onment. The
Environment is really an unappropriated part of ourselves. Definite
portions are continuously abstracted from it and added to the organism.
And so long as the organism continues to grow, act, think, speak, work,
or perform any other function demanding a supply of energy, there is a
constant, simultaneous, and proportionate drain upon its surroundings.

This is a truth in the physical, and therefore in the spiritual, world
of so great importance that we shall not mis-spend time if we follow it,
for further confirmation, into another department of nature. Its
significance in Biology is self-evident; let us appeal to Chemistry.

When a piece of coal is thrown on the fire, we say that it will radiate
into the room a certain quantity of heat. This heat, in the popular
conception, is supposed to reside in the coal and to be set free during
the process of combustion. In reality, however, the heat energy is only
in part contained in the coal. It is contained just as truly in the
coal's Environment--that is to say, in the oxygen of the air. The atoms
of carbon which compose the coal have a powerful affinity for the oxygen
of the air. Whenever they are made to approach within a certain
distance of one another, by the initial application of heat, they rush
together with inconceivable velocity. The heat which appears at this
moment, comes neither from the carbon alone, nor from the oxygen alone.
These two substances are really inconsumable, and continue to exist,
after they meet in a combined form, as carbonic acid gas. The heat is
due to the energy developed by the chemical embrace, the precipitate
rushing together of the molecules of carbon and the molecules of oxygen.
It comes, therefore, partly from the coal and partly from the
Environment. Coal alone never could produce heat, neither alone could
Environment. The two are mutually dependent. And although in nearly all
the arts we credit everything to the substance which we can weigh and
handle, it is certain that in the most cases the larger debt is due to
an invisible Environment.

This is one of those great commonplaces which slip out of general
reckoning by reason of their very largeness and simplicity. How
profound, nevertheless, are the issues which hang on this elementary
truth, we shall discover immediately. Nothing in this age is more needed
in every department of knowledge than the rejuvenescence of the
commonplace. In the spiritual world especially, he wi