THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 177 



apparatus to develop his body in ways beyond his 

 power without such aid. 



The theory of a vague diffused consciousness, strug- 

 gling into definite being by the aid of matter, suits well 

 the facts of evolution, which show that many lines of 

 advance have been tried without success, while one 

 alone that culminating in mankind has set conscious- 

 ness nearly free from the trammels of its necessitarian 

 environment. 



But this theory, well as it may explain some of the 

 phenomena, may perhaps be deemed insufficient on a 

 whole survey of the field. It has nothing to say on 

 the deeper problems of the existence of the Universe 

 of mind and matter, which problems underlie the view 

 of life we are now following no less than the purely 

 mechanical theory with which we began. 



Such problems may perhaps be pushed one step 

 further back if we assume the existence of a more 

 definite consciousness, pervading and yet transcending 

 all things, the origin of all mind, and, in some perhaps 

 less direct way, of all matter too. This consciousness, 

 universal and infinite, if it sought to develop parts of 

 itself into finite and distinct personalities, might find 

 it impossible to effect the separation (to speak in crude 

 metaphors), and allow the subsidiary personalities the 

 time, space and conditions of independent growth, 

 without using some such contrivance as organic evolu- 

 tion through matter. 



On either view, the development of human person- 

 alities becomes of transcendent importance ; on either 

 view it is the method of creating conscious minds, 



which, if the evolutionary drama is to have any 



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