gainst the Cosmic Urge, or
reproductive desire.

Necessarily, the Cosmic Urge is older than the Monastic Impulse; and
beyond a doubt it will live to dance on the grave of its rival.

The Cosmic Urge is the creative instinct. It includes all planning,
purpose, desire, hope, unrest, lust and ambition. In its general sense,
it is Unfulfilled Desire. It is the voice constantly crying in the ears
of success, "Arise and get thee hence, for this is not thy rest." It is
the dissatisfaction with all things done--it is our Noble Discontent. In
its first manifestation it is sex. In its last refinement it means the
love of man and woman, with the love of children, the home-making sense,
and an appreciation of art, music and science--which is love with seeing
eyes--as natural results.

Deity creates through its creatures, of which man is the highest type.
But man, evolving a small spark of intellect, sits in judgment on his
Creator, and finds the work bad. Of all the animals, man is the only one
so far known that criticizes his environment, instead of accepting it.
And we do this because, in degree, we have abandoned intuition before we
have gotten control of intellect.

The Monastic Instinct is the disposition ever to look outside of
ourselves for help. We expect the Strong Man to come and give us
deliverance from our woes. All nations have legends of saviors and
heroes who came and set the captives free, and who will come again in
greater glory and mightier power and even release the dead from their
graves.

The Monastic Impulse is based on world-weariness, with disappointed
love, or sex surfeit, which is a phase of the same thing, as a basis.
Its simplest phase is a desire for solitude.

"Mon" means one, and monasticism is simply living alone, apart from the
world. Gradually it came to mean living alone with others of a like mind
or disposition.

The clan is an extension of the family, and so is originally a monastic
impulse. The Group Idea is a variant of monasticism, but if it includes
men and women, it always disintegrates with the second generation, if
not before, because the Cosmic Urge catches the members, and they mate,
marry and swing the circle.

Ernst Haeckel has recently intimated his belief that monogamy, with its
exclusive life, is a diluted form of monasticism. And his opinion seems
to be that, in order to produce the noblest race possible, we must have
a free society, with a State that reverences and resp