Chapter II: The Living and Non-Living Worlds

I fancy I am not alone in having difficulty in uniting the two worlds--the living and the non-living--and in seeing them under the same law. In the one I see something like mind and purpose; every living thing shows something for which we have no name but intelligence. Organization demands an organizing principle. There is purpose in the wings of a bird, the legs of an animal, the fins of a fish, but where is there purpose in the orbs, in the comets, in the meteors? Or, to come down to the earth, where is there purpose in the mountains, in the stratified rocks, in the ocean, or in the air currents?

In a living body there are organs which function; in a non-living, there are parts which act and are acted upon. To see mind in all is the task--to see in gravity, in cohesion, in chemical affinity, in dissolution, anything at work akin to ourselves. We see irrefragable law; we see the sequence of cause and effect; we see the weather system work itself out--evaporation, condensation, precipitation, resulting in clouds, rainfall, springs, streams, lakes, and seas; we see the never-failing succession of the seasons; we see the law of the conservation of force; but do all these things imply the same intelligence, though unconscious, which we see in the sitting bird, or in the growing plant or tree? Is the cosmic order akin to the vital order? Of course mechanics and chemistry are one the universe over; atoms and molecules are atoms and molecules; but where does mind end, and law begin? Or, is it all law, or all mind, according to our point of view? The moral order, which is man’s order, we know has its limits, but I am trying to see if the rational order is coexistent with nature. The unity we seek we may find in the old conception of God, but this saddles all the turmoil and disorder and evil of the world upon an all-wise, all-good Being.

Shall we adopt the idea of a primal mind as distinct from the human mind, as the poets do? I grasp at anything that will help me see that I am akin to the farthest star, in my mind as in my body. I cannot think of a dual or a divided universe. I want to see myself as strung upon the same thread as all the rest of nature.

In organic evolution I see the workings of the creative impulse--or growth, as opposed to mere accretion or accumulation. In the light of the same law does one not see worlds and suns potential in the spiral nebulæ? Science helps us to see the evolution of the chemical elements, or to follow up this defining and differentiating process. Could we fly to the uttermost parts of the heavens, we should find the Cosmic Mind there before us.