CHAPTER XV.

. THE SPIRITUAL BASIS OF LOVE.
"All the laws of Physical Evolution cannot explain the first genesis of mind."
Thus declares the reviewer of "Evolution" in the Encyclope- dia Britannica.
If this applies to mind, how much more forcefully it applies to the phenomenon of love.
By love is meant that highest form of intelligent attraction and intelligent sympathy which exists between man and woman, between children and parents, and between relatives and friends.
This term also includes those peculiar individual sympathies and affections which exist between animals in their own relations. It also includes those sympathies which bind them to human beings.
Those preceding chapters on the genesis of physical life, the basis of evolution, and the natural law of selection, go to show that individual life and individual intelligence come into the world by the operation of a universal law of affinity, or the law of cor- respondence between positive and receptive energies.
This chapter is intended to show that love comes into the world by the same intelligent spiritual principle. The orderly and sequential development of love under this spiritual law of affinity, constitutes the Harmonics of Evolution.
The great common sense of the world is beginning to demand of science that it shall give an account of universal phenomena which shall accord with universal experience and with the com- mon impulses, aspirations and ideals of mankind. Every intelli- gent student and observer of life knows that love is a universal 19 289
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phenomenon attaching to intelligent, sentient life under normal conditions. Animals as well as humans love and seek love in others of their kind. Animals as well as humans may entertain sex love that is not physical passion. Animals like humans may love their offspring, may experience friendship for others of their own species, or of other species. They may love human beings.
Not man alone, but the animal also, is engaged in that uni- versal struggle for individual adjustment and an ethical content which depend primarily upon the love relations.
Physical materialism no more accounts for love than it does for the genesis of life or the individualizing of intelligence. Feed- ing, breeding and battle no more account for love than they do for matter, motion and space. It undertakes, however, to ac- count for it. That is to say, physical science claims to have at least discovered the basis of love between man and woman. Familial love, it casually explains as a matter of physical inherit- ance, or a habit. Friendship is translated as self-love or love of approbation. As to altruism, physical science frankly confesses that it has no theory. So convinced was Darwin of its abnormal- ity that he deplored that character of philanthropy which cares for the unfit children of men. He saw in this a direct defiance of Nature's primal purpose, viz., preservation of species through a battle of the strong against the weak.
Physical science, however, does claim to have found a natural physical basis for that love which exists between man and woman, and whose power and influence give life its permanent values. Scientific skepticism finds the basis of this character of love in an "overshadowing instinct for reproduction."
Darwin's contribution to science is unquestioned. His facts are of tremendous value. In theory alone he is disappointing. It is not physical fact, but intellectual dogma, that has degraded the sex relation to a "biological need."
It is, therefore, not fact, but mere opinion, that the higher science encounters in a discussion of this question .
The position of physical science as to the origin and nature
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of love, will be better understood by direct quotations from rec- ognized authority. Such authority declares:
(1) "Man is a mammal like any other, and only distinguished from the animals of his class by a greater cerebral development."
(2) "Generation is the outcome of nutrition."
(3) "The tyrannic need of procreation is the overwhelming and overshadowing principle of individual human development."
(4) "The institution of marriage has had no other object than the regulation of sexual unions. These have for their aim the satisfaction of one of the most imperious biological needs — the sexual appetite."
(5) "The prime cause of marriage and the family is purely biological ; it is the powerful instinct of reproduction."
(6) "If we are willing to descend to the foundation of things, we find that human love is essentially rut in an intelligent being."
Here, in brief, is the ultimatum of physical science as to the love principle in Nature. Thus is man reduced to the level of the animal. Thus is he accepted as a result of physical functions.
Not physical facts of Nature, but Darwin's interpretation of those facts, misled even so great an intelligence as Haekle. Here was a man of keen spiritual intuitions as well as of rare rational powers. It was always under protest that he forced his reason to accept what intuition denied. The result was, a theory as to the basis of love which satisfied neither Haekle himself nor con- vinced the world.
When contemplating the sex attraction of two microscopic cells and the transcendent powers of love in the human world, the great naturalist is led to say:
"We glorify love as the source of the most splendid creations of art; of the noblest productions of poetry, of plastic art, and of music; we reverence in it the most powerful factor in human civilization, the basis of family life, and, consequently, of the development of the state; * * * so wonderful is love, and so immeasurably important is its influence on mental life, that in this point, more than in any other, 'supernatural' causation seems
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to mock every natural explanation." Haekle also says: "On the other hand, we fear love as a destructive flame; it is love that drives so many to ruin; it is love that has caused more mis- ery, vice, and crime than all other calamities. * * * Not- withstanding all this, the comparative history of evolution leads us back very clearly and indubitably to the oldest and simplest source of love, to the elective affinity of two differing cells."
In a certain sense Haekle was right. The principle of elective affinity is, in fact, the true love principle. The naturalist, how- ever, drew his conclusions without any knowledge of the spiritual side of Nature. To him this conjugation of cells was therefore a physical act only. Love was therefore to him the efflorescence of that physical affinity. Moreover, had he possessed actual knowl- edge of the true love principle, he could not have confused the constructive nature of love with the destructive nature of un- controlled physical passion.
On the contrary, he would have realized that it is lust and not love that drives to ruin, v He would have known that a prin- ciple of harmony never yet engendered either misery, vice or crime\
With what satisfaction such an intelligence as that of Haekle had pursued the higher science. What pleasure such a soul would have in the analysis of a principle which accounts for love ra- tionally and in accordance with his highest intuitions. He would have then understood that there is nothing supernatural in love, nor yet anything that seems to degrade our highest ideals of it. On the contrary, an actual knowledge of the principle of elective affinity would have revealed a natural and purely scientific path- way of love, from its lowliest point in atomic activity to its sum- mit in the life of the soul.
The Darwinian theory has brought confusion and Hfsmay to many other honest and intelligent minds during the past half century. Unable to dispute his facts, they have felt compelled to accept the theories against which every intuition rebelled.
As long as the mind confines itself exclusively to the opera-
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tions of the physical functions, those theories appear logical. The moment, however, that the mind is diverted to other equally palpable facts, the commonest facts of intelligence, morality and love, that moment physical materialism fails and we must con- struct other theories to account for things.
The conflict between reason and intuition is never so sharp nor so clearly apparent as in the case of those scholars who accept Darwinism with such unmistakable loathing and humiliation. The man who stops for a moment to consider the motives and ideals of his own life, can scarcely bring himself to believe that those motives, ideals and aspirations had their root and nourish- ment in the absolutely unconscious and purely selfish demands of nutrition and reproduction. He cannot bring himself to feel that what he cherishes as his individual power and capacity, and what he experiences as his individual ambition or patriotism or love or altruism, is the mere efflorescence of a blind digestive ap- paratus, or a blind procreative passion. He cannot believe that all he is — as an individual — is but an ephemeral combination of mat- ter, an infinitesimal physical contribution to species.
The higher science formulates two grave charges against sci-, entific skepticism, viz.:
(1) That it obscures the Individual in Nature.
(2) That it levels intelligent love to "the instinct of repro- duction."
jl Though physical science asserts it as a fact, it is not able to show that man, even physically, is an animal only removed from the ape in point of time and additional feeding and breeding. Physically, man is an animal. Structurally, he is related to the ape. However, he is not an ape either physically, structurally, mentally or morally.
Though the ape appears to be a rudimentary man, he is not a man. There are differences physiologically, as well as mentally and morally, between the highest apje and the lowest human thus far discovered. >„
It must be remembered that actual proof of Darwin's theory
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rests upon this still "missing link." Until this is found, the whole elaborate theory means nothing in science. tEven in a physical sense Darwinism fails to bridge the gulf between animal and man. i
Since the writings of Darwin physical science has discovered a most interesting and important fact which bears directly upon this point. It is now discovered that the brain measurements of men and monkeys disclose a radical difference in actual quan- tity. Between the highest type monkey and the lowest type man the balance of actual brain matter is largely on the side of man. The ratio of difference is about 60 to 100.
More than this, man, one of the weaker mammals, is born unclothed, and practically defenseless from the elements and the stronger animals. From birth to death man is the one being who must live, attain, enjoy or suffer in the exact ratio of his own independent and rational self-development.
The resemblances, however, between the higher apes and low type men are distinct enough to logically show the physical re- lationship. If we were to compare an ape and a man, merely as a physical organism, the Darwinian theory would have much weight. The moment, however, that we compare an ape and a man as individual entities that moment the theory fails.
The distinction between man and animal is the absolutely im- passable gulf of rational and moral capacity.
Thus far finite science has discovered no natural link between an intelligent being endowed with the higher capacities of the soul element and one that is not. In the very lowest reaches of human society the child is born with capacities which no animal possesses, viz., capacities for rational and moral development. In this particular the lowest human transcends the highest ani- mal just as the nucleated life cell transcends vegetable substance in its energies and capacities.
The demarcation between the lowest human and the highest animal is even more distinct than that between the lichen and
THE SPIRITUAL BASIS OF LOVE. 295
the rock, or between low animal forms and certain vegetable growths.
It is true that an undeveloped human resembles an animal. It is also true that he may live on indefinitely, looking mainly to animal appetites and passions for his satisfactions. Indeed, the neglect of the higher nature reduces man below the animal, so far as external conduct and habit are concerned. The very fact that he does possess the power of individual reason, means that he has the capacity to disregard general principles, choose his own course, and thus apparently fall below the level of the brute.
Nevertheless, the low type human — unlike the ape — may at any stage of beastliness and degradation, rise from that condi- tion to one of rational and moral life. By force of the inherent powers of the soul he may at any time abandon animalism and assume the higher role of the human. Proofs of this are those facts which show the rapid development of low born children under civilized systems.
If man were, indeed, merely an improved animal, two condi- tions would obtain:
(1) The earth would teem with hybrids, physical, mental and moral. There would exist an infinite series of experiments between apes and men, entities which could be classified as neither animals nor men.
(2) Low type men could no more be suddenly raised to ra- tional and moral standards by highly developed systems, than could the ape.
Neither of these conditions obtains, but the reverse is the fact.
Physical science has no difficulty in distinguishing men from apes. One is distinctly human and the other is distinctly animal. No amount of culture will raise the chimpanzee to the rational and moral plane of man. Every normal human infant, however, is susceptible to both rational and moral development.
For illustration, negro children, offspring of the lowest full- blood Africans, show remarkable development under a system of
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education. That advance is as marked physically as it is in- tellectually and morally. The first generation shows an improved head, enlarged brain and modified features. The physical animal resemblances are wonderfully modified, while the mental and moral superiority to low type parents appears magical.
This change, however, physical, mental and moral, is not due to education alone. It is due to the latent capacities of the in- telligent soul. Education merely develops those latent possibili- ties of the soul. It does not create the soul itself.
By reason of this higher element the energies and activities of man are fundamentally superior to the energies and activities of the animal. The Darwinian theory lacks the one important link which alone could verify its elaborate speculation. That link Is still missing. Neither physical science nor any other science has discovered or will discover such link between man and the ape. It does not exist in this world nor in the next.
Does it not seem singular that a science which recognizes the fundamental differences between a rock, a tree and an animal, fails to recognize the same fundamental differences between a Plato, a Shakespeare, a Darwin, and the ape?
A science that does not take into account the psychical ele- ment in man, necessarily analyzes him as it would the pure animal. It is therefore bound to closely relate the highest activities and at- tributes of man to the activities and attributes of the animal. In- terpreting man through his physical functions, means the inter- pretation of love, as well as intelligence, through the same causes. Physical science, from Its present point of view, can do no better than to define love as "essentially rut in an intelligent being."
Nature, however, contravenes this position. Science that deals with two worlds of intelligence, love and ethical activity instead of one, arrives at a far different conclusion. The higher science which takes into account the fact of love in two worlds, holds this phenomenon to be the expression of a spiritual principle and not that of a physical passion.
The differences and distinctions of the two schools will be bet-
THE SPIRITUAL BASIS OF LOVE. 297
ter understood by sharp contrasts of their basic propositions. Physical science, as already stated, lays down as fundamental :
(1) That man is a mammal like any other, only distinguished from the animal by greater cerebral development.
Nature, on the contrary, demonstrates that man is a mam- mal, but fundamentally different from all others. He is distin- guished from the animal by one additional element which en- genders capacities, superior to those of any and all animals.
(2) Physical science claims that generation is the outcome of nutrition.
Nature, however, demonstrates that generation is the out- come and incident of the universal struggle for vibratory corre- spondence, which is the struggle for self-completion.
(3) Physical science declares that the tyrannic need of pro- creation is the overwhelming and overshadowing principle of in- dividual human development.
Nature, on the contrary, demonstrates that the natural neces- sity for self-completion is the overmastering and overwhelming principle of individual human development.
(4) Physical science declares that the institution of marriage has no other object than the regulation of sexual unions.
Natural Science, however, shows that the institution of mar- riage has for its object the rational regulation of the sex relation as a necessary part of the struggle for completion.
(5) Physical science declares that the prime cause of mar- riage and the family is purely biological. It is the powerful in- stinct of reproduction.
Nature, however, shows that the prime cause of marriage is spiritual rather than purely biological ; it is the powerful impulse for vibratory correspondence or for sympathy.
(6) Physical science declares that if we are willing to de- scend to the foundation of things we find that human love is essentially rut in an intelligent being.
Natural Science, however, finds that if we are willing to in- vestigate the spiritual principle of affinity, we find that human love
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is essentially an harmonic relation established between two intel- ligent beings.
Thus, while agreeing as to physical fact, it is yet possible for scholars to differ so widely as to formulate philosophies diametri- cally opposed. It must be remembered, however, that the one school bases its philosophy upon physical facts alone, while the other takes into account both physical and spiritual facts of Nature.
The higher science, taking into account as it does both spirit- ual and psychical principles, as well as physical functions, finds that love is an expression of the same principle which refines matter, increases vibratory action, generates life and individualizes intelligence.
The phenomenon of love which obtains among intelligent entities, is therefore as universal in principle and as normal in expression as are matter, motion, life and intelligence. It does not matter whether that love be manifested by animal or human, or whether expressed as sex love, or familial love, or as friend- ship.
Love is the sensation and emotion which accrue to conscious intelligence when vibratory correspondence obtains. It does not matter whether this affinity occurs in the higher or lower king- dom of intelligence, whether as between man and woman, be- tween parents and children or between friends.
When an individual intelligence observes this principle as molecular action, he talks of the "law of vibration." When, how- ever, he himself feels and enjoys the operation of that principle between himself and another individual, he calls that experience love.
Chemical union represents merely the vibratory correspond- ence of two material particles or atoms, while love and marriage represent the vibratory correspondence of material organisms, but they also represent the mutual sensations and emotions of two intelligent beings. The difference in effects between mineral marriages and human marriages can only be measured by the
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difference between the energies and capacities of unconscious atoms and those of self-conscious. intelligent souls. Sex Love, humanly speaking, is a complex activity in Nature. It embraces first, all of the unconscious or involuntary affinities of the lower elements; and second, it includes the direct self-conscious im- pulses, sensations and emotions of individual intelligence. These impulses, sensations, emotions and satisfactions of love, are sim- ply the values whicfi accrue to an individual intelligence as it co- operates with the universal law of affinity.
Nothing but a rational contact with the spiritual plane and a rational study of life upon that plane, enables the investigator to comprehend the nature of that activity defined as love.
Love is an activity of individualized intelligence. It is there- fore an activity common to both animals and humans. Love, however, in animal and human life, represents widely different values.. Animal love rises no higher than the potencies and capac- ities of animal nature. Human love, though an expression of the same principle, is an activity augmented, ennobled and illuminated by the potencies and capacities of the higher soul element.
The fact that animals do love their mates, their offspring, and those of their own and other species, must be accepted as proof that love is a possibility and normal accompaniment of all con- scious intelligent life. When the psychical energies have been added to animal passions, the love nature rises correspondingly in power and scope. The capacity for loving is increased just as the measure of ethical enjoyment is enlarged.
More than this, the individual love relation of man and woman embraces greater ethical possibilities than any other love relations in the human family. This is true by reason of the fact that only between individuals of opposite polarity can there exist an affinity and union which may be at once physical, spiritual and psychical. Nor are such close harmonies possible even spiritually and psy- chically except between representatives of positive and receptive elements. Men and women who have vainly sought for ethical
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content in children or in friendship, will sooner or later confess this law.
When the scientific investigator proves the fact of life after physical death, he proves that man is a spiritual being with in- telligent occupations, as well as a mammal with physical func- tions. When he finds that rational and moral development con- tinue in that other life, he proves that there are other generative agencies in Nature than the organs of digestion and reproduc- tion. When he discovers that the spiritual world is inhabited by men and women, he discovers that sex is a universal spiritual principle, instead of a biological need. When he finds that men and women seek each other in that spiritual world with the same definite, exclusive desire they do here, he then realizes that sex love represents a higher necessity than that of reproduction.
On the spiritual side of life men and women seek each other with even greater desire than they do here. They seek each other, however, in response to the passion for intellectual com- panionship, and not from the passion of lust which too often takes the place of intelligent love in human marriages.
In that world, therefore, as in this, the same exclusive char- acter dominates the love relations of the sexes. It is not any man or any woman, but the ideal man or ideal woman that the spiritual lover seeks.
It may be a comfort to those who are unhappily mated here, to know that spiritual life not only gives freedom, but equips the individual to much more easily form happy relations. It must be remembered, however, that a proper discharge of earthly obli- gation is in itself the development which best fits the spiritual man or woman to form higher and happier relations in spiritual life.
Whoever is a frequenter of the seance room is apt to gain information (and frequently misleading suggestions) concerning this spiritual law of affinity. No matter how depraved the spirit- ual life may be, the physically disembodied soon learn that the sex relation depends upon that principle of affinity.
The efforts of the low grade intelligences upon the spiritual
THE SPIRITUAL BASIS OF LOVE. 3°*
plane to interpret this law through the medium of the seance room, have given rise to many serious misconceptions and are responsible for much immorality.
These are some of the facts which the higher science interprets to mean that sex is an eternal principle, that love is a spiritual activity of intelligence, and that marriage is a spiritual and psy- chical necessity as well as a biological need.
Thus, Nature brings a message to man that satisfies his in- telligence and inspires the soul to still higher effort. In such a reading of Nature, the individual man finds compensation for the struggle for nutrition, and the individual woman finds reconcile- ment to the sacrifices of reproduction. This reading of Nature and this alone dignifies the sex relation, gives value to individual existence, and explains human love as an intelligent need of the soul, and not a blind lust of the body.
Mr. Drummond differs radically from Darwinism as to the origin of love. The moralist believes he has found the physical basis of love in the enforced pains, penalties and sacrifices of maternity. The moralist, however, entirely agrees with the ma- terialist, that sex is merely a physical device for reproduction. He agrees that the love relation of man and woman is, at the root, "a physical passion miscalled love."
Mr. Drummond, however, does believe that there is love in the world which is not physical passion, nor related to it, nor any- thing like it. He defines love as a phenomenon essentially made up of the virtues of pity, compassion, patience and self-sacrifice.
With this as a starting point, he next declares that love orig- inated in the physical disabilities of the female half of life. And he finally claims that by reason of this fact, "love comes into the world at the point of the sword."
Briefly summarizing this new moral philosophy by brief quo- tations, we are told:
(1) "Everything in the moral world has a physical basis."
(2) "Man progresses, not by any innate tendency to progress, nor by any energies inherent in protoplasmic cells from which
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he first set out, but by continuous feeding and re-enforcement from without."
(3) "Life is controlled by its functions. Living out these is life. The activities of the higher life are determined by these same lines."
(4) Sex affinity "may be the physical basis of a passion which is frequently miscalled love * * * but love has come down a wholly different line."
(5) "Sympathy, tenderness, unselfishness, and the long list of virtues which go to make up altruism (or love) are the direct out- come and essential accompaniment of the reproductive function."
(6) "The goal of the whole plant and animal kingdom seems to be the creation of a family."
(7) "Before altruism was strong enough to take its own initiative necessity had to be laid upon all mothers to act as they did."
(8) "The object of Nature is to turn out mothers."
(9) "Man fulfills his destiny in the struggle for nutrition, woman fulfills hers in the industries and activities of home and in paying the eternal debt of motherhood."
(10) "Love came into the world at the point of the sword." Thus, a new moral philosophy, attempting to build upon
physical materialism, brings no loftier message to the world than the system it partly rejects.
It is with a feeling almost akin to resentment that intelligent minds, especially among women, follow this theory to the end.
Sex, "a physical device for reproduction;" sex love, a "physical passion;" the object of evolution, the "manufacture of moth- ers;" man's individual destiny, "fulfilled in the struggle for nu- trition;" woman's individual destiny, "fulfilled in paying the eter- nal debt of motherhood;" the goal of individual life and endeavor, "the creation of an improved family;" competition and sacrifice the universal principles of progress!
This, in brief, is the message brought to the aspiring soul of man by the speculations of a scientific theologian.
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The differences and distinctions between Mr. Drummond's philosophy and the higher science are more easily appreciated by sharp contrast of their basic principles.
Moral philosophy, based upon physical materialism, assumes:
(1) That everything in the moral world has a physical basis. Nature, on the contrary, demonstrates that while everything
in the physical world has a spiritual basis, everything in the moral human world has a psychical basis.
(2) The moralist assumes that man progresses, not by any innate tendency to progress, nor by any energies inherent in pro- toplasmic cells from which he first sets out, but by continuous feeding and re-enforcement from without.
Nature, however, demonstrates that man progresses by reason of inherent spiritual energies in protoplasmic cells from which he first sets out. His progress upon the physical plane is sustained by nutrition, influenced by environment, and perpetuated by re- production.
(3) The moralist assumes that life is controlled by its func- tions. Living out these is life. The activities of the higher life are determined by these same lines.
Nature, on the contrary, demonstrates that life is controlled by the affinities which inhere in the vital elements. Responding to these is living. The activities of the higher life are determined by the higher affinities of the intelligent soul.
(4) The moralist assumes that sex affinity may be the phys- ical basis of a passion miscalled love, but that love comes down a wholly different line.
Nature demonstrates that sex affinity is the spiritual prin- ciple of polarity which operates as positive and receptive energy, and as centrifugal and centripetal force, in the processes of evo- lution.
(5) Moral philosophy assumes that sympathy, tenderness, unselfishness and the long list of virtues which go to make up altruism, are the direct outcome of the reproductive function.
Nature demonstrates that sympathy, tenderness, unselfishness
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and all other virtues which go to make up love and altruism are the direct outcome and essential accompaniment of a spiritual principle of affinity.
(6) The moralist believes that the goal of the whole plant and animal kingdom is the creation of a family.
Nature, however, demonstrates that the goal of all energies and of all activities is the completion of an individual.
(7) The moralist finds that before altruism was strong enough to take its own initiative necessity had to be laid upon all mothers to act as they did.
Natural Science holds that before individual intelligence was strong enough to take the initiative, maternal solicitude appears as an involuntary response to the law of vibratory correspondence or affinity.
(8) The moralist declares that the object of Nature is to turn out mothers.
Nature, however, would strongly suggest that its chief object is to turn out men and women.
(9) The moralist holds that man fulfills his destiny in the struggle for nutrition, and woman fulfills hers in the industries and activities of home and in paying the eternal debt of mother- hood.
The processes of evolution, as well as human experience, teach us that man and woman fulfill their destiny, primarily, in that individual relation which governs the highest possible develop- ment of each, physically, spiritually and psychically.
(10) The moralist has said that love comes into the world at the point of the sword.
This most serious charge against Nature, Nature itself con- travenes. The study of love and the love relations among in- telligent creatures, animal and human, clearly demonstrates the fact that love comes into the world by a natural law of affinity, which law becomes in intelligent life the natural law of self-con- sent.
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Thus, Nature, when rightly seen and comprehended, corrects, one by one, the errors of specialists and speculators.
When science discovers that the individual love relations of this life are perpetuated in the higher life, it is very naturally in- ferred that those relations have their basis in spiritual principles and in psychical or intellectual attractions. When it is observed that the individual love relation of man and woman survives the ties of family and the bonds of friendship, it is taken to mean that this individual, spiritual relation, is of primary importance. It is also accepted to mean that man and woman are fundamentally incomplete in both worlds, except through that individual relation.
As its name would imply, Natural Science investigates and analyzes this love principle exactly as it does the natural law of motion and number, of life, and of intelligence, viz., by study and comparison of its modes, objects and effects in two correlated worlds of intelligent activity.
Such investigation and interpretation incidentally explain maternal love as an expression of the same principle of affinity which governs sex love. From its lowest involuntary activities to its highest voluntary expressions, maternal solicitude and ma- ternal love represent that same natural law of consent which gov- erns sex love and all other love relations.
In human maternity, as in human sex love, we have a relation which may express physical, spiritual and psychical sympathies. In lower life maternal solicitude is an intuitive (involuntary and irrational) response to this universal law of correspondence. In the higher life of intelligence, however, maternal love expresses a self-conscious, voluntary and rational activity of individual in- telligence, as well as involuntary affinities and impulses. Mater- nal love in the human kingdom is, therefore, a spiritual and psy- chical relation, as well as a physical bond, and represents the higher affinities of spirit and soul, as well as the bonds of the flesh.
Such an interpretation further proves that love comes into the world, not by the physical pains and sacrifices of maternity, 20
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nor by force nor compulsion nor sacrifice of any kind or char- acter. On the contrary, this reading of Nature merely discloses maternal love as but one of the expressions of a universal law of affinity. It explains maternal solicitude as merely the natural expression of the receptive feminine nature, and is no more the outcome of maternal pain and sacrifice than masculine aggress- iveness is the outcome of the struggle for nutrition.
Though maternal love obtains in the lower kingdoms of in- telligence, it is the human mother who enjoys those increased capacities for loving which dawn with the induction of the highest life element, the soul.
Human mother love appears more and is more, in both volume and effect, than the maternal love of an animal. That is to say, the human mother has the capacities for those higher affinities which the animal lacks. A tigress just as truly loves her infant as does the human mother. There exists between them close affinities of both flesh and spirit. But who is there in this age of enlightenment that can fail to note the difference between tiger love and human love.
Physical science has a peculiar way of interpreting "selection" that would seem to imply that somehow both animals and humans, in their individual love relations and maternal activities, are really engaged in the effort to preserve species only.
For instance, we are told that "the preservation of the species was before everything else the object of selection." Also that "the first necessity of societies is that they endure." Again we are told that the price of the endurance and perpetuation of species depends upon the care which mothers bestow upon their offspring. It is therefore concluded that the manufacture of mothers is the first object of Nature.
While this assumes to speak for Nature, how shall the in- dividual impulse and intent of the mother be understood?
In truth, here is where physical science wholly fails. It as- sumes a purpose for Nature, and in that assumption it loses all sight of the individual.
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The maternal love of the tiger is a purely individual emotion. The tigress has nothing but this individual impulse and individual intent to bind her to her offspring. She has no remote intuitions as to the preservation of species, nor of the natural necessity for good mothers. She has not the faintest perception of a moral responsibility to her child. On the contrary, she is bound to it solely by a fierce, irrational affinity or passion. She is bound by tiger love. She is simply impelled, not compelled by that love, to feed, to caress and to guard it.
Unless we hold that love is a mere habit of enforced sacrifice, there is absolutely nothing in physical maternity to create or occasion love. There is, in fact, everything to engender dread, opposition and resentment on the part of an intelligent human being, forced to thus suffer for the race. Love is not a habit. It is not an inherited result of physical discomfort and sacrifice. To associate love with any idea of compulsion, is to entertain an absurdity. The very nature of love forbids the thought. Fear and endurance and patience and self-repression may come by compulsions and sacrifices, but love, never. The attempt to so relate it is an offense against Nature. It contradicts intuition. It confuses reason. It belies experience.
Love is as involuntary as breathing. It is the instant and in- voluntary response of the individual to the universal law of har- monics.
There is no known principle or process in Nature that can compel love between the very meanest of Nature's children. Love is the exact reverse of compulsion. It is the one phenome- non in Nature which, from its lowest to its highest expression, defies every phase of force, whether that force be physical, spirit- ual or psychical.
Maternal love survives physical death; which proves, as in the case of sex love, that there is involved a spiritual principle and a spiritual relationship as well as a physical relationship. Science, therefore, assumes that maternity is a spiritual activity of feminine nature which conserves the perpetuation of the race.
308 HARMONICS OF EVOLUTION.
It is found further, that mother love in the spiritual world, even as it is in the physical world, is an incidental relation of life, rather than the purpose of living.
In that life, as in this, intellectual activities and ethical enjoy- ments constitute the occupation of intelligent beings. Intellectual ambitions and moral purposes and ethical satisfactions are, there- fore, held to be the governing causes in the evolution of man upon both planes of existence.
From the vantage ground of its broader investigation, the higher science is justified in assuming that neither preservation of species, the creation of a family, nor the manufacture of moth- ers, has been the inspiration of that Great Intelligence which guides the infinite scheme of evolution. On the contrary, all of the laws of Nature on both sides of life, combine to show that the primary object of this Great Intelligence has been the perfecting and completion of the individual man and woman.
Science claims that this primary object of Nature is distinctly foreshadowed in that spiritual principle in Nature which impels the individual entity to seek vibratory correspondence in another like entity of opposite polarity.
Under such interpretation, completion can be effected neither in a physical struggle for nutrition nor in a physical struggle for reproduction. Instead, completion, as designed by Nature and sought by man, involves, primarily, the establishment of a per- fect relation between the individual man and woman. In this greatest struggle, therefore, the struggle for self-completion, man and woman pursue their destiny here and hereafter.
Thus, the universal individual is spiritually impelled, and not physically compelled, to love. Correspondences, co-operations and harmonics, and not compulsions, competitions and sacrifices, are the natural pathway of love. Thus, destiny is fulfilled, not in contributions to the body nor to .progeny nor to species, but in the highest possible individual relations and attainments. Des- tiny is fulfilled in intellectual and moral activities, and not merely in following out the lines laid by the physical functions. Individ-
THE SPIRITUAL BASIS OF LOVE. 3°9
ual completion through individual love relations, is the primary object of living.
Thus, the higher science finds a spiritual basis for love, in- stead of a physical one. It lays down a law of fulfillment in the place of the law of sacrifice. It formulates a philosophy of in- dividual development instead of one of individual repression. This philosophy looks, not to sacrifice and resignation, but to individ- ual happiness, as the goal of intelligent life and endeavor.
Thus, one by one the higher science corrects the errors of physical science, and of a moral philosophy largely based upon those errors.
Thus, by a long series of carefully proved facts, it clearly dem- onstrates that everything in this physical world has a spiritual basis, and that love comes into the world through this spiritual law of consent, and not through physical compulsions, "at the point of the sword."