Both processes (Evolution and Dissolution) are going on at every instant; but always there is a differential result in favour of the first or the second.
There is habitually a passage from homogeneity to heterogeneity along with the passage from diffusion to concentration.
All evolution inorganic, organic and super-organic. Every increase in functional complexity involves a change in structural complexity.
Study is of three kinds:—
1. Some always read less than the authors mean to convey. They always fell short.
2. Some read all that their books contain and Iio more,
3. Some read much more than the books state. Reading between the lines and mastering all the suggestions, they expand what they read through associations of ideas and their previous wide range of knowledge.
In reading books read your own heart.
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Evolution is equal to a change from a confused simplicity to a distinct complexity. The redistribution of the matter and its retained motion is from a relatively diffused, uniform, and indeterminate arrangement to a relatively concentrated, multiform, and determinate arrangement.
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In any locality, great or small, where the occupying matter acquires an appreciable individuality or distinguishableness from another, there evolution goes on.
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Along with Space and Time (Causality, Force or Matter) admits of no limitation in thought.
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“The analysis of both religion and science” shows that while the knowledge of the cause which produces effects on consciousness is impossible, the existence of a cause for these effects is a datum of consciousness.
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The recognition of a persistent force ever changing its manifestations but unchanged in quantity throughout all past time and all future tim3 is tint which alone makes possible each concrete interpretation and at last unifies all concrete interpretations. H. Spencer.
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It is impossible to prevent misrepresentations when the questions involved are of a kind that excite so much animus.
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The deepest truths we can reach are simply statements of the widest uniformities in our experiences of the relations of Matter, Motion, and Force; and matter, motion and force are but symbols of the unknown Reality.
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A Power of which the nature remains forever inconceivable and to which no limits in Time and Space can be imagined, works in us certain effects. These effects have certain likenesses of kind the most general of which we class together under the names of Matter, Motion and Force; and between these effects there are likenesses of connection, the most constant of which we class as laws of the highest certainty.
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But when Science has done this, it has done nothing more than systematize our experiences, find has in no degree extended the limits of our experiences. The interpretation of all phenomena in terms of Matter, Motion and Force is nothing more than the reduction of our complex symbols of thought to the simplest symbols; and when the equation has been brought to its lowest terms, the symbols remain symbols still.
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“All are forced to make concession after concession to their surroundings, and in these concessions all progress in life consists till at last each organism or each alliance of organisms must come to the greatest concession of all which we call death,”
D. S. Jordan
Then why not come to Renunciation of your own accord.
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The bonds of union between different species which are real = homology. It is the inside of an animal that tells the real history of its ancestry (time); its outside tells us only where its ancestors have been (space ).
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Agassiz:—
“The species represent the divine thoughts embodied in the act of creation. The Unity (Homology exists in the mind of the Creator. He made them all and so all bear the stamp of His workmanship. He is infinite and so they exist in infinite variety.”
That “material form is the cover of spirit” was to Agassiz “A truth at once fundamental and self-evident.” Each species is the material form which clothes a divine idea. Homologies arise from the association of divine ideas. To this great Naturalist (like Le Conte) the laboratory was not less holy than the Church and “a physical fact not less sacred than a moral principle” A spirit of deep reverence breathes through all his works. According to him “to study out Nature is to think again the thoughts of God.” Forget not Agassiz.
The term introduced by H. Spencer “the survival of the fittest” expresses only half the truth because to be on the ground is a factor not less important in determining survival than to have a special fitness for the conditions of life, therefore, the survival of the existing is a factor as potent as the actual survival of the fittest.
In the struggle for existence “the struggle is between the rival competitors to secure the object on which they depend one way or other.”
That party comes out successful which has more of the Almighty revealed in it which can be accomplished only through comparative (or relative) unconsciousness of body (or denial of little self) and as it were through co-working with the Infinite Force.
That kind of altruism or Christianity which founders in the bog of body – cognizance has a forlorn struggle for existence.
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Let the indefinite mixture of so-called self-denial and individual-assertion be definitely differentiated by Vedanta.
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We see then that at the bayonet’s point does the Law of Evolution point to Vedantic realization.
When you have realized the goal of Evolution, you find yourself to be the Ever Surviving One. Sesh Purush.
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And in that case so far as others are concerned, they are bound by the obdurate Laws of Nature to recognize you as the Imperishable.
The Theological interpretation of Nature is immediately confuted by the presence of indispensable struggle throughout Nature whether it is struggle for one’s own existence or struggle for the life of others.
Nature has no preferences and helps alike victim and victor.
“Other influences work in connection with ‘Natural selection’. In the higher animals changes may be wrought by conscious or unconscious effort on the part of the creatures themselves”.
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If a man employs his consciousness to co-work with the law, he survives and in him the conscious effort taking up the role of Natural Selection freedom from struggle is secured. Such a man in Armed neutrality goes out scot-free.
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Creatures of one cell – biological units, may be killed but cannot have a natural death. They are wholly alive or else wholly dead, never dying. Multiply by self-division. (No decomposition or death). Complication and specialization of structure as we know it in men and the other many celled creatures is bought at the cost of immortality.
Each creature must whether he will or not take part in a threefold struggle:
Struggle (1) with like forms of life neighbours.
(2) with unlike forms of life, or creatures unlike itself,
(3) with the conditions of life themselves.
“Darwin’s influence was not, like that of Cuvier or of Agassiz, the force of an overmastering personality.
He was rather the voice of Nature. His word was the impersonal word of Nature herself.”
Struggle (being the dissipation of involved motion or heat) is absolutely necessary for the differentiating integration of Evolution.
No consolidation could ever take place with out struggle.
And the recognition of this universal struggle is Pessimism.
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Truth cares nothing for majorities and the majority of one age may be the wonder or the shame of the next.
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“Extinguished theologians,” Huxley tells us, “lie about the cradle of every Science as the strangled snakes beside that of the infant Hercules”
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Every truth that is won for humanity takes the life of a man.
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The structures and objects- change their forms and relations and to forms and relations once abandoned they never return.
“I believe,” said the rose to the lily in the parable, “I believe that our gardener is immortal. I have watched him from’ day to day since I bloomed and I see no change in him. The tulip who died yesterday told me the same thing.”
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When one looks out on a storm at night, he sees for an instant the landscape illumined by the lightning flash. All seems at rest. The branches in the wind, the flying clouds, the falling rain, and the running train are all motionless in this instantaneous view.
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Brief as the lightning flash in the storm is the life of man compared with the great time record of life upon the Earth. To the untrained man who has not learned to read these records, species and types in life are enduring.
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“If God should wink at a single act of injustice,” says the Arab proverb, “the whole universe should shrivel up like a cast-off snake-skin.”
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We hear people say sometimes that the crying need of this sceptical age is that it may see some Law of Kature definitely broken, that some burning bush may unconsciously proclaim that the force which is behind all law is also above it and can break or repeal all its own laws at will.
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Emerson somewhere speaks of the purpose in life – “to be sound and solvent.” But one may say.
Let him break these rules to show his power, the man himself should be above all rules and requirements of his own making. Let him be unsound and insolvent for a time, then only will his real greatness appear.
But the soundness and solvency were the expression of Emerson’s life. Without these ho would not be Emerson.
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Just so Law-breaking Miracle-mongers would make God no God at all.