PART FIRST. GROWTH AN INHERENT AND CENTRAL PRINCIPLE IN MIND AND MATTER. MAN A PRODUCT OF EVOLUTION. Man Mentally and physically, man is a creature of growth, and hence is allied to the world of mind and matter. is the result of a vast series of evolutions. The same laws, extending into a higher domain, evolve his spirit. He is neither a spirit nor a body; he is the union of both. There is something more enduring than the resultants of chemical unions, actions and reactions in his body; something more than organizable matter out of which organic forms can be produced. We are We are to seek the origin of individualized spirit with the origin of the physical body. The individualization of the spirit is effected by and through the mortal body; the immortal spirit must be originated and sustained by natural laws. A certain stage of progress must be reached before this result, else all living things would be immortal. Like the arch, which, unless completed, falls as soon as its temporary support is removed, the spirit part of the animal falls at death. Immortality is not a gift bestowed and again resumed; it is a fact of organization. The origin of matter and force evade the grasp of human minds. Consistent philosophy can only rest its sure foundation on the admission of the co-eternity of the atom, and the A forces which emanate therefrom. We have no knowledge of the creation or destruction of matter; we are only acquainted with change. In change, nothing is lost. The indestructibility of motion is a sublime fact. It has All visible effects are produced by invisible causes; all the forces of nature act from within outward. The study of matter resolves itself into the study of forces. We are to divest ourselves of the idea of inertness in matter. within itself the forces by which it acts; without which it could not exist. Beyond this force and visible matter may be the domain of the Infinite Mind, the expression of whose will and purpose are these visible phenomena. Life is inherent in matter, and living beings are the individualization of that life. As man is the fruition of evolution and its purpose, so the evolution of an immortal spirit is the crowning glory of man. Whether a spirit clad in flesh or a spirit in the angel world, man is amenable to the same laws. We can learn many lessons from this contemplation. By it we comprehend our duty to the lower and our right relations to higher intelligences. Animals and all the lower forms of life require our kindness and sympathy; the angels our love and emulation. Man is in thrall of a higher sphere of motion and a higher system of forces than the animal plane. Only man is actuated by two motives, a higher and a lower, and, by yielding to the lower, can become depraved. What profits us, that we from heaven derive A soul immortal, and with looks erect Activity may over-reach itself, and destroy the organism on which it depends. Whenever any lower faculty transcends its sphere and encroaches on that of a higher, evil and unhappiness result. How are we to determine the higher from the lower? How shall the animal and the spiritual become harmonized? In the tangled web of mortal life, beset on one hand by clamorous instincts, and goaded on the other by the reprovings of angelic aspirations, we still inquire, as did the sages of old, What is truth? What is right? What is wrong? How shall we escape? If we answer by a just co-ordination of all the faculties of the mind, and a harmony maintained by dominant and intellectual power, then is required the methods through and by which this end is attainable. True happiness consists in the constitution of the habits. The great lesson which should be enstamped on men's souls is the harmonial formation of character. To grow harmonial we must remove the causes that obstruct and retard our development and impede our advancement. If a man would appeal to his own faculties, he must learn how to interpret their voice. He must learn how to triumph over the accidents which environ his mortal life, meeting all its duties, and bearing all its burdens, with cheerful heart, laying the foundation of that temple immortal beyond the shadow of death. As long as we are inhabitants of this sphere, our physical being is essential, and the laws and conditions of its development are as pure and holy as those of the spirit. It is not by crushing the instincts under iron rule-but in their proper and legitimate direction, by the dominant intellectual and moral power, that perfection is to be sought, happiness and true success attained, here or hereafter. GROWTH IS NATURE'S MIRACLE. Growth is the central cause and meaning of the world. All nature conspires to educate the spirit of USE. Man, more than anything else, was made to grow. He should acquire material for the exercise of his faculties. Souls grow by accumulation and affluence of quantity. Innumerable aids will come from every quarter. Sunbeams flow down and play upon the earth, and the life of the tree circulates from base to summit. So will the free soul absorb and grow from all that for which it has a liking, precisely in accordance with its mental craving. Refinement and expansion have no limitation. Supplies will be proportionate to the demand. Man seeks all things below and above him, because from all things he derived his being. All creation is animated with one life principle, which is the same in essence everywhere, modified and diversified merely by different combinations of matter. All forms of creation are but parts of human beings. Man, therefore, is in every conceivable sense, a child of Nature. Through the depths and over the sea of all experience, aided by his reason, man should guide his mental bark. Through the law of evolution organs grow into exquisite form, after a given type, by the accumulation of advantages. The faculties grow in proportion to observation and exercise; and as the perfecting of physical organs tends to unitize the being, so the perfection of mental qualities unitizes the mind. As the foundation of physical man is laid in the interminable series of forms beneath him, so is the spiritual. Because he is a spirit, his mind reaches into and grasps spiritual truths. This gives him a tendency toward virtue and repugnance to vice. The virtues are a part of his organization, and as such impel him in their pursuit. He loves to be good and do good, and countless examples of the opposite do not invalidate this claim. Man learns by experience the value of Truth. Every human being, as an immortal spirit, stands forever in the center of the universe. From the abysmal beginning up to the present moment, all the laws and forces of nature have labored to give him birth. Through all the ages of the future will they labor to sustain and develop his possibilities. The one auxiliary is his own efforts. Eventually all gain must come through the individual. God has planted perfectibility in all that He has made. Man must evolute himself. He must choose his own sustenance, and make his own conditions and character. In man, Nature is raising intellect as she raises food and flowers. Digestion is one of her secrets. It seems that every intellectual achievement is, in a certain degree, dependent upon the physical condition, and is the effect of force derived from elements within the cerebral tissue of the brain. And as force and activity, exhibited by a living organ, are synonyms of waste, therefore waste must be met with an adequate supply, or force will cease. Thought, logical effort and intellectual achievement have, in a certain sense, a food soil as much as the living oak has an earth soil. It must be understood that in a proper supply of elements to the human brain, and in a perfect function of digestion, lies primarily the grand secret of that intellectual power and activity that alone gives a perfect expression to the divine capabilities of human existence. Human beings, like trees, grow from and upon the soil, and attract to and assimilate with themselves qualities of congenial substance; and, like trees, grow large and beautiful; or, like trees, remain sometimes small and deformed, strictly in accordance with their hereditary fortune, subsequent condition, and mental and physical sustenance. BALANCE IS THE BASIS OF HARMONY. Man's body is the physiological representation of the physical universe, and the spiritual universe is psychologically |