--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Edwin Markham collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 6 number: 12 published: 1903-10 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Edwin Markham, "The Menace of the Tower. A Poem", *Improvement Era* 6, no. 12 (October 1903): 894–895.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0612unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera0612unse start_page: 894 end_page: 895 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1903-10) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0612unse publication_year: 1903 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1903, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # The Menace of the Tower. A Poem — 888 IMPROVEMENT ERA. of creation? challenge any philosopher to produce from expe- I rience — and experience, remember, is the criterion of science even the remotest analogy for such a thing. It is the absurdity of the mountain creating the temple. We might indeed imagine intelligent beings walking about the earth, but so hooded as to see results— cities springing up on the plain, locomotives dashing across the continent, steamers — plowing the ocean without perceiving the agents. These might be pardoned for theorizing that an "All-soul" residing in the ma- terials or forces making up a created thing, is the efficient cause of the creation; but how men, observing daily the agency involved in ten thousand acts of creation , could come to so crass a con- clusion, is explicable only by remembering Buddha and his dream. Again, by this conception, things created take form and out- line by virtue of God being the animating principle. He is con- ceived as the all-pervading spirit of nature — the noumenon behind all phenomena. The human soul is figured as a breath of Deity breathed into the clay of our mortal habitation, or as a spark struck from the soul of God himself. Now, what purpose, what possible motive, could a spiritual essence co-extensive with the universe have in creating, say, our solar system, or any other system for that matter? It could not have been for his better security, since by our very conception, he is the All-in-all; and if not for his security, then I can see only two other motives, his improvement or his diversion. The first we may dismiss at once; for how can that which is infinitely perfect have need of improvement by finite entanglements? There remains, then, the last consideration. We are to con- template the probability that the "All-soul" of the universe has involved that infinitesimal portion of himself which is bound by the orbit of Neptune into a blazing sun, a congeries of glowing, dead, and dying worlds, shooting stars and wandering comets, ice- capped poles and belching volcanoes, strutting bipeds and buzzing insects — all for the purpose of relieving the ennui, the monotony, of eternal bliss. Is it thinkable? I shall, no doubt, be charged with blasphemy for daring to ask the meaning of creation. "It is not for the finite to question the infinite. We do not know — can not know THE TWO ASPECTS OF DEITY CONTRASTED. 889 what God's motives are." Which objection is precisely the con- clusion which I have aimed to reach; viz., Creation, with the Buddhistic conception of God as creator, is motiveless, purposeless, from man's point of view. And if this be so, what assurance, from the standpoint of reason, has man that things formed and limited will endure, i. e., that there is eternal existence for worlds, eternal life for man? Buddhism answers flatly, denying the possibility; asserting, moreover, that there is eternal life (and bliss) for man only in Nirvana, the uncreated, or, as applied from our present point of view, the decreated state; in other words, that state in which the God-essence forming man's soul is completely disentangled from matter and re-absorbed in God. This is undoubtedly the legitimate and logical outcome of such a conception of Deity. And yet to the Christian, Nirvana* involving as it does the complete loss of self-consciousness or sense of individual identity, is the worst state imaginable; it is — worse than the second death it is annihilation. Accordingly, he refuses to follow out the inexorable logic of his oriental premises, but stops half way to build him a heaven in which shall reside a risen Redeemer — limited, remember, as to form — with multitudes of other individualized beings, including himself, together with thrones, roansions,cities with pearly gates,and streets paved with gold — for all which he claims eternal duration; whereby, though he has repudiated the only premises (i. e., the personal God of the Bible) which make possible either the organ- ization or the eternal perpetuity of such a heaven, he yet very illogically holds fast to the conclusion from the premises set aside. His clinging to the scriptural heaven makes him, in fact, twice illogical; first, in repudiating the conclusion of premises he accepts, (i. e. Nirvana) and second, in accepting the conclusion of premises he repudiates (i. e., Heaven). But bless him for his inconsistency. It shows that the vagaries of philosophy affect only his head; his heart, which is the altar of the Holy Spirit, still beats loyal to the true God. Need I point out that from the "Mormon" conception, creation becomes immediately intelligible? The solar system was con- structed in obedience to a necessity similar to that which impels