Abstract
THERE is much honest and suggestive thinking in this book, though the writer is sometimes both pedantic and ill-informed. Having proclaimed the bankruptcy of all dogmatic religion, all philosophy, and all ethics, he proceeds to give us the right thing. Matter and mind are the two certainties; they are entities, of which we can know only the manifestations. The universal mind is individualised in each living organism, the creative intellect directing matter from within. God is in us; we are His direct personification. From the first beginnings of life on the planet He has been moulding matter for His ends of manifestation, dropping the saurian forms, e.g., when not found to work, and trying another tack. He is continually fighting matter, aiming at fuller control, fuller manifestation; and matter is so big and strong that only a bit at a time can be grappled with—i.e., the part which thereby we see as “alive.” At death the mind that was in the organism survives, but in what form—individualised or not—we cannot know. The whole argument is in the right direction, though it is crudely put; if the author had read Fechner and Samuel Butler he might have improved it. Both of these see God as Logos manifesting through matter; but Fechner from the beginning, and Butler after trying a theory almost exactly identical with Mr. Drake's and finding it unsatisfactory, accept Him as energising not only through that small portion of matter which we call “living,” but through all the matter of the universe.
The Universal Mind and the Great War.
Outlines of a New Religion, Universalism, based on science and the facts of creative evolution. By E. Drake. Pp. vii + 100. (London: C. W. Daniel, Ltd., n.d.) Price 2s. 6d. net.
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The Universal Mind and the Great War . Nature 97, 400 (1916). https://doi.org/10.1038/097400a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/097400a0