352 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



The incubus of uncorroborative authority, which 

 like a nightmare had pressed so heavily on his mind, 

 was thrown off, and all his vital activities were impreg- 

 nated with the quickening spirit of experimental in- 

 quiry. The liberated agencies of mind and body at once 

 found access to new sources of creative power, and new 

 physical and spiritual growths followed with extraor- 

 dinary rapidity. 



With this broadened vision came a clearer recogni- 

 tion of mutual rights and obligations, penetrating far 

 deeper into the lower strata of life than ever before, re- 

 vitalizing social life from below, under the far reach- 

 ing compulsion of this new increment of intelligence. 



The emancipation of his mental imagery from su- 

 perstitions, from classical and theological dogma- 

 tism, for the first time in evolution gave free play 

 to his motor impulses, and ripened his thought for its 

 reproductive act. It delivered him from all paralyz- 

 ing fears, save the fear of a futile life; kindled within 

 him the lust for truth, and set him afoot with his 

 vision. 



Armored and armed with the courage of righteous- 

 ness, he bravely courted nature and won the lovers' 

 sanction to explore the forbidden mysteries of creation. 

 He broke down the phantom barriers of the flesh be- 

 tween man, and beast, and flower; bridged the canyons 

 of the living and the non-living worlds; beheld their 

 protean shapes merge with one another and emerge 

 again, and saw that they were one. All the social 

 institutions of man, however hallowed by custom and 

 antiquity, were subject to his questioning and his reno- 

 vation. The silent sanctuaries of the dead were robbed 

 of their ghostly terrors ; the hiding places of the gods 



