t energy and hopefulness with
our own humorous and wiser self in command. How completely we are
parts of life as it is lived upon this planet! Desires, affections,
passions, ideas, habits, all, when analyzed, point to the human
organism and its environment. Our personality is like a plant which
draws its nourishment from what surrounds it. Remove the old peasant
from his fields and plow-fellows, and he will lose interest in life.
Remove the business man from the mart and counter, and he will become
restless. How can we expect to revive a zest in life by cutting the
grown personality loose from what it has fed upon? It is
psychologically absurd and betrays that tendency to abstract thinking
which is so widespread. The human personality is a function of this
sub-lunar life, of this organism, of this sky, of this {151} soil, of
this restless struggle with nature. Immortality is an impossible
surgery.

At certain stages of social development, false beliefs are simply
inevitable. For example, the Ptolemaic view of the solar system was
bound to precede the Copernican. And false beliefs do both good and
harm before they are outgrown. How many of the down-trodden have
looked to another world to right their wrongs! It gave them hope: but
it made them passive and all too meek. Has not the idea of another
life encouraged a false perspective in regard to this one? I cannot
feel that the belief was ever a very healthy one for the human race.
Yet, during the coming period of transition, many who have been trained
to hold false expectations will experience grievous pain. People who
become used to a narcotic recoil from the idea of giving it up. Their
nervous system has been taught to depend upon it. Is there not
something parallel to this in ethics? Religious romanticism is a
spiritual narcotic which substitutes a dream world for the more humdrum
world of every-day existence. It develops a taste for the meretricious
and sentimental. In revenge, the enthusiast fails to achieve insight
into the significance of common things. Life's real tragedies and
triumphs are veiled from his untrained eye. Only a whole-hearted, even
joyous, immersion in the sea of struggling human life gives the
imagination that iron vigor it needs. The greatest saints have talked
the least of heaven.

"Born into life!--who lists
May what is false hold dear,
And for himself make mists
Through which to see less clear