in terms from which we shrink to-day4 ,but if we learn to see what it is the ,christian means1 can we say that he goes too far8 ,or shall we not say that if we had at our command words fit to depict his meaning they would go even farther8 ,no doubt we see plainly the absurdity of material fires and the religious and psychological falsity of the picture of human beings vainly desiring ,god1 when we know that1 as has been said by a great ,christian1 'the sun meets not the springing bud that stretches toward him1 with half that certainty1 as ,god1 the ,source of all good1 communicates himself to the soul that longs to partake of him4' ,but the fact remains that to lose life in 'the second death1' to pass out of all fellowship whether with man or ,god1 to shrink into an ever-shrivelling creature who cares for nothing outside its ever-narrowing and concentrating self-love1 is for any live1 loving1 healthy-minded man or woman as terrible and repulsive a fate as ever a painter or poet or theologian of old times attempted to describe4 ,yet it seems reasonable enough4 ,if we will not live we shall not live4 ,if ,god1 the ,christian says1 is permitted by us to reconcile us with himself1 he will reconcile us4 ,if we do not bar out his fountains of life they will live in us as well-springs4 ,we are wholly dependent upon receiving more of his life1 but we cannot be compelled to receive it4 ,we may even decline freedom and lose what we had of it1 employing it amiss2 it is not an inalienable character stamped upon us4 ,we have grown into enough of it to be able to refuse to have more4 ',whosoever hath1 to him shall be given2 and whosoever hath not1 from him shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have4' ------- ,,chapter ,x ,a religion that is not founded in nature is all fiction and falsity1 and as mere a nothing as an idol4 ,william ,law4 ,the gain or the loss of life--this is what the ,christian religion calls us to face4 ,will you be a slave to the life you have and in the end lose it1 or at least all that makes it worth living8 ,or will you1 in the liberty wherewith ,christ makes you free1 take up your heritage of more life in union with him8 ,there is a good deal in our experience that may be read with advantage as commentary on this challenge of religion4 ,there are men 7we have known them7 who grow smaller before our eyes4 ,we say that they are wrapped up in themselves4 ,there are others who as plainly grow larger4 ,their interests expand2 they take in more of the concerns of other men and1 as we put it1 make them their own4 ,these1 obviously1 far from being wrapped up in themselves1 are for ever breaking down barriers and passing beyond them4 ,if we do not see them for some time we find them happily different4 ,they are caring about ideas and aims and persons they were not interested in before2 they have been learning2 they have1 in one word1 grown4 ,and those others will have shrunk4 ,a man grows by the spiritual food on which he feeds4 ,and if such a statement sounds remote from ordinary experience 7which it is not71 let us say that the more he really has the more he really is4 ,now religion acknowledges this and interprets it4 ,in the eyes of a religious man such growth means a growth in ,god4 ,and he points out that it happens only where a man has sought for its own sake1 not for his1 what he has won4 ,he says that the way of life is a way of disinterestedness in regard to self and interestedness in all else4 ,and1 as usual1 he sends us to the ,gospel for the fundamental principle underlying what experience shows4 ',whosoever will save his life shall lose it4' ,that is the kernel of the matter4 ,because love is the secret of growth in spiritual life1 whether intellectual1 moral or aesthetic1 greed shall not procure its fruits4 ,in the nature of things it cannot4 ,that is why growth in 'spirit and life' seems so paradoxical4 ,when ,i want food to eat ,i may be as greedy as ,i please4 ,this will not prevent me from having it4 ,when ,i want food of the spirit greed will only take me out of my true path and ,i shall find husks that the swine eat and ,dead ,sea fruit4 ,i cannot even discover truth or beauty or holiness1 much less win them to myself1 if ,i do not seek them for their own sake4 ,i cannot see what another man is1 and ,i cannot make him at one with me in a real fellowship1 unless ,i care about him 7as we say7 because he is what he is1 and so make his interests mine4 ,if ,i use any human being as a mere instrument to serve my purpose ,i lose that human being1 though ,i may keep the instrument4 ,men and women1 like goodness and truth and beauty--and ,god--cannot be made mine unless ,i give myself to them4 ',it is very hard to be a ,christian4' ,it certainly is4 ,the man who husbands life forfeits it1 and yet life is dear4 ',die to live1 the philosopher advises1 as his counsel of prudence4 ,but how is a man to lay down life from nothing more than prudence8 ,how can a man be a prudent and careful adventurer of life8 ,he may prudently and carefully be a merchant1 but never an adventurer4 ,and true religion has no truck with merchandise or merchants of the spirit4 ,its watchword is love--the love that gives1 the love ,god is1 the love royal that seeks no gain1 the love of ,christ4 ,so according to religion the way of giving is1 in truth and experience1 the way of gain2 but if we try to follow it for gain we find ourselves altogether outside the way1 not giving and therefore without gain4 ,it is hard to be a ,christian4 ,it is exceedingly hard to love as ,god loves4 ,in fact we cannot1 unless ,god shall become man in us4 ,he is the supreme giver and our supreme gain4 ,inasmuch as we love the things and persons ,god loves1 for their own sake 7which1 naturally1 we shall do when he dwells in our hearts and our desires71 we shall win them to ourselves2 whether they are1 for instance1 goodness1 truth and beauty1 or our fellow-men4 ,and in thus and to that extent winning the objects of our love we shall unveil that reality we either call by those abstract names1 or find revealed in our fellows--the reality which is ,god4 ,under those mere names ,god himself lies concealed4 ',i am the way1 the truth and the life'--,i myself1 he says to the men who are discovering beauty or holiness or truth1 am that which you ignorantly worship4 ',when saw we thee8' they still may ask4 ,yet they knew him when through self-giving they knew these4 ,and names are nothing1 where reality is tasted1 touched and handled4 ,as ,god communicates himself or gives himself to us men1 in sheer love of us1 so must we communicate or give ourselves to all we seek4 ,this is the way of that life the ,christian calls eternal4 ,no man follows it unless ,god be with him2 but every man may follow it1 and will1 unless he refuses ,god4 ,what1 then1 is it to refuse ,god8 ,the answer is always the same4 ,it is to enclose the life of self within a prison of self-seeking1 to shut outside anything that seems likely to disturb this concentrated worship1 to try to drag inside anything likely to profit its narrow interests1 to use things and persons as its instruments of self-guarding and self-seeking4 ,and if self-guarding and self-seeking extend to the use of the instruments of religion1 as well they may in men and women of due prudence and ambition1 we have the type of ,pharisee whom ,jesus denounced1 or the type of priest who judged him and condemned him as the enemy of ,god4 ,all these are in some degree refusers of ,god4 ,and a religion that panders to self-guarding and self-seeking and encourages greed or makes play with fear may be popular1 but however well-established1 must be corrupt4 ,so far as this goes1 life is not in it1 and it does but help men to disguise from themselves their loss of life4 ,the incarnation of ,god and the atonement of man with man and with ,god in ,christ are wrought by self-giving1 that is by love4 ,the whole process of nature is a sacrament of ,god's self-giving1 rising to the full revelation of love4 ,these things are one4 ,it is profoundly true that 'a religion that is not founded in nature is all fiction and falsity1 and as mere a nothing as an idol4' ,yet the ,christian religion1 pre-eminently founded in nature though it assuredly is1 has been perverted1 over and over again1 to be an organized means by which men falsify a nature that is capable of an utmost self-giving to man and to ,god4 ,the greedy and the fearful have too often captured its organization1 and the adventurer of love has been driven out4 ,but both beyond and within those built-up walls the true religion of ,christ has always lived and is lasting now4 ,like the ferment in the meal it is everywhere alive in those who1 despite all the religious self-seeking around them1 share the self-sharing of ,god4 ,these have always had the alchemist's touch2 they have turned dross to gold and have used it to ends of ,god4 ,like the divine powers they overrule the errors of men4 ,but the pity is that this very fact not rarely hinders both the detection and the setting right of those errors4 ',see1' men say1 'this is the nursery of saints4' ,and confusion of judgement goes on4 ,it is a pragmatic test that shows the danger of pragmatic tests4 ,let us get back to principles1 for who shall dare to say whether this or that is the nurture of saints4 ,all things work together for their good1 as all things work together for the truth-seeker's truth and for beauty in its discerner's eyes4 ,for these1 nothing is common or unclean4 ------- ,,chapter ,,xi ,now whence was it that a religion1 so serious in its restraints1 so beautiful in its outward form and practices1 and commanding such reverence from all that beheld it1 was yet charged by ,truth itself with having inwardly such an abominable nature8 ,it was only for this one reason1 because it was a religion of self4 ,william ,law4 ,as heaven or hell depends on the choice between self-giving and self-seeking1 so does the worship of the true ,god or the false4 ,names may be mockeries here4 ,the self-seeking ,christian1 worshipping1 as he may tell us1 the ,god and ,father of his ,lord ,jesus ,christ1 is doing nothing of the kind4 ,he is worshipping that which he serves4 ,if he could really use the true ,god as a means towards the end he has at heart1 that is1 make ,god serve him1 he would do so4 ,this1 in fact1 is what he tries to do4 ,naturally he cannot succeed4 ,and the ,god whom he thinks he worships is fiction and an idol2 it is one who is his instrument in self-seeking1 and that is a fictitious ,god4 ',god is a ,spirit2 and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth4' ',thou shalt love the ,lord thy ,god with all thy heart1 and with all thy soul1 and with all thy mind1 and with all thy strength4' ,here is the first clue to ,christian worship4 ,and the second is 'like unto it'3--',thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself4' ,the ,christian comment on this is characteristic3--',he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen how can he love ,god whom he hath not seen8' ,and the test is crucial4 ,there is no true worship without love1 and no love of ,god without love of the brother-man4 ,so the argument works itself out and finally excludes the consistent and impenitent self-seeker from the worship of ,god4 ,indeed1 in the nature of life in man1 this exclusion is inevitable4 ,unless a man makes his neighbour and that neighbour's interests his own1 he necessarily excludes him from himself4 ,in the nature of living personal beings this must be1 for only in harmony do persons coincide1 only by the stretching out of my interests and myself to embrace do ,i include4 ,i must grow if my neighbour is to become for me 'as myself' and be loved as myself4 ,so that love of myself which is evil when confined to interests solely mine1 becomes good as it expands4 ,so the contracting of life within my narrow boundaries is escaped1 and although ,i still love myself ,i love a self that grows out and forth to the inclusion of all1 even to the inclusion of ,god1 whom then ,i shall love with the ardour which in the contracted self is the very torment of its hell4 ,only the directing of that ardour beyond the self can prevent it from being a consuming fire within the self4 ,therefore unless ,i learn to worship ,god 7and here again words1 names may mock at realities71 ,i shall 'perish' in my own flame4 ,worship is no pious luxury3 it is a necessity of the spiritual life4 ,every man who is growing in the spirit is a worshipper of ,god4 ,he may never use the name1 he may be one of those who would say ',lord1 when saw we thee8' but his love is showing him the true ,god in his own spirit and his own truth1 and1 in showing him too the divine way of ,love with men1 commands his worship4 ,he has discovered the marvel of self-giving1 and in that discovery the marvel of the divine way he cannot but adore2 his life1 in fact1 is adoration4 ,from other men this way is hidden2 and a ,god that may command their worship must be a different ,god and take another way4 ,he must declare himself in a power they can recognize1 that kind of power which has kinship with the forces of men's machines and has uses like the uses of machines4 ,this ,god1 who may perhaps1 through what seems to them worship1 be made a means towards their own ends1 is above all a ,god of an all but material power4 ,so1 may be1 they cringe before him1 pour out praises1 make sacrifices1 pay a dutiful service such as a supreme power of that kind may well call forth in the men they are4 ,and then1 if there comes among them a prophet1 he pleads with them in ,god's name1 ',i will have mercy and not sacrifice4' ',to what purpose cometh there to me incense from ,sheba1 and the sweet cane from a far country8 ,your burnt offerings are not acceptable1 nor your sacrifices sweet unto me4' ,just such men as these self-seekers came to ,jesus1 asking for a miracle1 a sign4 ',an evil and adulterous generation1' he said1 'seeketh after a sign4' ,why 'evil and adulterous'8 ,surely because in seeking a sign such as would please them they were blind to the divine truth in the presence of which they stood1 and1 open-eyed for their own interests1 were in their hearts trafficking with a false ,god4 ,that the craving for such signs1 such miracle1 is always evil and adulterous can hardly be said4 ,yet truly it partakes1 in large measure1 of the nature of sin4 ,and at best it is blindness1 blindness to the true marvels of ,god in his manifestation through 'the things that are made' and are being made4 ,we who have learnt of the history of earth have our souls filled with marvel1 and with mystery too4 ,it is not easy for us to see how any generation that looks for more1 while it has that1 can be other than evil and adulterous4 ,but the fact is that familiarity does blind men to both marvel and mystery4 ,if it did not1 the very stones we tread under foot would proclaim their witness to ,god1 and every moment of our own life would call forth adoration of him4 ,in regard to this matter there is a pressing need for the meeting of science and philosophy with religion4 ,science and philosophy tear away the veil with which familiarity hides from us the mysteriousness and marvel of all things and of our own personal and common life4 ,they show us unfathomed depths for wonder where we had seen nothing but a smooth accustomed surface4 ,but it is religion that shows us ,god in all those depths1 ,god made known even by the very surface1 and turns our wonder into worship4 ,it is science and philosophy that shall purge religion of the taint it has derived from both the ignorant1 and the evil and adulterous1 generations after generations who have made it seem what it seems4 ,i say 'seem what it seems1' for this is not what it is4 ,that is no true religion1 certainly no religion after the mind of ,christ1 which passes over the marvels of the lily of the field and of the man indwelt by ,god and one with ,god1 taking them as things that are of course2 while making much of signs interpreted as 'intervention' and therefore taken as the only signs of a ,god who is nowhere and nothing to us unless he intervenes4 ,we stand amazed1 we who have learnt now to see ,god everywhere4 ,can any religious man open his eyes1 we ask1 and not see signs of ,god8 ,can he search in any human life without finding signs in abundance there1 signs of the life-giving presence or of the dreadful death-dealing absence of ,god8 ,what more can he ask or desire8 ',lord ,god of hosts1' we exclaim1 'heaven and earth are full of thy glory6' ,then we turn to history1 the long history of man1 and the long history of the ,christian religion which goes back1 beyond the sublime figure who proclaimed it in ,palestine1 to the beginnings of the worship of ,god4 ,we discover those beginnings in the first men who turned their eyes from self to the brother4 ,we look along the ages and cease to be surprised4 ,in his long-drawn education man has but slowly learnt to find ,god in more and more of his own life and the world4 ,step by step he has felt his way1 led by the spirit given him1 to the knowledge of the ,god and ,father of ,jesus ,christ1 the incarnate and redeeming ,god of all men1 the ,god who comes to indwell all things4 ,only now1 in a new fulness of time1 are the teaching of ,jesus and the revelation of his life and death finding a new context in new knowledge and reflective thought4 ,only now are we beginning to see why1 if knowledge and reflective thought have so far done their work1 it may well be an evil and adulterous generation that seeks for any other signs than those which they and ,christ reveal4 ,just what the earthly presence of the ,god-revealing ,jesus was to that generation--a test of their single-mindedness and will to receive and welcome divine truth--so1 when his life and witness meet with a new emphasis in the less but concurrent witness of new knowledge1 this generation of religious men is put to the same test4 ,will they receive new witness to his truth and to ,god8 or will they reject it because it has no likeness to those signs that to their minds are alone fitted to show ,god8 ,will they or will they not have humility enough to learn of scientific and philosophic 'builders of ,jerusalem' concerning the true methods of ,god8 ,we cannot tell2 that is1 of this generation4 ,but we may trust in the prevailing strength of truth4 ,generations pass1 but that endures4 ,and the prophet's word goes on3--'the hour cometh1 and now is1 when the true worshippers shall worship the ,father in spirit and in truth4' ------- ,,chapter ,,xii ,nel suo profondo vidi che s'interna1 legato con amore in un volume1 cio che per l'universo si squaderna4 ,dante4 ,for the ,christian the barrier that finally checks the advance of life is not death but a self-concentrated self4 ,it is freedom misused and lost1 freedom turning against the life that has striven to bring it to birth4 ,perversity builds that barrier and human life cannot pass it or--shall we not say with the ,christian8--,god cannot pass it4 ,this alone thwarts the divine purpose for man and brings about the 'second' and only true death4 ,we have nothing to urge against this teaching of religion2 we see the second death beginning in every man who is perverting freedom from its life-furthering office4 ,we see in him that which he seems to have being taken away4 ,moreover1 we are prepared to believe that the first death1 willingly accepted 7as we have also seen7 as an element in purposive and potent life1 is but the gate through which men pass to more of life4 ,we may have our moments of doubt1 because we cannot see with our eyes the other side of that gate1 and the sense-habit is strong within us2 but reason demands1 as the ,christian religion declares1 that life that is growing here and is big with promise unfulfilled shall go on there4 ,the ,christian seems to know much of the other side of that gate that other people do not know4 ,he talks of heaven1 of paradise1 of hell4 ,we understand him when he talks of hell2 there is so much evidence of that here and now4 ,but we are less clear about his paradise1 less clear still about his heaven4 ,what does he really mean when he speaks1 all too positively and definitely 7we think71 about these two8 ,undoubtedly most ,christians have meant a good many things at which not a few of them will smile now4 ,they have meant things that were certainly not of the mind of ,christ1 but of the unilluminated and uncriticizing and biased minds of other men4 ,sometimes they have pictured a man who is1 even to our eyes1 a mere beginner in the divine art of life1 plunged1 as it were1 into a very sea of ,god1 sent with all his mere beginnings to live as he may amid ,god's unveiled glories4 ,that is not a picture which instructed and enlightened ,christians favour now4 ,our friend to whom we so constantly appeal will tell us of ,paradise1 where ,jesus and the thief were to meet together4 ,he will speak of 'intermediate' purifying and enriching states through which the beginner passes1 learning his art of life4 ,he will assure us that he knows of very few who even to his poor vision seem fit to 'go to heaven1' fit1 that is1 to endure the full glory of beauty and holiness and truth resplendent and realized in the 'beatific vision' of ,god4 ,and in this he commends himself4 ,he is an evolutionist of the coming worlds1 this believer in an advance through them towards the splendours of the ,city of ,god4 ,and after all he has the collective voice of ,christendom speaking with him4 ,only a minority of ,christians from the beginning until now have not been evolutionists of the worlds to come4 ,no doubt the ,christian arranges his pictorial conceptions of those worlds too systematically1 and marks off grades as life never does4 ,but in the main life has kept its hold upon him and he has been unable not to see that it must go on1 move1 change1 grow1 on the far side of death4 ,we have no quarrel with his principle in this regard1 though we may contest the mechanical fashion in which1 not rarely1 he applies it4 ,and when he speaks of the 'beatific vision' of the ,city of ,god1 our hearts are stirred in response4 ,we too seek a 'continuing city' of life in its grandeur4 ,we1 too1 see the promise of that city here1 even in the very failures of our own4 ,and when the ,christian tells us of his ,lord's ,prayer--,thy kingdom come1 as it is in heaven1 we feel that heaven is not alien from us or from our desires and our hopes4 ,if heaven is indeed the crown and consummation of personal and social life on earth1 then it is to heaven we ourselves are looking forward1 looking1 fearing1 longing4 ,we1 too1 have our vision of a kingdom where love shall be the king1 and self-seeking1 with all its dreadful consequences1 be done away4 ,we can see it is this that ruins our cities of earth1 this alone4 ,and where this is not1 there indeed will be our kingdom come1 as well as ,god's4 ,an ,eastern's imagination may depict the 'holy city1 the new ,jerusalem1' in her 'light1' as 'pure gold1 like unto clear glass'2 he may exhaust that imagination in details of chalcedony and emerald and pearl2 that is his way4 ,but when he says that 'the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it3 and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it1' he gives speech to our mind through his4 ,for this1 this1 is the 'goal of human endeavour' for us4 ,we have watched the advance of life towards our own cities and in turn watching them have discovered what they lack and what1 in their poverty of attainment and abundant promise1 they foretell if life goes on beyond the gates of death4 ,so1 sharing the ,christian's faith that indeed it does1 we share his vision4 ,only as a social being is any man a man at all4 ,only when the promise of other men is fulfilled1 is his promise fulfilled4 ,no man 7we see that plainly7 can be 'saved' alone2 he must be saved in his nations1 by true community in a life grown to be harmonious with life everywhere1 in and with the source of all life4 ,only in ,god can any man fulfil his destiny as a man among men who must be one with them if he is not to 'perish everlastingly4' ,we and the ,christian agree--once we see what he means and he sees what we mean4 ,and it is through ,jesus ,christ that we discover the meaning of the ,christian4 ,we may1 perhaps1 not unsuitably1 urge him to try to discover ours in the same way4 ,for it is only when he has wandered from the side of ,christ and forgotten or misinterpreted the mind of ,christ that there is trouble between us4 ,it is easy to forget and misinterpret1 very easy to substitute for divine spirit and life and the divine 'word1' a machinery of logic or tradition or institutional arrangement4 ,but it is destructive of the possibility of mutual understanding between us4 ,again1 we must urge1 it is machine-like scheming that divides1 not real religion or knowledge of life4 ',ye have made the word of ,god of none effect through your tradition' is a prophet's saying of the widest application in the affairs of men4 ,but when we recognize this1 even on one side only of a dividing line1 the process of correction has begun4 ,and as a matter of fact there is recognition now on both sides1 and day by day it extends itself and its influence4 ,science and philosophy and religion are met together as they have never in the history of the world been met before1 open-eyed1 conscious of the common heritage of training in the battle of the world and in the struggles of practical life1 which has biased every one of us and been the chief agent in turning the common search after truth by men of good will into a war of opinions4 ,to confess that we are all1 in so far as we are honest seekers1 'builders of ,jerusalem' after our own manner and degree1 is the first and perhaps the hardest step to take towards full co-operation between us4 ,what children we are1 that we do not know it6 ,yet1 in truth1 we cannot know it until on both sides we give up the fond belief1 the delusion1 that we are not seekers but have either attained or received1 either attained the full truth of the world and ourselves by knowledge1 or received it through an external and externally given revelation4 ,once we know that we are all pilgrims and that the divine city lies ahead for every one of us1 both in knowledge and in life1 we may travel together4 ,with the ,christian we may work for the divine kingdom4 ,we share his belief and his trust in the omnipotence of redeeming love4 ,nothing1 we see1 can redeem this earth but love4 ,there is love to be seen faintly1 amid dark and conflicting shadows1 in the biologist's picture of a world-,eden1 where it is after all and in spite of all 'creation's final law4' ,but the fulness of its glory is unveiled only in the love of ,christ1 passing our knowledge4 ',conceiving our life in this manner1 the material evolution of the world becomes the incarnation and the expression of a spiritual meaning1 of a divine event which is actually in process of coming to pass4 ,no longer1 for example1 do we think of the earth's movement round the sun as a meaningless rotation3 we think of it as preparing the conditions which enable life to rise to its sublimest height1 we see the whole creation saturated in sunlight4 ,not in vain are the heavens starred with innumerable fires4 ,they speak to us of worlds to which they give life and being1 warming them with their heat1 brightening them with their beams4 ,and the end to which all these lives are moving1 of every flower that blooms1 of every bird that sings1 is also the central principle of the entire evolution of the universe--the embodied ,word of ,god4 ,for the purpose of the whole is nothing other than the incarnation of the divine1 the participation of the created in the eternal life of the uncreated1 of which the ,god-man is the perfect revelation4444 ,if ,god be indeed the end of all existence1 he must needs fill all things with his being4 ,if ,god is love1 his arms are round the entire universe1 and there is no creature anywhere unloved by him4' ,,prince ,,eugene ,,troubetzkoy4 ,,appendix ,,books ,,on ,,the ,,subjects ,,of ,,part ,i4 ,b4 ,,moore4 ,the ,origin and ,nature of ,life4 7,home ,university ,library74 ,j4 ,a4 ,,thomson and ,p4 ,,geddes4 ,evolution4 7,home ,university ,library74 ,a4 ,r4 ,,hinks4 ,astronomy4 7,home ,university ,library74 ,r4 ,,meldola4 ,chemistry4 7,home ,university ,library74 ,j4 ,,ward4 ,heredity and ,memory4 ,,oliver ,,lodge4 ,the ,ether of ,space4 ,a4 ,,ruhe and ,n4 ,m4 ,,paul4 ,henri ,bergson2 ,an ,account of his ,life and ,philosophy4 ,,samuel ,,butler4 ,life and ,habit4 ,h4 ,,bergson4 ,time and ,freewill4 ,h4 ,,bergson4 ,matter and ,memory4 ,h4 ,,bergson4 ,creative ,evolution4 ,j4 ,,ward4 ,the ,realm of ,ends4 ,h4 ,,driesch4 ,the ,science and ,philosophy of the ,organism4 ,w4 ,,james4 ,principles of ,psychology4 ,e4 ,s4 ,,russell4 ,form and ,function4 ,a4 ,d4 ,,darbishire4 ,an ,introduction to a ,biology4 ,j4 ,s4 ,,haldane4 ,organism and ,environment4 ,,books ,,on ,,the ,,subjects ,,of ,,part ,,ii4 ,t4 ,r4 ,,glover4 ,the ,jesus of ,history4 ,a4 ,,clutton-,,brock4 ,the ,ultimate ,belief4 ,a4 ,,clutton-,,brock4 ,what is the ,kingdom of ,heaven8 ,w4 ,s4 ,,palmer4 ,providence and ,faith4 ,w4 ,s4 ,,palmer4 ,the ,ladder of ,reality4 ,,william ,,law4 ,the ,spirit of ,love4 ,,william ,,law4 ,the ,spirit of ,prayer4 ,g4 ,,tyrrell4 ,lex ,orandi4 ,g4 ,,tyrrell4 ,lex ,credendi4 ,faith and ,freedom--7edited by ,c4 ,h4 ,s4 ,matthews74 ,r4 ,g4 ,,collingwood4 ,religion and ,philosophy4 ,,alexander ,,nairne4 ,the ,epistle of ,priesthood4 ,a4 ,s4 ,,pringle-,,pattison4 ,the ,idea of ,god in the ,light of ,recent ,philosophy4 ,,friedrich ,,von ,h,,gel4 ,eternal ,life4 ,,friedrich ,,von ,h,,gel4 ,the ,mystical ,element of ,religion4 ,a4 ,c4 ,,turner4 ,faith1 ,prayer and the ,world's ,order 7,essay in ,concerning ,prayer--edited by ,b4 ,h4 ,streeter74 ,printed in ,great ,britain by ,butler ,tanner1 ,frome and ,london4 ,transcriber's ,notes4 ,the cover was produced by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain4 ,the original spelling and punctuation has been retained4 ,variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved4 ,italicized words and phrases in the text version are presented by surrounding the text with underscores4