II U" ! ill 1 'iw'W-l W Hi If. :X ^H OllllliillP III Mil H^HiHHHH iiiiHiiiittiiiiiiniiii liilllinlilililiillllllll 1 HI IP H ■1MB lIL m hm 111 in Class ~?^T^\ Book _ Copyright N° COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. THE LAST WORD BEING An Announcement of the Ultimate Generalization of Science AND A Solution of Popular Problems in Religion and Philosophy BY JAMES AND MARY BALDWIN, PH. M. BROADWAY PUBLISHING CO. 835 Broadway, New York BRANCH OFPICBSi CHICAGO. WASHINGTON. BALTIMORE, ATLANTA. NORFOLK. FLORENCE. ^ Copyright, 1910, By ENOS BALDWIN. CCI.A278547 To OUR FATHER CONTENTS The Ultimate Generalization op Science announced PAGE Preface. The Goal of Science 7 Section I. The Infinity of Mentation Wi Section II. The Law of Mentation 42 Applied Section III. The Last Word in Religion 50 Section IV. The Last Word in Government . 76 Section V. The Last Word in Morality 87 Section VI. The Last Word in Art 94 Section VII. The Last Word in Education . . 100 PREFACE THE GOAL OF SCIENCE "Then said the Shepherds one to another, Let us here show to the Pilgrims the gates of the Celestial City, if they have skill to look through our perspec- tive glass. . . . Then they essayed to look, but the remembrance of that last thing that the Shep- herds had shown them made their hands shake; by means of which impediment they could not look steadily through the glass ; yet they thought they saw something like the gate, and also some of the glory of the place. Then they went away, and sang this song: " 'Thus, by the shepherds, secrets are reveal'd, Which from all other men are kept conceal'd' . . ." — The Pilgrim's Progress. So, in his pilgrimage from the City of Destruction, Man has now reached those Delectable Mountains whence the Gate of Ultimate Reality comes within range of his Science. Yet, because he is impeded still by doubt, fearing his Shepherds' last showing, — "that there is a way to hell, even from the gates of heaven," — and because he compromises still with the 3i 8 PREFACE perspectives of ancient and alien eyes, chanting the song of the Over-man to whom "Secrets are reveal'd, Which from all other men are kept conceal'd," the thousand philosophies which have sprung up in our day, as so many visionary exclamation points, are woefully shaky. Nevertheless, they do testify, in the totality of their contradictory half truths, to an objective whole Truth, and, by the unanimity of their optimism, to the glory of that consummate Verity. Is Man ready to pronounce that last word in Science which shall make his Chaos a true Universe? Yes! The individual most astonished by the mighty mediaeval Reformation was Martin Luther. He nailed his thesis to the church-door and went to bed a lonely free-thinker. He awoke an international leader of authority. Already for long the people had been thinking and d}ang at the stake for their inarticulate Idea. And thus always, in the past, the prescient populace, wanting only Voice, has hung helplessly upon the slow lips of the Philosopher, the Priest, the Poet, the Politician and the Pedagogue. To-day, in our Wilderness of dying churches, cor- rupt administrations, depraved arts and futile schools the people are turning from their hereditary Shepherds. But not helplessly. Now, for the first time in history, the humble Man of Business is find- ing his own tongue. And his forthcoming word is the final Wisdom of Science and universal Gospel. PREFACE 9 It is the program of the following sections to briefly enunciate, in language as little technical as possible, the ultimate Generalization of universal Science, and to indicate its practical application in the solution of metaphysical, theological, political, ethical, esthetical and educational problems. THE LAST WORD in Science is that ultimate and universal Truth which includes and concludes all other truths. Each of the minor sciences observes, assembles, relates and classifies a particular kind of reality. Universal Science, or what is rightly called Philosophy, in turn observes, assembles and relates these minor classifications of temporary and limited particularity in a major Classification of eternal and infinite generality. Figuratively speaking, the philosophical Scientist essays to take a standpoint so lofty that he includes within his view all the diverse phenomena of Life, and from that vantage point to so fit together the parts of the world picture-puzzle — including himself —that they form a co-related, artistic Whole. In other words, he attempts to rationalize or explain all diversities by composing them in a self-explanatory Unity, a Uni-verse. The difficulty of such a task is evident. No figure of speech can adequately con- vey the enormity of that assumption which requires an Observer of not only the spectacular but all other varieties of sensory data, whose standpoint is every- where, and whose endurance is tireless. Indeed, the last Word is only made rationally possible for this generation by the recorded collaboration and coinci- dental testimony of countless preceding scientists 10 PREFACE and scientific philosophers. And, accordingly, before taking the final step up which shall give us the all- inclusive viewpoint, it is well not only to have firmly underfoot the apex of latest achievement, but also to glance backward along the entire length of the scientific Pilgrimage even to the Slough of Despond. For it is assumed that, with all its ancient errancies, that pathway points, in the long run, to the goal; and that even the wanderings in the wilderness of those who saw through a glass most darkly offer a negative guide of warning value for the direction of the present forward step. In this Preface, the Last Word is then to be provisionally defined by point- ing out the definite trend in the general course of civilized man's actual quest for knowledge in the past. The organized cooperation in Science, which makes possible a rapid ascent from minor to major generalizations, is of very late development. Even in relation to such a common and fundamental sub- ject as agriculture scarcely more than two genera- tions have passed since specialists began to collect, compare and classify accurate observations leading to general principles of knowledge. And the dis- covery of crop rotation is not more recent than that of the circulation of the human blood. The "wise men" of ancient times, granting them the most hon- orable intentions, must therefore have proceeded to sooth-say or philosophize upon an insecure basis. Despairing of the then unattempted task of harmon- izing the whole of experience they were obliged, in order to give authority to their unsupported gen- eralizations and to justify the fanciful stop-gaps in PREFACE 11 their fact foundations, to call in the aid of a super- human Harmonizer such as a Creator or First Prin- ciple, an Ultimate Equilibration or Judgment Day. This short-cut scheme of referring the inequalities, perplexities and contradictions of present life to a remote and hence unquestionable Harmonizer is the method of transcendental Metaphysics and old-school Theology. Obviously, the ultimate problem of Sci- ence, the rationalization of the Universe, is compli- cated rather than resolved by adding to the diversi- ties of Life, already despaired of as inherently in- harmonious, an inherently harmonious Principle or a Being who, by his very Superhumanity, lies outside of human Science. Such an act is at best an act of Speculation or Superstition. And yet as the only method available to the would-be philosopher of old, it acquired usage and reputation. The interpreters of dreams, readers of the stars, inspired prophets, oraculists and necromancers in black and white magic were of high standing in bygone society. So much so that their academic successors to this day need only, to speak a sufficiently mystical language to win for themselves the respect of the plain speak- ing workaday world. What is the essence of the speculative or super- stitious Ideal that was substituted by necessity for the Scientific Idea? The Scientist may not sit down at ease and experimentally fit together his cosmic picture-puzzle as one might handle passive bits of cardboard, for everything in this world-puzzle is in motion. The Scientist must harmonize in his ra- tional scheme of things such opposites as the sensual libertine and the saintly mother, both equally real 12 PREFACE facts. But even as he would put these opposites in their proper places, they may change. The libertine undergoes conversion ; the mother, degeneration. Moreover, the Scientist is subjectively in motion. His very sense organs, his instruments for assem- bling scientific data, alter in accuracy from day to day. And the Fancy of his youth is not the Ideality of his maturity. It is this movement without and within, this vagrant freedom of Nature in Time and Space, which has most appalled philosophers of all ages. And naturally the earliest scientists of all, confronted by the whole problem and by a world, too, in which the actual disorder was maximum (for it must not be forgotten that science has reacted continually in later days to co-relate the human world) were the most disheartened of all. That is to say, the earliest metaphysicians and theologians required of their Superhuman Ideal, a maximum Charity of harmonizing movement without, whilst they sought for themselves, with a view to restrain- ing the general confusion, the most absolute non- motion or Human Fixity within. But the quiet confinement of the astrologer's sky- chamber, the alchemist's dungeon, the anchorite's cell and the scholar's library were meanwhile denied to the unprofessional philosophers. And it must not be forgotten that even the humblest of the men who carry on the world's work has his philosophy of life, incomplete and unexpressed though it may be. From the beginning, men of business have perforce ac- quired knowledge not by superhuman Charity nor in cultivated non-motion, but through a process of ac- tive realization. And though it is true that the PREFACE 13 masses have ever been of speculative and supersti- tious temperament, easily led astray by professional authority, it is equally true that the professional philosopher has always been dependent, in the last analysis, on the man of business for his living and has consequently been obliged to constantly retrim his Ideal to suit the common cumulative Idea. When we take into account these factors, it will be plain that the History of Science may be stated, essentially, as the resultant of a battle between the Ideal of Human Fixation (Abstraction from the Here-place and Now-time) and the Idea of Human Motion (Traction in the Here-place and Now-time). A review of thought-systems typical of past beliefs will disclose a steady progress from pessimism to optimism with reference to the value of harmonizing Human Movement, and a corresponding progress from optimism to pessimism with reference to Super- human (Movement) Charity. This progress is the only real progress in human life history. It is a ten- dency which logically leads to the total destruction of speculative Metaphysics and superstitious The- ology. And, therefore, is never apparent in the academic histories of so-called Philosophy and Re- ligion. From the foregoing, it is to be expected that the oldest of earth's philosophers idealized Human non- motion or Fixity most absolutely. The oldest phi- losophies of which we have record are those of In- dia, Egypt and China. Chinese philosophy is no- toriously non-progressive on the human side. The three important doctrines of the Indian thought-sys- tem are Nirvana, the Transmigration of Souls, and 14 PREFACE Caste. Nirvana does not mean nothingness after death. It means exactly Human Fixity. The Indian heaven is simply Rest, after the torturing human Transmigration movement upon earth. The demand on Superhuman Charity is ultimate, a complete ab- sorption and preservation, — the miracle of Perpetual Non-Motion. Personally, the Indian philosopher or fakir is supreme in the practice of idealized abstrac- tion with suspended movement. Caste is systematic limitation of human movements. The Egyptians ex- pressed the same philosophy in materialistic terms. The pyramids and embalmed mummies are signifi- cant protests against human change. The next grand stage in the scientific quest is fairly represented by the typical philosophies of an- cient Greece, — Stoicism and Epicureanism. The Stoic feels the instability of the human world to be an evil. He looks to supernatural Charity — Fate, Nemesis, etc., for fixational relief in equating human diversities. But he also admits that there is so much of idleness or indifference among the gods them- selves that a man must a little exercise himself here upon earth to hold his own. He moves very little — only by way of internal stiffening in resistance to what would otherwise be an overwhelming motion. Yet he voluntarily moves and so advances the world's philosophy. The Epicurean is as pessimistic as the Stoic. He holds it better not to have been born into this mortal world. Yet he believes that by exercis- ing himself so slightly as to choose with careful sense discrimination between lesser and greater ills as they immediately present themselves to him he may side- step through life with a tempered felicity. (PREFACE 15 The next stage is that of Roman thought. Roman philosophy is Grecian philosophy a trifle more hope- ful in relation to human motion. The Roman Stoic is not content with merely stiffening himself to endure ills as they must needs come. He is capable of heroically seeking them out to increase the stiffening sensation. The Roman Epicurean in the same way ceases simply to exercise passive selection. He goes after the lesser evils. He crowds the banquet board with comparative goods. Bacchus failing in sufficient charity of good cheer, he sets the festive laurel on his own brow. He has more faith in human digestion. The early Mediaeval Scholastic metaphysicians and Catholic theologians are next in order. The human world is still for them mainly an evil place — a Struc- ture of Sophistry, a Valley of the Shadow of Death, through which the majority wander foolishly, sin- fully, to their certain damnation. Yet there is a straight and narrow road to truth through exercise in Logic; a straight and narrow path to heaven through attendance on Ritual. There are to be done studious works of straitened sort, — the copying of the masters. There are to be done holy works of tempered kind, — praying, preaching and proselyting. Later, the Medievalist travels as student and mis- sionary, organizes universities and churches, prints books, punishes heresies, combats infidels. His move- ment increases. He sets aside the feudal restrictions, sacred and secular. There develop the overflowing movements of Reformation and Renaissance. With the dawn of the Modern era, we find yet more serious symptoms of a loss of popular faith in Super- human Charity. It is a time of open skepticism and 16 PREFACE free thought. It is a time of revolution and free ac- tion. It is a time of exploration and novelization. Adventure and Romance free themselves from their classic shackles. More recently, the scientist takes on his proper name. He reaches out for the stars with man-made instruments, and astrology becomes astronomy. He emerges with a new faith in human and even sub-human movement called the Theory of Evolution. Liberty of action becomes a battle-cry. The age of Industry opens. To-day, pessimism respecting human activity has given way to meliorism. That is to say, the balance has turned from pessimism toward optimism. The spiritual meliorist has not forsworn his superhuman heaven of the hereafter, but he is getting more in- terested in human heaven-building here. He is bring- ing the Ideal back from its abstraction out of Now- time. The materialistic meliorist is similarly bring- ing his Ideal back from its abstraction out of the Here-place. His superhuman is still cherished, but it takes on the character of a Superman to be real- ized by human effort. The man of the modern spirit, thus reassured of the nearness of his Ideal, no longer seeks "the eternal verities" for the purpose of being charitably absorbed in them, of resting on "the ever- lasting arms." He backs up to them rather as a last resort in the battle of human endeavor. For him the fight ceases to be a retreat. Man comes to a stand. He even cries, Advance. The motto of old China is: Forward! The menticulturists begin to speak with hortative pugnacity. Fear-thought is de- cried as folly. The physiculturists denounce Illness as crime. Various spokesmen of human progress ap- PREFACE 17 pear in prophecies the most audaciously optimistic ever uttered. If that assumption of historical progress in sci- ence which was made the basis of the preceding re- view be justified, it should be possible to show an es- sential unity in all the popular thought-systems of any particular period of time. To test that general assumption and the validity of the particular cri- terion already demonstrated, let us examine for unity a number of our contemporary philosophers chosen from the most diverse quarters and without regard to their antagonisms as prejudged by the conventional metaphysical and theological standards. Among the most eloquent of meliorists are Charles Ferguson ("The Religion of Democracy") and Friedrich Nietzsche ("Beyond Good and Evil"). Ferguson strikes a hard blow at Superhuman Charity: "There is no Destiny — there are only Op- portunity and an infinite waiting for the coming of the poets and the artists who shall rejoice in Life on any terms. . . ." But Ferguson still clings to the fixed Ideal of Unanimity for limiting human "Life." Nietzsche, in the same spirit, strikes his blow at Superhuman Charity : "God is dead." He is optimistic to rhapsody in painting the future Super- man. But he, too, qualifies his "Laughing Lion" by the deadly Ideal of Power (Abstracted motion). The Superman may dictate, but he may not labor. The most popular of contemporary philosophers are William James ("The Meaning of Truth") and Mary Baker Eddy ("Science and Health"). As the professional theologians have been more and more put to it to reconcile their disagreements, they have ftlg PREFACE sought to get a foundation for popular religious unity by reducing their gods to the least common denominator. And inasmuch as their deities lie wholly in the realm of speculation, this reductive process leads to a spiritual zero. In recoil from this inevitable defeat, they now boldly resolve upon a common divinity which shall wear all the fixed ideals or abstract virtues with which any worshiper may choose to endow Him, — Perfect Truth, Perfect Love, Perfect Beauty, etc. ; and who shall at the same time usurp the place of the human with his destructive critical faculty. The result is the God-Mind of Christian Science. In exactly the same way the transcendental meta- physicians have been forced to reduce their princi- ples to the least common denominator with the result that their contradictory speculations lead to a verit- able zero. This state, frankly acknowledged, is what is popularly known as Pragmatism. Pragmatism is the negation of non-scientific philosophy. And here again, just as the zero is stretched by the theosophist so as to swallow himself and disarm human science, so Pragmatism is stretching its emptiness to make a valid Truth of its untruths. Professor James is among those who have struggled most valiantly to give Pragmatism a positive value. What is signifi- cant for this review is the fact that Truth is stated by him in terms of Human Motion. He defines the "truth" to be the expedient in the way of our think- ing, and the "good" the expedient in the way of our behaving. Of course, he hastens professionally to qualify the "expediency" of his definition with all of the James' ideals carefully abstracted from the pres- PREFACE 19 ent time and place. Says he : "The really vital ques- tion for us all is, What is this world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself?" The value of Pragmatism in the present place is evidently — nothing. No one exceeds Mrs. Eddy in humane optimism: "Sin is a lie." She brings the Superman farther down from his abstraction in the clouds. And the emphasis in Christian Science is on the human side — the ability of the human mind to move over and close that gap between God-mind and man-mind which causes the delusions of evil. As the fallacy of pure Pragmatism or the Denial of general human Truth is traceable to its originator in the very act of de- nial — ir. the effort to convince other humans of the general Truth of his own Idea; just so is the fallacy of Christian Science exhibited by its apostle in the act of proving its validity by sensory evidences of the cures of those diseases the very existence of which is theoretically denied. Thus, the validity of human movement is doubly emphasized in the theory and practice of these two Idealisms. Esthetes of the new melioristic thought are Allen Upward ("The New Word") and Hugo Miinster- berg ("The Eternal Values"). Both sing a world in harmony. But, notably, this harmony is one of mo- tion. Upward, whose above-named book is the most remarkable intuitional writing of recent times, poet- ically conceives a "metastrophe" of universally har- monizing volutions. Change "volutions" to "voli- tions," and you have the pseudo-philosophy of Miin- sterberg. For Upward, Strength is the vital Reality and all Strength is Going Strength. He tries to say 20 PREFACE Motion. In the heavy psalmody of Miinsterberg the refrain is : The real world is deed. For neither, how- ever, is philosophy erected on the basis of science. By the academician that basis is expressly scorned. Upward employs the "ragamuffin" Imagination to confute the Scientist. Among the most advanced of present day philoso- phers proper are Arthur Kenyon Rogers ("The Re- ligious Conception of the World") and Henri Berg- son ("Creative Evolution"). Bergson carries the evolutionary theory to a radical issue. The essential nature of the universe is understood by him in terms of development; and he deprecates the philosopher's detachment from the active human world. The proper business of the intellect consists in an ex- change of insights, got from experience, which, cor- recting and supplementing one another, will enlarge human nature, "and in the end enable it to transcend itself." In the last phrase we have the fatal trace of the transcendental Ideal. The goal is still the re- mote Superman. In fact, Bergson's philosophy is but an elaboration of that expressed by G. B. Shaw in an address on the New Theology, wherein he re- jected "the entirely gratuitous assumption that the force behind the universe is omnipotent." Its Su- perhuman Charity, in other words, is faulty, if not independable. We must conceive of it as blindly cre- ative, experimenting with birds, reptiles, animals, try- ing them and always rising higher until man is dis- covered. The role of life is to bring about unfore- seen variations which, however, are worthless unless they proceed in a single undefined direction — Super- humanward. PREFACE 21 Professor Rogers, who is distinguished by the clearness of his writings on abstruse subjects, signifi- cantly asserts in preface that the philosopher need not cease to be a man in order to philosophize. He defines the universe in accordance with the popular religious conception of "the fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man." The world is a society of spir- itual selves in which one member, God, represented by the natural or so-seeming material world, stands in a special relation to all the other members. So that the entire conscious experience of all human selves is unified in meaning or purpose by its inclusion in the God-spirit. He insists, however, that this inclusion of man in God is one of knowledge simply and that the human self is not only as real and necessary to the entire society as the God-self, but that man's conscious life, his feelings, sensations, etc., are his alone. The vital superiority of this conception over the older idealism is that it brings the transcendental over-soul nearer to the realm of reality. The weak- ness of the conception is the failure to definitely place the over-soul. It is urged that "the very point of the conception is that reality consists of selves in relation." But what is this relation between man and God? In a foot-note it is admitted that no con- scious change in man can take place which is not ac- companied by at least a brain change. Since the brain change is part of God's life, it must follow that man's life corresponds to part of God's life. And yet man and God are spoken of as cooperative; every human thought involving the "reaction" of divine experience. Obviously, this is a misuse of the term 22 PREFACE "reaction." Science assures us that the physical world conserves its own energy or continuity of mo- tion, and hence cannot be said to be acted upon by human consciousness. Professor Rogers' idea, though avowedly based upon the old conception, — Fatherhood of God and Brotherhood of Man, — is in reality a product of a typical modern viewpoint, according to which "Fatherhood" might better be expressed as "Mother- hood." The Father conception of God is one of an ancient and pessimistic patriarchal day. It is the conception of the divine Worker, the primal Creator, of the Punisher and Rewarder; of the One-to-be- Feared-and-Obeyed. The Motherhood conception is nearer to the modern spirit of Mother-Nature wor- ship. It humbles the olden paternal god-self to a posture of relative passivity and elevates the filial man-self to higher activity. The minds of men in this conception lie in the midst of the god-mind as off- spring wrapped in the maternal womb. As these offspring grow in importance, the parent wanes in authority. The newer idea forces upon the god-self a share of the imperfection of humanity and exacts in return a share of the perfecting glory of the creator. It is practically a humiliation of cosmic Charity and an exaltation of humanity. As religion, it still bears the flaw of charity. But it is charity of a refined and subtle opportunism: Give me a job, tools, strength, — and I'll work. Why human work is necessary for happiness; how the work may be creditably motivated to man who is himself originated by the working god-self; the principle of relation- ship between the human collaborators of the "society PREFACE 23 of selves"; what the work itself is, etc., are unex- plained. Here it is important to note only that the emphasis is again upon human motion. The society is co- operative. Rogers' human Ideal is Character. Not, however, so much the fixed character of conventional theology, as character in the making, character which is being developed by human selves in reaction upon the (to them) indeterminate variations of the natural or God-spirit environment. No better definition of the purely melioristic temperament can be found than is contained in these typically lucid sentences of Pro- fessor Rogers: "For already, in the highest attain- ment of man there is at least the promise of that re- fined product of human character which, because it so wills, can make its circumstances tributary to good, no matter what their crude form may be. And when once this attitude is reached, — when man has been schooled by events to a true practicalism or realism which blinks no fact of experience ; which ac- cepts facts freely as raw material of its action with- out losing itself in dreams of what might have been ; which refuses to live in a fool's paradise where truth is subordinated to our wishes ; and which yet, in spite of all this, sees in these same facts, ugly and hard though they may at first appear, the matter for a complete remodeling, which finds in the real the ideal present, not indeed as a finished result, but as that which the human will is determined to make out of the real, — then we have the possibility of the prac- tical optimism of which I have been speaking." This is strong talk for the metaphysician. One begins to 24 PREFACE be interested in the present process of valuation to the exclusion of the value of the "refined product," The following excerpt is remarkable for the thor- oughness with which it combats the abstraction from time: "And finally our activity is felt to be worth while in itself, and so is accompanied by the inner realization of value. For purpose, in the sense of realized meaning, need not carry with it the implica- tion of something partial and incomplete, of some- thing not yet attained, but only aimed at. It may be divorced from the notion of want and lack of attain- ment, of mere aspiration and striving. To free our- selves from the superstition that an end looks always beyond the present act, that means and end are separate and distinct, and to be able to find the doing of things from moment to moment an end in itself, carrying the sense of its own significance, is indeed a large element in the wisdom of life, without which life's whole satisfaction is continually put off and sacrificed." We have now sufficiently traversed the ground of scientific history. We have found in the older phi- losophies a large measure of faith in human Fixity. And in the recent melioristic philosophies — all com- promises with the old systems, compromises neces- sarily of half truths since the whole truth cannot be compromised — we have noticed absurd and danger- ous sophistries. Yet, rising above these infirmities there is evident a growing optimism based on a firmer actual Knowledge. Everywhere we find to-day a be- lief in the coming of happiness by human means. In the long course of mankind's quest for the wisdom of Life we have seen the waning of optimistic faith in PREFACE 25 Superhuman Harmonizing Movement or Cosmic Charity and a steady growth of optimistic experience in Human Movement. We are prepared, therefore, to face about and hazard a reasonably safe conclu- sion as to the general direction of the ultimate for- ward step in Science. If the momentum of the tendencies just noticed carries but a stage further, it is plain that the Ideal of Human Fixation must entirely disappear and the Idea of Human Movement must take its place. This purified Idea would raise the Will to Power, of Nietzsche, to the Will to Potentiation, lift the Expe- diency, of James, to the Expediency of Expedition; advance the Unanimity, of Ferguson, to the Unan- imity of Animation ; promote the Evolution, of Berg- son, to the Evolution of Volution ; exalt the Practic- alism, of Rogers, to the Practicalism of Practice; convert the Mind, of Eddy, to the Mind of Menta- tion. And already, as has been hinted in introduction, this pure motional Idea is finding its spokesmen. Turning from present-day professional philosophers to the common people, we find a new figure in society, the modern Man of Business. He moves to move. He wills to will. He lives to live. He is up to date in present Time. His feet are solid on the here Place. He plays the Game for the Sport and not the Counters. His Business is Busyness. Such is the deduction from historical sequence. It will next be shown that the universal Generalization of a purely reasoned inductive Science offers a re- liable Idea more conducive to present and future hap- piness than the most attractive Ideal of Charity. The Last Word SECTION I. THE INFINITY OF MENTATION. In preface we sought to indicate not, after the fashion of conventional criticism, what are the dif- ferences between the various thought-systems, but what is a common value in all of them. This value, increasingly emphasized with the passage of time, was shown to be the Human Motion Idea. And it is proposed in this Section to identify that motional Idea with the ultimate universal Generalization of in- ductive Science. What is the major Truth which includes and con- cludes all other truths? What is the essence of Truth? What is the infinite Truth of finite truths, long sought as the Philosopher's Stone, which, be- cause it unifies and harmonizes all things, offers a solution to every practical problem of life; defines man's right relation to his fellow man, his wife, his child, his property; offers an indisputable criticism in Art, Politics and Religion? This and no less is the goal now sought by the Last Word. And the in- ductive method to which we are herein pledged de- mands that we begin to build upon the lowest grounds of common knowledge. 27 28 THE LAST WORD Fortunately for our inquiry, men have been so long in the habit of comparing their experiences that we are already provided with something to work on in the shape of a set of building blocks warranted to be universally valid. Those who have made no study of natural philosophy will possibly be surprised to learn that Scientists have succeeded in reducing the world at large to six grand elements : Matter, En- ergy, Motion, Ether, Space and Time. In our quest of a Universal Ultimate Generalization, it will be necessary to deny the existence of all but one of these realities. Beginning with Matter, let us examine the reality of the substance embodied in an ordinary pair of shoes, for example. "Seeing is believing," and so a reliable evidence of matter here may be considered the visible appearance of the shoes. But as there are no two eyes or human cameras of exactly the same phys- ical structure, it follows that the color, shape and size of the shoes must appear differently to each dif- ferent observer, and to the blind man have no exist- ence whatever. A similar fluctuation will result from an appeal to any of the other senses, not excluding touch and its impressions of extension and impene- trability (two qualities which some stubborn sci- entists would insist upon holding constant for the real reason that extension seems to be necessary to preserve that other grand ultimate, Space; and im- penetrability is an excuse for potential Energy. But this is dishonest wire-pulling and log-rolling.) We must conclude so far that Matter is universal only as a source of possible sensations. And if the appeal be carried to the higher court I THE LAST WORD 29 of thought and feeling based upon these possible sen- sations, the results are even more inconstant. The practical philosophers of the world, the men of busi- ness, put a selling price upon footwear which is sup- posed to represent to the fullest extent its common exchange value or universal reality. But men of business understand that this value is only a symbolic approximation to reality, just as tan color is a verbal symbol upon which many will agree whilst no two see the same degree of yellow. In other words, this gen- erally accepted exchange price of the shoes must al- ways include a purely private, arbitrary and non- universal profit margin. And if the shoe seller offers shoes at cost value to himself he is but naming the speculative selling price of a particular wholesaler or manufacturer. Moreover, this selling price is by no means the measure of a constant meaning for all pos- sible purchasers. For the rich buyer, the fixed value or equivalent reality of the shoes may mean a passing whim; for the poor man, a bitter sacrifice; for the society belle, the high heels may represent the satis- faction of vanity; for the health-seeker, the same high heels may be realized as an abomination ; for the footless cripple, the shoes are a useless extravagance ; for the iron worker, a vital necessity. As there are no two feet exactly alike in Nature, so the pair of shoes will serve no two men equally for walking. That is to say, no fixed reality of the shoes is uni- versal in Space. Nor is such a value ultimate in Time. Every instant, the shoes are losing in style to represent a loss for the high-class seller and a pos- sible bargain for the low-grade buyer. Nor is our illustrative subject at fault. There is actually no 30 ffHE LAST WORD commodity, not even one of ordinary food substance, which is not rated in all degrees from minimum to maximum in the minds of earth's citizens. Nevertheless, it is apparent that, though men differ in valuing the most common things, including even the ancient elements : earth, air, fire and water, they do practically acknowledge the existence of them as possibly affecting and effecting facts. In some con- ceivable way, the shoes may become part of every man's consciousness. In the language of science, our pair of shoes are for all men "a permanent possibility of sensation" (sensation being here used broadly as a unit of consciousness). The only real evidence of Matter before us, then, is Motion. For all of the sensations — color, taste, sound, etc., — which may be produced by the shoes are actually known as measurable modes of motion. So, also, are the two pretenders — extension and im- penetrability. Without troubling to expand the shoes to a gaseous condition in which neither of these qualities would be realized at all, it is enough to point out that the sensation of Extension is based upon Motion. To the unsophisticated babe, the world presents itself as a flat picture, and only the roam- ing eye, the reaching hand and progressing feet de- velop spacial experience. Obviously, Impenetrability is purely a Motion-In word. The substance of the shoes is still no more than a hypothetical something supposed to somehow cause Motion. Driven from the sensory field, the effort to estab- lish an indisputable measure of Matter has resulted in the hypothesis that Matter is composed of minute particles of changeless substance called atoms. But THE LAST WORD Si even this cowardly substantive theory has been gen- erally untrenched. The atom is now held to be a centre of force, or a constellation of ions of electrical energy. And this merging of Matter into the second scientific Reality — Force or Energy — is seemingly upheld by recent studies and experiments. The Periodic Law of Atoms which expresses the fact that these imaginary elements of chemical combination form a series of regularly spaced gravitational en- ergy gradations, has been reinforced by the inten- tional discover}?- of several new elements properly fitting their prospective tabular weights. Also, there is convincing evidence that the atomic elements may be transmuted one into another by the application of heat energy. The spectra of the hot- test stars trace only hydrogen, helium and the light- est elements ; cooler stars are characterized by signs of nickel, iron and metals ; whilst the yet cooler earth exhibits carbon and organic units. The difficult problem of the maintenance of solar heat and light is now considered as solved by the energy given off in metachemical changes occurring between the elements on the sun's cooling surface and its photosphere. Finally, there are the recently famous laboratory experiments in the light energy of radio-activity and atomic evolution. Matter, up-to-date scientists would have us con- clude, is a condensed form of Energy. The Law of the Indestructibility of Matter merges into the Law of the Conservation of Energy. What, then, of the Reality of Energy? Did any one ever see Energy? Assuredly not. In the course of the Labor upon our m [THE LAST WORD exemplary shoes, we may have been informed that a cobbler expended one-man-power of energy in driv- ing in each sole peg. But had we been present at the operation, the only sensible reality observable would have been the fact that the man's arm made a motion causing a corresponding motion of the peg into the shoe sole. And the hypothetical Energy thus conserved in the peg can in no way become known except by way of further motion. We may pull out the peg, and in doing so will supposedly ex- ert a one-man-power equivalent to that of the shoe- maker. The supposed Potential Energy of the peg exactly cancels the supposed opposing energy of the pulling-out process, so that nothing actual is left but the movement of extraction. Modern science has, indeed, largely given up the primitive ideal of po- tency. The doctrine of the Equivalence of Energy, just illustrated, is virtually a cancellation of Energy by Energy. The mightiest Power, Gravitation, needed the falling of the apple for its demonstra- tion ; and gravitation has lately been artificially pro- duced by the vibratory movement of balls. This brings us to the third universal element. Is Motion really universal? The advanced view of this essay is based upon an emphatic affirmative answer. Motion is universal, and universal in the sense not only of being common to all scientific ex- perience, but as constituting the sole element there- of. All the minor sciences are affirming that Motion is ultimate. Heat, light, color, sound, growth, elec- tricity, gravitation, magnetism, radiation, sensation, nervation, etc., etc., are proved to be modes of Mo- tion. As Matter was reduced to condensed Energy, THE LAST WORD 3S so Energy is real only in the sense of condensed Mo- tion. The Law of the Conservation of Energy passes into the Law of the Continuity of Motion. Ether, to pass to the fourth scientific ultimate, is a real conception only as a hypothetical fluid sub- stance, that is, as a thinner and lighter variety of Matter ; whilst its very existence in supposition is by way of explaining Motional transmissions, such as light waves. Finally, Space and Time are realized only as at- tributes of Motion, that is, as jointly determined in Rate of Motion. The Universal Law of Inertia, long misunderstood, is now rationalized as a proof of the Universality of Motion. The impossibility of a finite perpetual mo- tion machine is proof of the infinite Perpetuity of Motion. What is both Universal and Perpetual is Infinite. We may now assert The Infinitude of Motion. This is so much "spiritual dynamite" wanting only translation from the artificially detached impersonal terminology of the minor scientist to the actually at- tached and personal language of the major Scientist or Philosopher proper, in order that it may shatter the debris of old fixational Ideas and reveal the pre- cious spring of the Water of Life. For Life is Mo- tion. Reality for every man is, of course, the reality ex- pressed in his own total consciousness. Man can realize only in a state of consciousness or mind proc- ess. When we conclude that Motion is All, we are doing no more than to state that all of our con- scious experience is motional. Thought-in-motion is 34 THE LAST WORD Mentation. Hence the philosophical conclusion of science is: The Infinitude of Mentation. All is not Mind, representable by a fixed and perfected Ideal. All is Mentation, the essence of which is ceaseless ideation. In order to reassure himself of the conclusion al- ready reached — the allness of Motion, let the reader examine from the introspective standpoint the two major elements already disproved: Matter and En- ergy. He must not be led astray by a verbal appeal to the consciousness of Effort, Strength or Force. Our vocabulary is indeed rich in the symbolism of en- ergetic terms as it is rich in substantives, but these invariably are but shorthand for motional meanings. The rower says he put renewed force in the oar stroke. What he really means is that he moved his arm and the oar at an accelerated speed. Our sense of stress is real only as a sense of alternating move- ments. There is no such thing as a steady strain. Steadiness, Fixation or Idleness is the deadly enemy of Strength. Only "Going Strength" is real and valid. When we speak of an energetic man, we mean essentially a man of action. Matter is humanly inconceivable. The substance atom cannot be so small that we cannot conceive of its being split in twain, and if this halving process be continued we have the absurd idea of something continually growing constantly less and yet never by any possibility ceasing to be somewhat. Energy, as a mere potency apart from motion, is equally inconceivable. Only going force has mental definition. Of any other force we must assert the ab- surdity that it can go, but can't go. On the other THE LAST WORD 35 hand, introspection reveals no state of consciousness in the sense of a static fixed condition of thought, but what has been well described as a flowing stream of consciousness. Thought is directly experienced as a motional process. An idea cannot be fixed in the mind. The same general idea may often and very rapidly recur, but this recurrence is a motional pro- cess. "Established" ideas are fixed only in an ap- proximate sense. We may keep the same name for them as we call one woman "mother" throughout our lives, but our actual consciousness of the mother is never constant as a definite idea. Only one thought can recur with perfect identity in the mind and that is the Idea of the Infinitude of Motion. The Last Word in Science is of revolutionary ef- fect in Psychology. As Matter is scientifically un- real, so its psychic analogues are invalidated. The whole hard-and-fast system of mental substantives, Sensations, Perceptions, Conceptions, Appercep- tions, are swept away. And, again, as Energy is disproved, so the potential psychics, Instinct, Will- power, Faculty, are invalidated. Psychology be- comes, in short, a universal science in which the only valid terms are continuously motional. Conscious- ness, thought, idea, volition, emotion, memory, are real only as active mentational processes governed by motional laws exclusively. Psychology as a minor science has already de- clared a relation of correspondence between brain and mind. This correspondence in so far as real is ac- tually based on mentational identification. It has been evidenced, also, that all experience comes di- rectly into consciousness as motion, — air vibration 36 THE LAST WORD on the ear-drum yielding sound, light vibration on retina, color, etc. And this motion continues meas- urably as nervation within consciousness. The In- finitude of Mentation means the Continuity and Uni- versality of Consciousness. Dust, plant, protoplasm, animal, man, dust, — throughout the cycle, all are of kindred consciousness. This is not a fanciful dream, but the rational end of sober science. The essence of human life is shown to be no differ- ent from that of any other life ; and nothing is inani- mate. This scientific conclusion, it is worth noting, is in accordance with the natural judgment of the Child. The child conceives all things as endowed with Life and capable of movement. For it, there is no dead inanimate. And as civilized man in the pur- suit of Philosophy grows more familiar with his artificial environment, the same truth is more and more felt by him. The speeding locomotive and the 6hip take on personality. The moving pictures fairly live. The moving needle of the phonograph reproduces the speaker's very soul. Our food stuffs we masticate with a new fraternal gluttony. In support of this view, which finds a vital one- ness in the natures of humans and non-humans, there is a growing tide of confirmation, as evidenced in the Continuity-of-Germ-Plasm Theory of Weissman, the Monism of Haeckel, the Brain-Sex Theory of Pat- ten, and general microcosmology. And those who re- ject these inductive theories as over-speculative and are prejudiced against even the evolutionary doctrine, may reach the same conclusion by a simpler deduc- tive process. The larger part of man's vital diet is actually inorganic, Moreover, the bulk of a man's THE LAST WORD 371 body is not strictly human. Most of the glandular products, milk, digestive juices, nutritive products, outer skin, hair, nails, bones, excrements, blood plasma, gases, spinal fluid, water, mineral salts, etc., are not part of organic man. They may be replaced artificially by so-called inanimate or non-human mat- ters. They are as much non-human as if they existed outside the body. Also, there are within the body non-human lives, cancerous, bacterial, etc. More- over, whole limbs and special organs may be removed without danger to the essential human life. Were our surgery sufficiently acute, man might conceivably be reduced to the unicellular birth life from which physiologically he develops. The necessary conclu- sion is that the life of man, for all its seeming com- plexity, is in fundamental character no different from the simplest conceivable life. Nor does this conclusion represent a come-down in dignity from that unique transcendental conception — the human Soul. The Motional conception of the universe resolves both matter and spirit, body and soul, to a higher term. Motion is subtler than "spirit," which is conceivable only as thin matter — * ghost. Motion escapes all definition. It cannot be explained by the metaphysician or theologian, since to explain is to relate to something else ; and motion itself is All. It is the rational Absolute. Mentation is Mentation. At this point it may be objected that the particu- lar human consciousness in which alone we may know reality is not a sufficient basis for asserting a uni- versal truth. We can only know our finite selves. We may answer this objection practically by calling 38 THE LAST WORD attention to the fact that we all do go outside of our own minds in asserting reality. Every man is per- fectly sure of the conscious reality of his fellow men, though he can by no means enter into their conscious life. The poet goes further and finds mind-life in animals, trees, etc. The scientist finds sound basis for belief in other mentations than his own from a comparison of the motional body changes in himself and others. The philosopher may add that, if he philosophize at all, he must take the speculative risk of assuming that other men and the world of nature have the same essentially conscious character as himself. But fortunately, the theoretical reply to the above objection is even stronger; is truly sufficient. For having logically identified his own mind with a mo- tional process, he has only to add the fact that mo- tion or mentation cannot rationally be conceived as self-originating or self-ending, in order to establish a conscious link between his own mentation and the world consciousness. His own mind is part of the world mind, a part not isolated but flowing in and out to identify itself with other minds. And the goal of this mind-motion is no less than a Unity of all things. We feel that nothing real is foreign or impossible to our mentational grasping. It is true that all past philosophies have rested on the assumption that the human mind is by nature of finite limits. But this assumption is false and absurd. What the mind nat- urally cannot conceive is exactly fixity or finity, — space with no more space extending beyond a bar- rier, cause without effect, etc., — what the human THE LAST WORD 39 mind does naturally conceive is no less than infinity. Every particular thought is felt by us to have an in- finitely extensive and indefinite margin. Our notion of infinity is vague, undetailed and indefinite, because these are exactly the essential qualities of an infinity of eternal change. The Philosopher need not claim a definite conscious collection of all the facts in the universe as so many material nuggets. He does not aim at dead mass of knowledge. His motive and end are fundamentally satisfaction through a knowing process infinitely prolonged. It is the threatened cessation of this process, as will be shown later, which has given rise to organized scientific philoso- phizing. The mind is satisfied when every thought is experienced as a reality harmonizing in nature with the universe of real thoughts. And the nature of this reality is an unobstructed moving from premise to conclusion and from conclusion to premise. This harmonious sequence is realization and the basis of rationality. The necessary conclusion to which re- cent thinkers have been driven, namely, that of the Relativity of Knowledge, becomes in a purely mo- tional conception of the world a proof of the possi- bility of a complete Philosophy. For it will be shown in the next Section that all Reality is essentially composed of "selves in relation." All knowledge is relative, and all knowledge is related. All the objections to an intuitive realization of motion are invalidated when it becomes the all with- out the fixational qualifications of Substance and Po- tency. Thus the argument that Motion is an ab- surdity because at every instant of time the moving 40 THE LAST WORD body must be somewhere and hence cannot be pass- ing to otherwhere, is falsely based upon the concep- tion of fixed points of Space and Time. Time is realized in our experience as a particular Present, but this Present is never a dead center. It is an indefinite freely progressive extension of the Past into the Fu- ture. A fixed point in Space is meaningless without reference to at least three other points and the tri-dimensional movement of the imagination. Or it may be said that a moving body cannot stop because at every instant of time it must be going at a certain rate and not a slower one. Here the quibble rests on the so-seeming material body which may, indeed, lose motion whilst the motion itself is provably con- tinuous. We live in a world of unceasing motion, and the only absurdity which shocks the normal mind is that of so-seeming non-motion or death. Universal Sci- ence or rational Mentation is the denial of Death. The desire for a harmonizing of all parts into a total Unity whether it be called: God, Substance, Morality, Nature, Life, Force, Law, Personality, Will, Polarity, Oversoul, or what not, is universal. Were this unity a unity of fixity, its attainment in thought would mean the end of the thinking process, complete satiety, ennui, death. The Last Word perpetuates the thought process. It identifies Sci- ence with immortal Life. With the ultimate Truth, Science throws off her rags of humility and takes on the robes of assured Philosophy. The formal bonds of the minor sciences, each representing a small foot- hold in the ascent of Generality, disappear in the ul- THE LAST WORD 41 timate All-view. The diversity of pigments van- ishes ; the unity of the solved picture-puzzle remains. All is Life. And all Life is of the nature of the hu- man Consciousness. SECTION II. THE LAW OF MENTATION. Having established the allness of Life, there re- mains the necessity for determining the Law of Life. In identifying Infinite Mentation with Universal Mo- tion we have supplied the key to an exact knowledge of the modes of mentation. The laws of Motion are already partially known to scientists. But their tre- mendous significance for human life becomes appar- ent only when, as now, Motion itself is recognized as the sole Reality. All motions are known to be vibratory. In terms of Energy, particular Motions follow a vanishing vibratory line resulting from the opposition of forces. Dropping the obsolete terms of Energy, particular rhythms are self-defined as particular centers vibra- ting to and fro on each side of equilibrium. This alternation of £o-motion and fro-motion we may term ad-motion — £#-motion. The Periodic Law of Atoms (hypothetically a law of gravitational energy, but actually a law of Mo- tion since only in the motions of the scale-beam does the ascending series of weights become manifest) is now seen to be a true Rhythm. Supposed aggregates of atoms, molecules, organs, bodies, societies, worlds, etc., are all harmonized by similar periodic laws. .THE LAST WORD 43 The to and fro of Centripetal — Centrifugal Force and Gravitation — Levitation Energy represents the crude attempt to vitalize the conception of Energy in this respect. Turning again to the personal basis of knowledge, we may translate admotion-exmotion as conscious admentation-exmentation. That is to affirm that our life is one of constant alternation between experience realized as coming motionally to us and as going mo- tionally from us. The "us" is an imaginary center of equilibrium and has no existence apart from these two alternating afferent and efferent currents. And just here lies the principal danger of misconception. The psychologist who shares the ordinary scien- tific view of matter believes that the soul or mind has a substantiality in itself quite apart from mo- tion. He, therefore, represents consciousness as al- ternating, if at all, by way of experience in-coming objectively from without the self and out-going sub- jectively from within the self. The distinction be- tween this inmotion-outmotion and admotion-exmo- tion is infinitely wide. The former conception in- volves us in the necessity of splitting reality into two or more different hinds. There is the motional re-, ality of the light wave of color ; there is the substan- tial reality of the eye and brain which it somehow affects ; there is the sensation of color resulting from a combination of those two realities ; and there is the self's, mind's, soul's, oversoul's, "pure reason's," and what-not's to-do with the sensation, perception, ap- perception, etc. According as one emphasizes the validity of the objective thing without himself, he is called a "realist," and as he emphasizes the self U THE LAST WORD within, he is an "idealist." And for all their battles, neither idealist nor realist can get along without the other. In the natural (child) consciousness there is no such ^/-consciousness. There is no gap between reality as it comes to us and goes from us, between the reality sensed and the sensing organism. The vibratory progress of the smoothly to and fro wav- ing line represents the natural consciousness. The real elementary distinction to be felt is between what are usually termed sensations on the one hand and volitions on the other, though we are as sensible of the volitions as of the sensations and the volitions are not actually experienced as functions of self-will- power any more than are the sensations. Men of marked "will power" are those who act as easily, as automatically, as they sense. It is true, of course, that a man's body represents something peculiarly himself. Yet this self is no less the related expres- sion of other selves or world consciousness than if it were indistinguishably joined to the world as an oak tree is rooted in the soil. And there is never felt in consciousness more of the body proper in exmotion than in admotion. These two regularly alternate in admentation-exmentation. As has already been pointed out, the human life is fundamentally identical with the smallest cell life, whose give and take drama is observably rhythmic. The admentation-exmentation, which is the charac- teristic of all lives, may be called, in the loose ter- minology of school psychology, a vibration between sensing and willing, or desiring and appropriating. But sensing must here mean more than the excitation THE LAST WORD 45 of the "five senses." Recalling our analysis of organic man, in this broader use of the term "sensation" are included such strong desires as hunger and love, (about which our psychologists strangely have little or nothing to say), produced more by the admotive activity of internal secretions than external titilla- tions. The "willing," once more, is not more voli- tional than the sensing. And neither the "desiring" nor the "appropriating" refer to any "thing." They are the real "things" themselves. The human self is a particular center of conscious- ness vibrating between admentation and exmentation and moving from one vanishing point to another. This does not mean that when a man dies his life ends. It means simply that its motion passes into another life, possibly beyond earthly observance, just as the highest rhythms in atomic periodicity repre- sent elements missing on earth, but in other stars ap- pearing; or just as child-birth represents the con- tinuation of the parental life processes. As all is Life and Motion is Continuous, no life can vanish or be finite in the sense of passing into nothingness. The All Life must include and continue every particular life. We have concluded that Motion is continuous and universal. Theoretically, only revolving motion, — that is, motion which turns completely back upon itself, could be at once continuous and universal. In the trend of actual scientific investigation, the De- velopment Hypothesis has expanded into the Uni- versal Law of Evolution ; thence into the Law of Dis- solution; thence into the Law of the Equilibration of Evolution and Devolution. But the doctrine of 46 THE LAST WORD ultimate equilibrium, in the sense of Cosmic Fixity, is contrary to the Universal Law of the Continuity of Motion and is rationally absurd. The equilibrium must, therefore, be a moving balance. Accordingly, these laws give place to the absolute Law of the (Evolution-Devolution) Revolution of Motion. In mode, Universal Motion is, then, like particular motion, rhythmic (continuously revolving) with the distinction that its Rhythm, being completely Revo- lutionary, is constantly and undiminishingly progres- sive. The vanishing vibrations of particular modes are continued and completed in the Rhythm of Uni- versal Motion. Reality is a universal rhythmic move- ment composing, and composed of, the sum of par- ticular movements. The relation in this composition may be seen in a single illustration. Standing on the shore of a pool, toss a pebble into the water. There results a series of rotating water particles, each of which vibrates diminishingly on each side of a sta- tionary center of equilibrium. And this series com- poses a series of rhythmic surface waves which carry the original motion of the stone back to the shore. This wave motion, assuming it to equal the stone throwing motion, is here typical of universal motion in its function of harmonizing balance. The admo- tion received by the particular pool center is ulti- mately returned in full as exmotion in accordance with the law of the Continuous Revolution of Uni- versal Motion. Universal Rhythm is the expression of a revolving balance harmonizing all particular vi- brations. Universal Time and Space are equilibrated in Eternity and Infinity by Universal Motion. The final generalization of Scientific Philosophy stands THE LAST WORD 47 as: — The Law of Universal Continuous Motion Re- volving as a balance between (non-universal, non-con- tinuous) 'particular centers interchanging admotion- exmotion. The "interchange of admotion-exmotion" defines the direction of motion. Motion directed to one self center is admotion for it and, oppositely, is exmotion from other self centers. The self center is not a dead center. It has no reality in itself save as the mov- ing exchange point between the real admotion and ex- motion. The exact relation of particular motions one to another and the way in which each, though related to and composed by others, is yet unique, is shown in our pool-pebble illustration. The progressive wave rhythm which carries backward each phase of the forward vibrations of the water-air particles is de- fined by and yet is distinct from them. So, however complicated the stream of human consciousness may be, it follows the line of universal motion, acting as a mutual redirection or harmonization of body and environment motions. The internal sub-human centers of vibration are the so-called "sub-conscious" processes. Such men- tations are as real and independent as any other par- ticular modes. They simply lie outside the field of what is called human consciousness. The skin of man, in the course of evolution, has come through cross-breeding to hold a compound of many lives. Each human organ has its own private history, its own mode of rhythmic function, in short, its own consciousness. The essential organ of briefest life rhythm puts the period to man's life as a whole. 48 ,THE LAST WORD Even after death many organs continue to function for hours. What we call the human consciousness is that mode of rhythmic mentation which harmonizes the sub- conscious centers of life with the super-conscious centers of life. As a function of motional adjustment, human con- sciousness is especially concerned when all the par- ticular human body organs act at once, since the re- sulting complexity is more liable to require harmon- ization. The two chief examples are the busyness of the nutrition of the whole body and sexual (whole body) reproduction. Hunger and love are, accord- ingly, the most vivid modes of mentation. With the metabolism of the separate organic cells, and in the reproductive growth of the special organs, human consciousness is, as naturally, unconcerned. These processes are least vivid, — sub-conscious, — sleep. Habit or instinct are henceforth to be interpreted as pure established rhythms needing no fresh redirec- tion. The Motional conception of the Universe gives for the first time a rational explanation of the mys- tery of reproductive generation or race rhythm. It also makes individual growth from the germ con- ceivable. (The reader interested in the occult side of psychology will find an application of the Law of Universal Mentation explanatory.) The full psychic translation of the Last Word follows: "The Law of Universal Continuous Motion Revolving as a Balance between particular centers interchanging admotion-exmotion" equals The Law of Universal Eternal Mentation infinitely mediating THE LAST WORD 49 between mortal selves socializing admentation-exmen- tation. In this supremely generalized form, the Law de- mands for its appreciation a practical application. The remaining sections are designed to clarify the meaning of the Last Word by disclosing its relation to typical problems. The man in the street invokes "philosophy" always as a solace in misfortune. So we shall put true Philosophy (here obviously de- veloped into identity with Religion) to the solution of the greatest of human problems, — unhappiness, — as the surest means of discovering its value. SECTION III. THE LAST WORD IN RELIGION. The want of cosmic harmony in Metaphysics is Error; in Theology, Sin. But neither Untruth nor Evil have vital significance, except as they ef- fect human unhappiness. All historical religions have had, with the sense of something wrong about human motion, a common element of faith in the righting charity of a super- human Ideal. As the metaphysician has sought Se- curity from Chaos in abstract Fixity, so has the theologian sought Salvation from Sin in abstract Deity. This common element has been pointed out as the essence of Religion. In fact, it is the essence of irreligion. For, though Metaphyics and Theology have sought through Speculation and Superstition to draw on Cosmic Charity, — the true Philosophy and Religion of the people have always reached out by Science and Conscience toward Cosmic Conscious- ness. Historical religions have never failed to make an active demand upon human motion, though it were no more than the posture of prayer or the fancy of faith. And, as was shown in Preface, this demand upon the world righting by human movement has grown historically until, in the metaphysic of James, the fate of the cosmos depends dubiously 50 THE LAST WORD 51 upon human pragmatism, whilst in the theology of Rogers, the human-self fronts the god-self in social equality. The Last Word in Science, the Truth of the Law of Universal and Eternal Mentation infinitely mediat- ing between mortal selves socializing admentation- exmentation, is proof positive and conclusive of the equal validity of man and God. It asserts the uni- verse to be eternally composed not of one life, but of lives; and it defines one of these lives as unique. The God-life and the man-life are akin in nature. Particular mentations and the universal mentation are alike rhythms interchanging social consciousness. God is unique only in his comprehensive relation- ship to finite selves. What the artistic meaning of the whole unified picture is to the meaning of the minor pigments which compose it, that, in terms of relation strictly, is God to man and other particu- lar selves. Man is a part of God and yet a separate self, just as the particular pigment is part of the unity of the picture and a separate thing-in-itself. In the objective description of science, God is re- lated to men approximately as the major rhythm of the wave is related to the minor vibrations of the water particles, the stationary phases of which com- pose its forward motion. This Motional conception of Universal Science ra- tionalizes the religious idea expressed by Professor Rogers. Universal and Eternal Consciousness is unique, absolute divinity. Here is no humiliation of God. Finite consciousness is akin to god-mind which it composes. Here is no humiliation of charity for man. Work (motional mentation) is the 52 THE LAST WORD nature of self, and so in the "society of selves" is self-explanatory. The rationality of the selves-so- ciety is Continuity of Consciousness. God is not simply a sum of units — a deification of space and time inclusiveness. He is an expression of active harmonization, having a proper motion of his own. Science asserts the universe to be a society of con- scious selves whose consciousness is essentially an ex- pression of socialization, that is, mentational inter- change-between-selves. God is the Infinite Mediator in this interchange of Finite admentation-exmenta- tion. The only sin possible to a particular socializing self is the desire to hold back from socialization. In such a desire the Mediator cannot share. There- fore God is blameless for human Sin and its result- ing unhappiness. The human responsibility for sin is the subject of the next succeeding paragraphs. The so-seeming material body has been conceived to be constantly integrating and disintegrating, be- ing built up and torn down. In motional terms, it evolves and devolves, sucks in and sends out. This double process, termed the "whirl-swirl" by Upward, is, in reality, a single process. The evolution-devo- lution phases alternately succeed one another as ex- tremes of oscillation between admentation and ex- mentation, between desiring and appropriating. Each sensational or desiring impulse is followed by a cor- responding willing or appropriating pulsation. The cause of human unhappiness cannot really be desires that accumulate in consciousness to produce the mis- ery of want ; nor appropriations that succeed one an- other without relief to produce surfeiting. More- THE LAST WORD 5S over, the harmonious mediated adjustment of the life rhythm gives to the vital vibration a rate ensur- ing no such gap between desire and appropriation as Schopenhauer would have us believe to be the cause of a necessary want — ennui alternation. In the obvious activities of a child at play are demon- strated the continuous income of admentation and outgo of exmentation. This natural interchange puts the child in direct harmony with the universal rhythm. The child feels equal kinship with man and beast, earth and sky, the universe. The child's self-consciousness is a true world consciousness. Now, uneducated children and undomesticated ani- mals are never unhappy. The wounded animal uses excessive exmotion as an immediate antidote to ex- cessive admotion. If the wound is of a special organ, the animal lies quietly, turning the adjusting menta- tion into the ordinarily subconscious field, and there by so-called molecular motion producing narcotic and curative heat comfort. Intra-organic wounds are oppositely treated by conscious motion, the ex- hilaration of flight, the erethic intoxication of com- bat, or the convulsions which protect vital parts — the origin of human ticklishness and laughter. Death itself is met in "the rapture of the strife." No branch of metaphysical speculation has been more grossly in error than that which treats of sub- human psychology. Materialists can never satisfac- torily explain biological laws. They must admit that variations ( actually growth-motion products) are in- determinate by their standards; that teeth and fin- gers evolve before they have any use and disappear unless chance use preserves them. This being held so 54 THE LAST WORD of the origin of the entire organism, it is little won- der that the life proper should fail in their view of any reasonable safeguard for happiness, and that they should have imputed to the lower animals and childhood itself the diseases from which they them- selves suffer. Fortunately, there is of late a grow- ing respect for the natural resources of the body to heal itself. It remains to be shown that the mind of man is also able to maintain its equilibrium when left to its normal self. This brings us to the sore spot in human psychology. Pain. What causes it? How can we be rid of it? In the last analysis, penetrating through all theological and metaphysical verbiage, mankind su- premely desires happiness, though that happiness be but "satisfaction." God and Truth are desired as blessings. The scientific philosopher no less than any other man seeks the ultimate generalization for happiness' sake. He seeks the complete harmoniza- tion of the universe because he feels himself to be in some degree at hurtful odds with the world as it is. In the many "shaky" philosophies of the present day we have marked a rising current of cheerfulness. These various systems, New Thought, Christian Science, Eugenics, New Theology, Emmanuel Move- ment, etc., show a temperamental tendency toward a practically pure optimism. Evils of all sorts are considered unreal or at worst but passing shadows — ■ absences of light. In this tendency to minimize the painful elements in human psychology, there is a real danger. Civilizations go down to ruin in hys- terical laughter. Philosophically, there is but one evil, Untruth, Ir- THE LAST WORD 55 rationality or abstracted Idealization. Mentation being infinite, Evil is a Living Lie. The generaliza- tions of the minor sciences have notoriously failed to discover and remedy unhappiness. On the other hand, the normal child is happy without knowledge of these minor sciences. But the child, we insist, does live in a natural harmony with the ultimate generalization of universal science. Its life nor- mally blends with the universal life as a part of the rational Realization of the Continuity of Mentation. And wherever we turn toward happiness, there does boundless Motion stand forth as an evident Reality. It is so in the myths of the bygone golden ages wherein the heroes and gods loved and warred as unrestrained as the wild winds. It is so in the pic- tured heavens to come of childlike peoples, — the In- dians' Happy Hunting Ground. As the smallest single discord invalidates the har- mony of many parts, so does science utterly fail of of her vital use and wisdom until the highest gen- eralization is realized. Mere facts and the lumber of learning avail no more for happiness than unhappi- ness. The whole history of scientific thought is one long struggle to regain tuitionally what the child- man once experienced intuitionally. The general trend of that struggle has already been traced with the result that the pessimistic Ideal of Fixity pre- vailing at the outset has been seen to wane to half whilst the pseudo-Idea of ameliorative Motion in- versely rises to meet it. In its purity the Living Lie is the all-pessimistic negation of the Truth, — the Law of the Universality of Continuous Rhythmic Mentation. 56 [THE LAST WORD Now, the Lie cannot invalidate a Universal Truth. Nor can it exist in the place of a particular truth, since all particular truths are included in the high- est Generalization of Science. A lie cannot be es- sentially Real. When we speak of the "Living lie," we mean that the lie, in its living, is itself an active proof and part of the Law of the Universality and Immortality of Living. This is not paradoxical. For the living lie is to be understood both as an Idea and an Ideal. The lie is real as an existing word or formula of words ; and at the same time unreal as a symbol of something that is non-existing and untrue. The abstract Ideal, as opposed to the gen- eral Idea, cannot be defined in any terms save those which negate Reality. The origin of this peculiar negative power of words will be explained later. The Ideal of Fixtfcy is the living lie which negates the Idea of Motion. The Ideal Fixity as a word Idea has motional value just as any word Idea has motional value. The mere uttering or hearing of a word is a conscious activity or mentation. The meaning of a word, its symbolism, is also motional. Cry "Excelsior," the lungs expand; say "pickle," the salivary glands contract. "Fixity" idealized is a word of exclusively motional meaning since its only reality depends upon the validity of motion. Materialistic metaphysics has asserted that man's superiority over the lower animals lies in his pe- culiar power to inhibit motion. There is no proof whatever that man is vitally superior to the lower animals ; and motion cannot be inhibited in the sense of being stopped. Particular motions being centers of admotion-exmotion, every oscillation upon one THE LAST WORD 57 side of equilibrium must be followed by a correspond- ing opposite. Inhibition of universal continuous mo- tion can only mean redirection of motion. And the lower animals, if there be a difference, are more apt in this "inhibition" than the civilized human. In active perseverance and waiting patience they are unrivaled. We have already spoken of one example of such obvious redirection of motion in the case where the internally hurt animal retires and lies out- wardly quiet whilst the exmotive current is directed bodily inwards. The external taking on of fat, thickening of fur, etc., against the cold of the win- ter seasons, is obvious redirection of exmotion. The exmotion leaves consciousness but not the body en- velope. It is well, here, perhaps to remind the reader that the harmonizing redirection-of-motion is exactly the whole rational reality of the individual conscious- ness, human or otherwise. Man, by reason of his great skull capacity, is capable of directing exmo- tion into brain action and so producing a seeming inhibition. But the memory of man is thus built out as fat is built up, exmotively. The brain is an abor- tive sex-organ, that is, one of reproductive or ex- motive function. A highly developed upper brain above the spinal cord is not a whit more vital to hap- piness than superfat on the muscle fibre. The lean learned metaphysician has nothing over the plump playful kitten. The worship of brain substance and weight belongs with the soon-to-be obsolete material and potential psychologies. When the Idealist's motional Word "Fixity" en- counters admentation in his consciousness, if the lat- 5& THE LAST WORD ter be of small momentum, the result is brain action, ideation. If the opposed incoming current be more vigorous, it will back up from the restraining nega- tive Idea into the lower centers of ordinary exmo- tion and there disorganize or rend apart the sub- organs, converting their molar motion into con- densed, molecular, atomic, subatomic, motion. In this state the heart labors excitedly but the blood which would ordinarily expend itself in the arterial feeding of moving limbs is choked and clogged until it reddens the very skin in its effort to escape. The conscious result is the e-motion of popular psychol- ogy. If the incoming admotion be of yet greater momentum and the motional word idea still restrains with equal momentum, the former will be vibrated back even to the normal sensory routes. The eye, then, sees red; the ear roars; the mouth turns bit- ter ; the stomach is nauseated. Each such supremely violent alteration in the di- rection of the admentation-exmentation of conscious- ness destroys sensing organism, sensitiveness, and hence indirectly diminishes succeeding admentation. A continuation of such a practice inevitably shortens the life period. It is as much suicidal as if the in- ward redirection were in the shape of a pistol bullet. And yet it must be clearly realized that this self- destructive process is not in itself the source of un- happiness. What we call the normal in animal life is simply the average consciousness, wherein the di- rection of the admotion-exmotion is simple and ha- bitually regular. But in the lives of all natural and happy beings come crises where the adjustment of the internal organization with a novel feature of THE LAST WORD 59 environment demands some such violent self-destruc- tion as the foregoing. The fleeing animal brought suddenly to bay in the snare is inwardly wrought upon by the momentum of its own flight. And where the same animal often experiences such emotion its flight centers are by repeated devolutionary processes so reduced that abrupt stoppage becomes finally un- emotional. In short, so-called inhibition and all its effects even to the extremest degree are perfectly natural and in no wise productive of unhappiness. The source of human grief does not lie in the Ideal of Fixity, as a word Idea, nor in any of its consequences as such. The inhibitive processes which such an idea sets in motion are as natural as those of any otner valuable inhibitive words such as "Stop, Look, Listen." Unhappiness springs solely from the disagreement of the Ideal as such, that is, from the desire of Fixity. For the greater the in- hibitive restraint upon admotion, the more violent is the vibrational rebound. The more Fixity is ideal- ized, the more Motion is realized. In this way, the current of consciousness is mentationally split asun- der and pain enters in. The Last Word gives a totally new conception of Pain. Pain is not a matter nor an energy. It does not derive from any physical causes. Unhappiness may exist in what the physiculturist pronounces the most highly perfected body, and it may be absent in the most diseased body. There is but one Pain, and that is felt in the Act of denying the ultimate Truth. Unhappiness is real only as the idealized or principled negation of happiness, — as its source, the Lie is real only as the negation of the Truth. 60 [THE LAST WORD Whoever denies the Universality of Life creates with- in himself a mortal Death. When any form of Fixation is idealized, the ac- companying unhappiness may be properly named Passion. Passion aims at a state of Passivity, and realizes instead a process of suffering (Patior). To distinguish natural emotion from unnatural passion, consider one general passion — fear. It has been said by one of our epigrammatic philosophers that we do not run away because we fear; we fear be- cause we run away. If there were any truth in this, the fear and the motion of running away would be identical processes. In fact, however, because run- ning away is usually principled motion, it would pre- vent fear. We fear only so long as we do not run away from the normally fearful object but, re- strained by a negative Ideal, passively absorb its abhorrent admotive influence. We impute fear to the palpitant deer brought to bay, whereas at ex- actly such a moment, thrilling with the emotional intoxication of flight and unconscious of wounds, it is ready to gallantly charge its enemies, reckless of odds, and with but the one idea in its head — that of maximum exmotion. To find the beginning of a belief in valid Death, the race rhythm must be traced back to the ape- man who antedates history. For though the present savage races are analogous to the childhood of civil- ized man, that childhood is a sophisticated and un- happy one. The natural or unspoiled child is the post-type of the highest of the lower animals evolved beyond the Missing Link. In what vital respect does modern man differ from the lower animals ? L THE LAST L WORD 61 Man has been called the cooking, the tool-using, the reasoning, the willing and the talking animal. None of these distinctions are absolute. Lower ani- mals artificially prepare food for digestion; use stone tools to crack nuts ; reason as certainly as they think, for all thinking is rational; will as cer- tainly as they reason, for all reasoning is attentively motivated ; and they converse by vocal sounds. The absolute distinction of man among earthly creatures is his ability to record his experience, that is, to fixate his motivity. This was done originally by verbal formulae, sagas, folk-songs, etc. ; later, by written formulae. It is principally to this ability that man owes his physical supremacy over the lower ani- mals. Physically, man is not strikingly superior in the animal kingdom. He rules through the pen rather than the sword; and the modern sword is itself the product of the inventive pen. Man's inherent rea- soning powers are not greatly superior to those of many lower animals. It is the series of recorded verbal syllogisms which enables him to ascend to "abstract ideas." By the verbal message and writ- ten record, he can communicate with his fellows at a distance and secure their cooperation ; and, most sig- nificant, he can hand down to posterity an accumula- tion of economic ideas which offsets the waning nat- ural resources of environment. It is the abuse of this supremely vital blessing which now yields the supremely lethal curse — unhappiness. The manner of this abuse may be simply illus- trated. An aboriginal woman discovers or invents a moccasin. She finds that it promotes human mo- 62 THE LAST WORD tion — locomotion. She tells her neighbor the for- mula for moccasin making. The story spreads in the form of a fixed receipt, such as the cake receipt housewives tell to friends and hand down to daugh- ters. The shoe formula becomes popular, a custom, a lesson to the young. Writing gives it greater fixity and spread. And so far, no harm is neces- sarily done. But now enter in the aboriginal metaphysicians and theologians and proceed to idealize the formula. These men are the witch-doctors and oraculists who pretend to enunciate superhuman truths. The "good" of the moccasin formula, which is a limited and temporary adjective, they add to other "goods" in their universal and eternal scheme of things. Be- ing specially unequal to the harmonization of the motion in the world, they give these goods the na- ture of fixation outside the realm of changing re- ality. The original shoe-quality "good" is by them turned into a substantive "goodness," that is, a sub- stantial, changeless, perfected, fixed "good." Thus the moccasin formula is joined as Good-ness with such other similarly fixed idealizations as Just-ice, Beau-ty and Vir-tue. As a part of universal Truth, it wins the allegiance of the normal man unaccus- tomed to defining his intuitions, and at the same time intuitively true to all Universal Truth as such. From being, at worst, a social fad, the formula now becomes a sumptuary law passed by a king whose "divine right" his theologians uphold. As the formula spreads to other peoples and as the descendants of the aborigine evolve into mod- erns, priests worship fragments of the original shoe, THE LAST WORD 63 and make the inventress a saint. As no two feet and no two environments are exactly alike, so no two shoes, and so no two adjective "goods" are really the same. But the same word and formula are used continuosly. The moccasin becomes unfit for later conditions. Yet the authority of philosophers, priests, pedagogues, politicians, poets, continues to uphold it. Though become admittedly painful, they say, wear it because it is "Goodness" and "Truth." To the shoe-pinch is added now the soul-pinch, the passion of unhappiness. If a modern seeks a better shoe formula, or offers to change the old, the meta- physicians and theologians cry, "hands off," or our whole set of ideals is destroyed. Who disputes the formula — now become a law, a dogma, a creed — is heretic, vandal, criminal. So the women of China continue to let their feet be bound according to precedent, though they can no longer walk on them. So the American woman is re- ligiously bound by the recorded dictates of the fash- ion paper from Paris ; and would nearly as soon vio- late sex as go abroad in pantaloons. So the hopeful imitativeness and cooperation of the monkey-man be- comes glorified and fixed in the Homo Sapiens as a Principle of Passivity. Is, then, the enormous tragedy of human misery the effect of a mere play upon words? In reply to this question, it is not enough to point out the tragedies of murder springing from the epithet "Liar !" and no matter of moment besides ; or to in- stance the duels, feuds and wars which the bare verb- iage of an empty boast, a sentiment of "honor" or a sophistical oration have effected. The hurtful 64 THE LAST WORD play is not upon words merely. The Curse is the play upon Truth through the prostitution of mo- tional proper verbs to substantive "common" nouns. It is the prostitution of language from a means of active collaboration and education to a symbol of passive dependence and slavery. It is significant that the most advanced intuitional book of our day — "The New Word," by Upward — is the writing of a philologist. Whoever would appreciate the deadly power of "Andronican words," learn how "Repeti- tion is the secret of all enchantment," and realize how soundly our civilization is yet lulled to sleep by the language yoke of Caesar and Gregory, — would do well to consult that book. The metaphysical method has been defined as an appeal from Human Fixity to Superhuman Charity. Philosophers generally attribute the origin of re- ligion to fear — a fear of superhuman animates, ghosts or gods. This is an empirical deduction based on observation of present-day savage religions. But the religion of observable savages is not true religion. It is cosmic passion. Moreover, such a deduction follows the emotional fallacy already pointed out. Fear is not a natural quality. It is the result of an idealization of Untruth. The lower animals are not religious in the sense that savages are religious, nor are these animals fearful. How, then, came humans to fear? The true origin of theological and meta- physical misery is involved in the problem of the origin of the so-called objects of passion — the belief in superhuman gods or principles. Primarily, these superhumanities were not feared; they were trusted. Superhuman Charity is the ■THE LAST WORD 63 Curse in the guise of the Blessing. Dogma is the Charity of free thought ; slavery the charity of free labor ; and the primal philosopher was their prostitu- tional go-between. The earliest fruit of human co- operation was the division of labor, roughly, into sex service (muscular in man, maternal in woman) and brain (enclosed abortional counter-sex) service (governmental in man, artistic in woman). In early competition the societies survived which pushed this division furthest. The emergence of primitive man from beasthood was rapid. The mating of an ape of phenomenally vigorous brain expansion and one of phenomenally vigorous skull expansion. Result, — a monstrous child of brain capable of holding any amount of verbiage ; a leap over the Missing Link ; a small sociality of vastly superior powers based on language communication; a plethora of unlettered captives of war; a surplus of human table meat; di- vision of labor, enforced servitude of handmaidens and foot-soldiers ; by them, still more serving sur- plus ; advanced servitude of barbarian sub-governors and sub-artists ; master class indoctrinating serving class with Loyal-ty; balance of power between cap- tor and captive classes; serving class indoctrinating master class with Royal-ty; double voluntary sla- very. In this communistic process, it will be observed that the original society does not survive as an hereditary unit. The enforced division of labor con- stantly operates to specialize its individuals and so make them more socially dependent. The slave works with hands and feet; his eyes and brain are enforced to idleness, — emotionally devolved. Equally, 66 THE LAST WORD the hands and feet of the master and overseer are emotionally devolved by the service of handmaidens and foot-soldiers. Continually the ruling and serv- ing classes become more interdependent; and at the same time the serving becomes relatively more power- ful than the governing class through an acquired edu- cation in its language joined with a comparatively greater approximation to the normal environing subsociality. At every disturbance of the social unit, the serving class is augmented and liberated by amal- gamation with fraternal fresh-blooded barbarians. The master is overthrown; the slave rules. All of this may be unlike the evolution and devolution of lower animal groups only in degree. The degree of difference is due to legitimate language development. The illegitimate use of language originated in the legitimate desire to cooperate. Civilization, as above described, ceaselessly rises and falls. There is a con- stant vibration between devolution of ruler and evo- lution of ruled. The individual life being absorbed in social activities, takes on habitually social terms of expression. Self-preservation becomes real as so- cial preservation. Civilness, the generalization of civilization, is a natural generality of legitimate civil intercourse in opposition to the ceaseless human mo- tion of unsocializing revolution. It becomes ideal- ized as Civil-ity ( Loyal- ty plus Royal-ty) when, by verbal exaggeration the disproof of which is actually difficult for the individual barbarian, a supersocial Idea is substituted for purely social intercourse in active civilization ; when known kings and priests, al- ready subordinated to knowable yet individually un- known Emperor and Pope, are yet further subordi- L THE LAST WORD 67 nated to an unknown and actually unknowable Gov- ernor (Law-giver) and Artist (Creator). The legitimate motive for such primitive deception is identical with the instinctive ruse practised by all creatures. The nature of this ruse, as exhibited, for example, in the protective coloring of animals, is not denial of Truth, but harmonization of environmental admotion with organic exmotion. When this natural deception has become fixed self-deception through repetition (verbal education and communication), then the passion, Pity, attacks the Ruler and Fear consumes the Ruled. So the Lie originated in the darkness before the dawn of History. The biblical symbolism of the Fall is strictly accurate. The knowledge of Good and Evil which tempted to sin can only mean a knowledge of the negative of Good (Evil) added to the already known Good. The Serpent tempting to wisdom was accurately the wise-man serving the ruler, and later the demagogue serving the ruled. And historically the remedial suicide of the Liar has been indefinitely postponed, by fresh accessions of serfs and a forward move of the margin of ideali- zation, until the present day. The Lie of Fixity has endured by virtue of a never-ceasing stream of Liars. To-day, at last, that barbarian stream is running dry. The negro, most inferior of races, is exalted in busyness to a competitive level with the white, most superior of races. The westward "march" of civilization, leaving its stumbling track of ruins, has circled the globe. America has, on the one hand, drained Europe for the immigrant serf stufE with which to feed her "free institutions"; and America, 68 THE LAST WORD on the other hand, finds herself withal not superior to the Oriental millions. Civilization based upon servility draws to its last Fall. The hope is the last Word of that Science which has stumbled often enough in its way, but which has nevertheless always made toward the goal of Universal Truth. Cosmic Charity, as a principle, seeks admentation without exmentation, Something for Nothing, Cheap- ness raised to the last degree or Value totally invali- dated. The doctrine of superhuman charity is the full defiance of the universal law of continuous men- tation, of cause-and-effect. The ultimate Generalization gives authority to deal with all particulars. With the reactive evils of Dogma and Slavery in the crude forms of doctrin- aire preachment and physical servility, men have lately become impressed. But there remain innum- erable subtler idealities under the general Charitable Principle, such as Vicarious Atonement, Protective Tariff, Freedom of Will, which are not even recog- nized as having such a relationship. With these par- ticulars, later sections of this essay treat. So far, the announcement of the Truth of truths and the diagnosis of the human sickness. It now remains to briefly define the method of remedy. Nat- tural and unnatural are terms herein applied to con- sciousness. The unnatural is a product of sociali- zation. It is not a producer of socialization. It produces only civilization. Every civilization has fallen hitherto from desocialization. And desociali- zation is the product of the artifice of fixational Ideality. The will to natural mentation is not a prehistoric THE LAST WORD 69! instinct which avails only in a simple unsocial ape life. Just as the natural mentation avails in our il- lustration to produce the first pair of serviceable moccasins, so it can avail to carry forward the high- est complexity of shoe manufacture. The Motional Idea which has evolved man from protoplasm will evolve him yet farther, and later devolve him without suffering as the earth cools and environmental mo- mentum wanes. The cure of unhappiness in Modern Man is the Ultimate of Universal Science. For Science alone is all-sufficient. The Universal Law of the Continuity of Mentation, etc., is the complete and continuous satisfaction of Science. He who achieves it becomes wholly optimistic in actuality. Whoever holds an Ideal beyond true philosophical Science is at best a meliorist in temperament. As physical accident may devolve muscular cells in emotion, so an absurdity in deduction may devolve brain cells. But in neither case is passion felt unless the individual has idealized Work or Logic, respect- ively. The application of the Truth is plain. We may choose only between factual Motion with hap-piness and fanciful Fixation with pas-sion. We must ideal- ize the Idea. To be happy we need only choose the deed. This does not mean that a manifest muscular deed must follow every stimulus. We are not to become jumping- jacks. The exmentational deed may be one of reminiscent cogitation, but it must aim only to forward harmonious admentation-ex- mentation. The Law of Life does not yield a formula which 70 THE LAST WORD may be followed without full organic busyness. Such a formula is exactly what the alluring Ideal of Su- perhuman Charity purports to give. What the Idea does is ultimately to call into action the fullest vi- tality which is consistent with happiness and direct it in harmony with the universal life. For every or- ganism, there is a particular mode <2»f vibration, just as there is a particular rate of speed inherent in the individual motor car. It is only necessary to be rid of the network of negations upon principle to expe- rience the "sweet-running," self-directing current of the natural will. The Idea frees all activity from suffering. It re- stores suffering to its original pure meaning — sub- fero — to bear burdens. The pain-killing power of a controlling motional Idea is many times instanced in history. Martyrs of natural intuition, forerun- ning Science, have died for a philosophical or re- ligious truth, chanting songs of ecstatic joy whilst undergoing the most horrible tortures. Properly speaking, the human organism is insensible to pain. The more sensitive organs record modes of motion varying in degree but of one fundamental nature. Without the restraint of artificial passion, all ab- normal admentation is balanced instantly by in- creased exmentation, and passes at once from the body emotionally. Emotion in the form of war dances and religious chants among savages, in the form of pioneering and record-breaking among men of business, produces an ecstasy which obliterates even mortal wounds. It is the passions, Fear and Pity (prostituted Hate and Love), and their brood — Shame, Jealousy, Spite ? THE LAST WORD 71 Anger, Lust, Regret, Eirv^, and the like, which solely produce conscious pain and all insufferable miseries. If faith in minor truths has, in the past, enabled martyrs, sacred and secular, to endure body tor- ments in soul gladness, how much more certainly must the exact knowledge of the validit} 7 " of the final conclusion of science, the Ultimate Truth, free hu- manity from woe. Who shall any longer fear death, knowing of a certainty that death is but a natural rebirth — a passing not into restful sleep, but into a new and harmonious mode of mentation, and that both of these phases compose with other lives a Life that is Universal and Immortal? Who, fearless of Death, shall be abashed by lesser ills? We are enmeshed in a civilization that is saturated with the fixational idealities. Stub a toe, and in flock the pitiers, doctor and priest, to curb the ex- motive kicking and cursing which would have natur- ally headed off and eased away pain. Most trage- dies, personal, domestic and social, originate in smaller ills than a stubbed toe, — compared with which, indeed, the body pain of dying is not so great. In such a society, it is difficult to conceive of perfect freedom of Human Movement based upon Law. But Science will have her way. The ultimate Momentum of the Idea of Life as op- posed to that of the Ideal of Death is as infinity to nothing. The Ideal of Fixation is pure Monomania. The monomaniac is the holder of a fixed ideal ab- stracted from reality. When it comes to the test, he cannot ultimately survive the sane holder of the Idea. The Man of Bus} r ness is master of our future, and his mastery is a relation of kinship with the 72 THE LAST WORD Eternal. Man will seek to loose his life that he may not lose it. He will experience peace in Gain and good will in loss, by virtue of a perfected, assured, actual, comprehensive Religion. Unspoiled children and the lower animals are purely religious and happy. They realize God and good in every action. They accept life for life's sake. They ask no superhuman Charity. Occasion- ally a childlike adult of pure unsophisticated con- science penetrates the rind of fixational materialism to the heart of life. Then we have a true Messiah ; but his preachment is of small benefit, since he must speak the common Andronican language. His words are not understood. He is urged to make laws and life-negations. He is driven to paradox, hyperbole and miracle. Contrary to general opinion, it is true that sav- ages are little impressed by civilized miracles. Chil- dren are not credulous. They are incredulous, curi- ous, analytical, eager to test by action. They are unsuperstitious. They are perfectly fearless until corrupted by suggestion. The child of six asks realistic questions for which the churchman has no answer. On the other hand, to the civilized mob the miraculous is inherently better than the natural. They are offended if God be spoken of as a real person. They are convinced that "nothing can be both Good and Actual." To them an Immaculate Conception is nobler than human Fatherhood; Res- urrection, — the familiar trick of the East Indian fakir, — even though it invalidates the Sacrifice, is preferable to genuine Death for Love. THE LAST WORD 73 The Vicarious Atonement is the sublimified doc- trine of theistic Charity. The Man of Business refuses to credit a God who forbids man to bargain with the Evil Spirit for Pleasure, Wisdom and Power, and then offers these same things by white magic without suffering so much honest payment as a bleeding of human veins for a drop of blood to sign the bond; or the Righteous Judge who, for an inevitable repentance, breaks all his own laws and the human law of cause and effect, pardoning the criminal and assuming the wages of another's sin; or the Abba Father whose charity is the old-fashioned pauperizing Charity of Cure; who disdains the Charity of Prevention, let- ting the world plunge into woeful torments, while accepting the unavailing sacrifices of the only sin- less creatures, until only a Drowning Deluge can cleanse; who then mercifully saves out in a Noah the seed of sin to repeople the earth with sinners until again it is necessary to slay — this time, the guiltless Son; or the creative Workman who pro- nounced his handiwork "good," and then shortly found it so bad that it must be practically "scrapped" ; or the Bargainer who offers two earthly covenants to humanity — with heaven thrown in — and yet is so poor a business Man that though he nails his First-born upon the Cross as advertise- ment and calls in all priests as auctioneers, he can close a deal with but a handful of his own creatures f — selfish, miserable worms, at that! And by the same tokens the Man of Business is coming to a higher appreciation of the busyness of iJesus of Nazareth. The early Christ of the conn- 74 THE LAST WORD trjside was a preacher — a man of mystical, meaning- ful preachment, since all intuitive sayings are aborted in our substantive verbiage. In the Para- dise of Galilee was preached the Utopia of Love — ■ the creed, word for word, of all ingenuous pagan saints and heathen saviors. But later, when the Rabbi came to critical Jerusalem and learned to his despair that the world was not to be reformed in a day — that the kingdom must be deferred until a second coming, — then that prescience of the Uni- versality and Eternity of Life that has fixed his name in history, not as a preacher, but as a prac- tiser, becomes manifest in the universal language — Deed. Then he seeks no charity of his persecutors. He seeks no charity of God. He does not turn the cup of vinegar into wine. He does not "come down" from the cross. He is economically sound. He pays the full price so that when his day's work is done it is given him to say with every good work- man : "It is finished" ; not I am finished." The form passes ; the life proceeds ; the books are closed ; ac- counts balance; credit is good; and the Business goes on. The essential nature of Jesus is the child nature. His most unique act is that reverencing children as the already perfected subjects of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is singular to reflect that the Christian religion in the hands of adults has been a most po- tent factor in the abortion of the natural child will, and a chief source of adolescent misery. What of the Church? It is doubly cursed by Charity. Its spiritual prayers are pitiful beggary for bare existence. Materially, its expensive build- THE LAST WORD 75 ings and expensive services — what, with the hired singer, instrumentalist, "surprise" and refined mono- logue, is little more than low-grade vaudeville enter- tainment — have alienated the working masses. The pulpit is enslaved by the hand that feeds it. The big money thieves and oppressors are pious church- men. Only the passive doctrines can safely emanate from such an institution. And already the suicidal effect of the passions is felt. The church body is internally burnt out. Hell-Fear and Crucifix-Pity have done their devolutionary worst. Even transient Revivalism is becoming impossible. The Church of Universal Science offers an im- perishable, all-sufficient Gospel of present Realiza- tion. Its Motionality is the cure for Temptation, Sin and Sorrow. Its Prayer is Communion in Serv- ice without servility. Its Cathedral is Everywhere. Its Ritual in Unrestriction. Its Commandments are, Thou shalts. Its Priest is Con-science. Its So- ciality is open to every Being. SECTION IV. THE LAST WORD IN GOVERNMENT. The ultimate scientific generalization defines the human consciousness as the admentation-exmentation vibration which acts as a moving balance between the subconscious and the superconscious rhythms. The function of a valid or vital government is, accord- ingly, that of a moving balance betwixt society and social environment. With the harmonizing of its internal or individual units, one with another, gov- ernment is not properly concerned. So far from be- ing the end of government, a perfected democracy is but the foundation for the equating of communal and natural movements. The Constitution of the United States recognizes this governmental viewpoint far more clearly than is generally supposed. Says a contemporary university president: "The fundamen- tal division of powers in the Constitution of the United States is between voters on the one hand and property owners on the other. The forces of de- mocracy on one side, divided between the executive and the legislature, are set over against the forces of property on the other side, with the judiciary as ar- biter between them." In the popular meliorative view of recent days, government exists to forward social progress. This 76 THE LAST WORD 7^ theory is an approach to the truth, and like all half- truths, is the more dangerous for its seeming verity. Government should exist to govern progress. Mo- tion being universal and continuous, social progress of some sort is inevitable so long as society exists. Government should direct in harmony the admotion from nature and the exmotion from society. In the ameliorative sense, there is no true progress. Every new invention hailed as a godsend is a social ex- motion. In proportion as it is valuable, it pro- duces an equally valuable natural counter-admotion. Every so-called improvement makes necessary a for- ward step and keener competition all along the line. Every new economy of motion throws men out of employment. Poverty of motion and wealth of mo- tion, or the contrast of a special idle class and a special working class is the sign of an unequilibrated non-social advance. As government has reality only as its members consciously interchange social authority, so the in- dividuals within a government who refuse to socialize must be considered as foreign to the governing or- ganism. They are exactly analogous to the non- human elements — food and excrement — within the human body. They must be treated as environmental admentation. The social unbalance produced by an advance, based on idealization of Fixity, is to be equated not by a scheme of material taxation, but by the gov- ernmental redirection of the activity of those rich in busyness to the scientific liberation of those poor in busyness. This necessitates a new non-criminal code which shall define a minimum grade to be passed 78 [THE LAST WORD by every citizen in a periodical civil service examina- tion covering all the vital data of the employments and parentage, and which shall oblige all units fall- ing below such grade to undergo an active social quarantine. This quarantine would be organized as an industrial army, and engaged upon public works under the direction of state departments and uni- versities. This army would be neither a penal nor a charitable organization. Its units under quaran- tine would be considered simply non-social. From the date of the establishment of active so- cial quarantine, no child would be suffered to grow up in idleness or over-specialized motion-restricting labor. Crime would be torn up by the roots. (Pres- ent experiments on prison labor farms prove that in- dividual, non-charitable work, even under our pres- ent absurd code, is almost always reformatory and industrially educational.) Such an army, graded throughout by civil service regulations, would pro- mote its units as rapidly as their disciplined powers of self-government and efficiency increased, until a final promotion ensured probation looking to dis- charge. In short, the compulsion of the military •war-draft would be employed in the industrial war. The compulsion of the public school system would be applied to adults. And the adult school is more needed by society than the child school. We should do better to let our children run wild and ensure to them through scientific parentage a good birth, good food, good home, good example and good appren- ticeship. Such an army, begun upon a relatively low grade qualification, would almost immediately defray the 3?HE LAST WORD 79 cost of its institution by draining cities of their wasting vice-holes, by relieving the police, judicial and penal systems of most of their present charges, and by making business "safe" through the equation of the labor market. A governmental "labor" bank is more needed than a governmental "capital" bank. Moreover, such an army could almost wholly take the place of our present military army and navy, which consume nearly three-fourths of all taxes with- out actual returns. The present army is mostly idle, resorting to artificial gymnastics for exercise. Army posts would lose nothing in defensive value if par- tially divided into state controlled experimental man- ufacturing and farming centers. The military supremacy of a nation rests, in the last analysis, upon the efficiency of its working class. And the efficiency of the soldier proper even upon the offensive is mainly a matter of just such sani- tary knowledge and executive training as peace-in- stitution work would afford. Of considerable im- portance also is the fact that only by an actual quar- antine, putting government in full possession of the delinquent's body, could the propagation of per- verts, etc., and the degeneration of normal offspring be prevented. Such an army, finally, would preven- tatively cut off the enormous and endless expense of present governmental cffarities and social asylums. Already these asylums for unsocials — idiots, im- beciles, epileptics and insane— are positively increas- ing the life rate of degenerates beyond that of the general population. The environment of a society is Nature and other societies. A tariff is the typical balance between 80 THE LAST WORD governments. To be valid, all tariffs must be moving balances based on "reciprocity," which is another name for international admotion-exmotion. A scien- tifically determined tariff on a sliding scale is pos- sible as soon as high tariff, low tariff and free trade cease to be idealized as fixed principles. Mo- tional tariff and taxation are as reasonable and as undisturbing to industry as the normal fluctuations of all market values. Profound financial crises are due to prolonged fixity in artificial governmental laws. As the persistence of the word Idea symbol- ising Ideal Fixity leads to maximum emotive or de- volutionary passion in the human individual, so do cherished statutes develop internal liberations of ex- pressive social emotion or panic within the body politic. Protective tariff upon principle, like all charitable devices, defeats its own ends. This is the verdict of The Last Word. A beneficial tariff must be determined as an adjustment between socialities as a whole, not with reference to any special class. With respect to natural motion, all societies face a diminishing surplus. The world's supply of coal, which is largely responsible for the high speed of recent civilization, is limited. At the same time, there is a growing surplus of coal-using mechanical devices, which also save human labor. The practical result is a vast superhuman Charity and Human Fixity: a developing class consciousness desocializ- ing those who possess natural resources from the proletariat. Government to-day is barely awaken- ing to the idea of "conservation." But the involved principle of equilibration is not yet perceived; nat- THE LAST WORD 81 ural resources are rather conserved as a miser hoards his gold. Mankind in the mass, no more than single man, can get something for nothing. The exmotion oscil- lation must be full and true. We hear grave econ- omists preaching the Utopia wherein machinery will perform all the labor of man and release him to the delights of leisure. Whilst this idea prevails, and whilst Matter and Force, that is, money and me- chanico-natural power, are idealized as values in themselves, machinery will continue to enslave the man ; and money will buy him, body and soul. The name of the Curse of Superhuman Charity in politics is "free government." Men who believe a particular government derives authority from fixed ideals or abstract principles, and hence confers super- human benefits, are self-enslaved. Patriotism as a passion is as deadly as Anarchism. Aristocracy originates in popular snobbery. The sovereign reigns because he is the people's superhuman Ideal. The universal Law demands that each man become a governor solely for the expansive joy of govern- ing. Such a communism is possible only to men realizing a continuity of social consciousness be- tween themselves and natural selves. This valid gov- ernment cannot be attained by a formal State and Constitution. Life is dynamic, not static, and con- tinually demands revised statutes. The more nearly finished the form of government, the greater its failure will be as a function of adjustment. The moving equilibration of society and nature, the busi- ness of good government, must be founded upon a consciously related body of active governors. Such 82 t THE LAST WORD a community cannot be created by a Declaration or enforced by Decision. Government is not based es- sentially on equality of property rights, of suffrage, of representation, of taxation, of liberty, of oppor- tunity. To strike down a most abhorrent half-truth, — it demands no equality of Unanimity (apotheosis of Socialism). Statesmen are equal in the Realiza- tion, through Scientific Rationality, of the Value of the Governing Process as an end in itself. The master passions, Fear and Pity (sympathetic fear), are rotting ferments in the Constitutional State as in the Established Church. The Beast in politics stalks his prey openly and none through fear dare give him battle. The Beast, in turn, is maud- lin with the pity of libertine alms-giving. To-day Fear dominates the nations. The greater part of so- cial surplus goes to provide armaments and to hire alien soldiery. A small citizen militia of men know- ing the Universal Law of Immortal Life, and hence unafraid to die in necessary self-defense, would es- cape this burden of servility. Pity is equally responsible for modern war. If the Red Cross were forbidden the battlefield, if no- quarter, torture, pillage, confiscation, and all the rigors of savagery were advocated, there would be few failures in international arbitration agreement. Jingo and commercially promoted wars, like the Boer-British and Japanese-Russian, would never occur. Pity has engendered most of our civil crimes. Prisons principally foster criminals. Imprisonment — living death — is half-hearted penalty. All crimes should be punished by outright death or not punished THE LAST WORD 88 at all. The men of Pity have been forced by facts to discontinue the Charity of Cure and attempt the Charity of Prevention. The Pure Food, Park, Vac- cination, Medical Dispensary, Dairy Inspection, Sanitation, etc., Laws are throwing up a wall of de- fense about the weakling. The man of feeble con- stitution is enabled to propagate his feebleness. All of these external safeguards are valuable, but they may be prostituted. The real enemy is internal. By normal digestion and sexual exmotion, the body should be vitalized to the point where it can resist native poison and bacteria. Primarily, we need neither prevention nor prohibition, but motions of resistance. With all that has been done recently in the above lines, the signs of race degeneration go steadily on. Our public and private asylums for the care and treatment of the mentally deficient and insane are being crowded more each year. Deaths from heart disease and apoplexy are not on the de- cline. Arteriosclerosis, Bright's disease, neuras- thenia and autointoxication are claiming more vic- tims instead of less. Cases of extreme longevity are not as numerous as a century ago. The problem resolves itself, in the last analysis, as do all human problems, into a question of more in- dividual exercise — Human Movement. This move- ment should be free movement, not the conventional makeshift of a fixed drill. Human nature, based on body organism, being what it now is, the natural will revolts against the barriers of the over-specialized trades and the crowded cities. The govermental remedy is the forced spreading out of cities, not by isolated parks with their sublime mockery of "Keep 84 [THE LAST WORD off the Grass" signs, for loafers, but by private gar- dens, for workers. The working specialist must vary his confinement in monotony by at least as much out-of-door labor as will earn an equivalent of the food he puts into his own mouth. This is Na- ture's minimum demand upon the animal. Without this decentralization and despecialization, no reform however sound theoretically can ever make city life other than rottening. Without this motional libera- tion to social intercourse, the spread of Science, upon which depends human happiness, is prevented. Destructively, the so-called "Garden Cities" are approaches to a rational scheme for combining city or social with country or private advantages. Con- structively, the scheme will follow some plan more or less adumbrated in the Roadtown devised by Edgar S. Chambless. This is a group of rapid transit con- nected suburban dwellings, each having a reasonable amount of land for tillage and each furnished with a universal motor utilizing distributed power for de- specialized home manufacturing. Quoting from the Literary Digest in further description : "Says a writer in The Review of Reviews (New York) : " 'The invention of Mr. Chambless involves a sys- tematic and efficient distribution of public utilities with a completeness that has heretofore been thought unattainable, even in blocks of high-grade apartment houses, from which the masses of our metropolitan population are excluded by the high rentals. " 'It would be an anomaly to describe the Road- town as a sky-scraper laid on its side, and yet there are close analogies between the modern sky-scraper THE LAST WORD 85 and the proposed Roadtown. This continuous house will provide its tenants, just as the apartment house now does, with water, heat, light, power and trans- portation — but for the latter a noiseless railroad will take the place of an elevator. It is proposed to em- ploy the Boyes monorail, as well as a moving side- walk, and to provide for mechanical deliveries of all packages and parcels, as well as for the trans- portation of passengers and food. Not only will an ideal combination of transportation service with house construction be secured by this plan, but very marked economies will be effected in such mat- ters as plumbing, wiring, and the use of cement. Mr. Thomas A. Edison has offered the use of his cement-poured house patents without royalty.' " The inventor and his assocates assert, we are told, that such savings in construction and maintenance will make it possible for a man to live in the country at the rent now paid for a second-rate city apart- ment, and enjoy all the benefits of electric power, light, gas, heat, hot and cold water, sewerage, irri- gation, vacuum cleaning, mechanical refrigeration, telephone, and message and parcel delivery. We read further : "That large class of workers in our large cities who are now commuters will naturally utilize the Roadtown, since it will give them many of the ad- vantages that they seek in the country, without de- priving them of libraries, schools, churches, or thea- ters. To a greater or less extent the Roadtown com- muters will be able to combine light farming work with labor at the city desk. "In the saving through the distribution of food SG THE LAST WORD supplies much is claimed for the Roadtown system. The purchase and preparation of food will be by wholesale, and meals will be ordered from serving centers conveniently located. It is proposed to make deliveries by means of special cars provided with warm and cold compartments directly to the dining- room of each individual home." Decentralization and socialization are to be equa- ted through improved means of communication ; transportation admitting of suburban residence; the telepost ; the microphone reporting public meetings ; moving pictures, and travelling organizations such as theatrical companies, branch libraries, university extensionists ; correspondence courses ; municipal, trades and agricultural exhibits on wheels; periodi- cals ; in short, by social-natural Motionality. SECTION V. THE LAST WORD IN MORALITY. The Last Word overthrows the categorical moral- ities ; but it asserts the validity of a universal Ethic. Science denies the Superhuman Charity of a Free Will in the sense of a human will independent of or abstracted from human motion. Every admenta- tion-exmentation vibration of consciousness is a re- sultant solely of hereditary and environmental rhythms. This absolves the criminal of crime by identifying him with his crime. As the only reality is motional mentation, so the doer and the deed are one. If the deed involves happiness, it must be a good deed for the doer. To punish a man for being happy, is irrational, since the human judge is ulti- mately in quest of happiness. To punish him for be- ing unhappy is equally irrational. To execute for the condition of being unhappy is ethically logical, since the unhappy man may indoctrinate others with the virus of his evil idealizations. But active quaran- tine is ethically more rational than execution, since it offers to the governing class exmentation, and ulti- mately, through the motional assurance of science, social admentation. The traditional moralist would have life bounded on principle by prison walls — "the square deal," "on 87 88 THE LAST WORD the level," "the golden rule," and similar "right"- angled rectitudes. But Life is eternally rhythmic in volution. All vital statistics follow curved lines. Conventional Morality substitutes for the natural conscience a fearful medley of dead supermen's warn- ings and a pitiful chorus of living submen's pleas: Fear and Pity. In a universe where all reality is the continuous harmonized interchange of motional consciousness, egoism and altruism lose their opposition. Every act of the individual center of mentational vibration is a motion to some life and from some life. Every act takes life and gives life. As in eating, the in- coming life is always "honestly" paid for by the outgoing apprehending motion and assimilative busy- ness. In a universe which, in the broadest sense, is a continuous Socialization, divine Ethics cannot be violated. The only conceivable violation of such a socialization lies in a mentational symbolism of a negation of sociality. This idealty is actual only as a particular Idea. The idealist seeks to cease thinking by abstraction; but the seeking is itself mentation. The moral essence is a matter of taste. Moral selfishness is the artificial will or desire to consume more than is given forth, to receive Superhuman ad- mentation and withhold human exmentation. The natural animal voids its excrement as diligently as it eats. The undomesticated pig is perfectly clean in habit. Judged by conventional ethics, children are supremely selfish. The charm of children is their purity from self-contamination, auto-intoxica- THE LAST WORD 89 tion, or self-consciousness. The fattening of princi- pled Charity is more hurtful to man than the forced feeding of the penned pig. Right is scientific or conscientious busyness. Con- ventional ethics is invalidated in proportion as it holds to fixational or materialistic standards. The tithe, the dole, the reward, as ethical ends, are un- moral. No one can give more than he receives in money, except through personal busyness. Morality is busyness. The habit rich men have of keeping fixed hold of accumulating funds and occasionally disbursing them in immense bequests is absolutely un- moral. The compound interest which works won- ders in the bank is but an expression of the multi- plication of human need which alone gives legitimate value to money. Such a family as the "Jukes," num- bering in a few generations hundreds of thieves, pros- titutes and murderers, costing the state more than a million dollars in prison and asylum funds and loss of property and life, might have been certainly headed off by a small expenditure providing a proper employment or active quarantine for the original mother. And the justly due wages or the govern- mental quarantining cost originally withheld, when applied finally to remedy these matters (which for all their sinister aspect are not necessarily evils, that is, expressions of unhappiness), actually make of them immoralities by pauperizing the victims or prosecuting them as criminals. Even the Ultimate Generalization cannot be im- parted as a "free gift." It must be appropriated through the realization process of Science. All other so-called moral "Good" is an empty abstraction. 90 £THE LAST iWORD The metaphysicians' universal Shoe actually fit's no two feet equally well. This is not modern pragma- tism. Reality or Truth, the pragmatists contend, is but a general name for the separate truths, which are true only for each individual life. This state- ment is a half-truth. It represents a rebound from the half-truth of altruistic idealism. As the altru- ist looks all away from himself, so the pragmatist looks all to himself. The former is willing to call himself a liar for the sake of Another; the latter, Another a liar to prove himself. Neither look to each other ; neither are fair to either. Science, in- cluding both altruist and egoist, finds verity for both in the moving balance between their extremes. Science affirms that truths though individual are not separate. Their truthfulness is in their very unsepa- rateness, their sociality. And this socialization is a universal expression of a Truth of truths, a harmon- izing Mediator of Eternal Value. In short, morality derives and is inseparable from true religion. The newness of the Last Word is evi- denced by the fact that there are no words in our civilized languages to express the true moral relation- ship of men. Competition is defined as contention over or for a reward. The reward represents the controversial abstraction. In actual competition, the exchange of consciousness is direct, and the act of interchange is its own reward. Happiness and unhappiness are absolutely in the self. No infliction or disappointment can invalidate the act which springs from a morally harmonized or scientific will. The value of the moral act, as herein [THE LAST lWORD 91 1 defined, is universally, eternally self-affirming and certain. The sympathetic passions, Fear and Pity, are per- versions of the imitative ape-instinct which enabled numbers of animals to act together on an exmotive or emotional basis of mutually independent cooperation. To-day, the Man of Business is organizing society on a cooperative basis in corporations, trades unions, banks, insurance companies, etc. So long as the trades-unionist fears and fawns on the corporation- ist, and is, in turn, pitied and patronized by him, so long will these organizations bear evil fruit. When- ever the Charitable element invades them, they are corrupted and invalidated, as, for example, in the case of "fraternal" (low-rate assessment) insurance. Only a national calamity, such as an earthquake, may now reasonably invoke in the human animal tribe the semblance of fear and pity. And it is gratifying to note that whereas these unwonted oscillations of natural admentation were wont a generation ago to produce external paralysis and internal prayers to Providence, the more recent catastrophes have been buoyantly and sanely met by the world's infor- mal insurance society, governments, the business in- terests, railroads, commission houses, etc., being first to respond. Altruistic Pity dare not act more than halfheartedly, for its wholehearted action would mean self-sacrifice to death — the very thing pity most fears. Only business — by which is meant complete busy- ness — busyness which, satisfied as an end in itself, cares not else when or how or who or what it is busy for or against or by or with — busyness without 92 THE LAST WORD principled restraint — is morally beneficial. Consider the typical case of old school altruism : The worthy man who fell among thieves on the way to Jericho and was rescued by the Good Samaritan. Was the unfortunate pitiable? No. He took a dangerous road without adequate protection. Who profits by the Good Samaritan's thorough-going charity? The thieves who have one more victim for the return trip. The valid remedy: The groceryman in the neigh- borhood who finds his business interfered with by these robbers and who presently unites with other tradesmen and chases out the robbers. It is the men of business the world over who have made highways safe for traffic. The Dark Ages were essentially en- lightened and ended not by Reformation or Renais- sance. These movements were themselves by-prod- ucts resulting from the advent of the voyaging, dis- covering, manufacturing, guild-organizing, coinage- harmonizing, printing, policing, food-preserving, etc., etc., man of business. Modern history and, in a great measure, valid Science begin with the emer- gence into sacred and secular activity of the protes- tant tax-paying producer. In conclusion — the sociologists who declare that human beings must war upon one another to secure the survival of the fittest are still laboring under a fixed Ideal of Fitness. They fail to take account of the Last Word in their own Science. The pioneering heroes of the Gunnison Tunnel competed with non- human, wild nature and survive humanly fit. The Man of Business is making it possible for the first time in human history for humans to turn their swords into plow-shares and compete in cooperation. THE LAST WORD 93 But human life is not more valuable in itself than natural life. Natural life supplements the human life within the divine life. Every game of childhood is played for the fun of the play. Every business of adult life must be conducted for the zest of the busyness. In this game of universal life there are no "rules." Rules in boxing are to keep out wrestling, and vice versa. But Life includes all the games, and so holds the sum of their interesting dramatic quali- ties. The only immorality, once more, is the unsports- manlike desire to impede the game by withdrawal from it, to break the unity of universal fellowship. Caution and slow moves are permissible; but pity and fearful hanging back invalidate the sport. Play- ing this game with Science, no man loses and every man wins. The temper of the true sportsman and the key-word in valid ethics is Good Will. This is what no charity can give to the soul and no competi- tion take away. It is to be the fruition of idealistic meliorism ripened into scientific optimsm. The nat- ural will is Good Will. Whether gaining or losing, devolving or evolving, the Sportsman is conscious of being himself a valued counter in the Game of eter- nal universal Benevolence. SECTION VI. THE LAST WORD IN ART. Reread the last lines of the preceding section with a view to the esthetic import. What a harmony ! A uni-verse in eternal rhythmic motion. How fair is the field of that great Game of Life, played without rules of principled restraint. Go into the woods and meadows. There is all about you ceaseless love and war without quarter. There is emotional activity and dispassionate content. Scarcely will you find a single dead bird of the thousands that fall — so lust- ful of life are the lowliest worms. The Art of to-day is wistful, idealistic, abstracted from Reality. The Art of to-morrow is willful, in- dustrial. Its name is beauty-in-motion or Grace; mentationalLy, Graciousness. Animals and children are always graceful in the eyes of Science. Here is the esthetic Gospel of the Last Word. Every one may acquire the Lincoln brand of beauty in gracious service without servility. The historical belief in human Fixity has proved as fatal in Art as in Religion, Government and Mo- rality. The art-form echoes the scientific progress from fixation to motion. The silent and massive Sphynx is the type of ancient art. Sculpture, be- cause of its substantiality, was the highest art-form 94 THE LAST WORD 95 of ancient history. The Greeks are unrivalled. Painting is the next stage, reaching the highest ar- tistic sincerity in the middle ages. Painting admits of more motional representation than sculpture. It is more plastic as a medium — less enduring. Early modern art excels in Poetry — the motional ballad and melo-dramatic forms leading. Contemporary artists use the Romance liberated from poetic re- straints, and excel in Music, the most liberated of art forms. Such materialism as exists in art ideals to-day is melioristically blended with human motion. The woman seeks the charity of the beauty-shop as an adjunct to personal busyness. Yet the taint of a false ideality remains and produces the humanly un- social condition of a beautiful class and a beautyless class, just as the same ideality creates in Government a master and a slave class ; in Morality, a saintly and a sinful class. Science shows the humblest grace to be irresistible. Only Fear and Pity are fatal to grace. The melioristic temperament is an advance upon pagan, pessimistic sensualism. The meliorist sees future beauty in present ugliness. He sees the angel in the unsculptured block. The scientific optimist or Motionalist seeks beauty in the process of sculpture, the harmonized interaction of eye, hand, chisel and granite. Who are our true artists of the universal Life? In America, for example, there is the old school en- tirely abstracted from the here and now. A Haw- thorne dreaming over his custom-house desk of Rome and a Marble Faun ; oblivious to the survivors about 96 THE LAST WORD him of that generation that had fought pirates, first carried the flag to Hindostan, Japan and Madagas- car; all but oblivious to his Salem, within memory the greatest sea-port in America and the center of a spirit of such high adventure and fine flower of enter- prise as drew from the life-loving expedientist, Burke, his incomparable Oration. Later, we have Whit- man, the sensual loafer, whose cult is appropriately established in Parisian salons. End of the decadent line is the expatriated super-sensualist, Henry James, whose best efforts are mainly the stories of vulgar amours enmeshed in Verbal Circumstances, and who frankly confesses that before the American business man he stands "absolutely and irredeemably help- less." Then there is the new American school, which clothes the traditional ideals in local colorings. Lastly, there are those so-called realists, who, de- spairing of esthetic philosophy altogether, bawl pragmatic detailed Discord. This is the age of Industry. Who is the poet of Business ? Popular Art to-day, the art of best-selling fiction and drama, is wholly charitable, that is to say, it is liber-tine. It fulfills the same purpose as beer and morphine. It neither educates the public nor reports the public. It is not a light in darkness ; it is not even a mirror of things as they are. It simply offers an abstraction — a getting away from reality, a representation of things as they are not. Consider the dramatic art. So far from reflecting reality, the theater exactly projects unreality. What is the meaning of the popularity of vaudeville? It means THE LAST WORD 97 that there is an unprecedented monotony or restric- tion to movement in our mechanical industries. The essence of vaudeville is relief from monotony. What is the meaning of the vogue of melodrama? It means that for a large, newly created commercial class, the "middlemen," romance has been extracted from life almost within living memory. Whatever such want to-day, though it lies at the most distant end of the earth, it is to be had instantly and surely for no more exciting an adventure than putting the hand in the pocket and paying for it. Melodrama is passionate excitement. What is the meaning of the comic opera and burlesque craze? It means that women are in an unprecedented degree being removed from their essentially feminine role in the home. Comic opera and burlesque exist by exploiting the feminine. And so on. Our so-called fine arts are, in fact, the slaves of our industrial arts. And like all slavery or charit- able labor, this one is fatal. Science must make the industrial arts and the fine arts one. The most universal art is music. Not only men, but the birds, and all the morning stars sing to- gether. Every so-called substance has a pitch and timbre. Every motion is rhythmic and musical to an ear of infinite compass. The symphony of a great orchestra is technically the most complex of single arts. Poetry owes its beauty to the lyric or metric essence, and ceased to be popular and pow- erful (save in sacred hymns) when folk-song and troubadours vanished. Music antedates words and the advent, through the abuse of the recording art, of unhappiness. Men must learn to sing, and sing at work. Play-Work is Music. 08 ,THE LAST WORD The highest human art is the dramatic. The drama takes in all humanity. It includes all the minor arts — plastic sculpture, scene painting, poetry and music. Its interest is supreme in human society. The drama is based on inter-action. This inter- action must be freed from fixational bounds. Our present day dramas are invalidated by conventional ethic. They are not true dramas. The "good" man, or hero, is always fixed to win if the author be an optimistic moralist ; or to lose, if the author be a de- spairing "realist." The play of the play must be- come the thing. Plays must permit the spectator to act as well as the actor. This is only possible in plays of rational ideation. The theater is fundamentally the one perfect hu- man institution. It is absolutely socialistic. It alone takes in all classes. And it is, oppositely, absolutely individualistic. It alone leaves every one free to feel and think after his own nature. This means that the theater in one form and another will replace all other institutions. It is already absorbing the church. Churchmen admit it can preach better and more forceful sermons than the pulpit. It is des- tined to dominate politics. The next revolutionary Uncle Tom's Cabin will make its debut upon the stage. The theater is affecting Education. It is becom- ing the great socializing school of the people. As church services are becoming more theatrical, so are school methods becoming more dramatic — actoresque — industrial. The theater will, in short, become the great popular medium of interchange in science. [This interchange demands travelling companies. An THE LAST WORD 99 established theater is as evil as aa established church. The theater, when sufficiently motional, will largely absorb the club, novel, magazine and newspaper. It will become the meeting place and harmonizing cen- ter for men of all nationalities and professions. Its art has the supreme attraction of the human element. It will reduplicate the tavern of the old socializing days. There moving devices will illustrate current and international contests ; there directly transmit- ted moving pictures and phonographs will record current events ; there will speak travelling lecturers, demonstrators and industrial exhibitors. There the democracy regaining the lost art of conversation and individual thought will deliver its own editorials and sermons. The Theater is to become the Salon and Forum of the world Society. SECTION VII. THE LAST WORD IN EDUCATION. The beginning of education is mothering. The deadly desocializing effect of fixational Ideality has put the sexes apart and made sexual intercourse pas- sionate instead of emotional. Woman fears man in shame ; man pities woman in chivalry. Through that pity, she is become to-day the most helpless and un- happy of female animals. The suicidal devolution- ary effect of Passion is strikingly evidenced in the prevalence of erotic literature, unnatural steriliza- tion, divorce, white slavery, etc. Sexual sensitive- ness has been largely destroyed, with the result that the sexes lose differentiation. This loss is then corn- batted by artificial, sentimental sex appeals. The Idealization of Human Fixity is supreme in sexual- ity. Society puts a strong negation upon the whole sex topic, and then is forced by the continuous uni- versality of vibratory mentation to resort to this same topic in underhanded servility. In the verse, in the novel, on the stage, it would appear that all the busyness of life centers in romantic love. Act- ually, in the polite world, the artificially separated sexes meet after a long day of exhausting slavery 100 THE LAST WORD 101 on the man's part and ennui on the woman's part to exchange corrupting gains for venomous sweet- ness, as blind worms that crawl for shelter into the same crevice and have but strength to sting each other to death. Woman must cure herself in self busyness. The employments which have been taken from the home and industrialized must be followed up by woman. But woman must govern her own industries. The old type of home is going. She must not be dis- mayed by the disorder of this "moving day." She can make the world of business a new and purified home. The same people live in both. The home spirit of good will is a matter of scientific education. The advent of woman's economic independence and suffrage is as desirable for men as for women, but it must work disaster if charitably bestowed. The family is to become a cooperative business unit in which the child shall have a place of equal social respect with its parents. Unless the child is recognized as a means to the completest adult admen- tation-exmentation, the growing habit of voluntary race suicide will annihilate the cultured people. The child needs no charity. Its activity is paramount. From its incessant questionings and automatisms, the parent flees to the fixational charity of a tax sup- ported "free" school. The public school is the enslaver of childhood and the debaser of parenthood. It teaches children to obey instead of to govern themselves. It teaches all alike — killing the first initiatives of individuation. It desocializes by separation into classes and encour- 102 THE LAST WORD ages a facility in recorded speech divorced from realization; that is, it reduplicates the very con- joined conditions which anciently brought unhappi- ness for the first time into the world. Elaborately charitable school-books make the student dependent upon book exposition — unable to solve an original problem. The charity of an unknown teacher, un- married herself, relieves some thirty or forty mothers and fathers of their most intimate responsibilities, with the result that our public schools and colleges are hot-beds of moral vice, body degeneracy and mental stultification. These mothers would not like to be called "common" women in the sexual signifi- cance of the word, yet they give their sex product, body and soul, to be moulded by a childless man or woman who is both a hireling and a stranger. The "common" school must go. The university can continue only as a governmental experiment sta- tion. The parent must not shirk the task of educa- tion. Already in many quarters the school is merg- ing into practical business. Students on wages work half time in regular industrial establishments and give half time to the college. This is a half-way measure. The full step will be taken. Already a great manufacturing company has announced its in- tention to train its own employees in a technical school. Every large business is locating an educa- tional department. A carpenters' union and con- tractors' association is paying boys to go to trade school in Chicago. Education must become all busi- ness. The industries are already voluntarily send- ing exhibits to schools. The schools will go to the industries. THE LAST WORD 103 The history of educational method, beginning with the rote system, and leading on up by the object lesson to manual training, is a progress in busyness. The logical Last Word in education is complete busyness. The child must act out its fairy-stories in the wonders of science. The child is utterly truthful and unfanciful by nature. It lies and exaggerates only as principled restraints are set about its mo- tions. Such lying is a witness to the Truth. The child must become an actor. Pedagogy must become dramatic. The charitable ideal which seeks to en- large the esthetics of the slums by handing out Perry pictures, and to stuff the stomach of the beggar in hope of increasing his manhood, is as sensible as the present ideal of stuffing the young mind in hope of increasing its wisdom. Child and parent must in- dependently exchange consciousness. The dramatic method necessitates the theater and the unities. The chapel or "big room," which is be- coming a feature of the modern school building, and the spontaneous growth of high school "frats," are straws in the wind which is to blow over all artificial barriers between curriculum subjects, between classes and between the school and the workaday world. The stage of education will play the Game of Life. For busyness is life. School taxation will be diverted to provide in the new family Home of Business an ap- prentice place for the child where only valuable ob- jects will be created. Can business afford to educate its business men and women? It is already affording to uneducate them. In the section on Government, it was argued that even in cities a considerable space for gardening 104 THE LAST WORD must be attached to every home. The proper basis of child education is agriculture. Biologically the child belongs to out-door nature. Its integrity, pu- rity, sweetness, can best be maintained in a natural environment. As it grows, it may as naturally fol- low the evolutionary course of man's history and come into the new nature world of civilization. The four children recently admitted to Harvard Univers- ity, though more advanced than the average student of twice their school-life, are not infant prodigies. They have had private schooling based upon the study by natural inclination first interesting to them. Other studies were rationally derived from this lead- ing theme. Agriculture offers not only a basis for all educational branches, but their natural unifying principle. In the soil and its products, all forms of business originate and are thence coordinated. A motional universe rationally demands a mo- tional education for motional ends. Briefly, valid education is whatever promotes scientific, conscious intercourse between life centers. Conventional edu- cation of pupil and professor is as fatal, therefore, as the conventional religion of penitent and priest, or the conventional government of subject and ruler. Education cannot be e-ducative more than a-ductive. Motion follows neither the line of greatest traction nor the line of least resistance, but a line determined by these two in conformance to the universal law of harmonizing Rhythm. Pupil and professor must equally educate themselves by the purely mutual in- terchange of admentation-exmentation. This is the age of child study and child apprecia- tion. To-day the unspoiled Conscience of the child /THE LAST WORD 103 is ready to meet the completed Science of the adult in affirming the universal Law of the Continuity of Consciousness. And this is the brightest augury for the swift realization of the Gospel of The Last Word. THE END. OUR NEWEST ISSUES v^S'y^? s%$ ys& y^^^^P^^P^^P x£lr > 5^V° °J^\° 5^°l^^<5v? By Alexandre Erixon. 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