SHALL WE ACCEPT THE UNIVERSE? 



butterflies dancing by on painted wings, I see and 

 hear the happy birds, and the August sun beams 

 his best upon all the land. 



The greatest of human achievements and the 

 most precious is that of the great creative artist. 

 In words, in color, in sounds, in forms, man comes 

 nearest to emulating the Creative Energy itself. 

 It seems as if the pleasure and the purpose of 

 the Creative Energy were endless invention — to 

 strike out new forms, to vary perpetually the pat- 

 tern. She presents myriads of forms, myriads of 

 types, inexhaustible variety in air, earth, water, ten 

 thousand ways to achieve the same end, a prodi- 

 gality of means that bewilders the mind; her aim 

 to produce something new and different, an endless 

 variety of forms that fly, that swim, that creep, in 

 the sea, in the air, on the earth, in the fields, in the 

 woods, on the shore. How many ways Nature has of 

 scattering her seeds, how many types of wings, of 

 hooks, of springs ! In some she offers a wage to bird 

 or quadruped in the shape of fruit, others she forci- 

 bly attaches to the passer-by. In all times and 

 places there is a riot of invention. 



in 



Are we not men enough to face things as they are? 

 Must we be cosseted a little? Can we not be weaned 

 from the old theological pap? Can we not rest con- 

 tent in the general beneficence of Nature's Provi- 



11 



