Editorial January 6, 1945 Issue

Spiritual versus Physical Forces

Paul Stark Seeley

The many useful discoveries of recent years, such as radio, television, electronics, and plastics, have brought to light physical forces hitherto unknown, or little understood. These discoveries do not represent the evolving of new forces, but the discovery of already existing ones. But human thinking, breaking through its self-imposed limitations, now discerns and uses what was previously hidden by the darkness of ignorance.

Physical scientists, for instance, have recently found that bats, in flight, are able to avoid objects in the dark because they use a certain type of radar. They send out sounds, unheard by the human ear, which echo back when they encounter an object. The bat, thus warned, avoids it. Men have only just now found the forces of radar. The bats have been using them for no one knows how long—perhaps since bats came to be bats.

But there are forces, far more important than those of radar and electronics, which have always been, and which are now, vitally related to the life and happiness of you and me, and all mankind. Whereas electrical and physical forces are wholly unintelligent, these forces are inherently intelligent. They are the forces of divine Mind. Mind is their substance. Mind is their power. They are the forces we strive to honor and cherish in our thought, the forces we teach our children to recognize, respect, and obey. They are the moral forces that make us love what is good and loathe what is evil; the forces that make us wise, merciful, just, loving, and meek. They are the only real, positive, and enduring forces—the forces of God.

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