its history has never
made more progress than in the last half century. If you ask why, one
reason is clear: man cannot live in a universe of uninterpreted facts.
The scientific approach to life is not enough. It does not cover all
the ground. Men want to know what life spiritually means and they want
to know that it "means intensely, and means good." Facts alone are
like pieces of irritating grit that get into the oyster shell; the
pearl of life is created by the interpretations which the facts educe.

In this difference between the facts of experience and their
interpretations lies the secret of the contrast between our two words
_existence_ and _life_. Even before we define the difference, we feel
it. To exist is one thing; to live is another. Existence is comprised
of the bare facts of life alone--the universe in which we live, our
heritage and birth, our desires and their satisfactions, growth, age
and death. All the facts that science can display before us comprise
existence. But life is something more. Life is existence clothed in
spiritual meanings; existence seen with a worthy purpose at the heart
of it and hope ahead, existence informed by the spirit's insights and
understandings, transfigured and glorified by the spirit's faiths and
hopes. It follows, therefore, that while existence is given us to
start with, life is a spiritual achievement. A man must take the facts
of his existence whether he wants to or not, but he makes his life by
the activity of his soul. The facts of existence are like so much
loose type, which can be set up to many meanings. One man leaves those
facts in chaotic disarrangement or sets them up into cynical
affirmations, and he exists. But another man takes the same facts and
by spiritual insight makes them mean gloriously, and he lives indeed.
To suppose that mankind ever can be satisfied with existence only and
can be called off from the endeavour to achieve this more abundant
life, is utterly to misconceive the basic facts of human nature. And
this profound need for a spiritual interpretation of life is not
satisfied by an idea of temporal progress, stimulated by a few
circumstances which predispose our minds to immediate expectancy.

IV

When, therefore, any one asserts the adequacy of the scientific
approach to life, one answer stands ready to our hand: science deals
primarily with facts and their laws, not with their spiritual
interpretations. To put the sam