ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



that is life, any more than a thousand of brick 

 dumped upon the ground can take the form of a 

 house. The brick and mortar demand an architect, 

 and organized matter demands an organizing prin- 

 ciple. Whence its source? There we are where no 

 further step can be taken. What about the divine 

 mind? But that is jumping the whole question. If 

 you place your God here, I shall ask him some em- 

 barrassing questions, such as, Where did you come 

 from? Where have you been all these aeons? Why 

 are you so wasteful and dilatory in your methods? 

 Why have you made the world so full of misery? 

 Or, I might ask the question a little boy asked his 

 father: "Why did God make Satan?" The prob- 

 lem, it seems to me, is quite as embarrassing to us 

 mortals with a God as without one. It is just as hard 

 to account for a God as to account for the initial im- 

 pulse. In both cases we have in our hands a rope 

 with only one end. In trying to find the other end, 

 we only get ourselves hopelessly tied up. 



X. PAYING THE DEBT 



In my youth I often heard the old people speak of 

 death as "paying the debt of Nature" — "He has 

 paid the debt." Life puts us in debt to Nature — 

 the earth, the air, the water — for the elements of 

 our bodies and the powers of our minds, and the 

 time inevitably comes when we must settle the ac- 

 count. That we are going to have something left 



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