sidereal universe of which I have tried to give some hint in the chapter on astronomy. That there is need of such a book as this I am well convinced, and others undoubtedly share my conviction. In a letter recently received a friend said: "If you can give to the world a book that will help people to see that it is possible to be happy here and now, really to get joy out of their every-day life, your own life will have been well worth while. There are a few people I know who do this, and you are one of them. Go on and complete the book; the world needs it; and in its preparation you will be aided by the celestial angels who sing around the throne of God." This is no book of creed propositions. It is one man's personal conception of God, and what He shows, in Nature and within man himself, as to what a man's life might be and can be. It should, perhaps, be called a book of heart emotions, impulses, beliefs, rather than of calm judgment. Indeed, I have learned to have such a supreme contempt for most of the arrogant assumptions and "judgments" of the conscious-human-intellect that I care little for its decisions, its praise, or its condemnation. The unconsciously exercised intuitions of a bird, a wild deer, a squirrel, a normally healthful baby, are worth quite as much to me in many ways as the deliberate judgments of so-called wise and learned men. In some things they are worth more. In my conception of God and the Universe He, the Divine Creator, is the God of Health, of Beauty, Perfection, Joy, of Happiness, Content, Singing. For where Health and Happiness are there will be the spontaneous expression of Singing. Without casting any personal reflections upon my friends the doctors and druggists, I feel that every doctor (save for accidents), and druggist; every pharmaceutical or manufacturing chemist, whose work is the preparation and manufacture of drugs supposed to combat disease; every hospital, asylum and sanitarium are proofs that the human race has missed the Divine Plan. Every patent medicine and especially its flaunting advertisement is an insult to the intelligence of the race. Every quack nostrum a proof that we do not know the first principles of healthful living. God is the God of Health, not Disease. He created for Joy, not Woe; for Happiness, not Sorrow; for Progress, not Retrogression; for Expression, not Repression. What, then, is the matter, the fault, the why of the missing of this mark? Why need we hesitate to confess that there are many things in Nature and in human life we do not understand? There are times when human life seems to be no more cared for than that of the myriads of insects that die at the close of a summer's day, for many have been victims of the destructive tornado, the earthquake, the fire and lava, belching volcano, the cloudburst, the flood, the lightning, the thunderbolt, and of famine and the pestilences or epidemics, that recently have decimated our population. I don't know why fruit-trees should be afflicted with scale and spider and moths, and blight of various kinds; why frosts should come just when crops are in the most sensitive stage, or super heat when it makes the fruit rot and fall. I cannot understand what it is in us that renders us prone to evil, leads us from the paths of righteousness and gives us pleasure in the things that injure and degrade us. Why are men so ready to take up with mediocre, low, or ignoble things when all the glorious and uplifting examples of the noble lives of the past are before them? Why will men deliberately choose the paths of luxury and vice that lead to disease, or close their understandings to knowledge that would keep them healthy? Why do men prefer temporary pleasure to mental and spiritual improvement, and follow after treasures on earth rather than the character that means treasure in heaven? These are but a few of the many things that puzzle and disturb one's mind, and were we to dwell upon them all the time they would destroy our capacity for joining in the Universal Symphony. But, as I have elsewhere remarked, while we cannot ignore these things, there is such an upward call to which man's real self, his higher self, responds; there is so much good and beauty, brightness and sunshine, joy and song in Nature and in mankind that he would be foolish who, having the power of choice (as man has), prefers to take the gloomy view, to see only the problems he cannot solve, instead of grasping the splendor and beauty that are placed within his grasp. It may be that I shall fail in completely expressing what I have felt and still feel so keenly deep down within myself of this great symphony of God's directing, but, if I can render more joyous, more singable, the lives of my readers, and particularly if I can help them to seek to hear and see and feel and taste and smell all the joyous things that the Universal Father in His bounty has spread broadcast on every hand for them, so that they will want to sing their own "Hymn of Praise," I shall be more than repaid -I shall be thankful. beng Wharton James Foresta, Yosemite National Park, California. SINGING THROUGH LIFE CHAPTER I WHAT IS MUSIC? THE dictionary defines music as "the art of com bining tones in a manner pleasing to the ear," but I think a far better definition is found in George Sterling's poem, Music,* which he opens with the following exquisite conceptions: Her face we have a little, but her voice And her deep soul is one, perchance, with life, Is half the human birthright. She hath part Of being, lifted on eternal wings From world to world. Her home is in our hearts. She is that moon for which the sea of tears Is ever a-tremble, and she seemeth ghost Of all past beauty, haunting yet the dusk Of unforgotten days; for of the lost, The changeless, irrecoverable years, From The Testimony of the Suns, and other Poems, by George Sterling, A. M. Robertson, Publisher, San Francisco, California. 3 |