Our Stage and Its Critics eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 278 pages of information about Our Stage and Its Critics.

Our Stage and Its Critics eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 278 pages of information about Our Stage and Its Critics.

This Creative Will acts like a living force—­and so it is indeed—­but it does not act as a reasoning, intellectual Something, in one sense—­instead it manifests rather the “feeling,” wanting, longing, instinctive phase of mind, akin to those “feelings” and resulting actions that we find within our natures.  The Will acts on the Instinctive Plane.

Evolution shows us Life constantly pressing forward toward higher and still higher forms of expression.  The urge is constantly upward and onward.  It is true that some species sink out of sight their work in the world having been done, but they are succeeded by other species more in harmony with their environment and the needs of their times.  Some races of men decay, but others build on their foundations, and reach still greater heights.

The Creative Will is something different from Reason or Intellect.  But it underlies these.  In the lower forms of life, in which mind is in but small evidence, the Will is in active operation, manifesting in Instinct and Automatic Life Action, so called.  It does not depend upon brains for manifestation—­for these lowly forms of life have no brains—­but is in operation through every part of the body of the living thing.

Evidences of the existence of the Creative Will acting independently of the brains of animal and plant life may be had in overwhelming quantity if we will but examine the life action in the lower forms of life.

The testimony of the investigators along the lines of the Evolutionary school of thought, show us that the Life Principle was in active operation in lowly animal and plant life millions of years before brains capable of manifesting Thought were produced.  Haekel informs us that during more than half of the enormous time that has elapsed since organic life first became evident, no animal sufficiently advanced to have a brain was in existence.  Brains were evolved according to the law of desire or necessity, in accordance with the Great Plan, but they were not needed for carrying on the wonderful work of the creation and preservation of the living forms.  And they are not today.  The tiny infant, and the senseless idiot are not able to think intelligently, but still their life functions go on regularly and according to law, in spite of the absence of thinking brains.  And the life work of the plants, and of the lowly forms of animal life, is carried on likewise.  This wonderful thing that we call Instinct is but another name for the manifestation of the Creative Will which flows from the One Life, or the Absolute.

Even as far down the scale of life as the Monera, we may see the Creative Will in action.  The Monera are but tiny bits of slimy, jelly-like substances—­mere specks of glue without organs of any kind, and yet they exercise the organic phenomena of life, such as nutrition, reproduction, sensation and movement, all of which are usually associated with an organized structure.  These creatures are incapable of thought in themselves, and the phenomenon is due to the action of the Will through them.  This Instinctive impulse and action is seen everywhere, manifesting upon Higher and still higher lines, as higher forms of organisms are built up.

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Our Stage and Its Critics from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.