Growing Predominance of the Psychical Life.
Let us note one further aspect of this mighty revolution. In its lowly
beginnings the psychical life was merely an appendage to the life of the
body. The avoidance of enemies, the securing of food, the perpetuation
of the species, make up the whole of the lives of lower animals, and the
rudiments of memory, reason, emotion, and volition were at first
concerned solely with the achievement of these ends in an increasingly
indirect, complex, and effective way. Though the life of a large portion
of the human race is still confined to the pursuit of these same ends,
yet so vast has been the increase of psychical life that the simple
character of the ends is liable to be lost sight of amid the variety,
the indirectness, and the complexity of the means. But in civilized
society other ends, purely immaterial in their nature, have come to add
themselves to these, and in some instances to take their place. It is
long since we were told that Man does not live by bread alone. During
many generations we have seen thousands of men, actuated by the noblest
impulse of which humanity is capable, though misled by the teachings of
a crude philosophy, despising and maltreating their bodies as clogs and
incumbrances to the life of the indwelling soul. Countless martyrs we
have seen throwing away the physical earthly life as so much worthless
dross, and all for the sake of purely spiritual truths. As with
religion, so with the scientific spirit and the artistic spirit,--the
unquenchable craving to know the secrets of nature, and the yearning to
create the beautiful in form and colour and sound. In the highest human
beings such ends as these have come to be uppermost in consciousness,
and with the progress of material civilization this will be more and
more the case. If we can imagine a future time when warfare and crime
shall have been done away with forever, when disease shall have been for
the most part curbed, and when every human being by moderate labour can
secure ample food and shelter, we can also see that in such a state of
things the work of civilization would be by no means completed. In
ministering to human happiness in countless ways, through the pursuit of
purely spiritual ends, in enriching and diversifying life to the utmost,
there would still be almost limitless work to be done. I believe that
such a time will come for weary and suffering mankind. Such a faith is
inspiring. It sustains one in the work of life, when one would otherwise
lose heart. But it is a faith that rests upon induction. The process of
evolution is excessively slow, and its ends are achieved at the cost of
enormous waste of life, but for innumerable ages its direction has been
toward the goal here pointed out; and the case may be fitly summed up in
the statement that whereas in its rude beginnings the psychical life was
but an appendage to the body, in fully-developed Humanity the body is
but the vehicle for the soul.