

ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



good in that it is in keeping with the spirit of the All. 

 Not the good of our brief personal successes and 

 triumphs, but good as evolution is good, as the proc- 

 esses of growth and decay are good. If life is good, 

 death must be equally good, as each waits upon the 

 other. From what point of view can we say that 

 death is not all right? Certainly not from the point 

 of view of this universe. Archimedes could have 

 moved the world had he had some other world upon 

 which to place his lever, and we must have some 

 other universe to plant our feet upon to condemn 

 death. 



As I have already said, we look upon death as 

 an evil because we look upon it from the happy 

 fields of life, and see ourselves as alive in our 

 graves and lamenting that we are shut off from all 

 the light and love and movement of the world. 

 Does our prenatal state seem an evil? 



Did anything begin de novo, when we came into 

 being? Not the elements of our bodies surely; they 

 were as old as the cosmos; not the germ of our minds 

 and souls; they were as old as the human race and 

 older — old as the first dawn of life. Is it the I that 

 is new? — that which makes you you and me me? 

 And that is probably nothing more than a new dis- 

 tribution and arrangement of the physical and psy- 

 chical elements and forces of which and by which 

 we are made. The pattern of our personality is new; 

 each of us differs somewhat from all the myriads of 



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