myself. “I am that I am.”
2. The aspiration toward complete sympathy,
consciousness (selfhood) as the aspiration of God, and
the aim of progress.
3. The idea of “holiness” meaning “wholeness.”
II. HISTORIC IDEAS OF GOD:
_a._ The inner meaning of polytheism: many aspects of one God.
_b._ The inner meaning of trinity: the three as one, as the
contrast of life, and its unity. A true paradox. Myself, the
other Self, and love, the holy spirit.
_c._ The inner meaning of dualism: the two are two sides of one
thing, the negative and the positive. Light makes darkness.
_d._ Personal, parental, and all other ideas of God are included
in our larger view. The unity embraces all ideas and
diversities.
III. PROGRESS AS THE TREND TOWARD COMPLETE SELF:
_a._ Throughout history the only progress has been toward
greater understanding and brotherhood:
1. The value of railroads, telephones, etc.
_b._ The good is whatever leads toward understanding, sympathy,
wholeness.
_c._ The bad is whatever does not lead thither:
1. The bad is what was once good, and has been passed.
2. Or sometimes it is the necessary result of an
experimental progress.
3. Things are not “good” and “bad,” but better and
worse. Therefore evil itself is proof of progress.
_d._ The will toward good is in the world and ourselves.
1. Dissatisfaction is the will toward progress.
2. We use all bad things for the great good that we
love.
(This meeting might be divided into two, one on GOD, and one on
PROGRESS.)
THIRD MEETING
_Matter and Spirit_
I. SHORT REVIEW:
_a._ What is the aim of life?
_b._ How do you explain good and bad?
II. ARE MATTER AND SPIRIT ANTAGONISTIC, OR LIKE GOOD AND BAD, TO BE
EXPLAINED THROUGH EACH OTHER?
_a._ All matter has shape or idea:
1. Matter takes the shape of spirit.
2. We know only the spirit, or idea, because all things
come to us through our senses.
3. Pure matter, if it exist, is a thing we cannot
experience.
III. MATTER IS THE MEDIUM THROUGH WHICH SPIRIT EXPRESSES ITSELF:
_a._ Expression is the means for reaching understanding.
_b._ All expression, at present, is through so-called material
means.
IV. SPIRIT CAN DO ALL THINGS IN THE FUTURE:
_a._ “Immovable” physical conditions are the result of will or
spirit in the past.
1. Our ancestors.
2. The mental beginnings of all physical ills.
_b._ Spirit force is the only shaping force in a universe of
spirit or will.
1. One can, therefore, control the physical.
2. One can shape one’s destiny.
FOURTH MEETING
_Evolution_
I. THE PLACE OF EVOLUTION IN A RELIGIOUS ENQUIRY:
_a._ We must believe in that, or in special creation.
1. Every religion has a theory of creation.
2. Evolution is a theory of creation.
_b._ It may throw light on the means of progress.
II. EVOLUTION MEANS DESCENT OF ALL CREATURES FROM A COMMON ONE-CELLED
ANCESTRAL FORM:
_a._ Physical proof of the theory:
1. In likeness of structure.
2. In rudimentary organs.
3. In geological records.
4. In the Law of Recapitulation.
III. THEORIES OF THE PROCESS OF EVOLUTION:
_a._ Natural Selection:
1. Variations in all directions, and adaptation.
2. Adaptation a struggle for life.
α. For place.
β. For food.
γ. For protection, through imitative color or
form.
3. The value of artificial selection as partly showing
us the processes of natural selection.
4. What natural selection fails to explain.
_b._ The theory of Sexual Selection, and its shortcomings.
_c._ The auxiliary theory of Isolation.
IV. THE PHILOSOPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF EVOLUTION:
_a._ Evolution a self-evolving of uncreated life.
1. Wish, desire, love cause all change and creation.
2. Progress is from within, of our own will.
3. Change or re-birth necessitates death.
α. Death makes room for young.
β. We die for the sake of life.
_b._ Evolution and the aim of life:
1. Fitness and harmony the test of life.
2. It goes from likeness to unlikeness and recognition.
3. Pain, disease, death and changing standards of good
and bad are the path of progress toward wholeness and
understanding.
_c._ Evolution the simplest, clearest proof of relationship.
[Note.—For reference and illustrations, the first volume of
Romanes’ “Darwin and After Darwin” is more convenient to use and
show than Darwin’s own works.]
FIFTH MEETING
_Prayer_
I. A COMMUNION, NOT A BEGGING:
_a._ In a world that goes toward its own desire—which is also
ours—it is folly to ask one’s vast Self for anything.
_b._ Prayer is a momentary consciousness of the vast Self which
is God.
II. THE VALUE OF PRAYER:
_a._ To be conscious, by an effort, of the vast oneness, gives
us renewed calmness and strength.
_b._ To pray for what we can be is to call forth the power to
_be_ it.
_c._ Prayer puts us in a state of mind in which we draw upon the
endless source of power and possibility:
1. The value, therefore, of prayer before sleep.
III. THE MANNER OF PRAYER:
_a._ By conscious words that give the communion.
_b._ By an occasional state of mind.
_c._ By every creative action.
_d._ By the whole attitude of our life.
SIXTH MEETING
_Immortality_
I. IMPORTANCE TO US OF AN OPINION CONCERNING DEATH AND IMMORTALITY:
_a._ We know we must die soon:
1. Speak of the numberless generations of life.
_b._ We live according to our expectations:
1. Relation throughout history of beliefs concerning
immortality and of the morality of peoples.
2. Good and bad effects of belief in heaven and hell.
II. KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING IMMORTALITY:
_a._ What is Knowledge?
1. The relativity of all knowledge.
2. Knowledge through conviction loses force when there
is disagreement.
3. Knowledge through analogy is like circumstantial
evidence.
_b._ We know:
1. That matter and force do not die.
α. We know of nothing that is positively mortal.
2. That life works in a certain direction.
3. That death and re-birth are the means of moving in
that direction, _i.e._, of progress.
4. That this progress is of the spirit or self.
5. That we are forever a part of the world, related to
the whole.
6. As we know nothing but consciousness or self, we
believe it must be immortal, though we have no proof.
III. THE THEORY OF RACE-IMMORTALITY AS AN IDEAL:
_a._ It is more improbable than self-immortality.
1. All planets die.
2. The last generation, dies, too.
_b._ It is not true immortality:
1. The thing we cannot transmit is the Self which loves
and seeks.
IV. MEMORY AND PERSONALITY:
_a._ Admission of ignorance and indifference. Why?
1. Everything is a memory and a prophecy, since
everything exists forever, and advances.
2. The body is a memory.
3. Memory must continue at least in its results on the
self, if not more definitely.
_b._ Love and Meeting:
1. Love may have other satisfactions than we dream of.
2. We are all one, and cannot be separated.
V. “I AM” EXPRESSES IMMORTALITY:
_a._ Each least thing is eternal and universal.
SEVENTH MEETING
_The Meaning of Beauty_
I. BEAUTY IS THE SYMBOL OF COMPLETENESS AND HARMONY:
_a._ This is the reason beauty delights us:
1. It pictures the aim and desire of our whole life.
_b._ The smallest thing can be as a universe in itself, if it be
complete and harmonious, _i.e._, perfect:
1. A drop as well as a planet; a dog, in his way, as
well as a man; a day as well as a century.
II. THE GOOD, THE TRUE AND THE BEAUTIFUL HAVE THE SAME END, AND ARE
SOUGHT, RESPECTIVELY, BY PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE AND ART:
_a._ Philosophy seeks the whole at once, therefore can never
reach that completeness.
_b._ Science seeks individual truths, not the moral truth, or
aim:
1. Darwin, the philosophical scientist.
_c._ Art gives us that completeness, our aim, symbolized in a
small and definite shape.
III. GENIUS IS THE COMMON HUMAN QUALITY, DISTINCT FROM TALENT:
_a._ The Genius differs not in _kind_, but in _degree_, from his
fellows.
_b._ The desire for understanding and completeness, present in
some measure in all, is genius.
_c._ The understanding in the spectator is akin to the genius in
the artist.
IV. TALENT IS THE POWER OF EXPRESSION:
_a._ To see all things as distinct wholes, impersonally.
_b._ The skill to portray, and to handle material.
_c._ Genius and talent vary in degrees of relation in different
artists’ work:
1. The great idea, imperfectly executed.
2. The small idea in perfect form.
V. ART AS THE SYMBOL OF COMPLETENESS AND CREATIVE EXPRESSION:
_a._ The sublime lie of the Symbol, truer than fact:
1. The effect of removal from life, of unreality, in
relation to beauty. It seems more self-sufficient.
_b._ A complete vision must not take sides:
1. When art is partisan, _for_ something, it is also
_against_ something. Complete representation.
_c._ Creative art gives us the joy of play, of creation:
1. Play—interplay—is the progress and will of life,
and work but a name for the disagreeable but necessary
part of the game.
EIGHTH MEETING
_Art_
I. REASON FOR ÆSTHETIC ENQUIRY:
_a._ Art (creation) is the service of religion.
_b._ Laws of beauty (completeness) may give us laws for life.
_c._ Will prepare us to deal more sanely and surely with the
involved problems of conduct.
II. ART IN THE NOVEL:
_a._ Completeness in the story:
1. Exclusion of unimportant and irrelevant matter.
α. The “story-teller” in us all.
β. The distractions of real life, with its
far-relatedness.
γ. The “outside” event in melodrama too like
life.
2. Exclusion of author’s one-sided moral verdict.
3. Must not be “_for_” some characters, and “_against_”
others.
_b._ Understanding of Life in novel:
1. False simplicity of poetic justice, of all good, and
all bad.
2. Cant phrases offend because they appear imitative,
not sincere.
3. Psychological and dramatic treatment:
α. Dramatic writer trusts reader’s insight.
β. Action is more convincing than description of
motive.
4. Humor and wit:
α. Humor is knowledge of human nature, its
contrasted greatness and littleness.
β. Wit is a juggling of words into contrasted or
incongruous effects.
γ. Both are a bringing together of the
incongruous, in a paradox of unity.
NINTH MEETING
_Art_ (Continued)
I. ART IN POETRY:
_a._ Difference between Poetry and Prose:
1. Poetry is “set to music,” and the rhythm carries part
of the message.
2. This unreality or distance from life makes it more
complete and beautiful in itself.
3. The emotions and imagination picture completeness
more easily than the intellect:
α. Because the desire for completeness is a
feeling.
_b._ Completeness and understanding in Poetry:
1. Metaphor and simile a relationing of far-off things.
2. Symbol in Play replaces them:
α. The Fairy-story.
3. Taking sides destroys poetry.
4. Exaggerated and conventional phrases are weak because
they are insincere.
II. ART IN MUSIC:
_a._ Music is itself harmony and completeness:
1. The most intangible and removed, it is yet the most
satisfying symbol of completeness and harmony.
III. THE OPERA:
_a._ Its attempt to combine all the Arts in one harmonious
expression.
IV. ART IN PAINTING:
_a._ Unity or completeness in painting:
1. Point of interest; with radiating lines, balance, and
other means of making it prominent.
2. The cycle of colors, complete color, and the contrast
of light and darkness.
3. A story, not embodied in the picture itself, but
needing words of explanation, spoils unity.
4. Unnecessary detail, detracting from central interest
and motive, also spoils unity.
_b._ Truth in painting:
1. Falseness of photographic truth, because of its lack
of unity and purpose.
α. The “out-of-focus” and imaginatively planned
photograph sometimes artistic.
2. Perspective, the painter’s vision of the single
complete experience.
3. To see beauty in things is to see the truth.
4. “Prettiness,” the result of catering to the
shortcomings of the spectator’s taste, is a violation of
the artist’s taste or sense of completeness and truth.
5. Knowledge of life (anatomy) is necessary:
α. One must understand life to portray it.
V. SCULPTURE:
_a._ The Greek Drama of the visual Arts:
1. The unlifelikeness of the material, the removal from
life, makes it more beautiful, and a truer symbol.
_b._ Expresses idea through attitude of the human form.
VI. ARCHITECTURE:
_a._ Like music’s, its appeal is to the emotions, without
definite sense or lifelikeness; but speaks as life itself.
_b._ To be complete, it must express outwardly its inner use and
meaning.
_c._ To be sincere, or true, it must express the spirit of land
and people.
[Note.—This ninth meeting might profitably be divided into
two.]
TENTH MEETING
_Shall We Make an Art of Life?_
I. TRUTH, GOODNESS AND BEAUTY, BUT THE GREATEST OF THESE IS BEAUTY,
WHICH COMBINES THE OTHER TWO:
_a._ Science is knowledge of facts.
_b._ Philosophy is vision of truth or aim.
_c._ Art is using our knowledge to create what we seek. Action
and purpose.
II. ART IS SELF-EXPRESSION, CREATION, ACTION, RELATIONING:
_a._ All life, all being, is action, or self-expression.
_b._ All power in the world is imaginative, creative
thought-power:
1. All things must be imagined before they can be known
or done.
III. ALL GREAT ACTION, ALL GOODNESS, ALL POWER IN LIFE FOLLOWS THE SAME
LAWS AS ART:
_a._ Therefore let us discover the laws of all arts, and see
whether they can be applied to life.
IV. THE MESSAGE OF ALL THE ARTS:
_a._ All have the same laws:
1. Art is the symbol of completeness in a definite
shape.
2. Is self-expression and self-fulfilment.
3. Must leave out the unimportant.
4. Must have variety and many-sidedness.
5. Must not be partisan, and must be sympathetic.
6. Must give the impression of truth.
7. Must be aloof, that is, separate from life, and see
things, as it were, from a distance, in their wholeness.
V. REVIEW AND CONCLUSION:
_a._ Each smallest thing can symbolize the whole:
1. Each human life is a symbol of the complete Self, in
a definite shape.
2. Each is deserving of reverence:
α. Reverence is the small self awed before its
own vastness.
[Note.—As the eleventh meeting was somewhat of a digression,
and as the notes taken were covered in later meetings, it is
here omitted.]
TWELFTH MEETING
_What is Goodness?_
I. EACH LIFE, TO BE GOOD OR BEAUTIFUL, MUST BE A SYMBOL OF THAT PERFECT
OR COMPLETE LIFE FOR WHICH WE LONG:
_a._ Life—the symbol of complete Self in a definite shape.
_b._ The good man makes all he knows and touches a complete,
harmonious whole:
1. Goodness is always of relation.
2. One cannot be perfect till all are so:
α. Therefore goodness implies modesty.
II. FALSE AND TRUE GOOD:
_a._ The one law of Love, and its petty, changing codes:
1. True good of changing harmonious relation.
2. False good of outworn custom and rule.
III. THE MEANING OF SELF-EXPRESSION:
_a._ The small and large Self:
1. The whole world is the whole of me.
2. Serve, not others only, but others as part of
yourself.
_b._ Self-sacrifice:
1. Giving up one thing for a greater thing.
2. Happiness is whatever we want most.
3. If completeness is the aim of life, then all lesser
happiness is sacrificed to it.
4. If life is a drama, a whole, we give up our selfish
satisfaction to see that whole self satisfied.
_c._ Creation is Self-expression, is endless, higher rebirth:
1. All action reveals the actor.
2. Life is a drama, in which we feel ourselves to have
equal prominence with others, and conscious power of
control:
α. We cannot help having influence.
β. Let us shape our influence for the whole.
THIRTEENTH MEETING
_Self-fulfilment Through Overcoming Limitations_
I. ENVY, ITS NARROWNESS AND BLINDNESS:
_a._ Every man serves me who does for me what I cannot do for
myself:
1. Each one fills out my shortcomings.
_b._ Use, instead of coveting.
II. SELF-REGULATION IN DESPITE OF SELF:
_a._ The moral sense of beauty, an intellectual sense of
completeness, makes us regulate and suppress our desires:
1. Hence we make laws which are substitutes for
understanding love.
_b._ The substitutes necessary until love conquers, are:
1. Justice.
2. Honesty.
3. Duty.
4. Binding by promise.
5. Obedience.
_c._ Conventions, their changes and their convenience.
III. SOME VIRTUES CHANGED BY LOVE’S DEMANDS:
_a._ Revenge, the first expression of Loyalty:
1. Our admiration for such expression in its own early
time.
_b._ Pity, the developer of Feeling:
1. Degenerates into Weakness and Impotence.
2. Is an Insult:
α. A strong man does not pity himself. Should
not pity other strong selves.
3. Strong Sympathy, and our common Working for the great
Happiness, should replace pity.
_c._ Reverence for special people, with Fear:
1. Self-reverence means reverence for all selves.
2. Reverence the old—and the young, too.
3. The reverence with love replaces the reverence with
fear.
FOURTEENTH MEETING
_Loyalty, and Conscious Allegiance to our Individual Aspiration_
I. PATRIOTISM; ITS MEANING:
_a._ We are children of all we can love and serve:
1. The growth of loyalty, from the family to the world:
α. War as a fighting for peace.
_b._ Patriotism in its growth, like all progress, must include
the small in the large, though in seeming disloyalty:
1. Disloyalty to one’s country cannot be loyalty to the
world.
2. But wholesome criticism often seems disloyal:
α. The loyalty of revolutionists.
II. CONSCIOUS CHOICE IN SELF-DEVELOPMENT:
_a._ Know what you want most to be.
_b._ Eliminate whatever interferes with your choice; make life a
work of art, not a haphazard photograph.
1. Concentration.
2. Choose and subordinate your studies for their worth
to you.
3. Prefer friends to acquaintances.
4. Do the work at hand (charity at home), and be sure
your service harmonizes with your knowledge and your
whole life.
5. Never degrade the end by making an _end_ out of the
_means_. (Business, athletics, study, must always be
means.)
_c._ Dare to desire the utmost, unflinchingly:
1. Greatness comes from persistent desire rather than
from inborn skill.
_d._ Youth and old age:
1. Desire and service can continue throughout life.
III. VARIETY AND RHYTHM:
_a._ Varied life with single Aim:
1. Concentrate on one thing at a time, but not on one
thing all the time.
2. The meaning and worth of Knowledge.
3. Never be bored, or bore:
α. Sense of humor; and use of silence.
4. Work and play, exertion and rest, must harmonize:
α. Even your pleasures will reflect your
character, or taste.
_b._ Be a rhythm, a measure, a force like music in the life all
about you.
[Note.—The fifteenth meeting was spent on Christian Science,
and is therefore omitted from the notes.]
SIXTEENTH MEETING
_Social Relations_
I. THE AVOIDANCE OF BITTER PARTISANSHIP:
_a._ Take sides, not with persons, but with causes.
_b._ Use all. Be for all, and against none.
II. SOCIAL SYMPATHY:
_a._ Humanity as a vast Self:
1. Democracy means we have all the right to be equal:
α. Faith and reverence for self in all.
β. Service is larger self-service.
γ. Each does his part; hand and head.
2. To keep well, to be satisfied, we must care for the
sick and miserable:
α. Starvation.
β. Old age.
γ. Contagion.
_b._ To care for the weak strengthens the strong:
1. To destroy the weak is dangerous loss. (Rome and
Sparta.)
_c._ In passing judgment on crimes, hate not persons but their
acts:
1. Each acts according to his desire or needs.
2. Punishment as preventive and cure.
III. TRUTH IN PERSONAL RELATIONS:
_a._ Truth-telling not the whole of Truth:
1. Malicious truth-telling is not truth.
2. Worth of kind, true criticism and praise.
_b._ Our judgments of people judge us:
1. Our limited understanding.
2. Say: “I am one who hates, or loves,” etc.
_c._ Whom shall we please, and how?
1. The morality of good manners.
2. Vanity, the pretended worth; and true worth or
loveableness.
3. “Prettiness” in manner, pleasing those who cannot
understand us.
4. Social frivolity, overdress and luxury, and its
result of friendship.
α. Show is for those we do not love. (Resembles
“costly material” in art.)
[IV. WOMEN AND WORK:
_a._ The true preparation for marriage.
_b._ Social life and service.
_c._ Knowledge as mere show; or as power.]
SEVENTEENTH MEETING
_Aloofness and Creation_
I. SEEING LIFE AS A SPECTATOR, FROM GOD’S POINT OF VIEW:
_a._ The collective personality:
1. Psychological fact: We are often outside ourselves in
tense moments.
2. Getting far away from oneself in self-criticism and
judgment.
3. Our reasonableness in crises.
4. All heroism is self-forgetfulness for the sake of the
whole.
II. RESULT IN ACTION AND CREATIVE LIVING:
_a._ Partnership with whole, or God:
1. We can see and use our personal life as part of
whole.
2. We can get above our own sorrow and pain, and use
them.
_b._ This aloofness from self, or being the _One_, is the root
of all morals:
1. Some know this, and make laws; the others are forced
to obey.
_c._ Aloofness is collective experience, or memory, whence we
grow toward the good. We live in all time and space.
III. PERSONAL RESULT OF OUR CLUB’S WORK:
_a._ Drawing judgment from the whole.
_b._ Drawing strength from the whole.
_c._ Training our lesser desires to serve the whole aim and
desire of our life.
_d._ How shall we attain to fulfilment in our personal life?
1. Money, health, power, etc., as certificates of
creative value, to be used for new creation.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Hyphenation and archaic spellings have been retained as in the original.
Punctuation and type-setting errors have been corrected without note.
Other corrections are as noted below.
Page 37, and he saw that an ==> and we saw that an
Page 91, God,” I answered ==> God,” she answered
page 93, so; but a word itself ==> so; work itself
Page 104, a sense of duty ==> a sense of unity
Page 236, different from each one ==> different for each one
Page 266, if the operator always ==> is the spectator always