Hey Rub-a-dub-dub: A Book of the Mystery and Wonder and Terror of LifeDreiser, Theodore
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Hey Rub-a-dub-dub: A Book of the Mystery and Wonder and Terror of Life
Dreiser, Theodore
American essays -- 20th century
Aside from the confusion involved as to the character of man and the
governing forces of life, there is no quarrel with a portion of this
theory. To a certain extent harmony, or a “dependent equation,” as
Spencer was pleased to term it, will always be attained between
individuals assembled in vast numbers on earth or in the sea perforce,
because it may not be escaped. If one reads chemistry and physics
correctly it is a condition which underlies everything. An equation
between matter and force and the elements to which apparently they give
rise, must be struck, a balance attained, if life as we see it is to
appear or go on. The slightest disturbance of the existing equations
which produce life as we see it, as Loeb and Crile and others have
shown, ends in monstrosities or confusion, and life as we know it
ceases. In our own social life, if equation did not hold, internecine
contest would soon decimate and gradually eliminate the vast majority of
us. The late great war indicated as much. Indeed there is scarcely any
doubt that social life as we know it will yet need to be organized upon
an even more closely balanced scale than at present, since the elements
and powers which make for contest and self-defense are becoming more
numerous. Hunger, cold, thirst and many other ills to which the flesh is
heir may yet be eliminated among men, or the individuals of one dominant
state. It is now, by certain orders of men and insects; the bee-hive and
the ant-colony offer suggestions. But it does not follow that the basic
elements of Nature or God, or man, would thereby be changed. Is it not
more likely that here and now, in a small way and for the time being,
only their disruptive as opposed to their constructive characteristics
are restrained? Such stabilized centers of motion do occur in Nature
from time to time in small ways and places. All human and animal bodies,
machines and forms of government even, are illustrations in point. But
does that prove or augur that the changeful elemental conditions
everywhere prevailing outside these delicate arrangements in Nature may
not eventually sweep in and make over that which has been established
here into such a condition as we find in the sea, for instance, where
life insistently and apparently mechanistically preys on life? Why not?
The glory of pagan life and art--were they saved? Or was their knell
sounded by the advent of Christianity?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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