Page:The Science of Religion (1925).djvu/90

ment, from lower to higher. In stone and earth there is no life or consciousness. In trees there is vegetative growth, an approach to life, yet no full-grown life and no conscious thought-process at all. In animals there is life and also consciousness of life. In man—the culmination point—there is life, consciousness of it, and also consciousness of the Self (i.e., Self-consciousness). Hence it is natural for man to develop himself through thinking and reasoning, by deep study of books, by original research work, and by laborious investigations into causes and effects in the natural world. The more deeply a man engages in thought-processes, the more he can be said to be utilizing the method by which he has come to be what he is in the course of the world-evolution process (i.e., the method by which consciousness develops into Self-consciousness) and the nearer, knowingly or unknowingly, he approaches the Self. For in thought we rise above the body. The deliberate