Science and the Infinite; or, Through a Window in the Blank WallKlein, Sydney T. (Sydney Turner)
Religion
Science and the Infinite; or, Through a Window in the Blank Wall
Klein, Sydney T. (Sydney Turner)
Religion and science
Let us go back into the far distant past, before the frame and brain
of what we now call the genus Homo was fully developed: he was then an
animal pure and simple, conscious of living but knowing neither good
nor evil; there was nothing in his thoughts more perfect than himself;
it was the golden age of innocency; he was a being enjoying himself in
a perfect state of nature with absolute freedom from responsibility of
action. But, as ages rolled on, under the great law of evolution, his
brain was enlarging and gradually being prepared for a great and
wonderful event, which was to make an enormous change in his mode of
living and his outlook on the future. As seeds may fall continually
for thousands of years upon hard rock without being able to germinate,
until gradually, by the disintegration of the rock, soil is formed,
enabling the seed at last to take root; so for countless ages was the
mind of that noble animal being prepared until, in the fulfilment of
time, the Spiritual took root and he became a living soul. The change
was marvellous; he was now aware of something higher and more perfect
than himself, he found that he was able to form ideals above his
ability to attain to, resulting in a sense of inferiority, akin to a
"Fall"; he was conscious of the difference of Right and Wrong, and
felt happy and blessed when he followed the Good, but ashamed and
accursed when he chose the Evil; he became upright in stature, and
able to communicate his thoughts and wishes to his fellows by means of
language; and by feeling his freedom to choose between the Good,
Beautiful, and True on one hand, and the Evil, Ugly, and False on the
other, he became aware that he was responsible and answerable to a
mysterious higher Being for his actions. This at once raised him far
above other animals, and he gradually began to feel the presence
within him of a wonderful power, the nucleus of that Transcendental
Self which had taken root, and which, from that age to this, has urged
Man ever forward first to form, and then struggle to attain, higher
Ideals of Perfection. As a mountaineer who, with stern persistence,
struggles upward from height to height, gaining at each step a clearer
and broader view, so do we, as we progress in our struggle upwards,
toward the understanding of Perfection, ever see more and more clearly
that the Invisible is the Real, that the visible is only its shadow,
that our Spiritual Personality is akin to that Great Reality, that we
cannot search out and know that Personality; it is not an idea, it
cannot be perceived by our senses, any more than we can see a sound by
our sense of sight or measure an Infinity by our finite units; all we
can so far do is to feel and mark its effect in guiding our Physical
Ego to choose the real from the shadow, the plus from the minus,
receiving back in some marvellous mode of reflex action the power to
draw further nourishment from the Infinite. As that Inner Personality
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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