Article April 21, 1917 Issue

"Human invention must have its day"

HAWLEY O. TAYLOR, PH.D.

In recent decades the gathering and classification of human knowledge has been pursued with increasing zeal, until now the vastness of the accumulation makes specialization necessary for marked human achievement. We are living in the time when, as we read in Daniel, "many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased," but, as Mrs. Eddy tells us on page 196 of Science and Health, man "has not yet found it true that knowledge can save him from the dire effects of knowledge."

To what does human knowledge lead? In the political world the settlement of human affairs gives rise to tension, which gradually increases until finally in some locality there is a general giving way; diplomatic ingenuity has spent itself and disruption and war follow. In the material world a time is seen approaching when all physical and chemical change will have reached a dead level, so that further transformation, making available useful energy, will be impossible. In all lines it is very plain that reasoning and logic, supported only by the evidence of the material senses and based upon the premise that matter is the substance upon which life depends, lead to only one conclusion, namely, that dissolution awaits all things, the final condition being a universe of dead worlds.

The annals of history, however, record that mankind have on many occasions recognized an intelligence of which the material senses afford no evidence, and which has often intervened, through those men and women who were awake to its presence, to the overthrow of calculations based upon the infallibility of so-called material law. The protests of mankind against conclusions based upon the evidence of the material senses have been hushed in times past by the sensuous majority, but these protests are now gaining in volume, inspired by a clearer perception of the truth that makes free, and can be seen swelling into a mighty wave which will finally sweep away all human confusion. The accumulated strain of material conditions is becoming so unbearable to human beings uninstructed in Science, that their only relief from the impending cataclysm is to awaken from the material dream, aroused by the trumpet call of Truth, and to experience the joy of life immortal under the "perfect law of liberty," to use the words of James.

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