66/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE
To the limited, finite vision, natural selection may appear to be the sole factor in the achievement of this end; but above and beyond this incidental fact of individual choice, which the intellect is able to detect, the omnipresent Spirit is all the while making for ends quite unperceived by the near-sighted,
analytical mind. Nor does this universal order of manifestation cease when the human plane is reached. Evolution (evolution, the unfolding process) does not terminate in the conglomerate of disorderly elements at present recognized as “society.”
There is a broader, grander ideal to which humanity must eventually conform. This crude, unperfected, embryotic state, in which each participant is heroically striving to undo the work of his neighbor, is not the culmination of human unfolding.
Men of the growing, divine type are so constituted by nature that, as social particles, they cannot belong to the class of bodies termed “dead” bodies that are molded from without and held together by the crude elementary force of cohesion; they must necessarily assume social forms patterned after definite ideals, not ones adopted as a matter of expediency or mere convenience.
A Universal harmonizing, polarizing power operates on every plane of life, tending in the mineral realm to form perfect crystals, in the vegetable realm to produce perfect foliage and flowers, in the animal realm to create perfect sensible organisms, in the human realm to develop perfect rational beings, and in the divine realm to establish a perfect society.
The kind of body that shall be, depends in each instance on the quality of the particles that enter into its composition; yet they do not consciously determine the ideal they are to represent. The ideal will grow into manifestation if they are free and receptive to the higher directing. It can neither be altered nor destroyed, but its expression may be retarded by circumstances.
Every seed contains the germ of particular species; and when the formative principle, the Universal vitalizing power, is permitted to act through it, it will unfold along its own peculiar line, and no other. Everywhere men are groping with the intellect after an ideal form for society. Some conceive it to be anarchistic, others socialistic or communistic.
But it will not be perceived by the intellect until the Spirit has first given it birth. Crude and imperfect as human society is at present, it is the outcome of natural forces working inwardly and causing it to expand along general lines just as definitely predetermined as those adhered to by any particular species of tree in growing to maturity, flowering and yielding fruit after its own order.