Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/414

410 Of constituents into the most economic system of foreign and domestic cooperation.

Whatsoever conditions of time, space, materials and mode of action tend to give greater unity and better cooperation in nature, is world-service. Service, then, constitutes the real basis of ethics and of morality for the attainment of service is, to that extent, the actual fulfilment of the possibilities of nature; and all service is the fruit of a measurably perfected process of cooperative union.

Science, therefore, finds no time, nor place, nor thing set apart and alone sanctified by one instantaneous, all-embracing creative act. Cosmic evolution and organic evolution, the growth of suns and stars, of earth, and plant, and man, are continuous parts of one process. The formal chemistry of earth, and sea, and air; the flowing chemistry of protoplasmic cell and organ; the moulding discipline of associated nerve and muscle; of eye and hand; the alchemy of associated lives in nature's household, are but different phases of one living, all pervading, process of creation.

Nebulæ stiffen into stars, and suns give birth to drooling planets, larva smeared. Throbbing tides of sea and air, the heart-beats of a planet, drive the humid breath of oceans over the mountain skeleton, and through the capillaries of earth, clothing her ribs in clay, and spreading her first gardens of ooze. Earth labors in her kitchen, and with equal skill in synthesis, brings forth atoms tied in squads, or regiments; minerals, straight-edged and steadfast; soft proteids and albumens, with rounded forms and yielding sides; dancing specks and wriggling threads, prophets of the life to come; sprawling, self-constructing, self-consuming, protoplasm, free to rove, or wrapped in walls, or bound in glowing brotherhood of cells together; naked, hand-free, high-headed man, armored and armed with conscience and with vision. Scrutinize as best she may, science finds no seam in this universal fabric; no patchwork of dead and alive, honored or dishonored in creation; no boundaries between what was, and is, and shall be.

Thus all nature is a moving conflict for more intimate union, better cooperation, wider service. An unending strife to gain stability, or peace, where peace is won only through union and cooperation that lead to further conflict and wider service. All evolution is the product of service, and its progress is measured in terms of service. The essential character of all natural processes is a striving for perfection through organized service.

There should be no conflict between the teachings of science and the dictates of an enlightened humanity as expressed in the broad term religion, for science and religion are dual reflections of a universal natural law; their methods and aims are the same; they differ only in the manner in which they seek for, discover and express the same things.