[CHAPTER III]
HOW ALL LIFE COMMENCES
We have seen that the human body after it gets started is quite as much a physical apparatus as a chemical laboratory, and the harmonious working of all its parts is to a considerable extent a matter of mechanics.
You will find that this is true for every disease or disturbance of the body. For instance; nervousness or headache from eyestrain. This strain may come through insufficient light or light wrongly entering the pupil of the eye. The nervousness may come because there is too much effort to adjust the lenses of the eyes by a constant pull on the tiny muscles. Even that peculiar nervousness that many unwise men and women are suffering from which makes them take ruinous drugs, is due to a chemical disturbance of the nerve cells. All the drugs in the world will not help them—it only increases the chemical disturbance. These sufferers need the poison out of their system; not more put in.
And so it goes on throughout the whole system; some of the physical or chemical elements are unevenly balanced or worn out for the time. In diseases due to a particular germ—like diphtheria or pneumonia—it is the disturbance of the chemical elements in the body which brings about the disease.
But we have finished with the chemistry and machinery of the body and now enter upon the wonderful and interesting part of life which deals with reproduction—the continuance of species. Every living thing—flowers, fishes, animals, man—is reproduced by laws all having the same principles. The underlying facts in all these different forms of life are the same. There is absolutely no exception to the law of reproduction. Every living thing is the result of the mating of the male element with that of the female.
We shall not have much to say about botany or zoology, you can read all about these sciences in your books. What I shall tell you in the rest of our chats are things which you do not get from your books or teachers.
It makes no difference what your religion is; what you have been taught to believe, how little or how much you already know about the laws of nature, you will all have to come to one conclusion as you get along in the world—that God, Nature, or some great Power controls and rules everything on this earth. You cannot avoid this conclusion after knowing certain facts—positive facts which are to be seen everywhere in all their glory.
As you grow older and reach full manhood many of you will become scoffers at all religion; some of you will call yourselves atheists, others agnostics—one who does not know—more of you will have a blind faith in orthodox religion.
But if you have kept your brain power and moral health, and I shall show you how to do this, in the end you will all come to the right point—reverence and love for the great Power which controls us all.
You cannot avoid this desired point in life; it WILL come in time. Worry and impatience in your youthful days; self-questioning and a feeling that something is wrong with the world, will be your portion of man’s burden. You will see what looks like injustice, the apparent success of the evil-minded, the accumulation of wealth by the man of shady methods, and those who should be happy, miserable, and those who in your estimation should receive punishment, living in luxury, and highly esteemed.