XI

THE LAW OF SELECTION

Jesus said, "If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and
cast them from thee," but this age finds it hard to accept that saying.
It asks, If we are to throw life away why should it have been given to
us? Why this selfhood with its passions, its surging desires, its
great longing to be untrammelled and free if all is to be restrained
and the passions are to be perpetually denied? If religion means, as
some plainly have said, doing the things you don't want to do and
leaving undone those you desire, then it is a mockery, a contradiction
of our lives and natures.

Therefore there exists another philosophy which says, boldly: Live out
all that is in you; do all the things you want to do; your passions in
themselves are sufficient justification for their gratification. They
say man is free; therefore, let him realize himself by giving free and
full expression to every thought, inclination, appetite, and
possibility within him.

When the average man puts the two philosophies in contrast he is likely
to conclude that the path of self-denial, of stern repression, is the
mistaken one; for, he will say, does it not contradict nature?--does it
not involve the repression of natural instincts and make all life a
perpetual fight against ourselves, a waste of forces, instead of, as it
should be, a plan by which a man might find success through the
realization of the best in himself?

But let another test be put to this philosophy--the test of life. How