"A PROPHET OF THE SOUL" 



forces of the earth went their round of ceaseless 

 change for untold ages without escaping from the 

 grip of mechanical necessity in which they were 

 held; then there came a time when the spell was 

 broken and the current of life arose. We have to 

 speak of the event in this anthropomorphic way, as 

 if it were an event, as if there were discontinuity 

 somewhere, as if the creative spirit began its work as 

 we begin ours. But evidently life did not begin in 

 our human, practical sense, any more than the line 

 we call a circle begins, or any more than the sphere 

 has ends and boundaries. Our logical faculties, cast 

 in the moulds of our experience, fail to grasp these 

 problems. Life is, and, in some inscrutable way, 

 always has been, and always will be, because it is 

 one with the cosmic spirit. 



IV 



One phase of this new world which Bergson's 

 "Creative Evolution" opens to us is this play and 

 interplay of spirit and matter, or this struggle for 

 the mastery, or shall I say for the union between 

 them, of which organic evolution is the drama a 

 real drama unfolding throughout the biologic ages, 

 with vicissitudes, failures, and successes. We see 

 the current of life, spirit, consciousness, making its 

 way through matter, struggling with it, hampered 

 and retarded by it, as a stream wearing its channel 

 through the soil wastes itself and is delayed, divided, 

 213 



