--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Kingsbury, Joseph T. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 20 number: 2 published: 1916-12 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Joseph T. Kingsbury, "Mind and Plan in Nature," *Improvement Era* 20, no. 2 (December 1916): 158–160.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2002unse 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: improvementera2002unse start_page: 158 end_page: 160 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1916-12) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2002unse publication_year: 1916 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 1916, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Mind and Plan in Nature Mind and Plan in Nature* By Dr. Joseph T. Kingsbury, Late President of the University of Utah We say that the great and small masses constituting the heavenly bodies are of spherical form, because of gravity and molecular attraction; that they are moving through space about one another by reason of gravitation, centrifugal and centripetal forces; and that many are luminous on account of the rapidity with which the molecules are moving among themselves. Likewise we explain that plants germinate and grow by means of chemical reactions and physical changes ; also that certain chemical and physical activities accompany the act of evolving thought and ideas. Thus, all these various chemical, physical, and motor energies are spoken of as if they were the ultimate, moving, living, and intelligent energies and power in the universe. We only mean, however, by chemical reactions, changes, or activities, that atoms or ions are changing places among themselves, and are forming new substances. By physical changes we mean merely that molecules are assuming different positions with respect to one another; and by gravitation, motor energy, and centrifugal and centripetal forces, we designate those energies through which larger bodies move through space. But behind all these attractive and repellant forces among atoms or ions, molecules and masses of matter, there is indeed something else. Now what causes the ions or atoms to rearrange themselves among the substances brought together? To say that it is chemism, or chemical energy, does not tell the cause at all. Chemism is simply a name conveniently used for an activity or property. To say that gravitation is the cause of the attraction between two heavenly bodies does not tell the ultimate cause at all. Gravitation is simply a name used to designate a certain kind of force. The character of the ultimate cause we do not know. So it is with all ultimate causes; we can not comprehend them. They are beyond the ability of man to find out. That there is some great ultimate cause or power underlying all nature, no one can reasonably deny; and after logically tracing step by step the various factors, we are led to this inevitable conclusion. But what sort of underlying power must this be? In this *From a baccalaureate address. MIND AND PLAN IN NATURE 159 universe there is at least one great body, the earth, on which living beings can thrive, as, for example, plants, lower animals, and man. Man is not only a living being, but an intelligent one, with powers to reason, to judge, to make comparisons, and to draw conclusions. This being called man not only has been endowed with all these wonderful powers, but through his capabilities he has reached that stage in his development when he can look back upon the growth of this earth, read and interpret the footprints of time, and with great certainty can understand the meaning of the many phenomena presented on the surface or in the crust of the earth. From one viewpoint, he can read into a thousand objects wonderful things of the past; and even into the little pebbles on the sea shore, he can read marvels of the bygone history of this old planet on which we live. For instance, the smooth, round granite pebble, picked up on a lone shore of some great body of water, is laden with a record that might fill volumes. What does this pebble tell to the scientific mind? Does it not say: "I am here, and being moved hither and thither on this shore, gradually losing by the lashing and surging of the waves about me, more and more of the material of which I am composed. I have been here a long time. I came from the top of yonder mountain. At first I was washed down by the spring freshets into a swift canyon stream, and afterwards by that stream into the ocean. I was then angular and irregular in form, and much larger than I now am. As you find me, I am smooth and much worn. It took me a long, long time to come from the place at which the freshets first landed me in the stream to this lonesome shore where you now find me. Much of my angular form was changed in the bed of the stream that carried me to the sea. I was knocked down and thrown about unmercifully, rubbing up against first one rock and then against another. Sometimes I was on top, at other times underneath some immense boulder. At times I was buried deep beneath the bed of the stream and at other times I ; found myself even above the howling, moaning water of a cataract, and perched upon some point of rock untouched by the seething water below. Either by the increased volume of the water or by the change in the course of the stream, I was unearthed from my burial place, or I was unhorsed from my position on the rock. At one time the surging water dashed me up against the bank and lashed me to the shore; and then, again, it licked me up and threw me into the middle of the angry stream. Countless times I was tossed and thrown here and there at the pleasure of the maddened water, as it made its way to the valley below. I was tossed against this rock, and then against that rock, and hurled to the right and then to the left, and then 160 IMPROVEMENT ERA to the bottom of this raging stream, without warning and without mercy, making my life strenuous, fierce, and severe. Thus did I pass through the various cruel vicissitudes of my abode, in the swift and furious stream, until I was carried to the ocean and pushed upon this lonely shore. On that mountain top, long before I began my slow movement to the sea, I was detached from a huge mass of granite, by the heat of the summer and the cold of winter, the expansion and contraction of, my mother rock, the rain and snow, the gentle and swift winds of the seasons of the year. Not always, before my journey to the sea, was I at the top of that mountain, but only slowly did I rise to that eminence from far below the bed of the ocean where I was born. Within me are water inclusions; so, in moisture as well as under great heat and pressure, must I have been formed. To the bed of that body of water the material of which I consist was carried by erosion, and by the action of running streams. Sediment upon sediment was deposited upon my component parts until the heat developed became sufficiently great, with the co-operation of the superheated steam and the innate energies, to form the quartz, the feldspar, and hornblende or mica of which I am made. Then, under great pressure and other physical agencies, those minerals were blended and cemented together, and thus was formed the granite rock of which I was once only a very, very small part. Still farther, to trace my history back into the ages of inconceiv- — able time I find myself divided into parts, separate and different minerals, and finally, during the time possibly of the formation of the earth, and before and after that period of time, I was divided into the elementary substances themselves." Thus ends the tale which a pebble tells to the scientist. And although man can read these facts, yet, as compared with the universe of facts, he knows little indeed; still his capabilities are truly wonderful, and in many ways very great. With these wonderful capabilities and this intelligence, this comprehension and these strong and intelligent emotions and feelings, is man here for naught? Is there no purpose for his existence? So far as is now known, spontaneous generation is impossible; life and intelligence can not be produced without the existence of previous life. This being true, life has always existed; and it is more reasonable to believe, since life never had a beginning, that never was there a time when intelligence did not prevail somewhere in this universe. From the account thus given of the condition of the stars, the planets, and other masses of matter, and of their movements in endless space; of the other energies and power extant the — growth and development of the plant, the nature of the human — mind and intelligence we have learned that there are fixed laws