TOWARDS A THEORY OF LIFE 1425 



chivalry, and from cow-educated Brahmin to lamb-educated "good 

 shepherd". Our anatomy, taxonomy, palaeontography and embryo- 

 graphy, our laboratory physiology and psychology are all very good; 

 yet the life and soul of biology culminate in ecology in its evolution, 

 and these psychologically as well as organically considered. And all 

 this evolution no doubt selective, towards the fuller and better 

 living association and interaction of human with simpler life. In fact 

 do we not thus see Biology at its best, reaching towards the ideal 

 of a less fallible Adam and Eve, who among their kindly creatures 

 and beside this ever-growing and fascinating tree of knowledge, are 

 also finding that of life; and so with more and more of Paradise 

 Regained ? 



APPLICATION OF HIGHER FACULTIES— Now assuming these 

 main higher faculties of Emotion, Ideation, and Imagination, as in- 

 telligibly illustrated and outlined, and in relation to the simpler ones, 

 the question next arises of their applications. What use has man 

 made of them in his practical life? Yet so fascinating is the inner 

 life that in well nigh if not all historic civilisations, it has ever given 

 rise to hermitage or to cloister; of which the inmates have forsaken 

 the everyday world of place, work and folk, for these higher joys of 

 the developed spirit, however these may seem but dreams to the 

 plain folk they have left. And though in our day religious emotion, 

 scientific thought, and imaginative creation, are commonly cloistered 

 apart, in church, laboratory and studio, may not this be due to that 

 dissociation of place, work and folk, of environment and organism, 

 of biology and psychology also, into separate studies, which was 

 noted at the outset? For in olden times, from Egyptian or Hindu 

 temple onwards, we find these not only incorporating the knowledge 

 of their time, but carrying its creative art to its highest expressions 

 also. 



Yet in the above we are so far anticipating; for even emotion, 

 and thought still more, are often far from taking outward form in 

 deed, as its hermits show, from of old to this day. Yet psychologists 

 agree that thought points and tends to action ; and that it may even 

 react banefully on the inner life itself, if not realised, from dream to 

 deed, from meditation to application. Certain it is that with in- 

 creasing clearness and enlarging interests ideas become emotional- 

 ised towards action; and this as collective as may be; and in what 

 is no longer mere Folk-Life, but Polity; and this emotionalised 

 and towards common good, as Etho-Polity. Synthesis in thought 

 thus also tends to collective action — to Synergy; and Imagination 

 combines and pre-figures for our Etho-Polity, in Synergy, the 

 corresponding Achievement — the accomplishments of Deed which 

 it may realise. Here, then, is a new Chord of Life; that of a Psycho- 

 biosis, in which the subjective urge and consciousness creates its 



VOL. II YY 



