The breath of life
life nears its end with me, I find myself meditating more and more upon the mystery of its nature and origin, yet without the least hope that I can find out the ways of the Eternal in this or in any other world. In these studies,
I fancy I am about as far from mastering the mystery as the ant which I saw this morning industriously exploring a small section of the garden walk is from getting a clear idea of the geography of the North American Continent. But the ant was occupied and was apparently happy, and she must have learned something about a small fraction of that part of the earth’s surface.
I have passed many pleasant summer days in my hay-barn study, or under the apple trees, exploring these questions, and though I have not solved them, I am satisfied with the clearer view I have given myself of the mystery that envelops them.
I have set down on these pages all the thoughts that have come to me on this subject. I have not aimed so much at consistency as at clearness and definiteness of statement, letting my mind drift as upon a shoreless sea. Indeed, what are such questions,
That truth is a matter of utility is the ruling principle of what is known in the philosophic den as Pragmatism. One weak point in the work of this school should be corrected. It has had no criterion for judging whether an idea has practical value, it gave no valid reason why a theory is true because it works.
There is a biological test and a biological reason. Whatever in our experience, or in the arranging of our experience, constitutes a genuine adaptation to the Environment, is true to that extent. Science and Philosophy, Religion and Ethics, are phases of the same fundamental process. They represent our human attempts to know the world and fit ourselves to its conditions. Any experience, idea or theory which enables us to do that successfully, has a survival value.
