reality of obligation. Its content must be determined by experience, and a man may make honest mistakes about what he ought to do. But to be aware that there is a course which he ought to take-whether he likes it or not, and whether it serves his interest as an isolated individual or not-is part of the very form of his self-consciousness.

As there is no one point of reference in man's nature which is the source of individual distinctness and unity, so there is no such thing as human nature existing by itself apart from all individualisation, or capable of being rightly so conceived. But this does. not mean that human beings merely exist side by side, or that humanity is a word denoting the mere aggregation of them. On the contrary, all the grounds of obligation just set out involve the solidarity of the human race, and all the more so inasmuch as the most important and significant part of his environment to which a man is receptive and reactive is that part which consists of other human beings. From his parents he derives the body, which is the physical basis of his being; from his family-its traditions, outlook, circumstances, hopes, fears-he derives the main direction of the impetus which carries him out into life; from his country, and his social class in that country, he receives the influences which either modify or stereotype that direction. His whole being is a condensation of society. He is his fellow-men's experience focussed in a new centre. There is no impenetrable core of self-hood which is his, and his alone; his distinctness is his angle of vision. That is the core of self-hood which, along with his own principle of selfdirected growth, he brings as an original contribution to the scheme of things.

As the experience of any group of men expands,

1 To the religious man God is the most important factor of environment; and religion is the effort, by the direction given to attention, to make Him all-important. But this is a highly developed stage, and at present we are dealing with the elementary stage.

its content becomes more and more common to all of them. This does not lead to any merging of their individualities or separate selves in a common self; nothing can obliterate their past history; the route by which each has reached his stage of apprehension leaves its influence; even if all of us became omniscient, we should still be many foci of an experience common to all in its content, and should appreciate differently the values of the world that we all apprehended, for appreciation depends on subjective factors which are themselves largely dependent on personal history. But though humanity exists only in individuals who are eternally distinct, it is a unity itself. It is a unity, because human nature exists to be the coming to self-consciousness in many centres of the one universe; it is a unity because only in the harmony of a united human race can any one human being find the satisfaction of his own nature; its unity is apparent in the indisputable fact of influence. Again, alike the origin and the goal and the present fact of human nature demonstrate its unity.

1

It has already been said that the form of human self-consciousness includes both the capacity to compare and contrast the actual state or experiences of the self with others that are possible though not actual, and the realisation of absolute claims. In other words, it involves an apprehension of good and evil in their various forms, or, in one word, of Value. In the animals this is already present, but not, as it would appear, consciously present in such a way that an unattained, and even de facto unattainable, good may be conceived as a goal of ambition. A dog has a sense of duty, but shows scarcely any signs of a divided consciousness. In man this is fully apparent, and carries with it four main results:

1 I am not here concerned with the question why the Universe comes to selfconsciousness in many centres rather than in one. The answer to this question is hinted at above; it is partly because all the values can only be appreciated if all angles of vision are taken. Cf. Mens Creatrix, pp. 82-86.

(a) As clearly apprehending and appreciating Value, man begins to bring to full actuality the Value or Good which is the raison d'être of the Universe; through his experience it begins to find its end.

(b) For the same reason man is capable of fellowship with God, for he can share the motive of Creationye shall be as God, knowing good and evil."

(c) For the same reason man himself becomes creative. Everything that can be named represents some original contribution to the totality of things; and this individuality increases as we rise from the purely mechanical, through the various forms of life, to the dawning self-consciousness of certain animals. But only in man is there the clear apprehension of Value which brings with it deliberate, purposive action, so that by his sense of Value man tries to change the world about him.

(d) For the same reason also man is involved in deliberate selfishness. The Value which he seeks is focussed in his own individual consciousness, and comes to actuality through his individual appreciation; and it is only with effort that he comes to learn that his good is essentially a part of the universal good; and that only by seeking and assisting the realisation of the universal good can he find his own. Thus the arrival of man at full self-consciousness makes possible deliberate sin, makes it indeed so probable as to be almost certain.

"It is very unhappy," says Emerson, "but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made that we exist; that discovery is called the Fall of Man." 1 With that discovery human history begins.

1 Essay on Experience.

NOTE TO CHAPTER IV

THE FALL

THE profound wisdom of the Myth with which the Bible opens sets before its readers the following

truths:

(1) God made the world and saw that it was very good; (2) Man arrived at conscious realisation of Value (Good and Evil) by doing what was in fact forbidden, but was (ex hypothest) not realised as wrong; in breaking a rule he discovered a principle;

(3) Thereby he became a conscious sinner; (4) But thereby also he became capable of fellowship with God.

This is a true analysis of all natural human progress. Man stumbles, by the impulse of his nature, into something which, by his misunderstanding of it, is first a source of new evils, but is the condition of a hitherto impossible good.

CHAPTER V

"

HISTORY AND ETERNITY

'I have seen the travail which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised therewith. He hath made everything beautiful in its time; also he hath set eternity in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out the work that God hath done from the beginning even to the end."-ECCLESIASTES.

So far we have considered Man in himself; we have now to consider Man in action. His destiny is fulfilled in the achievement of two unities, unity of individual personality and unity of universal fellowship. So much has become clear from our enquiry into the nature of man. We have seen also how near to inevitable was the failure to realise without preliminary error and struggle all that the form of human selfconsciousness makes possible. Certainly that failure is a fact. Man was made for unity but has chosen division; and as each man is by his nature in large part a focussing point for his environment, it is not possible that, when once this false start has been followed by any, there should be others who are totally unaffected by it, unless indeed some power coming into human history from outside should make this possible. In so far as human history is a continuous process, where each stage proceeds from the one before it, there can be no perfecting of individuals except by the perfecting of the race; and as the race consists of individuals, and.is what they make it, the outlook is gloomy enough.1

1 Karl Marx scarcely overstates the dependence of the individual on his environment, though he does leave out of sight the spark of creative energy that is in every human soul; his error is that he misconceives the environment; he takes this to