The Management of Life 93 



in women. The characteristics of gods are put to- 

 gether from the highest that we find in men and from 

 what we see that men may become as evolutionary 

 development continues. All these things are the shad- 

 ows of which living things are the reality. It is the 

 living creatures themselves that have the attributes 

 that inspire wonder and devotion and effort in these 

 reflections. The wonder and devotion and effort given 

 to the reflections are unconscious or distorted tributes 

 to the living reality; they become not less by con- 

 sciously turning them toward the living reality. 



To sum up the whole matter the study of biology 

 leaves us with an impression of the universe that is 

 perhaps less pessimistic than that which is sometimes 

 presented in the name of physics. The universe is a 

 system that in time comes to life; a system that be- 

 comes conscious of itself ; a system that has feelings, 

 ideas, interest, thoughts, knowledge, purposes. It 

 brings forth living things, with their sensations, emo- 

 tions, satisfactions, their knowledge and thought and 

 ideals; with their powers of action, of controlling 

 what further occurs. This production of life and its 

 attributes is one of the revelations of the essential 

 nature of things ; something never to be forgotten in 

 considering the properties of the elements of which 

 the world is put together. 



In bringing forth life, the universe shows itself a 

 system that is not given complete, once for all; a 

 system that is not stereotyped in its action, not pre- 

 dictable from its beginning to its end. With the pas- 



