The Orient in Bible Times: Grant. Bergson and Personal Realism: Flewelling. Man and the New Democracy: McKeever. The Lebanon in Turmoil: Scheltema. Education in Ancient Israel: Swift. To the Gentle Personalist E HAVE been frequently importuned to state a platform for W THE PERSONALIST, a brief account of what is meant by the term personalism. What might properly be called the personalist's creed? It is far from our purpose to be drawn into divisive statement of dogma so often fatal to harmony. No doubt every personalist has an interpretation as individual as himself and his needs. Still to those who are strange to the term is not some statement due? ¶ Might a brief statement run like this: I BELIEVE in personality as the power of self-conscious- I believe in personality as the World-ground, the I believe in personality as the fundamental reality of life, man's highest possession, the source of all creattivity, the perfect realization of which is his supreme goal. I believe that human personality is fully realized only as it comprehends and gives itself to the will of the Infinite Personality, or God, "in whom we live, and move, and have our being." ¶ We are certain that this statement will, with consideration be improved upon. To the person who sends us the best credo we will give a year's subscription to THE PERSONALIST, contest to close October first. Send in your formulation of personalistic belief. The story of the discovery of the planet Neptune brings a thrill to everyone with a developed scientific sense. The orbits of some of the known astronomical bodies were observed to be eccentric, and Uranus made a wabbling path for which the formulas of gravitation could not account. The scientists agreed that the cause of the eccentricity was some huge undiscovered power in the astronomical universe. Leverrier began a mathematical study of the aberrations of the planet Uranus, and reduced his findings to a formula. He ascertained the point in the heavens and the time at which a planetary force would cause the observed disturbance. The observatories turned their telescopes upon that calculated point and at the designated moment the hitherto undiscovered planet moved into view. "They detected the silent footsteps of Neptune as he trod the solitudes of immensity." In the world of human society today we are witnessing a disturbed condition without precedent in history. Political governments are being overthrown, monarchies are being democratized, economic schemes of every degree of radicalism are being advocated to replace the social order that has failed. There is a welter and chaos of bolshevisms, socialisms, industrial workers of the world, communisms, and radicalisms of every sort which seek the end of bringing order out of the social chaos, of bringing peace and justice and stability out of the social distress which grips the whole world. Surely there is no problem which engages the attention of thoughtful people today which is comparable to this vast social problem. It is THE HUMAN PROBLEM today! The point where insight and discovery and experimentation and invention and sound theory will count most in education today is not in the laboratories of biology and chemistry and physics, but in the social laboratories where leadership shall study and master the facts and the powers which really control personality, individually and in groups, and offer solutions that go to the bottom of the problem. The great world-movements of society today are not going on rhythmically, with the steadiness of a law-expressing evolution, but with threatenings and clashings and chaos and revolution. The ominous wabbling of the organized social orders as they with difficulty keep the orbits assigned by the social theorists, old and new, suggest that there is a missing world of power with which social theorists ought to reckon. My attempt today is to demonstrate and locate the "Missing World." Though it is not so much a new world that I am seeking,-I am not a real discoverer. I am rather attempting the humbler task of showing that the moral world is not a mythical world, but a real world of the first magnitude of power. I hope to point out afresh, with some appeal to your conviction, that some of the wabblings of our scholarly explanations in the fields of social leadership, can be accounted for, and some of our scientific observations in the fields of the social sciences must be corrected and restated, when the true magnitude of the moral fact is recognized. If the vital conception of morality which lies at the heart of the ethics of Jesus can be grasped in its implications and made the underlying theory of all social remedies, it will introduce steadiness into the social order. As an astronomer dealing with social constellations, I want to show that the moral world is a real world, as real as the world of economics or eugenics. I want first to make you feel and know that I am dealing with a scientifically observed fact, and not with a fairy story. One thing that gives stability and impressiveness to scientific explanation is that the scientist makes us feel that he has the universe behind him, he is dealing with a cosmic fact from which there is no appeal. I covet that secure and confident buttressing of an ethical emphasis which I want to submit. So let me, with unskilled hands, outline the action of the cosmic drama that the ages have played in world-making. The evolutionary process is continuous and the curtain is never rung down between the acts. Indeed there is only one act from the beginning until now, with many shifting scenes. But for a purpose which will appear I will sketch the familiar drama in five acts. There is first the act in which the inanimate worlds are produced as a titanic stage for the later action. From star-dust to planets, by cosmic cauldrons and furnaces, by hammering and welding, by moulding and the compressing power of world-weights, the inanimate worlds are shaped. By volcanic fires and glacial ice, by the age-long sculpturing of the elements and the incessant whirling of the potter's wheel, worlds are prepared and flung into systems in space. This cosmic action works according to definite laws that know no deviation or shadow of turning. It is silently |