1730. Being weak, lax and dismissive about the above-mentioned question of mental temperature is synonymous with disaster. And where all growth stops, desert spreads. Are not such tendencies towards desertification beginning to emerge within the human mentality or psyche? Is not the complete denial of all spirituality, the denial of the existence of an eternally continuous immortal I in the organism of every living being a stunting of mental growth? Does not a rather harsh mental desert area emerge wherever one believes in absolutely nothing but dead matter, wherever one believes that the living being or the "creator" is a product of the "created" instead of the opposite? Believing that the "created" creates the "creator" can of course never be expressive of mental lushness or intellectual insight, just as denying the existence of the "creator" and thereby one's own existence can constitute only utter barrenness or a mental desert. Indeed, is not all the prevailing unrest, "the war of all against all", an irrefutable documentation of an all-pervading mental desert-like state? Why does world peace not thrive within the terrestrial human sphere? Mankind has long since been able to control the elements. It has made a servant of Nature's millions of horsepower. In no case does it need to do the strenuous work itself. It can, with machines, move mountains, rocks and rivers, and manufacture useful objects by the million. The machines liberate people more and more from the "curse" they inherited: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread". The human hand becomes ever more refined. It need only press buttons, and the machines produce power, light, heat and cold as wished. Enormous vessels transport the human being across the seas, above the clouds and under the water. Indeed, in certain cases the human being can even compete with the speed of sound in transporting itself from place to place. When mankind thus has the ability to subdue the forces and control the elements, why then are its mental state and general level of happiness not a culmination of vigour, health and joy? There is, as will be remembered, no lack of ability or energy to make matter obey its will.