But it _must_ find suitable channels. Let there be no mistake about
this. Perhaps some one may say: Cannot it _make_ suitable channels for
any sort of expression that it needs? The answer is, that it can, and it
does so up to a certain point. As we have seen, the Word, Thought, or
Initial Impulse of the Ever-Living Spirit starts a centre of cosmic
activity in which the mathematical element of Law at once asserts
itself; thenceforward everything goes on according to certain broad
principles of sequence. This is a Generic Creation, creation according
to _genera_ or classes, like the "archetypal ideas" of Plato. This
creation is governed by a Law of Averages, and the legal maxim "De
minimis non curat lex"--the Law cannot trouble about minorities--applies
to it. This generic law keeps the class going, and slowly advancing,
simply as a class, but it can take no notice of individuals as such. As
Tennyson puts it in "In Memoriam," speaking of Nature:
"So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life."
This mode of creation reaches its highest level, at any rate in our
world, in Genus Homo, or the human race. We also, as a race, are under
the Law of Averages. The race continues to exist, but from the moment of
birth the individual life is liable to be cut short in a hundred
different ways. In producing man, however, Generic Creation has produced
a _type_ having a mental and physical constitution capable of perceiving
the underlying principle of _all_ creation, that is, of seeing the
relation between the Word and the Law. We cannot conceive creation by
type going further than this. By the nature of this type every human
being has the potential of a further evolution, which will set it free
from bondage to an impersonal Law of Averages, by specializing it
through the Power of the Word, that is, by bringing the Personal Factor
to bear upon the Impersonal Factor, and so unfolding the possibilities
which can be achieved by their united activities. We have the power of
using the Word so as to specialize the action of the Law, not by
altering the Law, which is impossible, but by realizing its principle,
and enabling it to work under conditions which are not spontaneously
provided by Nature, but are provided by our own selection. The
_capacity_ for this exists in all human beings, but the practical
application of this capacity depends on our recognition of the
principles involved; and it is for this reason that I commenced this
book by citing instances of the combined working of Law and Personality
in purely physical science. I wanted first to convince the reader from
well ascertained facts, that the Law contains infinite possibilities,
but that this can only be brought out through the operation of the mind
of man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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