THE BREATH OF LIFE 



tion of matter — the conception that Tyndall ex- 

 pressed when he wrote the word with a capital M, 

 and declared that Matter was "at bottom essentially 

 mystical and transcendental"; that Goethe ex- 

 pressed when he called matter "the living garment 

 of God "; and that Whitman expressed when he said 

 that the soul and the body were one. The material- 

 ism of the great seers and prophets of science who 

 penetrate into the true inwardness of matter, who 

 see through the veil of its gross obstructive forms 

 and behold it translated into pure energy, need dis- 

 turb no one. 



In our religious culture we have beggared matter 

 that we might exalt spirit; we have bankrupted 

 earth that we might enrich heaven; we have de- 

 based the body that we might glorify the soul. But 

 science has changed all this. Mankind can never 

 again rest in the old crude dualism. The Devil has 

 had his day, and the terrible Hebrew Jehovah has 

 had his day; the divinities of this world are now 

 having their day. 



The puzzle or the contradiction in the natural- 

 istic view of life appears when we try to think of a 

 being as a part of Nature, having his genesis in her 

 material forces, who is yet able to master and direct 

 Nature, reversing her processes and defeating her 

 ends, opposing his will to her fatalism, his mercy to 

 her cruelty — in short, a being who thinks, dreams, 

 aspires, loves truth, justice, goodness, and sits in 



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