Page:Personality (Lectures delivered in America).djvu/108

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PERSONALITY

down as it suited him, because his free spirit, in its movements, stumbled against things arranged without consideration for him. He was obliged to behave as if he must follow the arrangement of nature, which had not his consent, or die. But this, in spite of hard facts against him, he never could believe in his heart of hearts. Therefore he dreamed of the paradise where he could be free, of the fairy land, of the epic age when man had constant coöperation with gods, of the philosopher's stone, of the elixir of life. Though he saw no gate opening out anywhere, he groped for it, he fretted, he desired and prayed with all his might for an entrance to freedom. For instinctively he felt that this world was not his final world, and unless he had another world his soul was to him a meaningless torment.

Science guides man's rebellion of freedom against Nature's rule. She is working to give into man's hand Nature's magic wand of power; she is to free our spirit from the slavery of things. Science has a materialistic appearance, because she is engaged in breaking the prison of matter and working in the rubbish heap of the ruins. At the invasion of a new country plunder becomes the rule of the day. But when that country is conquered, things become different, and those