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CHAPTER VII

THE COSMIC ROOT OF LOVE

HE other great law of animate nature-no

TH

less fundamental and original than the

law of selection and the struggle for life

-is the law of self-sacrifice for the life of others, or the law of love. It is often said that "Selfpreservation is the first law of nature;" but that is incorrect. Self-preservation and racepreservation are two parallel laws of nature, or, better, two intertwining laws; for they so react, back and forth, now one dominant, now the other, in the activities of an individual that they are inextricably tangled together.

The struggle for the life of others begins down very low in the scale of animate creation. In fact, suggestions of the law are found in the inorganic realm. What is that passionate affinity of atoms for those of another element, or of atoms of the same element for one another, but a demonstration of the fact that nothing

lives unto itself or for itself? Everything seems to live not for itself alone, but for something else, and realizes itself by merging itself into a larger whole. It finds itself by losing itself. In the animate world this law finds its first manifestation in connection with the function of reproduction. Everywhere in nature the mother gives up something of her own life for her offspring. In the lowest protean forms of plant and animal the mother-cell simply divides to produce another cell; while in the more highly organized forms it seems that the chief aim of the life of the individual is to produce and to care for other individuals.

Take, for illustration, a flowering plant. In its beginnings it seems purely selfish. During its germination it grows by the disorganizing and appropriation of the sheltering seed. After it has absorbed the nutritious tissues of the mother-seed and has produced a root and leaf of its own, it reaches into the soil and into the air and sunlight, appropriating everything it can use for its own nutrition.

But watch it: it is going somewhere. Buds

for next year's foliage and blossom are forming in the axils of its leaves, and the plant is carefully and ingeniously protecting these little buds. Then it comes to the blossom, and we observe this plant we thought had been growing in pure selfishness carefully nourishing the little ovules in its ovary until they are full-grown seeds ready to begin again this cycle of life. Having performed this function of nourishing, perfecting, and protecting its own seed-children, the mother plant dies, or goes into its periodic rest.

In the light of this result we see that the main purpose of the whole process from the beginning, though apparently selfish for much of the time, is at last to pour its life into the life of its offspring. The ultimate goal of the growing plant is not its own life, but the nurture of the seed. Every cell division, every differentiation of tissue into root, stem, leaf, flower, was for the one crowning event-the production and nurture of another living being. Some of my peach trees have literally laid down their lives in the effort to bear more fruit than their

vitality could endure. In this familiar process of fruit-bearing the chief purpose of the individual seems to be to preserve not itself primarily, but the species. The individual merges itself into the race, gives up its individual being. for the life of the larger circle of beings. In all this there is no conscious effort, of course; it is a purely instinctive tendency breathed into the protoplasm of which the plant is made. But who breathed upon the protoplasm, and knew the plant's members and processes when as yet there was none of them? What is this mysterious thing we call "function," if not the Mind of the Spirit of Life-the Will of the living God? Function is spiritual purpose that guides in the organization of all living matter, an intelligent Something that gathers and molds inorganic matter to its will. Its immediate purpose seems to be self-preservation by nutrition; its final purpose is self-sacrifice for the lives of others.

There is also another aspect of the vicarious principle in the vegetable kingdom. Why should plants live and grow at all? Is it worth while

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