The Making of a Man

by James W. Lee

We do not propose to discuss this subject dogmatically. The writer believes in dogmatism; but in this work the attempt has been to treat man, and the things provided for him, scientifically. We have taken nothing for granted, and have intended to say nothing but what was warranted by the facts. That man is a spirit, and related to an unseen realm, is attested by the fact that all round this world temples and mosques, and synagogues and churches lift themselves sublimely, or modestly, to the sky. That there is something in man that seeks provision from beyond the range of sense and sight, no one in his senses can deny. This deep and fundamental and irrepressible need of man’s nature finds its correlate in love. Speaking out of the depths of his life, it is an everlasting call for sympathy, for reconciliation, for pardon, for peace. Love gives sympathy, insures reconciliation, grants pardon, and secures peace. But love can only come from the unseen and eternal in the form of life. Let us see how the love expressed in the life and sacrifice and death of Jesus Christ, as the embodiment of divine love, is set over against the spiritual nature of man, as its correlate; as completely as bread is set over against hunger, or the truth against the intellect, or as beauty is set over against the æsthetic sense. We believe this is so in the nature of things, and will finally be taught as truth, as absolute and unfailing as the multiplication table. Men will come to it, after a while, not only as a dogmatic doctrine taught by the churches, but also as absolute doctrine, taught by the constitution and needs of human nature. The time will come when to doubt this will not simply be to write one’s self down as mean, but as mentally unbalanced. If Jesus Christ, as love, is the correlate of the spiritual needs of the human race, then his life is peculiar and unique. It cannot be classed with any other life. It cannot be measured by any rule used to measure other things or other lives. We propose to test this life by a principle said, by scientific men, to have universal application in this time.

II.

The doctrine of the correlation, equivalence, persistence, transmutability and indestructibility of force, or the conservation of energy has had vast influence upon the thought and life of our time. It has furnished a new opening through which to behold the nature of things. It has given to men a new working hypothesis and richer views and conceptions of the universe and its author.

The tremendous advancement made in the material civilization of the present is due more to this than any other scientific doctrine or principle. According to Professor Balfour Stewart, there are eight forms of energy or force. The energy of visible motion, visible energy of position, heat motion, molecular separation, atomic or chemical separation, electrical separation, electricity in motion, and radiant energy. Now taking this earth as a complete whole, containing within itself all these forms of energy, and so isolated from the rest of the universe as to receive nothing from it and to add nothing to it, then the principle of the correlation of forces asserts that the sum of all these forces is constant.

“This does not assert that each is constant in itself, or any other of the forms of force enumerated, for in truth they are always changing about into each other—now some visible energy being changed into heat or electricity, and heat or electricity being changed back again into visible energy; but it only means that the sum of all the energies taken together is constant. There are eight variable quantities, and it is only asserted that their sum is constant, not by any means that they are constant themselves.”

For the purpose of elucidating our principle in the realm of nature, we will consider it as it applies to some of the useful forces whose effects we can measure and whose origin we can trace and determine.

There is the force of conserved fuel. Away back in the carboniferous period of the world’s history, there grew immense forests, which in succeeding ages were turned under the earth, and, in the process of the years, were changed into coal and oil and gas. These have been treasured for untold ages in the mountains and in the bowels of the earth. Now they are brought forth by the applied intelligence of man, to turn his wheel, draw his car, cook his food, propel his plow, and to light his home and his street. The force in one ton of coal is capable of accomplishing more work in a few hours than one man could in a lifetime. All this force, as well as that contained in the growing forests of to-day, originated in the sun.

There is the conserved force of food. This is found primarily in the grass, the wheat, the rice, the fruit, which grow in our fields and orchards. The lower animals feed on these, and through the process of digestion and assimilation, they are transmuted into blood and bone and muscle—thus furnishing man, who stands at the top and the end of the creative process, with a more refined higher form of food. But whether in the shape of grass, rice, wheat, or in the more refined form of animal flesh, these various elements of food are only so much transmuted sunshine. Before they ever adorned the surface of our fields, or moved in the lowing herd over the meadow, they were held in solution in the sunshine. The food, the fuel, and the animal life of our earth are all traceable to the sun.

There is the conserved force of flowing water. This turns the wheel, spins the thread, gins the cotton, weaves the cloth, and grinds the corn. All the force that water possesses for the performance of work, comes from the sun. The warm rays of the sun, coming down on southern seas and rivers, causes the waters thereof to evaporate, and then it is carried on the wings of north-bound winds to a colder clime. There the diffused waters gather themselves into clouds and fall in rain to flow down the rivers, thus exchanging their energy of position, which they have obtained from the sun, for the actual energy of the turning wheel.