It is not that thought is our final guide, for it falls short of the realities of existence. As the great biologist Henri Bergson has said: "The intellect is characterized by a natural inability to comprehend life" ('Creative Evolution," p. 174.) But thought does at any rate make or raise questions, and that' is what we have to begin with.
In such a catastrophe as this, thought is tinged with doubt and gloom. Living: as we do under the conditions of a highly civilized life, surrounded, and perhaps even supplied, with alli that money can buy, we expect the world to be run like a hotel, and Providence like a smiling manager to study our convenience. It is necessary to be jolted out of this complacency, because it is unreal. Civilization cannot hold Nature at arms length for ever. The mysteries of birth and death belong to a world of sterner stuff. than we invent. Soon or late death drags us from the shelter of an artificial environment. And it is well we should be compelled to take the measure of natural force, ad when an earthquake reduces civilization to pulp and ashes. in the Middle Ages people were kept from a~false complacency by the teaching of hell. As it is, we are pushed against the rough facts of the universe, and we cry out again forces that imperturb4 ably devastate human hopes and affections. Such an unmoral ini vasion seems to suggest nothing! but an inequitable government. But thank God, thought is not our last resource. Let me repeat) those words of the greatest living: philosopher: "The intellect is characterized by a nature) in+ ability to comprehend life." The failure of thought is
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