vanished chances to haunt the mind; but only the
insistent voice of immortal Opportunity, urging us to wake and rise to
strive and win!

FOOTNOTES:

[L] Interview in San Francisco Examiner, March 5, 1916.

CHAPTER XI.

REBIRTH: ITS NECESSITY

There are apparently but three ways in which anybody has attempted to
explain the origin of the race. If two of these are shown to be
impossible we have no course open to us but to accept the one which
remains. One of the three theories is that of the materialist. Another
is the common belief that God created an original human pair and
continues to create souls for babies. The third hypothesis is that of
the evolution of the soul.

The materialist's position seems to be, briefly, that the forces of
nature, with no directive intelligence, are sufficient to account for
man as we see him; that a continuing consciousness in the human being is
a delusion; that immortality is a vain dream and that humanity has
neither a past nor a future. Yet the very facts of science to which the
materialist appeals contradict such conclusions.

This materialistic belief regards the human body as a self-sufficient
machine whose brain generates thought. But the savage has a completely
evolved physical body with eyes, ears and other organs like our own. His
brain under the microscope shows no trace of difference in its material
constitution from the brain of civilized man. Indeed, his physical body
is not only as complete a machine as ours but is likely to be materially
sounder. Why, then, if the brain produces thought, does not this savage
produce the thoughts of a philosopher? If there is no directing soul
back of the brain, why the marvelous difference in the product of the
two brains?

Materialists go too far in the assumption that they can explain the
phenomena of life. They can talk learnedly about it but they must stop
short of the source of life. Everything about anatomy and physiology
they know, but the life that flows through the human machine remains
unexplained. They can trace the circulation of the blood from the heart
through the arteries, from the arteries across to the veins, from the
veins back to the heart, but the greatest mind the race has produced
cannot say what makes the heart beat. Life has not been explained and
cannot be explained from the materialist's viewpoint. Every human being
is a miracle. A fingernail is a mystery of evolution. It is formed from
the s