FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45  
46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   >>  
nimals, and the rudiments of memory, reason, emotion, and volition were at first concerned solely with the achievement of these ends in an increasingly indirect, complex, and effective way. Though the life of a large portion of the human race is still confined to the pursuit of these same ends, yet so vast has been the increase of psychical life that the simple character of the ends is liable to be lost sight of amid the variety, the indirectness, and the complexity of the means. But in civilized society other ends, purely immaterial in their nature, have come to add themselves to these, and in some instances to take their place. It is long since we were told that Man does not live by bread alone. During many generations we have seen thousands of men, actuated by the noblest impulse of which humanity is capable, though misled by the teachings of a crude philosophy, despising and maltreating their bodies as clogs and incumbrances to the life of the indwelling soul. Countless martyrs we have seen throwing away the physical earthly life as so much worthless dross, and all for the sake of purely spiritual truths. As with religion, so with the scientific spirit and the artistic spirit,--the unquenchable craving to know the secrets of nature, and the yearning to create the beautiful in form and colour and sound. In the highest human beings such ends as these have come to be uppermost in consciousness, and with the progress of material civilization this will be more and more the case. If we can imagine a future time when warfare and crime shall have been done away with forever, when disease shall have been for the most part curbed, and when every human being by moderate labour can secure ample food and shelter, we can also see that in such a state of things the work of civilization would be by no means completed. In ministering to human happiness in countless ways, through the pursuit of purely spiritual ends, in enriching and diversifying life to the utmost, there would still be almost limitless work to be done. I believe that such a time will come for weary and suffering mankind. Such a faith is inspiring. It sustains one in the work of life, when one would otherwise lose heart. But it is a faith that rests upon induction. The process of evolution is excessively slow, and its ends are achieved at the cost of enormous waste of life, but for innumerable ages its direction has been toward the goal here pointed out; and the case m
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45  
46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   >>  



Top keywords:

purely

 

nature

 
pursuit
 

spirit

 

spiritual

 

civilization

 

curbed

 
moderate
 

labour

 

secure


shelter

 

future

 

beings

 
uppermost
 
consciousness
 

progress

 

highest

 
beautiful
 

colour

 

material


forever
 

disease

 
warfare
 

imagine

 

enriching

 

process

 

pointed

 

evolution

 

excessively

 
induction

innumerable

 

direction

 

achieved

 
enormous
 

diversifying

 
utmost
 
countless
 

completed

 

ministering

 
happiness

create

 
limitless
 
inspiring
 

sustains

 

mankind

 

suffering

 

things

 
physical
 
variety
 

indirectness