He does not wholly understand the forces he tries to control, but he studies them, experiments upon them, and makes servants of them as far as he has grasped their laws. Had he insisted upon considering his mind and his physical powers as entirely separate and refused to use them together, he might still have claws for hands, and might still be a mere burrower in the earth. Moreover, his mind would not have developed as it has. Steam and electricity might have aroused his curiosity, but he would not have known how to make them to do his will.
Further, if man had been able to keep his intellect apart from his spirit, he would not have developed the qualities that lift him above the more intelligent animals. Sympathy and justice and love would not have come into his relations with his fellow-men.
These moral feelings expressed in our bodies, our minds, and our hearts are some of the possibilities of the life of all three natures, and to endeavor to know and harmonize them, thus “fitting one’s self for one’s sphere,” would bring us the happiness that follows action and the rest that flows from selfless purpose or harmony.
If we consider what the true object of life is, we cannot help trying to see the connection between the three natures of man. It does not seem possible that the life of any thinking being was intended to be a purposeless jarring jumble, or, as poor Stephen Blackpool said, “a’ a muddle.” We find such harmony in the life of the material world that we may expect to find a similar harmony in the life of man. So soon as we discover this, we see also that there must be harmony between the life of the material world and the life of man, and further harmony between both the material and the human life, and the Source of all life. Seeing this, and living it, is fitting ourselves for our sphere, preparing ourselves to take our destined places in the Universe as Men and Women.
CHAPTER XLV
THE SPAN OF LIFE
We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Shakespeare.