Life on Earth

“ Love of the Earth, life close to Nature, and denial of so-called civilization was the first step upwards. In the Simple Life, in this return to Nature, lay the opening of the little path that climbed to the stars and heaven. ”

“ Resting the head upon the hand, gazing down upon the ground, the strange and marvellous inner sight of the mind penetrates the solid earth, grasps in part the mystery of its vast extension upon either side, bearing its majestic mountains, its deep forests, its grand oceans, and almost feels the life which in ten thousand thousand forms revels upon its surface. Returning upon itself, the mind joys in the knowledge that it too is a part of this wonder—akin to the ten thousand thousand creatures, akin to the very earth itself. ”

“ What is the odd power that earth holds over men? When one walks through the quietude of country roads, of forest and stream, of field and meadow-land, one is stirred by strange emotions. The trivialities of life seem of slight importance. ”

“ Life is here, but do they know the power that gave it, or the mode of its coming? Vegetation and animals, in great variety, teem upon the face of the earth, but are mankind familiar with the secret springs of their growth and existence? ”

“ In order to ask, ‘What is the aim of our life?’ we must take for granted, above all, that our life has a definite aim, and since it is only a particular phenomenon in the universal life of nature, in the evolution of our earth, of our solar system, of all solar systems, this assumption includes in itself the wider one, that the universal life of Nature has a definite aim. ”

“ Here, I say, and in these discourses only, shall this be so; for, strictly speaking, and in the higher flights of speculation, Human Life on Earth, and Earthly Time itself, are but necessary Epochs of the One Time and of the One Eternal Life;—and this Earthly Life with all its subordinate divisions may be deduced from the fundamental Idea of the Eternal Life already accessible to us here below. ”

“ When we have thus ranged air, earth, and water, finding everywhere a prodigality of living forms, visible and invisible, it might seem as if the survey were complete. And yet it is not so. Life cradles within Life. ”

“ The terrestrial world having made this advance from brute to human life, can we think it at all likely, that the present condition of the earth's inhabitants is a final condition? Has the vast step from animal to human life, exhausted the progressive powers of nature? or to speak more reverently and justly, has it completed the progressive plan of the Creator? ”

“ We know that this, our Earth, is a habitable globe, for we ourselves are living upon it. We know what constitutes the physical basis of our life, and under what conditions on this Earth it flourishes, and under what conditions it is destroyed. ”

“ This planet we call earth, is a great and marvelous work, whether it be the work of an abstract God, or whether it be the work of the god in Man.
And whether this earth be the gift of an abstract God, or whether it be the generating bed of the life now upon it, the fact remains that we have no business to despise the gift, or the work of self-generation. ”

“ This eternal world is about us and within us while we live here. 'Heaven is nearer to our souls than the earth is to our bodies.' The world which we ordinarily think of as real is an arbitrary selection from experience, corresponding roughly to the average reaction of life upon the average man. ”

“ Meaning that because we live on Earth—walk on solid ground, swim in the water and fly in the air—we deny the existence of life in space. There's the answer written in the blood of some life that was snuffed out as we hit it. ”

“ Yet a very great and unselfish man, who helped to make one of the greatest of scientific discoveries, has written a big book to try and establish this fact—that this little Earth of ours is the only place in the whole universe on which there is life. ”

“ And if our Earth is any type or example of the vital stage in general, vast aeons must run their course from the first appearance of the humblest germs of life up to the bringing forth of Life in conscious Intelligence. ”

“ That low, and even the lowest, forms of life should survive and abound all down the ages, and be the most widely diffused over the earth, seems also the most natural result, being simple adaptations to simplest conditions of air and water, so nearly the same the world over. ”

“ The object of the fifth book is to explain the formation of our system—of earth, sea, sky, sun, and moon,—the origin of life upon the earth, and the advance of human nature from a savage state to the arts and usages of civilisation. ”

“ In my recent works, Man's Place in the Universe and The World of Life, the conclusion was forced upon me, that the scheme of the development of the universe of stars and nebulæ with which we are acquainted, and especially of our sun and solar system, was such as to furnish the exact conditions on our earth, and there only, which should allow of the origin and evolution of the organic world culminating in man. ”

“ For since we hold that this universe is framed after the pattern of That, every living thing must needs first be There; and since Its Being is perfect, all must be There. Heaven then must There be a living thing nor void of what are here called stars; indeed such things belong to heaven. Clearly too the earth which is There is not an empty void, but much more full of life, wherein are all creatures that are here called land animals and plants that are rooted in life. ”

“ DEVELOPMENT OF LIFE Q. 9. Are there beings lower in the scale of existence than man?
A. Yes, multitudes. In every part of the earth where life is possible, there we find it developed. Life exists in every variety of animal, in earth and air and sea, and in every species of plant.
CLAUSE IX One of the facts of nature which we must weld into our conception of the scheme of the universe, is the strenuous effort made by all live things to persist in multifarious ways,—spreading out into quite unlikely regions, in the struggle for existence, and establishing themselves wherever life is possible. ”

“ My curiosity was awakened as to what was the origin of human life in its first appearance upon the earth, and of vegetable life as well, and also the cause of the existence of the earth, sun, moon, and stars. ”

“ And then a new creation of plants and animals succeeded; still living under the fostering influence of the united pair, Air and Water, which never ceased to brood over the World of Life, their Nurseling; and then, perhaps, a new change of the limits of land and water, and a new creation again: till at last, Man was placed upon the Earth ”

“ Thus all nature is linked together by invisible bonds, and every organic creature, however low, however feeble, however dependent, is necessary to the well-being of some other among the myriad forms of life with which the Creator has peopled the earth. ”

“ In this scale, nature, i.e., in this sense, the nature which most immediately surrounds and environs man, this planet of our earth which bears and nourishes the human race, is first of all man’s habitation, teeming, indeed, with life, and even itself a living thing, in which, however, he is ever meeting here and there with something that tells him it is not his proper home. ”

“ With this conclusion I am in hearty accord, I believe that life as we know it is but one manifestation of the mysterious spiritual powers which permeate the universe. The geologic factors assembled in the primitive earth provided an environment within which the spiritual could manifest itself in the material. ”

“ Life to each individual is, a scene of continued feasting, in a region of plenty; and when unexpected death arrests its course, it repays with small interest the large debt, which it has contracted to the common fund of animal nutrition, from whence the materials of its body have been derived. Thus the great drama of universal life is perpetually sustained; and though the individual actors undergo continual change, the same parts are ever filled by another and another generation; renewing the face of the earth, and the bosom of the deep, with endless successions of life and happiness. ”

“ Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature,—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it,—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we? ”

“ In his short experience of the world he had come to the conclusion that, as the earth consisted of land and water, so human life was made up of eatings and beatings, and that the beatings largely predominated. ”

“ Are physical forces alone at work there, or has evolution begotten something more complex, something not unakin to what we know on Earth as life? ”

“ It goes on for ever, like the sea fog creeping up from the wide ocean and burying life and sunshine in its fatal folds, or like the ever-flowing river, or like the fall plunging over the edge of the cliff, or like the motions of the midnight sky. Each moment in its turn passes into the colourless stony past, and the shadow creeps up the hillside.
And how unnoticed it is! We only know motion by the jolts. The revolution of the earth and its rush along its orbit are unfelt by us. ”

“ But when the perfection of the natural world is attained—when it becomes, so to say, spiritualized, and its grosser elements are absorbed—then the human being can live on its surface arid develop his faculties from century to century.
The thoughtful reader will perceive from this statement that the spirits who have inhabited these superior planets must have attained a far greater perfection than those who have inhabited your earth, and the spiritual existence, or heaven, to which such beings migrate, is in advance of the heavens in which the dwellers of earth are born. ”

“ From the same source, and by the same authority, in response to a sincere desire for a better definition of the word Sin; we are taught, that the object and purpose of the existence of this planet, is the evolution and perfection of the human race. Human life, then, is the flower and fruit of the planet. ”

“ Moreover, why should Nature not prepare Men of a bulk to ford the seas afoot, Or rend the mighty mountains with their hands, Or conquer Time with length of days, if not Because for all begotten things abides The changeless stuff, and what from that may spring Is fixed forevermore? Lastly we see How far the tilled surpass the fields untilled And to the labour of our hands return Their more abounding crops; there are indeed Within the earth primordial germs of things, Which, as the ploughshare turns the fruitful clods And kneads the mould, we quicken into birth. ”

“ Central to their discussions is the nature of life. Is it continuous, as it appears in vegetation and the animal kingdom, or is it discontinuous like the rocks on the mountainside or the grains of sand on the seashore? ”

“ Thus there is a steady and perceptible advance in man’s conception of the Earth, of Nature, of what we call the World and the Universe, though each individual, generation, and century are but dimly conscious of this progress.
The Earth as the Dwelling-place of Man. ”

“ The Earth, the whole bustling universe, was nothing after all but a visible production of eternal, living Powers—spiritual powers, mind you—that just happened to include the particular little type of strutting creature we called mankind. ”

“ I asked, "it is quite possible that there are other worlds in the sky—that, also, the rest of the planets either are or will be, homes for souls, for living beings equal to or higher than our present human grade of development?" ”

“ That purpose seems to have been the development of a life-world culminating in Man—a being capable of studying, and enjoying, and to some extent comprehending, the vast universe around him, from the microscopic life in almost every drop of water to the whirling nebulæ of the glittering star-depths extending to almost unimaginable distances around him. ”

“ Thus, though not yet ripe for heaven, I wish extremely, according to my doctrine of metempsychosis, to become once more an inhabitant of this beloved earth. The planet is beautiful and interesting enough to like to rove about in it in ever-renewed human shape. ”

“ And a living man should know the advantages of these places, which are, the earth, the sky, and the space between; for to-morrow, when dead, your body and soul will be there; before it knows the road it will change its habitation into a living being ”

“ There are moments in which I feel that I can measure the very stars, which shine like Edens in planetary space; fit abodes for beings who have made it the study of their lives on earth to create peace and happiness for all around them. Is nature a mystery? ”

“ Learn, oh children of our common Father, Mother God, that they are Worlds, some of them of such vast proportions that, compared with them, Ento and the Earth World, where I dwell, are dwarfed into insignificance. Some of these worlds are peopled by very advanced and exalted humans, others by mortals in various stages of evolvement, and all are the children of the Infinite One. ”

“ Earth was a scathed planet, a roofless, shelterless home; a wild where the human soul wandered a little interval, tortured by sharp, cruel storms; lost in thorny, entangled brakes; weary repining, till the hour came when it could soar to its native birthplace, and find refuge from its ills in promised Paradise. ”

“ Thus it may be seen that Nature, to whom they had gone, was not only busy with the mountain and its life, but that her silent forces were also at work in those whose unperverted hearts were not beyond her power. ”

“ The grandest objects in Nature were before us, the primeval forces that mould the face of the earth {207} were at work, and it was all so out of the every-day world that we might have been walking a new planet, fresh fallen from the Creator's hand. ”