UNTAUGHT WISDOM 



A wild plant that gets a late start, or that grows 

 in a cold climate, will make less length of stalk than 

 the same plant when it gets an early start, or when 

 it grows in a warmer climate, reserving its energies 

 to produce and ripen its seeds. If it can be shown 

 that all this is the result of mechanical or chemical 

 laws, I still want to know why these laws act thus 

 and not otherwise; I want to trace to its source this 

 solicitude about the seed. 



Is not man's wisdom also older than himself? Is 

 not every pound of force that he uses through his 

 own members, or through the mechanisms that he 

 invents, a part of the sum total of the force of the 

 physical universe? In like manner, may we not infer 

 that every spark of intelligence he shows, or is capa- 

 ble of showing, is a part of, or a manifestation of, the 

 intelligence that pervades all things? As he modi- 

 fies and uses the cosmic force through his various 

 mechanical devices, so the cosmic intelligence is 

 modified and individualized through his reason and 

 personality. The inorganic intelligence of universal 

 nature, so to speak, becomes organic intelligence in 

 the realm of life, appearing in the lower orders in 

 what we call instinct, and in man as self-knowledge 

 and the higher consciousness. 



Our cats and our dogs are, as it were, pulled along 



in our wake. They learn without instruction to do 



certain things which they see us do, if these things 



are in a line with their natural activities, such as 



207 



