Page:Personality (Lectures delivered in America).djvu/109

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THE SECOND BIRTH
91

who robbed act as policemen to restore peace and security. Science is at the beginning of the invasion of the material world and there goes on a furious scramble for plunder. Often things look hideously materialistic, and shamelessly belie man's own nature. But the day will come when some of the great powers of nature will be at the beck and call of every individual, and at least the prime necessaries of life will be supplied to all with very little care and cost. To live will be as easy to man as to breathe, and his spirit will be free to create his own world.

In early days, when science had not found the keys to nature's storehouses of power, man still had the courage of stoicism to defy matter. He said he could go without food, and clothes were not absolutely necessary for him to save him from extremes of temperature. He loved to take pride in mortifying the flesh. It was his pleasure openly to proclaim that he paid very few of the taxes which nature claimed from him. He proved that he utterly disdained the fear of pain and death, with the help of which nature exacted servitude from him.

Why was this pride? Why has man always chafed against the humiliation of bending his neck to physical necessities? Why could he