Our Stage and Its Critics eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 278 pages of information about Our Stage and Its Critics.

Our Stage and Its Critics eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 278 pages of information about Our Stage and Its Critics.

We might fill page after page with quotations from eminent thinkers going to prove the correctness of the old Yogi teachings that Life is Omnipresent.  Modern Science is rapidly advancing to this position, leaving behind her the old idea of “dead matter.”  Even the new theories of the electron—­the little particles of electrical energy which are now believed to constitute the base of the atom—­does not change this idea, for the electrons manifest attraction, and response thereto, and form themselves into groups composing the atom.  And even if we pass beyond matter into the mystical Ether which Science assumes to be the material base of things, we must believe that there is life there too, and that as Prof.  Dolbear says:  “The Ether has besides the function of energy and motion, other inherent properties, out of which could emerge, under proper circumstances, other phenomena, such as life, mind, or whatever may be in the substratum,” and, that as Prof.  Cope has hinted, that the basis of Life lies back of the atoms and may be found in the Universal Ether.

Some scientists go even further, and assert that not only is Life present in everything, but that Mind is present where Life is.  Verily, the dreams of the Yogi fathers are coming true, and from the ranks of the materialists are coming the material proofs of the spiritual teachings.  Listen to these words from Dr. Saleeby, in his recent valuable scientific work, “Evolution, the Master Key.”  He says: 

“Life is potential in matter; life-energy is not a thing unique and created at a particular time in the past.  If evolution be true, living matter has been evolved by natural processes from matter which is, apparently, not alive.  But if life is potential in matter, it is a thousand times more evident that Mind is potential in Life.  The evolutionist is impelled to believe that Mind is potential in matter.  (I adopt that form of words for the moment, but not without future criticism.) The microscopic cell, a minute speck of matter that is to become man, has in it the promise and the germ of mind.  May we not then draw the inference that the elements of mind are present in those chemical elements—­carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, sodium, potassium, chlorine—­that are found in the cell.  Not only must we do so, but we must go further, since we know that each of these elements, and every other, is built up out of one invariable unit, the electron, and we must therefore assert that Mind is potential in the unit of Matter—­the electron itself...  It is to assert the sublime truth first perceived by Spinoza, that Mind and Matter are the warp and woof of what Goethe called ‘the living garment of God.’  Both are complementary expressions of the Unknowable Reality which underlies both.”

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Our Stage and Its Critics from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.