ge and my portion in the land of the living."[83]

Are these the directions in which men in these days are seeking to
complete their lives? The completion of Life is just now a supreme
question. It is important to observe how it is being answered. If we ask
Science or Philosophy they will refer us to Evolution. The struggle for
Life, they assure us, is steadily eliminating imperfect forms, and as
the fittest continue to survive we shall have a gradual perfecting of
being. That is to say, that completeness is to be sought for in the
organism--we are to be complete in Nature and in ourselves. To
Evolution, certainly, all men will look for a further perfecting of
Life. But it must be an Evolution which includes all the factors.
Civilization, it may be said, will deal with the second factor. It will
improve the Environment step by step as it improves the organism, or the
organism as it improves the Environment. This is well, and it will
perfect Life up to a point. But beyond that it cannot carry us. As the
possibilities of the natural Life become more defined, its
impossibilities will become the more appalling. The most perfect
civilization would leave the best part of us still incomplete. Men will
have to give up the experiment of attempting to live in half an
Environment. Half an Environment will give but half a Life. Half an
Environment? He whose correspondences are with this world alone has only
a thousandth part, a fraction, the mere rim and shade of an Environment,
and only the fraction of a Life. How long will it take Science to
believe its own creed, that the material universe we see around us is
only a fragment of the universe we do not see? The very retention of the
phrase "Material Universe," we are told, is the confession of our
unbelief and ignorance; since "matter is the less important half of the
material of the physical universe."[84]

The thing to be aimed at is not an organism self-contained and
self-sufficient, however high in the scale of being, but an organism
complete in the whole Environment. It is open to any one to aim at a
self-sufficient Life, but he will find no encouragement in Nature. The
Life of the body may complete itself in the physical world; that is its
legitimate Environment. The Life of the senses, high and low, may
perfect itself in Nature. Even the Life of thought may find a large
complement in surrounding things. But the higher thought, and the
conscience, and the religious Life, ca