As the astronomers tell us that it is probable that there are in the universe innumerable solar systems besides ours, to each of which myriads of utterly unknown and unseen stars belong, so it is certain that every man, however obscure, however far removed from the general recognition, is one of a group of men impressible for good, and impressible for evil, and that it is in the eternal nature of things that he can not really improve himself without in some degree improving other men.—Charles Dickens.
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See Boy and King.
Mutuality—See Social Interdependence;
Social Strength.
Mutuality, True—See Faithfulness.
MYSELF
What unto me is Nature after all?
I pass her by and softly go my way.
She is the remnant of my little day
Upon this beautiful revolving ball.
I am the real being. At my beck,
The seeming actual pays its vassalage;
I am the reader and the world the page;
I fling a halter round old matter's neck.
Glad to be taught of things outside, yet I
Find me indifferent to their transient touch;
A life's to-day is an eternity
Seems not to please my spirit overmuch.
I may not fathom now the end or what
The sweat and blood and tragedy may mean;
But I can fight the fight and falter not.
Above the clouds the hilltops are serene.
So if I stay here years or slip away
While yet the early dawn is dim and dark,
It matters not. I am that living spark
That ever glows 'tho planets have their day.
(Text.)
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MYSTERY IN NATURE
What determines which queen shall leave
the hive with the swarm? What determines
which five thousand out of fifteen thousand
worker bees, all apparently similarly stimulated
and excited, shall swarm out, and which
ten thousand shall stay in? These are questions
too hard for us to answer. We may
take refuge in Maeterlinck's poetical conception
of the "spirit of the hive." Let us
say that the "spirit of the hive" decides these
things; as well as what workers shall forage
and what ones clean house; what bees shall
ventilate and what make wax and build
comb. Which is simply to say that we don't
know what decides all these things. (Text.)—Vernon
L. Kellogg, "Insect Stories."
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MYSTERY IN RELIGION
Here are wood, brass, my hand—any material
things. Here are light, electricity, a
magnet—things that we all have something
to do with. Now let us ask the scientific
people to look at them, weigh them, test
them, analyze them, describe them—what will
they report? Well, part of their report will
be this: There is one thing without which
all these other things are impossible, without
which there could be no wood, no metal, no
light, no electric current; and that thing is
called ether. This ether is like nothing you
have at hand. It is not solid, nor liquid, nor a
gas. It does not weigh anything, nor does
it move. It is not alive, nor is it capable of
division. Yet it is everywhere. It is in the
wood, in the brass, in the air. It fills what
we call empty space. It is the road by which
light travels. It is the medium of electricity.
It is the home of magnetism. Well, when
the scientist tells us this we can but gasp.
It is nothing that we know, yet without it all
we know would break down. It can not be
seen, nor handled, nor heard, yet without it
we could neither see, nor handle, nor hear.
It is utterly beyond belief, so strange a bunch
of contradictories it is; and yet if we assume
it to be real, then and then only can
all the things of life which we do know be
properly explained.
If in the natural world we follow out carefully all that is before us, if we explore our narrow strip of experience thoroughly, we come to a region getting more and more remote. Send a traveler from Hampstead—he comes back to tell us of India or the Arctic Ocean. Send a scientist out into this world of matter and force, of wood and stone and electricity, and he comes back to tell us of the incredible wonders of the unseen world, of the fathomless mysteries of the ether.
If this is so with material things, how much more is it likely to be so with moral and spiritual things? If it be true of earthly things, how much more of heavenly things? If the findings of science are puzzling, con-
