takes. And if it should chance that the reader finds this ring untrue
to him, then he may take it that he stands outside us, that the New
Republic is not for him.

It may be submitted that this statement that Life is a texture of
births may be accepted by minds of the most divergent religious and
philosophical profession. No fundamental or recondite admissions are
proposed here, but only that the every-day life for every-day purposes
has this shape and nature. The utter materialist may say that life to
him is a fortuitous concurrence of atoms, a chance kinking in the
universal fabric of matter. It is not our present business to confute
him. The fact remains this is the form the kinking has taken. The
believer, sedulous for his soul's welfare, may say that Life is to him
an arena of spiritual conflict, but this is the character of the
conflict, this is the business from which all the tests and exercises
of his soul are drawn. It matters not in this present discussion if
Life is no more than a dream; the dream is this.

And now one comes to another step. The reader may give his assent to
this statement as obvious or he may guard his assent with a
qualification or so, but I doubt if he will deny it. No one, I expect,
will categorically deny it. But although no one will do that, a great
number of people who have not clearly seen things in this light, do in
thought and in many details of their practice follow a line that is, in
effect, a flat denial of what is here proposed. Life no doubt is a
fabric woven of births and the struggle to maintain and develop and
multiply lives. It does not follow that life is _consciously_ a
fabric woven of births and the struggle to maintain and develop and
multiply lives. I do not suppose a cat or a savage sees it in that
light. A cat's standpoint is probably strictly individualistic. She