ible--by
earthquake and storm, by age-long seasons of flood and frost and heat and
drought, not only destroying both natural resources and the slowly
accumulated products of by-gone generations but often extinguishing the
people themselves with the centers and abodes of struggling civilization.

Of all the hostile circumstances, of all the causes which throughout the
long period of humanity's childhood have operated to keep civilization and
human welfare from progressing in full accord with the natural laws of the
time-binding energies of man, the most potent cause and most disastrous, a
cause still everywhere in operation, remains to be mentioned. I mean human
ignorance. I do not mean ignorance of physical facts and the laws of
physical nature for this latter ignorance is in large measure the effect
of the cause I have in mind. The ignorance I mean is far more fundamental
and far more potent. I mean human ignorance of _Human Nature_--I mean man's
ignorance of what Man is--I mean false conceptions of the rightful place of
man in the scheme of life and the order of the world. What the false
conceptions are I have already pointed out. They are two. One of them is
the conception according to which human beings are animals. The other one
is the conception according to which human beings have no place in Nature
but are hybrids of natural and _super_natural, animals combined with
something "divine." Both of them are characteristic of humanity's
childhood; both of them are erroneous, and both of them have done infinite
harm in a thousand ways. Whose is the fault? In a deep sense, it is the
fault of none. Man started with no capital--on knowledge--with nothing but
his physical strength and the natural stirring within of the capacity for
binding time; and so he had to grope. It is not strange that he was
puzzled by himself. It is not strange that he thought himself an animal;
for he has animal propensities as a cube has surfaces, and his animal
propensities were so obtrusive, so very evident to physical sense--he was
born, grew, had legs and hair, ate, ran, slept, died--all just like
animals--while his distinctive mark, his time-binding capacity, was subtle;
it was spiritual; it was not a _visible organ_ but an _invisible
function_; it was the energy called intellect or mind, which the physical
senses do not perceive; and so I say it is not strange--it is indeed very
sad and very pathetic--but it is not to be wondered at that huma