SELF 231 



appropriate the soluble nutritious particles, coming in 

 contact with its surface, but rejects the -insoluble, and 

 inorganic, unless it is, that both phenomena, in all 

 essential elements, are expressive of the same choice, in 

 less degree only, as man makes, in his reasoning out a 

 civil and moral code; which man considers essential to 

 his physical welfare; the same- essentially that similar 

 acts by man, although more complex, constitute, what 

 is variously expressed by the words, thought, reason, 

 memory, will? This basis, or stimulus to all thought, 

 is the necessity of the natural preservation of the or- 

 ganism, or of the race, to which it belongs. 



Whatever an organism does, has at the bottom this 

 basic motive. Even the social instincts of human beings, 

 bees and ants, have this for a motive. 



There are certain functions, of the higher brain, 

 producing abstractions, and generalizations, whose con- 

 nection with self, or race preservation, is difficult to 

 trace. But there is a connection. Whoever is unself- 

 ishly pursuing truth in the abstract, is doing it by the 

 compulsion, or tendency, of his organism. Truth is 

 essential to his organized brain structure, or his nerve 

 structure is in necessary correspondence with a higher 

 environment, in which truth is the essential thing. He 

 is doing it, also, for the benefit of the physical welfare 

 of the race. All research, in whatever domain, is at 

 bottom, the finding of better method of human effort. 

 To the devotee of esthetics, the beautiful is a condition 

 of natural existence, or at least of social existence to 

 him. To him harmony, in sound and color, is necessary 

 to the preservation of his organism. Whatever a man 

 does, seems in the last analysis, to have, at bottom, the 

 motive of preservation of either self, or the race. The 

 principal is very apparent in all commercialism and 



