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Chapter XVIINature’s Law in Our Progress —Unity in Diversity, Law and LibertyFOR MAN alone of terrestrial creatures to live rightly involvesthe necessity of knowing rightly, whether, as rationalismpretends, by the sole or dominant instrumentationof his reason or, more largely and complexly, by the sum of hisfaculties; and what he has to know is the true nature of being andits constant self-effectuation in the values of life, in less abstractlanguage the law of Nature and especially of his own nature,the forces within him and around him and their right utilisationfor his own greater perfection and happiness or for that and thegreater perfection and happiness of his fellow-creatures. In theold phrase his business is to learn to live according to Nature.But Nature can no longer be imaged, as once it was, as an eternalright rule from which man has wandered, since it is rather a thingitself changing, progressing, evolving, ascending from height tomore elevated height, widening from limit to broader limit of itsown possibilities. Yet in all this changing there are certain eternalprinciples or truths of being which remain the <strong>same</strong> and uponthem as bedrock, with them as a primary material and withinthem as a framework our progress and perfection are compelledto take place. Otherwise there would be an infinite chaos andnot a world ordered even in the clash of its forces.<strong>The</strong> subhuman life of animal and plant is not subjected tothis necessity of knowledge nor of that which is the necessary accompanimentof knowledge, a conscious will impelled always toexecute what knowledge perceives. By this exemption it is savedfrom an immense amount of error, deformation and disease, forit lives spontaneously according to Nature, its knowledge andwill are hers and incapable, whether conscient or subconscient,of variation from her laws and dictates. Man seems, on the

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