Love, the Law of Life

It is said by some that love and science are not to be confused, that the realms of the two differ, that love is the flame of passion, and therefore harmful to scientific investigation.

If these contentions be true, then is science something akin to asceticism? Is the scientist a recluse? Can there be any science apart from mankind? Is not science an extension of human life? In my own view, there is nothing so romantic as science.

It is also said that science conflicts with religion. For the doctor of dried herbs shut up in the university museum it may be so, but for the seeker after living things in a living world such talk is fantastical. There® was a time in the past when so-called science and socalled religion were in conflict, but it was rather like © saying the eye was in conflict with the face! The face boasted that it held the eye, not because it wanted the _ eye for seeing but for mere looks. And the eye scorned the face because it had only form but could not see. The logic of emotion that would live was in conflict with the experience that would know. But apart from man these two realms of truth are nonexistent.

In the realm of religion is taught the wisdom of the will-to-be-thus, while through science is imparted the knowledge of how the external world exists. There is, then, no inherent reason for conflict between the two. Some present-day pseudo-scientists fail to comprehend the religion of life because they negate the law by which man is to live. And if present-day pseudo-religionists slander science, they are maligning the structure of the cosmos as the content of life. The two, science and religion, are not really discrete. But in Occident and Orient many still think them incompatible, and day by day the laboratories of science and the piety of religion get farther apart.

Even the scientist lives not only in a world of biological necessity, but as well in a world of psychic urge. Men, however, tend to confuse necessity and urge. In the laws of life there is here no dualism, but a necessary. order upon two different levels. Not even the scientist can discard one of these and continue to live. Do not scientists make overtures for marriage and exhibit infatuation with beauty? It is, therefore, a great error to treat these two realms as separable.

Penetrating more deeply into human nature, we discover that consciousness attains its value where necessity is changed into purpose. The essence of life inheres in growth, variation, and selection. Consciousness awakens to purpose. It cannot, of course, know absolute purpose, but becomes alive to momentary inner © aims. These inner aims by degrees rise in quality from the mere physical, such as ‘‘I want to drink tea and eat bread,’’ to the psychic, “I want to study,” “I want to view the cherry blossoms,”’ and thence on to the ethical, ‘Let us love one another,” “I want to make a better world,” ‘‘I would save the weak,” ‘I would emancipate the proletariat’’—the aims being transformed to ever-rising ideals. Such is human nature. | That which necessity can teach man is bestowed as experience acquired on his road of advance. That is, in the progress of life the existence of various laws is taught to man experientially. Hence, there was a reason for ancient man expanding his own life to include all objectivity and thinking of the whole cosmos as one gigantic human being; but with subsequent development man has learned that in human life there are limits and that man himself is infinitely inconsequential.

The so-called scientists who learned the fact of man’s insignificance next imagined that the thought of man’s having a purpose could be discarded, and finally arrived at the position of regarding man as a species of machine. That is, they came to think of man as the objectification of necessity and as incapable of higher development. To this necessity they applied the term causality, and they even reached the point of believing that man is governed by causality and unable to move in any direction. |

These scientists, however, failed to remember that apart from man no such thing as causality exists. There is, of course, this causality which man has discovered.

He has learned that in the variability of the world there are certain laws, certain restrictions, and a certain temporal order; that there is never any confusion, or lack of restrictions, or disorder; that neither chance nor blindness rule, but that all is under the government of certain laws.

Certain people tend to consider man’s machines as blind. But their error is manifest. Every one of man’s machines has a purpose for man, and whether the mechanism itself is conscious of its purpose or not, it has structure, order, and temporal sequence. It is absolutely not a mixture of chance and _ blindness. Every mechanism invented by man has an inner human aim. The spinning wheel is made for the purpose of spinning thread; the pump for the purpose of raising water. Each machine is a fitting together of the cosmic laws which man has discovered, a combination of the laws which man has through his inner purpose searched out. The machine and the inner purpose are thus united.:

Cosmic necessity, too, is something which man has discovered—not cold necessity, but the necessity which sanctions man’s inner purpose. Nay, it is possible to say more than this: the necessity in the universe is a necessity which enfolds man’s inner purpose; and it transpires that the necessity which, as man developed, was thought to bind him, is on the contrary easily utilizable, and advances concomitantly with man’s purpose.

In ancient times man was unable to fly. Now man ean fly. Thus the necessity of the past differs from the necessity of the present. In other words, that which we regard today as necessary is not an absolute necessity, but one viewed from a certain level of experience. The necessity revealed in experience is that made known in life. As life is prolonged, the essence of its necessity is more deeply conveyed to us. That is to say, apart from purpose necessity is absolutely unthinkable.

Einstein’s principle of relativity regards all as in a state of flux. Matter is regarded as flowing force, upon one point of which we fix our attention. That is, according to Einstein, matter and force are quali- — tatively the same. I have no objection to this view. When we think of matter as flowing, it is force; when we think of it as quiescent at one point, it becomes matter.

I believe that the case is the same with purpose and necessity. Man always thinks with some purpose. To.

ask one to think without purpose, aimlessly, would be absurd. Man possesses life which continually moves forward, exhibiting certain tendencies. Though the individual may not be able to see the goal, he inwardly knows at least where he is next arriving.

When moving with purpose, restrictions are placed upon the mode of motion. These are summed up in the term causality. To us who live in a relative order it is apparent that ours is a world where behind the purpose there are laws. That is, it is a world of spatial limits and a temporal order.

That which may be known intuitively within the life of the soul is capable of being deduced, but that which works externally may not be known except by inductive methods. However, there is something which binds together induction and deduction, namely, life. Life moves with purpose, and as it moves, experiences are accumulated.

Yet I am unable to think after the fashion of William James, who advocated the pragmatic theory of truth— the idea that all truth is utilitarian and has no absolute value. We live, it is true, in arelative world. Truth, then, may be regarded as relative. But since life itself is perceived intuitively, and value judgments when _made have in them absolute elements, it is impossible that all things should be regarded from the utilitarian point of view.

However, we should not lose sight of James’ contribution, which consisted in reéxplaining truth in human terms. It was well that James reéxplained truth thus, but his real adventure lay in his effort to dispel the absoluteness which is the very essence of truth. The objective world is not the creation of subjectivity. Objectivity as the content of subjectivity, which appears as the content of life, is the result of the experiences of life.

It is in this sense that knowledge is spoken of as the product of life. Knowledge differs from reality. It is received through the avenues of limited sensations. If there could be a device for observing the content of objectivity, knowledge would indubitably be given in forms quite different from the content which it now possesses. That is, we are to think that as life evolves, the categories of knowledge too undergo evolution.

As life evolves, man grows. His knowledge becomes systematized, and science is born. Science may be taken to signify the activity of the intelligence which studies the structure of the universe and the laws of its changes. Science is the cosmic structure which we look out upon from the windows of the soul. Or, again, we may say that science is the microcosm framed together within man’s soul. The universe which we know is merely that given through the extremely limited activities of our five senses. It is of the nature of a symbol. That is, the external creation that man knows is a universe which has undergone a reconstruction. To it is added all the feelings of the inner life, giving a knowledge of the essence of reality. Therefore, science is for the soul’s life the most fascinating of romances. It is the illumination newly bestowed when life is surgent.

How, then, can religionists scorn this truth that is so human? And why is it that the creators of such radiance cannot comprehend the religion of life? It is because the scientist does not perceive the essence of science, and the religionist fails to grasp the nature of religion, The great errors are these: the scientist con- siders himself more scientific as he becomes more like inorganic substance, while the religionist is satisfied with abusing science. Yet the relation between science and religion is as close as that between face and eye, or body and limbs: they are not to be disputed over or to be separated.

If I am to tell how I feel, the more I study science the greater becomes my wonder at the dignity of life, its dramatic nature, and its marvelous design.

Science is a splendid drama. There is nothing more romantic. For me, locomotives and wireless messages are poems and dramas. They are the musical tones of vibrant life. They are the devices to help man to love; they are the passage toward the higher refinement of life.

Science is the ‘‘feeler”’ of life, the revelation bestowed upon the living. Science is, for the man who thinks only of the struggle for existence, undoubtedly an amazing weapon: it creates military airplanes and submarine torpedoes. But to him who dreams of a world of mutual aid, science is the new power which plans mills and cities and all the communications that serve to strengthen the ties between men. Even aside from these utilitarian aims, I look upon science as the great window of the soul, the supreme revelation of reality.

Let me sit in the physical laboratory, quite removed from thoughts of utility, like a selfless, desireless scholar of the cloister, and hear what science has to tell me. Does it not tell of the drama of life activity? In the biology classroom naturally, but even in the physics lecture room, usually thought of as tasteless and dry as dust, I behold the drama of the inanimate. Have you witnessed the Brownian movement of molecules? Or the activity of elements excited by electricity, moving in orbits similar to those of celestial bodies?

Have you seen the seeming surprise of the electrons when a plate of tin is bombarded by X-rays? Have you ever thought of such things as the arrangement of electrons, the evolution of molecules, or the development of colloids?

Have you measured the velocities of the stars by means of their spectra? The physics of electrons, of geology, and of the celestial bodies is all of a piece. In it are to be discovered the secrets of this globe, the habitat of humanity.

If physics be dramatic, chemistry is still more so. But I must avoid the tedium of minute explanation.