THE NATURALIST'S VIEW OF LIFE 



lasting, the other perishable, one the supreme good, 

 the other the seat and parent of all that is evil, — ■ 

 the cumulative effect of this habit of thought in the 

 race-mind is, I say, not easily changed or overcome. 

 We still think, and probably many of us always will 

 think, of spirit as something alien to matter, some- 

 thing mystical, transcendental, and not of this 

 world. We look upon matter as gross, obstructive, 

 and the enemy of the spirit. We do not know how 

 we are going to get along without it, but we solace 

 ourselves with the thought that by and by, in some 

 other, non-material world, we shall get along with- 

 out it, and experience a great expansion of life by 

 reason of our emancipation from it. Our practical 

 life upon this planet is more or less a struggle with 

 gross matter; our senses apprehend it coarsely; of its 

 true inwardness they tell us nothing; of the perpet- 

 ual change and transformation of energy going on 

 in bodies about us they tell us nothing; of the won- 

 ders and potencies of matter as revealed in radio- 

 activity, in the X-ray, in chemical affinity and 

 polarity, they tell us nothing; of the all-pervasive 

 ether, without which we could not see or live at 

 all, they tell us nothing. In fact we live and move 

 and have our being in a complex of forces and tend- 

 encies of which, even by the aid of science, we but 

 see as through a glass darkly. Of the effluence of 

 things, the emanations from the minds and bodies of 

 our friends, and from other living forms about us, 



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