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Portions of a paper on "The Real Basis of Democracy,"
which appeared in the August (1917) number of the Nineteenth
Century and After, are included in this book by the kind
permission of the editor.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

WHAT IS AND WHAT MIGHT BE.
A study of Education in General and
Elementary Education in Particular.

IN DEFENCE OF WHAT MIGHT BE.
THE TRAGEDY OF EDUCATION.

THE NEMESIS OF DOCILITY. A
study of German Character.

THE PROBLEM OF THE SOUL.
THE SECRET OF THE CROSS.
THE CREED OF MY HEART POEMS.

PUBLISHED BY

CONSTABLE & CO., LTD., LONDON.

THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS
OR, SALVATION THROUGH GROWTH

What in ill thoughts again. Men must endure
Their going hence even as their coming hither.
Ripeness is all. SHAKESPEARE — King Lear.

Whether we be young or old,
Our destiny, our being's heart and home,
Is with infinitude, and only there ;
With hope it is, hope that can never die,
Effort and expectation and desire,
And something evermore about to be.

WORDSWORTH — The Prelude*

Unity itself divided by Zero will give Infinity,
Make thy claim of wages a zero, then ;
thou hast the world under thy feet.

CARLYLB — Sartor

THE

SECRET OF HAPPINESS

SALVATION THROUGH GROWTH

EDMOND HOLMES

Author of "What Is and What Might Be"
The Tragedy of Education," « I,, Defence of What Might Be,

LONDON

CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD.

1919

INTRODUCTION

uegan 10 disclose themselves, and these in their
turn demanded, and were duly reacted upon by expression.
As time went on I made a third discovery — that the inter-
action of thought and expression was a process to which
there were no limits, and therefore that there could be no
finality in thinking. But it was not till middle life that this
discovery came home to me as a conviction. When I was
young I had the ardour and audacity of youth, and I thought
myself quite competent to construct a complete system of
thought. I did in fact construct such a system, a bulky
work in three parts (each of which, if printed, would have
filled a stout volume) which bore the portentous titles of
(i) Method ; (2) System ; (3) Proof. When I had finished
this work I found that I had begun to outgrow it, and I
made no attempt to publish it. Undismayed by my failure,
I set to work at another system ; but when the end of it was
in sight I found that the point of view from which I had

INTRODUCTION

EVER since I began to read for " Greats " at Oxford 1
have been trying to think out the great problems that
perplex us all. It did not take me long to discover that if I
was to bring order into my thoughts I must try to write
them down. The attempt to do this led to the further dis-
covery that, unless I could combine sincerity with lucidity
in writing, I could not hope to attain to sincerity and
lucidity of thought. There seemed to be a close connection
between sincerity and lucidity ; but sincerity was my first
concern. When I had written a passage I would read it over
and ask myself : Is this what I am really trying to say ?
This question gave rise to another : Is this what I really
think ? Thus my attempt to give expression to my thoughts
led me to scrutinize them continuously. Under the search-
light of my scrutiny new aspects of, new subtleties in, my
thoughts began to disclose themselves, and these in their
turn demanded, and were duly reacted upon by expression.
As time went on I made a third discovery — that the inter-
action of thought and expression was a process to which
there were no limits, and therefore that there could be no
finality in thinking. But it was not till middle life that this
discovery came home to me as a conviction. When I was
young I had the ardour and audacity of youth, and I thought
myself quite competent to construct a complete system of
thought. I did in fact construct such a system, a bulky
work in three parts (each of which, if printed, would have
filled a stout volume) which bore the portentous titles of
(i) Method ; (2) System ; (3) Proof. When I had finished
this work I found that I had begun to outgrow it, and I
made no attempt to publish it. Undismayed by my failure,
I set to work at another system ; but1 when the end of it was
in sight I found that the point of view from which I had

418458

vi THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

approached my subject was ceasing to interest me, and I
left the work unfinished.

Since then I have published many books, but I regard
them all (with the doubtful exception of one or two volumes
of verse) as by-products of my central effort to construct
an adequate theory of things. For, though the direct re-
sults of that effort had been elaborate failures, the effort
itself had not been wasted. It had helped me to evolve an
unformulated creed, which, besides throwing light on the
path of my own life, provided me with a base of operations
from which to attempt the solution of some of the large
problems that revolve, like satellites, round the largest of
all. For example, when I had served as a School Inspector
for more than thirty years, it suddenly dawned upon me
that a man's theory of education ought to be governed by
his theory of life ; and straightway, guided by my own
theory of life, I began to think and write about education.
In my published books I have made free use of my two un-
published " systems of thought," having not only embodied
in the former some of the ideas which I had elaborated in
the latter, but having also treated the two derelict structures
as quarries from which I could take at will the materials
that I needed for my less ambitious ventures.

I now come to the main purpose of this bit of autobio-
graphy. In this, my third attempt to untie " the master
knot of human fate," I have, not unnaturally, entered into
partnership with my two former selves and made use, as I
thought fit, of the fruits of their labours. It is therefore
possible that there are passages in this work "(apart from
one or two which I have deliberately quoted) which have
already appeared in print. If this is so, I must ask to be
excused for having repeated myself (without a suitable
apology), on two grounds. The first is that in order to make
sure of avoiding those " undesigned coincidences " I should
have had to read through all my published prose works, a
task for which I had neither time nor inclination. The
second is that if I have unwittingly repeated myself, the
repeated passages belong more properly to this book, as the
heir-at-law of its two unpublished predecessors, than to
those in which they first saw the light. I may add that a

INTRODUCTION vii

booklet which I recently published, called The Problem of
the Soul, has always belonged to this book, and now takes
its place in it, slightly modified, as the second of its five
parts.

Having said so much about myself I will ask leave to say
a little more. I have no learning, and no head for meta-
physics. Why, then, have I presumed to concern myself
with these great matters ? Because the choice of a creed
rests, in the last resort, with the individual consciousness.
Because one exercises the right of private judgment, even
in the act of renouncing it. Because submission to dog-
matic direction, though it may sterilize interest and capacity,
cannot relieve one from responsibility for the ideas that
dominate one's life. Because, if that responsibility is ac-
cepted, the demand which it makes upon one ought, as far as
possible, to be met in full. Because, above all, the problems
which I am trying to solve are of interest, not to experts only,
but also, and more especially, to "plain average men/' of
whom I am one. If I have any advantage over other plain
average men, it is that I have kept alive a strain of poetry
(if I do not flatter myself unduly) which is, I believe, innate in
most of us, but which many men, under the deadening pres-
sure of education and other adverse forces, allow to die out of
their lives. This strain of poetry, by vitalizing my intuition,
has saved me from being enslaved to my own theories, and
through its solvent influence has prevented my convictions
from crystallizing into dogmas, and has kept them fluid and
mobile. It is not by the exercise of reason alone that man
works his way towards the truth of things, but by the
maintenance of what I may call a progressive balance
between reason and intuition, between conscious thought
and subconscious " vision." This means, I suppose, that
the dream of attaining to certitude or even to mental repose
in this exalted region must be abandoned, and that the
quest of ideal truth must be regarded as an end in itself.
I, for one, am well content that this should be so. To find
final satisfaction in mental unrest is to bid defiance to
perplexity and doubt. This indeed is the lesson which
I learned in middle life, when 1 discovered that there were
no limits to the interaction of thought and expression.

viii THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

But I could not then fathom its depth of meaning. To
emphasize that lesson, to convince myself that high think-
ing (like real living) is in very truth an adventure into the
infinite, and that as such it is the only solution which its
own problem admits of, is one of the main purposes of this
book. It will perhaps be objected that fluidity of belief
is incompatible with fixity of purpose. But there is an
obvious answer to this possible objection. It is with
rigidity, not with fixity, of purpose that fluidity of belief is
incompatible ; and rigidity of purpose — fixity of means, as
well as of aim — is weakness, not strength. What fluidity
of belief (if it is not allowed to degenerate into indifference)
does to purpose, is to give it that elasticity of fibre which
makes it both pliable and strong. It is, I admit, a difficult
matter to keep belief fluid, to avoid the opposite extremes
of dogmatic rigidity and agnostic indifference. But the
attempt is worth making, even though it involve the labour
of a lifetime ; for, with the higher agnosticism, with the
faith which is so secure that it does not ask to be formulated,
there will come into one's life a large tolerance, a wide
sympathy, a far-reaching hope, and a deep peace.

CONTENTS

PAGB

INTRODUCTION v

PART I
THE FAILURE OF FEUDALISM

Oi AFTER

I. THE PRESENT DISCONTENT i

II. THE GENESIS OF FEUDALISM ..... 8

III. SECULAR FEUDALISM 22

IV. SPIRITUAL FEUDALISM 37

V. THE MORAL^OF FAILURE 56

PART II
THE MEANING OF GROWTH

I. THE LAW OF GROWTH 60

II. HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT. A. THE PHYSICAL

PLANE 64

III. HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT. B. THE HIGHER

PLANES . ....... 72

IV. THE THEORY OF STRAIN ..... 92
V. THE ANCESTRY OF THE SOUL 105

VI. THE RANGE OF THE SOUL 119

PART III

THE PURPOSE OF GROWTH

I. THE POLARITY OF NATURE 124

II. THE POLES OF NATURE . .140

III. THE DIVINE CIRCLE 163

IV. THE POLES OF KNOWLEDGE . . . . .182

V. THE POLES OF ACTION . . . . . .202

x THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

PART IV
THE PROCESS OF GROWTH

CHAPTER PACE

I. GROWTH THROUGH DESIRE . . . .216

II. GROWTH THROUGH BELIEF . .... 229

III. GROWTH THROUGH CONSCIENCE . . . .241

IV. GROWTH THROUGH CONDUCT. A. THE AIM . .254

V. GROWTH THROUGH CONDUCT. B. THE WAY . . 269
VI. EARLY GROWTH . . . . . . .284

PART V
THE FRUITS OF GROWTH

I. PHYSICAL WELL-BEING 301

II. MENTAL WELL-BEING ...... 308

III. ESTHETIC WELL-BEING 318

IV. MORAL WELL-BEING 328

V. SOCIAL WELL-BEING . . . . . -336

VI. SPIRITUAL WEBL-BEING .... . 349
VIT. BEYOND WELL-BEING 356

THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

PART I
THE FAILURE OF FEUDALISM

CHAPTER I

THE PRESENT DISCONTENT l

IF the secret of happiness was ever ours we have lost it
for a while. For where there is happiness there is joy
and there is peace. But to-day, instead of joy there is wide-
spread discontent ; and instead of peace there is a world-
encompassing wave of unrest.

So true are these words that it is difficult to say anything
in support of them which is not the statement of a truism.
The resources of the material world are being developed
with ever-increasing rapidity, and the wealth of what we call
the " civilized world " is increasing by leaps and bounds.
But the increase of wealth does not bring with it increase of
happiness. The rich are not satisfied with their riches. For,
if they were, they would not labour unceasingly to add to
them. The middle classes are not satisfied with their bour-
geois comforts. For the standard of comfort is continuously
rising ; so that what is luxury in one decade is mere comfort
in the next, and may well become squalor in the third. The
poor are not satisfied with their poverty ; and it is among
the more prosperous classes of " workers " that discontent
is rifest and keenest . For the rise in the standard of comfort ,

1 This chapter was written before the Great War began. See the open-
ing paragraph of the next chapter.

2 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

though the middle classes suffer most from it, affects all
classes from highest to lowest ; and the result of it is that
the richer we grow and the more millionaires we breed, the
poorer we become. It is to this practical paradox that the
all-absorbing hunt for wealth, which makes our inequalities
more and more oppressive and our contrasts more and more
offensive, is gradually leading us.

When we look at things from the standpoint of social
position — a standpoint which is ever tending to coincide
with that of wealth — we see that similar influences are at
work. The multiplication of social grades is one of the by-
products of our growing wealth. It is said that even in an
English village there are seven distinct grades, and that
between grade and grade there is little or no social inter-
course. When social gradation seems to have been fixed by
" Providence/' men are willing to acquiesce in it ; but when
it is in a state of incessant flux, discontent is at once the
cause and the effect of its mobility. Each grade in turn is
envious of the grade above it and strives to rise to its level.
Yet the highest grade of all is perhaps the least contented ;
for the pleasure of effort and pursuit is withheld from it ;
and on its summit, to which all its inferiors aspire, instead
of the sunshine of joy and love, there is a wet mist of bore-
dom and ennui.

From East to West and from West to East the atmo-
sphere of the world is impregnated with discontent and
unrest. In this and other Western countries class hatred is
one of the passions which the demagogue deliberately ex-
ploits. " Strikes " and " lock-outs " are more numerous
and on a larger scale than they have ever been. A world-
wide war between Labour and Capital seems to be imminent,
if it has not actually begun. For both sides are organizing
their armies ; and some at least of the current strikes and
lock-outs must be regarded as " reconnaissances in force."

Even the immobile East is in travail with enormous
changes. In India there is much political unrest, which is
not the less serious because its aim is uncertain and its
scope undefined. China has recently expelled a dynasty
which had ruled her for three centuries, and proclaimed
herself a republic. Japan has gone through a series of

THE PRESENT DISCONTENT 3

transformation scenes and become one of the " Great
Powers " of the world. And the end of her evolution is not
yet ; for the ideals of her growing industrialism are at war
with those of Bushido, and her traditional reverence for
and devotion to authority are being slowly sapped.

Look where we may, we see that authority is being called
in question. Our religious creeds are dead or dying, and the
churches and sects are being " modernized " with or without
their consent. In the pojjtical world despotism is confronted
by anarchism, while weaker governments think it prudent
to legalize rioting and condone acts of sabotage. In litera-
ture there is a craze for individuality which sets all prece-
dents and unwritten laws at defiance. In art the same
tendency leads from paradox to paradox. Impressionism,
post-impressionism, cubism, futurism, vorticism, and I know
not what other " isms " succeed one another with breathless
rapidity ; and what was a rank heresy a decade ago is a
stale orthodoxy to-day. In music, as in poetry, cacophony
is a fashionable affectation and euphony is despised. In
social life custom and tradition are openly rebelled against,
and restraints of all kinds are systematically flouted. VThe
marriage tie is losing its sanctity, and " the other woman""
has become the recognized heroine of romance. Marital
authority is an absurd anachronism. Parental authority is
going by the board. Our daughters break away from the
home and insist on carving out careers for themselves.
Woman claims entire equality with man, and tries by
methods of assault and battery to wring political enfran-
chisement from the Government of the day. If we no
longer take all our pleasures sadly, the reason is that defiance
of the authority of decorum adds a zest to some of them
which they formerly lacked. The chaperon has long since
vanished from the ball-room ; and the liberty which came
in with her departure is degenerating into open licence.

And side by side with the revolt against authority goes
on that pursuit of external ends which (as we shall presently
see) the regime of external authority imposed upon the
world. As the belief in a " future life " and " another
world " wanes, the desire to live with the whole energy of
one's being in a materialized " this world " and a secularized

4 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

"this life " grows apace. So strong and so widespread is
the " mania for owning things," so large a part does it play
in politics as well as economics, that the hunt for wealth
has now become national as well as individual, and is even
threatening to involve the Great Powers, through their
competition for markets and sources of supply, in a series
of world-convulsing wars.

But, swift and far-reaching as is the succession of changes
through which human society, in its present state of feverish
unrest, is passing, man's knowledge of the outward world
and his mastery of its resources keep easily ahead of all
other aspects of his progress. In science discovery follows
discovery ; in applied science invention follows invention ;
and some at least of these triumphs of human ingenuity are
bidding fair to revolutionize the material conditions of life.
The mysterious forces of electricity are being pressed, more
and more, into the service of man. The waterfalls of the
world transmit their power to great cities hundreds of miles
away, where they light the streets and houses and work
innumerable factories. The petrol-engine, having enabled
us to traverse the high roads with the speed of an express
train, is now beginning to open a new era in marine naviga-
tion, and is also giving man the long-sought mastery of the
air. Telegraphs and telephones — wired and wireless — the
gramophone, the cinematograph and the rest are helping
us to annihilate time and space. And so on.)^Yet men are
not a whit the happier for all these achievements. Nay,
they add to the fever and unrest of the age. For new
ends are perpetually set before us which our externalized
desires are unable to resist.) "Respectability" was once
content with a " gig." Now it is content with nothing less
than a motor-car. And it will not be long before it aspires
to an aeroplane or an airship. And when its votary soars
through the air he will be no happier than when he rushed
along or even than when he jogged along a dusty road.

Matthew Arnold has described in familiar lines an age
which had much in common with ours, though the sphere
of its activities wras far narrower, the resources at its com-
mand far smaller, and the fever of its unrest proportion-
ately less : —

THE PRESENT DISCONTENT 5

In his cool hall, with haggard eyes,
The Roman noble lay ;
He drove abroad, in furious guise,
Along the Appian Way.

He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,
And crowned his hair with flowers ;
No easier nor no quicker passed
The impracticable hours.

Our Appian Way is the Portsmouth Road, which we
traverse on Sundays " in furious guise," racing down to
Hindhead (where we lunch) and back to Ockham or Ripley
(where we have tea) and on to London, in clouds of dust of
our own upstirring. And we " make feasts " and " drink
fierce and fast " at the Ritz, the Carlton, and the Savoy.
But for us too the hours prove " impracticable " ; and
strive as we may to kill Time, we cannot speed its passing.
^ Even the " working classes," as we call them, are in-
fected with the microbe of ennui. They clamour for shorter
hours of work ; but when their playtime comes they find
that it hangs heavy on their hands. The " dullness of the
country " drives the sons and daughters of the peasantry,
in quest of cheap amusement, into the slums of the great
towns ; and there, in the gin palaces, or on the foofball
ground, or at the music-hall, or at the picture theatre, they
labour assiduously to lighten the heavy burden of their
scanty leisure.

It might be thought that this " incredible whirl and
rush " was due to some widespread upwelling of originality
and will-power. But this is not so. There are leaders of
revolt as of all other movements ; but the rank and file of
men are as passively obedient as they ever were. In their
reaction against authority as such, they do but substitute
one authority for another, — the demagogue or the " boss "
for the emperor or the king, the caucus for the junta, the
" cartel " for the secret council, the " union " for the guild,
syndicalism for feudalism, a negative for a positive dogma-
tism, fashion for custom, unstable opinion for unwritten
law.

Our anxiety to keep abreast of all the changes of fashion
(in conduct, as in dress) and to know what is the right thing

6 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

to do (as well as to wear) is almost pathetic in its earnest-
ness and singleness of heart ; and our loyalty to the most
inconstant of all mistresses outrivals the loyalty of a clan
to its chief. For blindness of devotion, indeed, our anar-
chical loyalty has never been equalled. Authority in the
past has always professed to be based — in part at least
—on regard for and knowledge of such high abstractions as
truth, goodness, justice, beauty. The churches have pro-
fessed to be the exponents of divinely revealed truth. The
moral codes, to be the exponents of divinely established law.
Kings and parliaments have ruled in the name of justice
and order. The canons of taste which have tyrannized over
letters and art have been formulated in the name of beauty,
the laws of which they were supposed to express. But we
obey the fashion of the moment just because it is the fashion
of the moment, and not because it is supposed to be right
or just or beautiful or true. The ideal that sways us is in
fact the negation of all ideals, just as the authority to which
we are loyal is the negation of all authority. We may flatter
ourselves, if we please, that ours is freer than most ages from
hypocrisy and cant ; but there is something of cant in our
horror of all cant, and something of hypocrisy in the mask
of moral earnestness which our cynicism wears when we
denounce hypocrisy. The young cynic, fresh from Oxford
or Cambridge, who professes to have emancipated himself
from all conventions, is a conventionalist to his finger-tips.
He repudiates the conventions of yesterday because it is the
correct thing to do so — in other words, because he is unable
to resist the pressure of a convention of to-day.

Nor need we flatter ourselves that, because our experi-
ences are many and varied, we are living our lives more
fully than we used to do. If anything, we are living them
less fully, for change follows change so quickly that we
never have time to settle down to the business of living —

And never once possess our souls
Before we die.

" A mad world " our forefathers would say if they could
revisit it. But there is something of method in its madness.
The very paradoxes in which we arc doomed to entangle

THE PRESENT DISCONTENT 7

ourselves show that the master words of our speech are
changing their values while we are using them, and therefore
that an old order of things is passing away and a new order
beginning to stir into life. Meanwhile the zeal with which
we throw ourselves into the successive changes of fashion,
and the rapidity with which change follows change show
that, in spite of ourselves, we are seeking in deadly earnest
for something which we have lost (if indeed it was ever ours)
—seeking it in deadly earnest, yet with the aimlessness and
inconsequence of one who, having lost a valued treasure,
has not the least idea where to begin his search or how to
conduct it. The treasure which we have lost is the secret of
happiness. The very fever of our unrest, the very bitterness
of our discontent tell us this. When, if ever, did we possess
that greatest of all treasures, and where and how are we to
begin to seek for it ? If we are to answer these questions,
we must first ask ourselves what is the old order of things
which is passing away, and what is the new order of things
which is beginning to stir into life ?

CHAPTER II

THE GENESIS OF FEUDALISM

THE foregoing chapter was written before the Great
War began. In the unrest which it describes there
were two main currents.

The first was economic and social. The poor were restless
with discontent and envy ; the rich were restless with still
unsatisfied ambition, or with the Nemesis of satisfied
ambition — ennui. With this movement we need not at
present concern ourselves.1 The cure for economic and
social discontent will not be found until a larger problem
has been solved.

The other was a deeper current — vaguer, obscurer, less
self-conscious, more spiritual. It may perhaps be character-
ized as the unrest of revolt — revolt against the galling
pressure of authority in general, and in particular of conven-
tion, custom, tradition, and dogma — a movement which was
in some sort controlled and even directed by the very forces
that were being resisted and defied, and which was therefore
confused, chaotic, and uncertain of its meaning and its aim.
When the War came, this movement, this blind revolu-
tionary ferment, this undisciplined struggle for moral, social,
and intellectual freedom changed its character. Germany
stood forth as the champion and embodiment of autocratic
authority ; and the Allied nations were therefore compelled,
consciously or unconsciously, willingly or unwillingly, to
take up the cause of freedom and make it their own. This
meant that the forces of revolt were gradually directed into
other and worthier channels than those which they had

1 So far as the pre-war unrest was due to ennui, to boredom, to the eye
not being satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing, the War, with
its absorbing interests and its insistent demands for strenuous service,
provided an effective remedy for it.

THE GENESIS OF FEUDALISM 9

been striving to cleave for themselves, — into the channels
of patriotism, of self-devotion, of self-imposed discipline, of
moral indignation, of hatred of cruelty and injustice, of
pity, of tolerance, of brotherly love. And while this was
happening, the follies, frivolities, and eccentricities of the
pre-war movement were being gradually swamped by the
rising tide of high purpose and stern resolve, and by a grow-
ing sense of the seriousness and profound significance of life,
—a sense which was fostered in no small measure by un-
wonted familiarity with death.

With this change in the character of the revolt against
authority has come a clearer perception of what was and if
at stake. Prussia, the evil genius of Germany, is felt to be
the last and most formidable stronghold of feudal tyranny ;
and the War is resolving itself, in the last resort, into a
struggle between autocracy and democracy, between self-
will and self-preservation, between the claim to dominate
others and the right to live one's own life. We are beginning
to realize that these are the forces which were blindly
struggling for mastery before the War began, and which in
the heat of their chaotic conflict, with all its cross-currents
and cross-purposes, generated the ferment of lawlessness and
unrest that was characteristic of those tumultuous but, as
we now see, prophetic years.

Seen from another point of view, that struggle was and is
the effort of a new order of things to free itself from bondage
to the old. What the new order is we can but dimly discern,
for it has yet to reveal itself ; and though we believe that it
will give us a fuller measure of freedom than we have
hitherto enjoyed, we cannot say how it will do this or in
what scheme of life it will ultimately express itself. But
the features of the old order have long been familiar to us ;
and now that the Central Power?, under German leadership,
have made themselves its champions and have put its
principles into practice with German logic and thoroughness,
we see its inner meaning and its ulterior purport more clearly
than we had ever done before. This is a gain to those who
are trying to understand the new order and prepare for its
advent. For to know what the old order stands for is to
know what the new is in revolt against ; and as this revolt

io THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

is an effort at self-expression, as it has Hying principles and
spontaneous tendencies behind it, it is clear that the more
carefully we study the old order, the better shall we be able
to forecast the features of the new.

The old order of things is, in a word, Feudalism. As a
formal system, feudalism passed away long ago, but as an
informal system — social, political, economic, and ethical — as
a principle of order, as an ideal of life, it is still with us ; and
though it seems to be dying, its power of rallying is almost
inexhaustible ; and if it is now in extremis, its death-bed
struggles are of almost superhuman strength.

What was — and is — essential in feudalism is the exercise
of irresponsible authority by those who rule. Mediaeval
feudalism had, in addition to this, two differential features
which intensified the pressure of irresponsible authority on
human life and gave a distinctive and lasting bias to its
influence on character and conduct. In the first place,
irresponsible authority was spiritual as well as secular.
The period during which the "feudal system" prevailed
was the period in which the power of the Catholic Church
was greatest and its position most secure. In the second
place, in the secular world irresponsible authority was
exercised, largely if not wholly, by a ruling caste. The
feudal system covered the land with a multitude of petty
autocrats (the feudal lords). This led to the formation of
an autocratic caste and, as the natural result of this, to
the outgrowth of the feudal spirit, — a spirit which gained
strength from its informal alliance with the spirit of
ecclesiastical domination, and which is still in the ascen-
dant in the upper classes of Western Society.

By irresponsible authority I mean authority which, pro-
fessing to be based either on supernatural sanction or on
superior force, does not feel called upon to justify itself
to those whom it governs and has no sense of responsibility
towards them. Those who exercise irresponsible authority
are not necessarily indifferent to the welfare of their subjects.
On the contrary, they usually profess to have their welfare
at heart ; but they claim that they alone are competent to
provide for their welfare and that they alone have the right

THE GENESIS OF FEUDALISM 11

to do so. Where authority is irresponsible, we have the
strange though familiar spectacle of a small minority, who
are in no sense representative of those whom they govern
and are but little in touch with them, professing to know
what is best for the welfare of the community as a whole,
and taking measures to impose well-being (as they interpret
the word) on the rank and file of their fellow-citizens, without
allowing them to have any say in the matter, and without
realizing that well-being is not well-being (in the deeper
sense of the word) unless men have helped to evolve it for
themselves. The particular embodiment of irresponsible
authority, of which we in the West have felt and still feel
the pressure, is feudalism ; and the passing of feudalism is
therefore the passing of a tradition which for many centuries
has socialized and moralized us and otherwise moulded our
lives.

Feudalism is the child of Supernaturalism, the God of
supernatural religion being the feudal Over-lord of the earth
and all its races and nations. Supernaturalism is the child
of Dualism, the "Yes or No" of popular thought finding
its last and most comprehensive expression in the disruption
of the Universe into Nature and the supernatural world.
Dualism is generated, in part by the inadequacy of language
—its inability to measure the range and subtlety of Nature
— and by the reaction of its defects and limitations on
human thought ; in part by the spiritual indolence of the
average man, by his reluctance to think out the great
problems of existence, and by his readiness to accept the
excuse for evading that responsibility, which the inadequacy
of language provides. The task of measuring, or at least of
making due allowance for, the infinite range and infinite
subtlety of Nature is one of almost insuperable difficulty for
even the most serious of thinkers ; and it is no matter for
wonder that popular thought, reluctant to grapple with so
formidable a problem, should take refuge in dualism, in
ignorance of the heavy price which it will have to pay for
delivering itself into bondage to " the Opposites."

That price is the ascendency of Supernaturalism, in re-
ligion, in morals, and at last, under a thin disguise, in social,
political, and economic life. The transition from dualism to

12 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

supernaturalism is easily traced. Consciously, the average
man, who is in large measure sense-bound, regards the
outward and visible world as intrinsically real. Uncon-
sciously, or subconsciously, he feels that there is a higher
reality in himself. But the fact that he consciously seeks
for reality outside himself constrains him, as a thinker, to
project the inward reality of which he is dimly aware into
the outward world, — not into the outward and visible world
which he calls Nature, but into an outward and invisible
world which he calls supernatural. Had he been able to
merge himself, with all his higher possibilities, in Nature,
the need for a supernatural world would not have arisen.
And if he were able to identify supernature with higher
Nature, the fundamental fallacy of supernaturalism would
correct itself. But, as a thinker, he comes under the control
of his only available medium of expression — language ; and
the inherent dualism of language reflects itself in the dualism
of his thought, the antithetical terms in which language
abounds — good and bad, high and low, light and darkness, and
the rest — finding their counterpart in his philosophy in a
series of quasi-objective antitheses, among which the anti-
thesis of Nature and the Supernatural is central and
supreme. The consequence is that, far from identifying
supernature with higher Nature, he interposes between
Nature and the supernatural world a gulf of separation, an
unfathomable and (in the order of Nature) impassable gulf,
into which drains unceasingly the reality of both the dis-
severed worlds.

This separation of reality (or what passes for such) from
the supreme source of reality (or what passes for such), this
separation — to use familiar words — of Nature from God,
must needs have serious consequences which will make
themselves felt on every plane of man's being and in every
sphere of his life. The glaring contrast between the pre-
sumed perfection of the supernatural God and the obvious
imperfection of his handiwork — the natural world — necessi-
tates the doctrine of the Fall, the doctrine of the corruption
and degradation, first of human nature, and then of Nature
as such, through a primal act of disobedience on the part of
Man. The doctrine of the Fall necessitates the doctrine of

THE GENESIS OF FEUDALISM 13

a supernatural revelation, if the consequences of the Fall
are not to be irremediable ; of the communication of divine
grace from Heaven to fallen man ; of the selection, for this
purpose, of special instruments — chosen prophets, a chosen
people, a chosen church ; of the delegation of spiritual
authority to those recipients of the divine grace ; of the
achievement of " salvation " through blind and quasi-
mechanical obedience to supernatural direction instead of
through the vital processes of natural growth.

From supernaturalism to feudalism the path is open and
straight. The supreme source of spiritual authority and the
supreme source of secular authority are obviously one. In
other words, the God of supernatural religion is the ultimate
owner of the earth and all its material resources, and there-
fore the Overlord of all the rulers of the world; and the
authority which he delegates to kings and princes is doled
out by them to their vassal nobles and knights, and through
these to a hierarchy of officers and officials, till its pressure
is felt by all the rank and file of mankind.

The historical genesis of the Feudal System was, I need
hardly say, a different thing from the logical genesis of
feudalism. It was out of the social and political chaos
which preceded and followed the downfall of the Roman
Empire of the West that the feudal system arose. Its
origin, in this sense of the word, was obscure and complex,
and I will not attempt to trace it. But if we are able to
take a wide and far-reaching view of things, we shall see
that the logical genesis of feudalism controlled and even
determined the historical. For feudalism, as an all-embrac-
ing scheme of life, may be said to have been generated by
the confluence of two main streams of tendency, — Roman
imperialism and Judaeo-Christian ecclesiasticism, the latter
being an expansion and modification of Jewish legalism ;
and in each of those streams of tendency the ruling principle
was distrust of human nature, and faith in obedience to
external authority as the only means of salvation, the only
way to happiness, well-being, and life.

Republican Rome, by the force of her character and the
might of her arms, gained the whole world — the whole
Mediterranean world — and in doing so lost her own soul.

14 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

A republic might conquer an empire, but for obvious
reasons could not govern it. It was only by concentrating
all authority in the hands of one supreme ruler that chaos
could be averted or rather that its advent could be delayed.
The consequent transformation of the Republic into an
Empire was, in the world of ideas, a revolution of the first
magnitude. Instead of ascending from the base of the social
pyramid, or from some intermediate level, and then descend-
ing from the apex, authority now entered the community
from above, and, without attempting to justify itself to its
subjects, demanded their implicit obedience.1 " The State,"
says Treitschke, in words which might have been written
eighteen centuries ago, "is in the first instance power. It
is not the totality of the people itself. . . . On principle it
does not ask how the people is disposed : it demands obedi-
ence." Whence the State derives its power Treitschke does
not make clear ; but in the days of Imperial Rome there
was, in theory at least, no uncertainty on this point. The
deification of the Emperors based itself on the assumption
that the ultimate source of authority was not in human
nature but in the supernatural world.

The triumph of Judaeo-Christian ecclesiasticism pointed,
more directly, to the same conclusion. The history of Rome
is the history of the transition from clan to empire. The
history of Israel is the history of an analogous movement
in the religious world. For the multitude of tribal and civic
"false gods" Israel substituted one omnipotent autocrat.
This was his unique achievement. But just as Rome
transformed political life by conquest, by successful self-
assertion, so Israel transformed religion by placing his
own national deity on the throne of the Universe. To
obey the will of this deity, who combined the functions of
ruling the Universe and directing with meticulous care the
affairs of a petty nation, was to obey in all its details
a minutely elaborated code of law. Under his rule

1 In establishing Imperial rule at Rome, Augustus, the first of the
Empercrs, paid due regard to the form of the Republican Government ;
but, while thus " saving the face " of the old regime, he took good care to
concentrate the reality of power in his own hands. His successors, abandon-
ing the pretence of being constitutional rulers, played the autocrat without
let or hindrance.

THE GENESIS OF FEUDALISM

the distinction between the religious and the secular life
became effaced, not through the secular life being trans-
figured by an inward and spiritual conception of duty and
destiny, but through its being invaded and at last overrun
by a casuistical ceremonialism which professed to expound
to man the high purposes of God. This invading wave
reached its high -water mark in Pharisaism, which, with a
fearless and pitiless logic, carried out the first principles of
legalism into all their consequences, however repugnant
these might be to right reason, to conscience, and to common
sense. That Pharisaical Judaism should ever become a
universal religion was impossible, for no one code of law
could pretend to regulate the lives of all the peoples of the
earth ; and the more the Jewish law was systematized and
elaborated, the less adaptable it became and the less capable
of being transplanted to other lands.

Yet it is to Judaism that the Western world owes the
religion which it has professed for fifteen hundred years.
The explanation of this seeming paradox is comparatively
simple. The Jews, whatever may have been their failings,
had one great quality. They took religion very seriously —
so seriously indeed that, as we have seen, they tried to efface
the distinction between the religious and the secular life.
It is true that in making this attempt the formalists, who,
after a prolonged struggle, were left in possession of the field
of national life, inverted the real order of things, materializ-
ing the religious life instead of spiritualizing the secular.
But the idea of effacing that deadly distinction was so
grandly adventurous, that because they entertained it with
whole-hearted earnestness — even though their own attempt
to realize it ended in abysmal failure — the Jews were
privileged to give religion to half the human race. For a
serious people will be serious, not only in affirmation, but
also, and perhaps more especially, in denial and revolt. It
was therefore inevitable that Jewish legalism, by its ex-
cesses and abuses, should provoke a fierce reaction against
itself. The exponents of this reactionary movement were
the prophets of Israel. And the last and greatest of the
prophets was the Founder of Christianity. As devotion to
legalism reached its climax in the practices of the Pharisees,

16 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

so the reaction against legalism reached its climax in the
teaching of Christ. True to the tradition of his nation, he
set himself to efface the distinction between the religious
and the secular life. And he achieved his purpose. But he
did so by reversing the procedure of the Pharisees, by pro-
viding for the spiritualization of man's daily life through
the medium of a new and revolutionary conception of God.
For whatever may be doubtful as to the character and
ultimate purpose of Christ's self-imposed mission, it is
certain that he was uncompromisingly hostile to Pharisaism,
and that he opposed to its rigid externalism and formalism
an inward conception of God — a conception which was
spiritual, poetical, intuitive, undogmatic, and even agnostic,
in the true sense of that much-abused word.

Could this inward conception of the universal God, could
this vision of One who is the life of every life and the soul
of every soul, become the animating principle of the new
religion for which the Graeco-Roman world seemed to be
waiting ? Alas ! no : the times were not yet ripe for so
radical a transformation of the religious consciousness. The
Jews rejected as a blasphemy a conception of God which was
as repugnant to their national egoism as to their theological
prejudices. The followers of Christ, who were steeped in the
Jewish tradition, who took over-seriously their Master's
provisional acceptance — for purposes of argument and illus-
tration— of the Jewish Scriptures, and who were for the
most part unable to fathom the profundity of his ideas,
subconsciously identified his all-loving " Father in Heaven "
with the stern and vindictive God of the Jews, and tried to
harmonize the inwardness of the Sermon on the Mount with
the externalism of the Old Testament scheme of life. And
when Christianity ceased to be the religion of a Jewish sect,
its exponents, in their loyalty to its Jewish founder, ac-
cepted as divinely true the very conception of God and man
which Christ had striven to transform beyond all recogni-
tion, and made it — as he found it, not as he left it — one of
the corner-stones of their creed. They went further than
this. Another corner-stone of their creed was devotion to
•the person of Christ — devotion which culminated, by a
strange irony of fate, in the worship of the apostle of divine

THE GENESIS OF FEUDALISM 17

immanence as a supernatural God. When this cult was
fully established, the tragic misunderstanding of Christ's
teaching, on which the structure of orthodox Christianity
may be said to have been based, was complete.

Yet the theology of Christianity has always kept open its
communications with the theology of Christ . In the doctrine
of the Incarnation Christianity has taught that very man is
very God. In the doctrine of the Holy Spirit it has taught
that the true self of each of us is, in the last resort, divine.
But these emancipative doctrines have been either ignored
or misunderstood by Christendom. For to obey the will of
the immanent God is to obey the laws of man's own highest
self. And as those laws must be discovered before they can
be obeyed, and as they are to be discovered only by being
obeyed, the cult of the immanent God makes demands on
human nature — demands for lifelong self-devotion and life-
long self -illumination — to which few men are willing to
respond. Hence the failure of Christendom to realize, to
live up to, the sublime doctrines of the Incarnation and the
Holy Spirit. Hence its tacit rejection of Christ's spiritual
message, of his appeal to the inward life and the inward
light. Hence its acceptance of the story of the Fall and the
doctrine of Original Sin, — a story and a doctrine which shift
the responsibility for man's salvation from man to his
Maker, who must himself redeem from ruin what he has
allowed to fall from grace. Hence the recrudescence of
Judaism in Christianity. Hence the triumph of the super-
natural over the immanent God, the baser currency, accord-
ing to its wont, driving the purer out of circulation. Hence
the desire of the " believer " to be saved by machinery,
instead of by growth and life. Let God formulate his will
for mankind, as he did of old for his chosen people, and
men will obey it, and in doing so will save their souls alive.
With this prayer at its heart, Christianity — inspired by the
gracious and commanding personality of Christ, but unable
to fathom the spiritual depths of his teaching — set forth to
evangelize the Gentiles.

But before Christianity could embark on its career of
conquest, one great departure from Judaism must be made.
The Law must be left behind. Jewish legalism had long

iS THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

been tending to identify itself with its own Extreme Right,
with the formalism, the literalism, and the casuistry of the
Pharisees. These had been sternly denounced by Christ.
But that was not the only reason why Christianity broke
with legalism. The inherent rigidity of the Law, its lack of
a supreme ethical principle by which to interpret its own
rules, its inability to provide for new cases except by formu-
lating new rules and sub-rules, unfitted it for the task of
adapting itself to the various and ever-varying conditions
of life which would be met with in other lands and other
ages. What Cardinal Newman says of a formula holds good
of a rigid system : it " either does not expand or is shattered
in expanding/' It was possession of the Law which had
differentiated the Jew from the Gentile ; and it was only
by renouncing the Law, that Jerusalem, or any wave of
spiritual life and energy that emanated from Jerusalem,
could hope to sweep away the barrier between Jew and
Gentile and win the latter to the worship of Jehovah.

But if, on the one hand, Christianity was to free itself
from the incubus of the Law, and, on the other hand, the
principle of salvation through obedience to external
authority was to be maintained, how was the will of the
supernatural God to be communicated to man ? To this
question there could be but one answer. A living organism
must take the place of a lifeless system. The Church must
take the place of the Law. The priest must take the place
of the doctor and the scribe. In no other way could
" authority " be conciliated with adaptability, and the
oracles of God be interpreted to man by a voice which
would never grow old. When these changes had been
accomplished, Christianity would be ready to become the
religion of the Mediterranean world, Judseo-Christian ecclesi-
asticism would be ready to take its place by the side of
Roman imperialism, and the dawn of the new era would be
at hand. That Roman imperialism was then in its decad-
ence, and that the dawn of the new era was therefore bound
to be stormy and protracted, is a matter of historical
interest on which we need not dwell. It is with the
spirit of the new era that we are now concerned.

The confluence of ecclesiasticism and imperialism was not

THE GENESIS OF FEUDALISM 19

followed by their fusion. Like the Rhone and the Saone at
Lyons, the two rivers flowed side by side in the same channel,
but did not merge into a single stream. There was indeed a
constant struggle for priority. Sometimes an Emperor
deposed a Pope. Sometimes a Pope excommunicated an
Emperor. At the beginning of the thirteenth century the
Pope came near to being the Suzerain of Christendom as
well as the ruler of the Church. A century later the Papacy
had come under the domination of monarchical France.
More often than not, the Church was the aggressor ; and
the resistance of King or Emperor to papal aggression was
typical of what was going on in every grade and sphere of
human life. So long as religion centres in the cult of a
supernatural God, the opposition of the secular to the
religious life will hold good, and whatever attempts either
life may make to absorb the other will fail. For the priest,
as the interpreter of the oracles of God, will put forward
pretensions which the layman, obedient to the instinct of
self-preservation, will strenuously resist. In the consequent
struggle, after the first great surrender, the layman will
more than hold his own. The vital forces which are making
for the evolution of the human spirit will see to that. But
he will have paid a heavy price for his victory. For he will
have acquiesced in the fatal distinction between the secular
and the religious life ; and he will have abandoned the
latter to the control of the priest, or some other exponent
—personal or impersonal — of God's will.

There was another reason why ecclesiastical and secular
feudalism, though they had much in common, were unable
to blend. The Church was an organic whole. The Empire,
in the feudal era, was not. " In theory," says Stubbs, " the
feudal system originates in the conquest of a kingdom,
which is parted out by the King or general among his
followers, who held their shares of him by military service,
and subdivided that share to their followers on similar or
lower services." Under this system the ownership of land
gave the landlord political authority over his tenants, and
through these over his sub-tenants. In theory the owner-
ship of all the lands in the realm was vested in the king, who
was therefore in his own right the highest source of

20 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

authority and the highest object of loyalty and devotion.
But the king himself had an overlord. Strictly speaking,
indeed, he had two. What the vassal lord was to the king,
the king was to the Emperor of the West. In theory — but
not in practice. Had the empire been genuinely elective,
and had the electoral college been composed of all the
sovereigns of Western Christendom, the secular overlordship
of the Emperor might have been as real and as effective as
the spiritual overlordship of the Pope. But the associa-
tion of the empire with the German crown prevented the
Emperor from enforcing, or even asserting, his theoretical
ascendency over his fellow sovereigns, who naturally re-
sisted the claim of one kingdom to supremacy over the rest.
Though he was obviously needed to complete the symmetry
of the feudal structure, such deference as was paid to him
was purely sentimental ; and, except in Italy, which, as the
headquarters of the Papacy, was of special interest to him,
he was at best primus inter pares. And even in Italy his
claim to political supremacy was stoutly and, as a rule,
successfully resisted. No : the real overlord of the feudal
monarch (if indeed he acknowledged any overlord) was the
supernatural God. If the monarch won new lands for
himself by conquest, he did homage for them to the God of
Battles. If he came into peaceable possession of his king-
dom he did homage for it to the Prince of Peace. The divine
right of kings — and sub-kings 1 — was of the essence of the
philosophy of feudalism ; and if it was in humility that the
king deferred to the overlordship of the Almighty, it was in
pride that he proclaimed himself the Lord's Anointed and
accepted the crown from the spiritual representative of God.
In the feudal era, then, we have a two-fold descent of
authority from God to man, a descent of spiritual authority

1 By sub-kings I mean "the barons," the feudal lords. In feudal
times the king (under God) was, in theory, the sole landowner. When
fiefs became hereditary, tenancy changed, in effect if not in theory, to
ownership, and the vassal lord became a more or less independent ruler.
The degree of his independence varied inversely with the degree of his
overlord's force of character — and wealth. Unless the king was himself
a powerful feudal magnate, the owner de facto of large hereditary estates,
lie had not the means of enforcing his authority. With the passing of
the feudal system, effective sovereignty was transferred in most countries
from the barons to the king.

THE GENESIS OF FEUDALISM 21

through the Pope, the bishops, and the priests, to the lay
members of the Church, and a descent of secular authority
through the kings of Christendom and their vassal lords to
the rank and file of their subjects. The difference between
the two movements was that in the descent of secular
authority an all-important link was missing. The kings of
Christendom had no human overlord. Each of them
claimed to hold his kingdom direct from the Most High,
just as if each Archbishop had claimed to be a Vicar of
Christ on earth. The result of this was that, whereas in the
Church the Pope has been the fountain-head of patronage
as well as of authority, in secular Christendom the Emperor
exercised neither patronage nor authority outside the fluctu-
ating limits of the Empire, while even within those limits
nomination by him to vacant thrones and sub-thrones gave
way at an early date to the hereditary transmission of
authority, till at last even the Imperial crown became
hereditary — de facto — in the House of Habsburg, and
Imperialism revealed itself as the hollow mockery which it
had long been.

But the vital principle of feudalism — the super imposition
of authority on the community, as opposed to the inherence
of authority in the community — was in no way affected by
these distinctions or these changes. The Pope, sitting in
the chair of St. Peter, might be the undisputed head of the
Catholic Church. The Emperor might be such a nonentity
that even in Germany each king or duke or count or knight
could claim to rule his subjects as the Anointed of God.
In either case what was essential in feudalism was jealously
preserved. The ruler, whoever he might be, was neither
representative of nor responsible to the ruled. It was for
him to command. It was for them to obey. The " State "
was no organ of the people, or aspect of the people's life,
but a power which had descended upon the community
from " Heaven " or some other external source. " On
principle" (to repeat Treitschke's words), "it did not ask
how the people was disposed. It demanded obedience."

CHAPTER III

SECULAR FEUDALISM

HAPPINESS may be defined as the conscious (or sub-
conscious) realization of well-being ; or, more briefly,
as the sense of well-being. If we knew what constituted
well-being and how it was to be secured, we should have
guessed the secret of happiness.

In feudal times a systematic attempt was made by irre-
sponsible authority — authority which was not representative
of the people and which gave account to them of none of its
ways — to impose well-being on those whom it governed.
Feudal authority was, as we have seen, of two kinds —
secular and spiritual. Secular authority sought to impose
political, social, and economic well-being on its subjects.
Spiritual authority sought to impose on them mental,
moral, and spiritual well-being.

How far did this two-fold attempt succeed ? How did
feudalism affect the character, the mentality, and the social
life of those who came under its influence ? Did it make
for the well-being and, through the well-being, for the
happiness of mankind ? In our attempt to answer this
question we shall find it convenient to respect the distinc-
tion between secular and ecclesiastical feudalism. For that
will enable us to respect another distinction which we must
recognize at the outset if we are to bring order into our
thoughts. The man who governs his fellow-man without
their consent brings pressure to bear on them — pressure
which may easily become harmful — from two separate
quarters. In the first place he does for them what they
ought to learn to do for themselves. In doing this he
atrophies certain mental and moral faculties by preventing
them from being exercised ; and as those mental and moral

SECULAR FEUDALISM 23

faculties have many implications and may even be said to
cover the whole range of human life, in atrophying them he
tends to arrest, or at least to retard, the whole mental and
moral development of the subject people. In the second
place, he sets them an example of arrogance and ostenta-
tion, which they will respond to either by imitating it or by
abasing themselves before it, each of these attitudes being
the counterpart and correlate of the other. In doing this
he tends to externalize and materialize their lives. Under
the feudal regime the baneful pressure which emanates from
irresponsible authority was intensified in each of its typical
aspects. The tendency to arrest development by atrophy-
ing faculty was intensified by the fact tnat the pressure of
irresponsible authority was spiritual as well as political,
that spiritual feudalism went hand in hand with secular
feudalism, and that the influence of spiritual authority
went deep into life and left no side of life untouched. And
the tendency to externalize and materialize life was inten-
sified by the fact that under the feudal system (the conse-
quences of which have not yet passed away) political power
was inherent in the ownership of property, the attractive
force of material possessions being thereby raised to an
abnormally high power.

Of these two tendencies, it will be found convenient to
study the former when we are considering the effect of
spiritual feudalism, — the latter, when we are considering
the effect of secular feudalism, on the mental, moral, and
social development of the Western world. That the two
tendencies — and the two kinds of feudalism — interacted
unceasingly goes without saying ; and if I deal with them
separately, it must be understood that I do so for the better
ordering of my own thoughts rather than because the line
of demarcation between them is clearly defined.

Let us first deal with the tendency of secular feudalism
to externalize and materialize human life. History tells us
that what might have been expected to happen in the
secular world did happen. The fundamental dualism which,
in the world of ideas, prepared the way for the feudal era,
was bound to reproduce itself, and in point of fact did re-
produce itself, in every feudal community. The wide and

24 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

deep gulf between the supernatural God and Nature re-
appeared as a wide and deep gulf between those who
ruled and those who obeyed. On one side of the gulf were
the land-owning classes, a small minority who ruled their
fellow-citizens, not as their elected leaders, but as their
hereditary lords, their right to rule, though in theory
derived from the favour of God, being actually inherent
in their might, and their authority over the rank and
file of the people being as absolute and irresponsible *
as that of a flockmaster over his sheep. On the other
side were the landless and therefore disfranchised masses,
whose lives were ordered for them, so far as authority
could order them, without their consent, and who changed
masters as a matter of course, whenever a queenly bride
brought a principality with her as her dowry, or two king-
doms were united by a royal marriage, just as sheep or
cattle change owners when an estate is inherited or sold.
The few who ruled had every advantage which power,
position, and property could give them. The many who
obeyed, being cut off from the higher life of the community,
and being socially and economically, as well as politically,
oppressed, were poor, helpless, ignorant, and rude. That
the former should become proud to the verge of arrogance,
that they should exalt themselves as a superior order of
beings, that they should look down on their fellow-men as
little better than brute beasts, may be said to have been
pre-ordained. " In the eyes of the Polish szlachta," says the
writer who calls himself " Rurik," " it was no greater crime
to kill a peasant than a dog." In France the Revolution
swept away legalized abuses which bore witness to a similar
attitude on the part of the Seigneur towards the peasantry
on his estates. And the Jacquerie in France, the Peasants'
War in Germany, and the Peasant risings in this and other

1 The serfs were the chattels of their lords. Their very bodies be-
longed to him. The villeins (or roturiers), whatever may have been their
nominal status, were in effect entirely at his mercy. "There were no
other guarantees," says Professor Vinogradoff, "to the maintenance of
the rights of the superior rustic than the moral sense and the self-interest
of their masters. Should the lords infringe the well-established rights of
their subjects, the latter had no court to appeal to and only God could
inflict punishment on the oppressors." "On the whole," says the same
writer, "serfdom appears as a characteristic corollary of feudalism."

SECULAR FEUDALISM 25

countries were the violent protests of an oppressed and
disinherited class against a tyranny which was half
contempt, half brutality — and all injustice. Their own
theoretical dependence on the favour of Heaven ought
perhaps to have taught the feudal magnates humility. In
point of fact it was either forgotten or, if remembered,
served to swell their pride. Their religion taught them that
all men have immortal souls, and are therefore equal in the
sight of God ; but they paid scant heed to its teaching. The
sense of power, the feeling of being able to dispose at will
of the lives and destinies of their fellow-men, was too strong
for them. The doctrine of human equality counted for
little in the eyes of men who were in a position to treat their
own fellow-citizens as the dirt beneath their feet. The gulf
which separated the rulers from the ruled was impassable
and unfathomable ; and in its depths the infinitude of the
human soul disappeared and was lost to thought.

This was no new departure in the history of mankind.
The strong had oppressed the weak, the rich had exploited
the poor, the upper classes had despised and held aloof from
the lower long before the days of feudalism. In the Graeco-
Roman world the slave market was a recognized institu-
tion ; and the slave was counted as a chattel, not as a human
being. And even the free proletariat were regarded by their
" betters " with aversion and contempt. When Horace
said —

Odi profanum vulgus et arceo

he was the spokesman of his class. But feudalism (which
came into the world after the abolition of the slave market)
by disfranchising the landless and making each landlord an
autocratic ruler in his own domain, went far towards en-
slaving the whole proletariat, including those who in the
days of slavery would have been free. At any rate it
tended to weaken the weak, to impoverish the poor, to
reduce the degraded to a lower depth of degradation. And
its general effect was, therefore, to intensify the ruthlessness
of the strong, the rapacity of the rich, and the pride and
aloofness of those who were highly placed.
These are sweeping statements which need to be freely

26 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

discounted ; but, as statements of general tendency, they
are, I think, correct. The feudal system has passed away,
but feudalism survives ; and in proportion to the strength
of its hold on a country is the arrogance of the upper classes
and their supercilious contempt for the lower. The brutality
of the discipline in the German army is part of the after-
math of Prussian feudalism, the attitude of the officer
towards his men being a faithful reproduction of the attitude
of the Prussian landlord-officer of the eighteenth century
towards the serfs whom he led to battle. In the Baltic
Provinces of Russia, when a German baron gives audience
to a tenant, he turns his back on the latter and looks out
of a window ; and when the tenant has said his say, the
baron, with his back still towards him, holds out his hand to
be kissed and so dismisses his visitor. In Austria, where
there is less brutality than in North Germany, but not less
feudal pride, the attitude of the nobility towards the rest
of the community is aptly set forth in Prince Windisch-
graetz's epigram : " Mankind begins with the barons."
These are extreme cases, but they help us to realize how the
nobles and knights in feudal times bore themselves towards
the rank and file of the people. Still more significant, how-
ever, because so much more widely spread, is the attitude
which the upper classes, even in democratic countries like
our own, instinctively adopt towards the lower. They
assume that the lower orders are by nature rough, rude,
brutal, boorish, coarse in their tastes and pleasures, inar-
tistic, unintellectual, incapable of refinement or culture.
They forget that for centuries feudalism gave the masses
the worst environment that could possibly be devised, and
that the conditions under which many of them live to-day,
now that the feudal baron has been succeeded by the
capitalist, are in some respects even worse than those which
prevailed in the Middle Ages. If they could consider the
matter without prejudice, they would realize that defects
which offend them in the lower orders are probably due to
the deadening pressure of an adverse environment rather
than to base or tainted blood. But so strongly are they
dominated by the tradition of their own inherent superi-
ority, that they assume, almost as a matter of course, that

SECULAR FEUDALISM 27

the bulk of their fellow men are of an inferior breed to
themselves.

This feeling is a legacy from feudal days. In itself offen-
sive and even anti-human, it is but a faint reflection of the
arrogance which the feudal lord drank in, one might almost
say, with his mother's milk. Now arrogance may be defined
as aggressive egoism. Or, as aggressive separatism. Or, as
aggressive individualism. What is essential in it is the
refusal of the individual to go out of himself into the larger
life of sympathy and love, to realize his oneness with his
kind. This refusal is whole-hearted and unreserved. The
arrogant man holds himself aloof, deliberately and defiantly,
from his fellow men. He may, indeed, identify himself with
his own caste or order ; but only because he prides himself
on bearing the hallmark with which his order stamps its
members. He may fight for the privileges and work for the
aggrandizement of his order ; but only because in so doing
he will be fighting for his own privileges and working for his
own aggrandizement. Even in his relations to his peers he
will be ready, when the opportunity comes, to break away
from them and play for his own hand. For the communal
sentiment, the feeling of unselfish, uncalculating devotion
to a common cause, is one which he does not understand.
His very loyalty to his leader is too often rooted in self-
interest. The Norman knights who fought at Senlac were
loyal to their Duke, but their chief motive to loyalty was
the promise of plunder. When a feudal monarch was
indolent or weak, the selfishness of the vassal lords was free
to assert itself, and the community was plunged into civil
strife and social chaos. In fine and in brief, the arrogant
man, whatever age he may belong to and whatever may be
the source of his arrogance, is at heart a self-centred indi-
vidualist. As such he is sick, though he does not know it,
with a mortal malady. If moral goodness is resolvable, as
in the last resort it surely is, into forgetfulness of self and
sympathy with others, arrogance, which is the direct
negation of those qualities, must be regarded as one of the
deadliest of moral defects ; and the social and political system
which could infect a whole section of the community, and
that the most exalted and conspicuous, with so anti-human

28 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

an attitude towards life, must be held to have betrayed the
cause of human progress.

If the feudal lord could have kept his arrogance to him-
self, the moral atmosphere of the community might not
have been poisoned by his influence. But he could not keep
it to himself. No man can keep his vices to himself. Moral
evil is always infectious ; and of all forms of moral evil the
most infectious is the arrogance of those who are highly
placed. If the feudal lord was there to rule and command,
he was also there to be envied by those beneath him, perhaps
to be admired, certainly to be imitated. The man who is
in a position to order life for a multitude of lesser men must
be presumed to have solved the problem of ordering life for
himself. If such a man, with all the advantages which
power, privilege, and property could give him, had not
attained to well-being, who could hope to reach that goal ?
But if he had attained to well-being, and if arrogance was
an effluence from that state of blessedness, were those who
looked up to him to blame for making him their model and
bearing themselves towards their underlings as he bore
himself towards them? Just as children instinctively
imitate their elders, believing them to be their betters, so
do men instinctively imitate those who are, or who are
supposed to be, on a higher level of life than themselves.

I have said that feudalism rent the community asunder
and interposed an unfathomable gulf between the rulers and
the ruled. The truth of this statement is not affected by the
obvious fact that in every organized society, whether feudal
or democratic, there are many social and administrative
grades, and that each of these is at once subordinate to
those above it and in a position to dominate those below it.
For what happens in the case of one who both rules and is
ruled is that the gulf of which I have spoken reappears, or
tends to reappear, in his own person and his own life. If
he belongs to a highly feudalized society, such as the Prus-
sian State or the German Army, the chances are that he
will be alternately servile and arrogant, that he will cringe
to-day and make up for it by bullying to-morrow. At any
rate, if arrogance is a prominent characteristic of those who
are in high places, it is pretty sure to descend, owing to our

SECULAR FEUDALISM 29

tendency to imitate what we look up to, from level to level
of the social pyramid, and to sink at last to the lowest level
of all ; for there is no one so lowly that he cannot some-
times, from some point of view, look down on others. We
have seen that in an ordinary English village there are
many distinct social grades, and that each of these looks
down on those beneath it and keeps itself aloof from them
" in society." It is probable that on the lower social levels
the sense of superiority and aloofness seldom has the
strength of undiluted arrogance. Nevertheless the distilled
essence of arrogance, however diluted it may be, is always
in it.

While arrogance is descending from level to level, a
counter vice is ascending to meet and interpenetrate it —
the vice of the weak and oppressed, servility. And not only
does each of these characteristic vices interpenetrate its
opposite, but it even ascends or descends, as the case may
be, to the very source from which its opposite springs. Just
as arrogance descends from level to level till it reaches the
very base of the social pyramid, so does servility ascend
from level to level till it rises at last to the very apex. The
servility of courtiers is proverbial ; and the servility of a
court favourite to his royal master is only equalled by his
arrogance towards the rest of the world.

It is in self-defence rather than from inclination that men
become servile. The confession of inferiority which is im-
plicit in the servile attitude is not congenial to the natural
man. But if servility is more excusable than arrogance,
because less gratuitous and more obligatory, its conse-
quences are not less deadly. The ultimate basis of all right
thinking and right doing is the conviction that things are
what they are, not what they seem to be or are said to be.
Servility abandons this fundamental conviction in favour
of the assumption that things are whatever authority may
affirm them to be. In other words, it abandons the belief
in, and therefore the quest of, the intrinsically real. But
the intrinsically real is the same as the ideal ; and the ideal
controls and finally determines all our moral standards and
tests. The servile man externalizes his ideals, and in doing
so externalizes his standards of worth and tests of right and

30 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

wrong. His aim is to satisfy a master, not to satisfy his own
higher self ; and the approval of a master, not the " inward
light " of the soul, is the sunshine of his life.

From externalism to materialism there is but a single
step. I have said that the servile man externalizes his
ideals. It would be more correct to say that he de-idealizes
them. The ideal is nothing if it is not inward and spiritual.
When it is externalized it becomes one of a crowd of com-
peting and fluctuating ends. But the ideal is always the
One behind the Many. Therefore, when it is externalized
it ceases to be. And when idealism dies out of a man's life,
materialism takes its place. The pursuit of outward ends
becomes all-absorbing. Material possessions and the things
that such possessions enable us to secure — position, power,
privilege, pleasures, comforts, luxuries, and the rest — come
to be regarded as the only prizes that are worth winning.

In feudal times materialism infected the whole community
from its apex to its base. If servility was essentially selfish,
the servile could at least plead that examples of selfishness
were constantly set them in high places, that wherever
they looked, self-seeking seemed to be the main business of
life. For with feudal arrogance came rapacity, and with
arrogance rapacity descended from social grade to grade.
The feudal lord was arrogant, brutally and cruelly arro-
gant, because he had great possessions ; and his desire for
possessions was insatiable. Pride in possessions, pride in
owning what others lack, is a poor kind of pride ; but of all
kinds it is the most common. Its presence is a proof of the
growing externalization of life and the consequent debase-
ment of our standards. The possession of inward goods—
the " fruits of the spirit," the goods which are potentially
common to all men — can never be a source of pride. Indeed
the possession of such goods is incompatible with pride ; for
the infinitude of the inward ideal humbles a man even while
it inspires and transfigures him, and the presence of pride
is therefore a proof of spiritual destitution. The possession
of outward goods is a source of pride because there are not
enough of this world's goods to go round, and those who
have more than their share are, in that respect and to that
extent, superior to their fellow men,

SECULAR FEUDALISM 31

Under the feudal system the ownership of land gave the
owner political power over his tenants. No system could
have been devised which would so greatly enhance the
attractive force of property or so greatly stimulate rapacity.

And when the feudal system passed away, and political
authority and responsibility ceased to be inherent in the
ownership of land, the association of power, position, and
privilege with property — not with landed property only,
but with property of all kinds — remained. The consequence
was that the economic changes which succeeded the decay
of the feudal system, far from undermining the existing
materialism, did but serve to strengthen and broaden its
basis. And as from externalism to materialism, so from
materialism to individualism there is but a single step.
When I say that of this world's goods there can never be
enough to go round, I mean that the desire for such goods
grows with the possession of them, that the richer we
become the higher our standard of luxury and even of com-
fort rises, and that therefore, for those who seek happiness
in material prosperity, there can never be enough goods to
go round. It follows that in a materialized society there
will always be a scramble for possessions. But a scramble
for possessions is of inner necessity an orgy of individualism.
" Each for himself and the devil take the hindmost," must
needs be the dominant motto. The individual may indeed
co-operate with others. But his motive in co-operating will
be fundamentally selfish. He will help to enrich others in
order that he may enrich himself. In the general scramble
for possessions the servile will play their humble parts.
Servility is always dictated by self-interest. The poor man
is not necessarily servile. A millionaire may, for purposes
of his own, be more servile than the meanest of serfs. The
end and aim of servility is to win the favour of the rich and
powerful, and so secure material benefits at the cost of self-
respect. Now what was most deadly in the feudal system
was that, as it gave a great stimulus to arrogance, so it made
servility almost compulsory. The serf was virtually depen-
dent on his master for the bare means of subsistence. If he
did not defer to him, if he did not show him all the outward
signs of servility, he was in danger of starving. And when

32 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

he emerged from serfdom, it was only by deferring to the
rich and powerful, by trying — by whatever means — to win
their favour and their patronage, that he could hope to rise,
however slightly, in the scale of comfort. But in trying to
win the favour of the rich and powerful he found himself
competing with others, who, like himself, were in a more or
less dependent position ; and in order to meet their competi-
tion he had to fight vigorously and unscrupulously for his
own hand. And it was not only for a rise in the scale of
comfort, it was not only for an addition to his material
possessions, that he competed so fiercely with all who
crossed his path. It was also for admission to a higher
social grade. In each grade in turn, the able and ambitious
men, the men who might have done most for their fellows
had they been content to identify their interests with those
of the community, were tempted by the prevailing condi-
tions to devote their talents to lifting themselves to a higher
level — higher in respect of the three great essentials, pro-
perty, position, and power — than that on which they had
been born. To " rise in the w^orld " on the shoulders of
one's fellow men, to win the right to be arrogant, to be
looked up to and envied, to look down on others with
contempt and self-satisfaction, — this was the supreme prize
which attracted ambition and stimulated effort, this was
the end and aim of the " competitive selfishness "with which
feudalism infected every grade of the community, from the
king down to the serf.

It is true that counteracting influences have not been
wanting. Wherever the feudal system was superimposed
on tribal organization, the tribal sentiment of disinterested
loyalty long survived ; and the purer the tribalism and the
less it had been modified by the reaction of Roman ideals
and influences on the tribal invaders of the Empire, the
stronger was the sentiment of loyalty and the longer the
period of its survival. But from the beginning of the feudal
era it was exposed to the undermining influence of that
greed for property which is inherent in feudalism. And
when the feudal system had passed away, when the capit-
alist had begun to take the place of the feudal baron, the
ascendency of cupidity over loyalty had been securely,

SECULAR FEUDALISM 33

though of course not fully or finally, established. Thence-
forth cupidity, materialistic individualism, the greed of the
individual for property and its inherent advantages, swept
through society like the infection of a plague. The rich
strove — each for himself — to make themselves richer. The.
poor, vmen they were not struggling for the bare means of
subsistence, strove — each for himself — to raise their standard
of comfort. Out of the consequent state of social
chaos there emerged at last a principle of order, which was
also, as it happened, a principle of strife. With the advent
of the capitalist had come another change which was des-
tined to have disastrous and far-reaching consequences. In
feudal times the ownership of property carried with it duties
and responsibilities, political and social, as well as rights
and privileges. With the passing of the feudal system, the
duties and responsibilities ceased to be obligatory, but the
rights and privileges remained. It is true that a sense of
moral obligation, sustained by and partly based on custom,
succeeded the sense of legal obligation ; but that too
gradually passed away. In the former part of the nine-
teenth century, the typical property-owner, whether the
estate was personal or real, had no sense of moral obligation
to his underlings, and no sense of responsibility to society
for their welfare : whatever he did for them was pure
charity. If he did nothing, and his conscience accused him,
he sheltered himself behind the religious fatalism of the age,
as set forth in the familiar lines —

The rich man in his castle,

The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high or lowly,

And ordered their estate,

and claimed the right to do whatever he pleased with his
own. To dispute that right was radicalism, socialism,
anarchism. The extension of the sphere of his legal obliga-
tion was the only remedy for his anti-social individualism ;
and that end was fought for by organized Labour and
gradually won. How far was the limitation of the rights
of property to be carried ? This question is still in dispute.
L'appStit vient en mangeant. The more Labour won, the
more it demanded. As its pressure became stronger, Capital,

34 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

alarmed for its own security, began to organize itself for
purposes of defence and aggression ; and trade unions, at one
end of the economic scale, were met by trusts, cartels and
other combinations at the other. In each case the individual
co-operated with his fellows in order to protect his own
interests, in order to aggrandize himself. The outcome of
this dual movement was an organized war between Labour
and Capital which had so far developed as to imperil the
stability of the whole structure of Western civilization,
when the Great War, provoked by the ambition and rapacity
of the nation which is the last stronghold of mediaeval
feudalism, interrupted its progress and threatened civiliza-
tion from another quarter.

We can now see what moral and social havoc has been
wrought by feudalism. The arrogance with which it
infected the landowning classes, and the servility with
which it infected the landless, may seem at first sight to
be mutually exclusive vices, the one being the vice of a
" master," the other of " the herd." In reality they have
everything that is vital in common, and are seldom dis-
joined, being in fact the face and reverse of the same
tendency of human nature. That tendency is in the first
place externalism, the tendency to seek for the real and the
good outside oneself instead of in one's own soul. Then it
appears as materialism, the tendency to ascribe intrinsic
reality to outward things and therefore intrinsic value to
material possessions, and to desire the latter accordingly.
Then, as individualism, the tendency to take part in the
general scramble for material possessions, and to play for
one's own hand in doing so. Then, as egoism, the tendency
to separate oneself from one's kind, to live for one's own
aggrandizement, and to identify this separated, this self-
centred personality with the true self. What we call
arrogance is an effluence from the egoism of a " master."
What we call servility is an effluence from the egoism of a
" serf." But as there are few of us who are not at once
masters and serfs, he who is arrogant to-day may well be
servile to-morrow ; and in respect of their ultimate origin
and their inner meaning, the two vices are, I repeat, not two
but one. By withdrawing from the people political power

SECULAR FEUDALISM 35

and political responsibility — which mean in the last resort
power to order, and responsibility for the ordering of, one's
own life — by associating these prerogatives with the posses-
sion of property, and concentrating them in the hands of auto-
cratic rulers and their underlings, feudalism interposed an
impassable gulf, first in the life of the community and then in
each individual life, between the ruler and the ruled, be-
tween the will to power and the instinct to live. It thus
destroyed the unity and inward harmony of the human
spirit, and based its scheme of life on distrust of human
nature and therefore on an appeal to man's selfishness, to
the hopes and fears of his lower self.

We are trying to discover the secret of happiness. With
this end in view, we are trying to get to the bottom of our
" present discontent." The social system under which we
are living is a survival from feudal times, and is still deeply
infected with the spirit of feudalism. It is to the ascendency,
then, of this spirit that our present discontent must be
partly due. If feudalism has failed, as it certainly has, to
make man happy (our own unhappiness being the aftermath
of its failure), the reason is that by associating power,
position, and privileges and opportunities of various kinds,
not to speak of comfort, luxury, and pleasure, with the
possession of property, it has taught us, as no other political
system or social scheme of life has done, to lay up treasures
for ourselves " where rust and moth doth corrupt and where
thieves break through and steal." " For where our treasure
is there will our heart be also " ; and the heart of man
cannot find permanent happiness in material possessions or
even in those " good things of life " with which such posses-
sions endow their possessor. A world in which nine men
out of ten want what they cannot have, and the tenth man,
who has what he wants, is dissatisfied with it, is not in a
state of well-being ; and where well-being is lacking, happi-
ness, which is the sense of well-being, has not been won.1

But feudalism has done more than breed discontent among
rich and poor. Obscurer and more subtle forces have been

1 I have not forgotten that to-day we are supposed to be democratic,
not feudal. In point of fact we are very far from having attained to
democracy. The explanation of this is that we have tried to build a
durable democratic structure on a feudal basis.

36 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

at work in it. By basing its scheme of life on distrust of
human nature, by withdrawing from the masses powers and
responsibilities which are the prerogatives of citizenship,
by substituting dependence on embodied authority for
reliance on a man's own energies and resources, by under-
rating and even despising knowledge and enlightenment,
by acquiescing in the claim of the Church to dominate
thought and conduct, secular feudalism went far towards
paralyzing the higher activities of the human spirit and arrest-
ing the growth of the soul. And the sinister influences
which it set in motion are still active. This is an aspect of
the tragedy of feudalism on which I have as yet said little,
but on which, as we shall now see, there is much to say.

CHAPTER IV

SPIRITUAL FEUDALISM

IN secular feudalism the pressure of authority on the
individual was, directly, political and social ; indirectly
— and yet predominatingly — moral. For all the other
aspects of man's life react upon his morals ; and moral
conduct makes or mars the man. In spiritual feudalism
the direct pressure of authority on the individual was
spiritual, mental, and moral ; but its direct pressure on his
morals, strong though it was, counted for less than the
indirect pressure which it exercised through its ascendency
over his spirit and his mind.

How did it gain this ascendency ? As the first step
towards answering this question, let us compare and con-
trast the religious with the secular world in the days when
both were under feudal control. As in the secular world the
feudal spirit generated arrogance in the higher social grades
and servility in the lower, so in the religious world the same
spirit — for at heart it was the same — generated dogmatism
in the professional interpreters of the oracles of God, and
docility, which easily became ultra-docility, in the rank and
file of the faithful. And as in the secular world arrogance
descended from the highest social grade to the lowest, while
servility ascended from the lowest social grade to the highest,
so in the religious world the faithful were dogmatic, from the
head of the hierarchy down to the youngest catechumen,
and docile, from the youngest catechumen up to the head
of the hierarchy. But though the two worlds had so much
in common, there was an important difference between
them. In the secular world the serf was not taught or even
expected to be arrogant. That was a lesson which he had
to learn for himself. But in the religious world the docile

38 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

were deliberately and systematically taught to be dogmatic.
Indeed it may be said without exaggeration that dogmatism
was the first and the last lesson which the docile catechumen
had to learn. What the Church taught him was the truth
of things as received from God ; and as it was his privilege
to possess the truth, so it was his duty to proclaim it as the
truth, and to maintain it, if necessary, against disbelief or
doubt. So too in the secular world the feudal lord was
arrogant from pride of place, and servile — if at all — re-
luctantly, and only from motives of self-interest. In the
religious world, on the contrary, as the humblest of the
faithful was a dogmatic defender of the faith, so the Sove-
reign Pontiff himself was the docile recipient of the truth as
delivered to him by his Divine Overlord.

From this we can see that the relation between dogmatism
and docility in the one world was far more intimate than
that between arrogance and servility in the other. The two
antitheses had much — almost everything — in common ; and
in each of them the upward and downward movement
which is of the essence of a true antithesis was controlled
and limited by a fundamental unity. But whereas in the
secular world arrogance could exist apart from servility,
and servility apart from arrogance, in the religious world
dogmatism was always and of inner necessity docile, and
docility was always and of inner necessity dogmatic, each
tendency in turn being actually, and not merely potentially,
the other self of its opposite.

For this vital difference between the two authorities and
the two worlds there were no doubt many reasons. But
there was one which at once suggests itself. When Catholic
Christianity was at the meridian of its power and glory, the
religious world was, what the secular world was not, and
had never been — an organic whole. In the secular world
there were, as we have seen, many independent kingdoms
and sub-kingdoms ; for the Holy Roman Empire \vas an
idea which had never materialized, the so-called Emperor
not being master even in his own domain ; and in the absence
of a visible overlord to serve as the connecting link between
earth and heaven, the feudal lord found it easy to persuade
himself that the might of his arms was his right to rule,

SPIRITUAL FEUDALISM 39

and easy to forget that he owed homage for his throne to
the King of kings. But the Church, though it embraced all
the secular states of Christendom, and though its children
spoke a hundred different tongues, was a single community,
owning one visible Head — the Pope, and one invisible Head
— the Son of God. And though its constitution was typically
feudal, authority descending upon it from above and being
transmitted by a process of devolution from grade to grade,
the Church was, in theory at least, a democratic community,
in the sense that all who belonged to it, as the possessors of
immortal souls, were equal in the sight of God. For these
reasons, and also because the Church existed in order to
secure salvation — the most precious of all boons — for each
of its members, the loyal Churchman had a feeling of
devotion to and identity with the society to which he be-
longed, which had no equivalent in the secular world, even
in those communities, in which the tribal tradition still
lingered and the tribal sentiment of devotion to the com-
munity was still strong.

For though feudalism was in a sense the negation of
tribalism, the combination of feudal organization with
tribal sentiment was by no means rare in the Middle Ages,
and still survives, as Europe knows to her cost, in Germany
as a whole, and in particular in the Prussian State. But
nowhere was the fusion of these opposites so complete as in
the Catholic Church. If the organization of the Church was
uncompromisingly feudal, if its theory of the soul was pro-
foundly democratic, churchmanship itself, regarded as a
sentiment, was the apotheosis of tribalism, transfiguring
most of its virtues and exaggerating most of its defects. So
completely, indeed, did the loyal churchman identify himself
with the Church, that he made its very personality his own
and accepted responsibility for all that it said and did and
was. If the Church was dogmatic, each of its members was
dogmatic. If the Church was ultra-docile, each of its
members was ultra-docile. If the Church was intolerant,
each of its members was intolerant. If the Church forbade
the exercise of private judgment, if it persecuted heresy, if
it virtually excommunicated the greater part of the human
race, each of its members did the same.

40 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

We can now see why the pressure of authority on the
individual in the religious world could be, and so often was,
overwhelmingly strong. Sharing as he did in the corporate
life of the Church, the churchman neither resisted nor
resented the pressure of its authority, but on the contrary
welcomed it, invited it, and surrendered himself to its
influence. In fine, the pressure of the community on the
individual was the pressure of the individual on himself.
This meant that its influence on him, for good or for evil,
was far stronger than it would have been if he had accepted
it unwillingly and only under compulsion. What form did
that influence take ? The antithesis of dogmatism to
docility, however much it may seem to efface itself, will
always hold good. So let us think of the churchman as the
willing victim of dogmatic pressure in spiritual things, and
then ask ourselves how such pressure would be likely to
affect his character and his life ?

Let us first consider the general policy of the Church.
While rejecting the Jewish Law as a scheme of conduct, the
Christian Church remained unswervingly true to it as a
philosophy of life. And what the Jewish Law had done to
the human spirit, the Christian Church continued to do.
It substituted guidance from without for guidance from
within, — guidance into the paths of " Right Knowledge "
and " Right Conduct." It explained the Universe to the
believer ; and, as difficulties arose, it interpreted to him its
own explanation. It provided him with a scheme of life ;
and this too it interpreted, theoretically in its casuistry,
practically through the confessional. In each case it did
for him what he ought to have tried to do for himself. In
explaining the Universe to him and requiring him to accept
its explanation as final, it usurped the function of his reason.
In providing him with a scheme of life and working that
scheme out for him in detail, it usurped the function of his
conscience. It might indeed have given guidance without
usurping the function of either organ. But because it gave
authoritative guidance — which, indeed, believing itself to be
supernaturally guided, it was bound to do — and because its
secret desire for domination was met and matched bv the

SPIRITUAL FEUDALISM 41

believer's secret desire for direction, it carried guidance so far
as to arrest what it set out to foster — the growth of the soul.
When I say that the Church usurped the function, first of
reason and then of conscience, I do not wish to suggest that
its procedure was the same in both cases. Its proscription
of conscience, though logically predestined, was indirect and
unintentional. It was on reason, and, so far as it knew, on
reason only, that it laid its ban. But if it imagined, as it
seems to have done, that freedom of conscience was com-
patible with the suppression or enslavement of reason, its
psychology was gravely at fault. We are apt to assume that
reason is a dry, hard, impersonal, coldly logical faculty,
which exists for the sole purpose of examining positive
evidence and drawing logical conclusions. Reason is this,
and no more than this, when its subject matter admits of
such treatment. But as its true function is to throw light,
by whatever means, on things in general, to understand
them, to explain them, it must needs suit its procedure and
even its character to its subject matter, if the sphere of its
work is not to be unduly restricted. And in proportion as
its subject matter gains in comprehensiveness and com-
plexity ; in proportion as our experience of it becomes
individualistic and emotional ; in proportion as it tends to
make a direct and personal appeal to each of us and to take
a fresh shade of colour from each percipient mind, — the
coldly logical method of investigation becomes, for obvious
reasons, less and less appropriate. Finally, when we
exercise ourselves in the greatest of all matters, when we
try to understand and explain the Universe, the impersonal,
dispassionate treatment of a subject-matter which over-
whelms with its infinitude and blinds with its excess of
light becomes impossible. It follows that if reason is to
deal with these august problems, it must ally itself with the
intuitive faculties which culminate in creative imagination
—insight, sympathy, taste, tact, conscience, faith, aspira-
tion, and the like — ally itself with these, take them up into
itself, assimilate them to itself, interpenetrate them and be
interpenetrated by them. This means that, on the highest
level of thought, the soul itself, in its unity and totality, is
our only available instrument of research, reason being but

42 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

a name for the soul when it is trying to understand and
explain ; and that therefore to forbid a man to use his
reason for the quest of ultimate truth, is to paralyze his
higher activities, to thwart his instinctive, though possibly
latent, desire to live to his higher self.

The proof that on these exalted levels of thought reason
is intuitive and emotional rather than coldly logical and
dispassionately impartial lies in the fact that in banning
reason the Church, wittingly or unwittingly (probably the
latter), struck a deadly blow at the intuitional side of human
nature. Had they not been unduly interfered with, the
intuitional faculties would have continued to occupy them-
selves with great matters under the general supervision of
reason, — supervision which in such matters is informal,
sympathetic, penetrative, persuasive, and ready to adapt
itself to each individual case. When the Church took over
the duties and responsibilities of reason, it was probably
quite willing that the intuitional faculties should continue
their activities. But here a difficulty arose which proved
to be insurmountable. It was against the claim of A, the
individual churchman, to think out the great problems of
life for himself that the Church had protested. In dis-
allowing that claim, it made itself responsible for providing
A with the true solution of his problems. And not A only.
It had also to provide solutions for B, C, D, E, and all the
other members of its community ; and in defiance of the
fact that no two of those members would, if left to them-
selves, have looked at the problem from precisely the same
point of view, it had to provide one and the same solution
or set of solutions for all of them. It thus found itself com-
mitted to the assumption that the innermost and ultimate
truth of things could be set forth in human speech and
taught as one teaches formulas in mathematics or chemistry.
In accepting this assumption as a basic truth, the Church
reduced within finite limits what is intrinsically infinite and
unattainable, and therefore forbade by implication, not
reason only, but all those human faculties — conscious, sub-
conscious, unconscious or nearly unconscious — which reach
out into the infinite, to occupy themselves with the greatest
of all their appropriate problems ; and in thus forbidding

SPIRITUAL FEUDALISM 43

them to energize at their highest level, it atrophied their
finer nerves and muscles, it arrested or, at best, retarded
and stunted their growth.

The Church said to the people : " The truth of things is
in my keeping. I will teach it to you, and you will dis-
believe it at the peril of your souls." And to this demand
for obedience in thought and word, as well as in deed, the
people were for many centuries content to say " Amen."
Now the man who believes whatever he is told to believe
has both ceased to trust and ceased to use his intuition.
And he has ceased to trust it and ceased to use it just where
he has most need of it, — in dealing with the great problems
and the great issues of life, matters with regard to which the
impersonal methods of positive science are out of place. If
his intuition were really at work, the chances are that he
would find something to criticize and perhaps to dissent
from in some at least of the doctrines which he is required
to believe. For quot homines, tot sententice. Opinions
vary from man to man. So do primary assumptions. So
do outlooks on life. When a theory of things which pro-
fesses to explain the fundamental mysteries of existence is
accepted in its entirety by millions of so-called believers,
we may be sure that it is accepted on its merits by very few
of them. This means that for most of them intuition has
ceased to work ; and the reason why it has ceased to work
is that it has been deprived of the co-ordinating, organizing,
and therefore vivifying influence of reason, which is to the
intuitional faculties what the General Staff is to an army
in the field. This shows how vain it is to suppose that, when
one of the vital organs of the soul has ceased to operate, the
rest of them can continue to discharge their normal func-
tions, and the soul in its totality continue to live a healthy life.
As well might it be supposed that the action of the lungs
can be stopped without deranging the other vital organs and
without imperilling the well-being of the body as a whole.

And though the suppression of reason in the sphere of
speculative thought interfered primarily with the higher
intuitions, the mischief that it wrought did not end there.
The whole intuitional side of man's being above the physical
level was adversely affected by the dogmatic attitude of the

44 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

Church. If a man was not to trust his own nature when
the supreme problems of life pressed for solution, for what
purpose or purposes was he to trust it ? In other words,
for which, if any, of the problems of life could authorita-
tive guidance be dispensed with ? It was difficult in any
case to delimit the respective spheres of obedience and
initiative ; and the growing ambition of the Church, its
desire to dominate the life of the believer more and more
completely, increased that difficulty by tending to lower
the level at which the line of demarcation was to be drawn.1
To disparage self-reliance where the need for it is greatest
is to undermine it in greater or less degree on all the planes
of man's activity. And the man who ceases to rely on
himself when he is in difficulties will get out of the way of
using his judgment and his insight, and will thus tend to
atrophy through disuse those faculties and all the senses
and sub-senses which they employ when they are at work.
What the Church did, then, when it forbade reason to
attempt the solution of the greatest of all problems, was to
deaden sensibility in general and spiritual sensibility in
particular ; to deaden the souls' capacity for evolving
special senses in response to the pressure of special environ-
ments ; to deaden the master faculty — half insight and half
judgment — by means of which we steer our way through
the difficulties, perplexities, and intricacies of life. The
Church did not mean to do this — its quarrel was with reason
only — but it did it none the less. Now of all the forms
which spiritual sensibility takes, the most important is
Conscience, partly because the sphere of its work environs
all of us, partly because — as the result of this — it is a sense
with which all men are endowed, but chiefly because ac-
cording to the way in which it functions, and the use which
is made of it, so does a man shape or misshape his character
and direct or misdirect the growth of his soul. How, then,
did conscience fare under the regime of ecclesiastical
feudalism ? How could it be expected to fare when its

1 So aggressive indeed was the Church in its encroachments on the
freedom of the human spirit, that, as we shall presently see, it was only
by retiring into the world of physical nature and confining its activities
to the problems of physical science, that reason was able — and even then
only after a bitter struggle — to escape from ecclesiastical control.

SPIRITUAL FEUDALISM 45

theoretical problems were solved for it by the doctor of
casuistry in his study, and its practical problems by the
priest in the confessional box ? The more a man's life is
ordered for him, the less he will be able to order it for him-
self. If you fence a man in with commands and prohibi-
tions, if you map out for him, not only the broad highways
of his conduct, but also its byways and footpaths, you must
not be surprised if he gets to rely on you for moral guidance
and ceases to rely on his own sense of right and wrong.

But the Church did more than weaken conscience by
relieving it of the necessity for exercising itself. It also
sophisticated it : it obscured its vision and perverted its
judgment. For, by making obedience to itself one of the
first of virtues— obedience to external authority being in-
trinsically neither a virtue nor a vice — it upset and threw
into confusion the whole of that natural scale of moral
values which it is the function of conscience to discover and
apply. By comparison with the supreme heinousness of the
sin of disobedience, the difference, in respect of moral
gravity, between this and that act of disobedience was
always tending to efface itself.

The result was that, under the pressure of ecclesiastical
authority, conscience tended to lose that sense of propor-
tion which is of the essence of healthy intuition (in whatever
sphere it may operate) and, in the absence of which, moral
sensibility, losing touch with what is vital and essential,
either dies out into moral callousness or degenerates into
morbid conscientiousness. The man who could not see for
himself that sins of anger, greed, and lust (for example)
were more serious offences than (for example) neglect to
fast on the prescribed fast days, had lost his insight into the
facts and laws of the moral world.1

1 I do not forget that the Catholic Church has always distinguished
between mortal and venial sin. But such a distinction is difficult to draw,
and, when drawn, is almost certain to mislead. To classify sins without
regard to motives and circumstances is to externalize morality. And
motives and circumstances differ so widely in different cases, that, if due
regard is paid to them, classification becomes impossible, what is a mortal
sin (for example) in the case of A being a venial sin in the case of B, who
committed the same offence, but from a totally different motive and in
totally different circumstances. In any case, if sins are to be classified,
the classification must be personal and informal, and must be made by
the individual conscience, not by a central authority.

46 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

And the chances are that the deterioration of his moral
sense would carry him even further than this. He would
find it easier to substitute fish for meat on fast days than
to subdue the passions of anger, greed, and lust. And as the
Church would lay special stress on the duty of submission
to its own special ordinances (which it regarded as of quasi-
divine authority) he would be exposed to a two-fold tempta-
tion to attach less importance to the commands which had
a broadly human than to those which had a merely ecclesi-
astical sanction ; and, like the Pharisee who paid " tithe
of mint and anise and cummin " and " omitted the weightier
matters of the Law — judgment, mercy and faith," he would
probably end by thinking more seriously of the ceremonial
peccadillo than of the moral offence. Here, as elsewhere,
the baser currency, when placed on a par with the sterling,
would tend to drive the latter out of circulation.

Finally, and above all, when external authority pressed
heavily on morals, correctness of outward action would neces-
sarily tend to count for more than purity of inward motive.
Indeed in extreme cases the former would count for everything
and the latter would count for nothing. Where this was
possible, the moral intuition had obviously ceased to work.

When we remind ourselves what are the constituent
elements of a healthy conscience, how largely imagination
and sympathy enter into it, as well as insight and judgment,
we shall be able to realize how grave an injury was done to
the intuitional side of human nature when the Church,
having told men what they were to believe, and compelled
them to believe it, obedient to the logic of the situation
which it had created, went on to tell them in ever fuller
detail what they were to do, and to insist on their doing it.
Nor did the fact that, in thus tyrannizing over the human
spirit, the Church was responding to the average man's
secret demand for spiritual direction, lessen the mischievous
influences that were unloosed by its actions. On the con-
trary, it doubled them. For the average man's demand for
spiritual direction generated in the leaders of the Church a
desire for spiritual domination ; and each of these tenden-
cies— the one passively and the other actively harmful —
unceasingly acted on and was reacted on by the other.

SPIRITUAL FEUDALISM 47

While intuition was thus degenerating under the sinister
influence of dogmatic pressure, what had become of reason ?
Having been compulsorily divorced from intuition it had
either taken service under the Church and devoted itself to
" sciences," such as theology and casuistry, which are based,
in no small measure, on a confusion between words and
things ; or it had retired to a sphere of work in which it
might hope for freedom from ecclesiastical control, — the
sphere of material Nature, the sphere of physical science.
The evidence of the intuitional faculties, being largely
personal and emotional, can never be conclusive, in the
strict sense of that word. I mean by this that those to
whom it does not appeal will always be free to reject it.
But the evidence of the bodily senses, which, as Ruskin says,
are " constant and common, shared by all and perpetual in
all," and which are therefore organs of universal consent,
is irresistible ; and the reasoning which is based on that
evidence, if its own procedure is correct, is not to be gain-
said. It might have been thought that in that sphere of
work reason would not have been interfered with by " au-
thority." But the appetite for domination grows by being
indulged ; and having subdued to its will the domains of
belief and morals, the Church sought to extend its empire
into the region of positive knowledge. Here however it met
with effective resistance. The claim of external authority
to deduce scientific truths from the text of sacred scriptures,
and to set aside conclusions which were based on observa-
tion and experiment and had been verified by an appeal to
experience, could not be permanently enforced. E pur si
muovc is an argument to which, in the last resort, there is
no answer.

After a protracted struggle which, while it lasted, brought
intellectual development almost to a standstill, reason won
and made secure the freedom which it sought. But, by
comparison with what it had left behind, the freedom that
it won was the freedom of an exile, not of an enfranchised
citizen. The spirit of man had to pay a heavy price for the
partial emancipation of reason from the despotism of the
Church. The intuitional faculties, abandoned by reason,
had to bear unaided the deadening pressure of autocratic

48 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

authority ; and reason, confining its activities for the most
part to one plane or aspect of Nature, and surrendering, as
an outlawed exile, the remaining planes to the theologian
and the priest, lowered itself to the level of its subject-
matter, and became unequal to the task of dealing with the
master problems of life. And now that it is free to return
to its forsaken home and take up again the high task of
interpreting the Universe, — instead of allying itself with
intuition and going forth with it on the greatest of all
adventures, it either renounces its heritage in the name of
agnosticism, or tries to no purpose to bring the inner mys-
teries of the Universe within the compass of scientific
method. The word rationalism, as it is used to-day, connotes
distrust of intuition not less than antipathy to supernatur-
alism ; and the rationalist is so far from understanding the
meaning and purpose of intuition that he is apt to hold it
responsible for the vagaries of religious belief. This divorce
of reason from intuition has had calamitous consequences
which have not yet worked themselves out. Which has
been the greater of the two great evils that it has wrought,
the despiritualizing of reason or the derationalizing of
intuition — the degradation of reason to the level of induc-
tive logic, or the degradation of intuition to the level of
blind faith — it would be hard to say. What the future may
have in store for us in the way of a reinterpretation of
Christianity or a new treatment of the problems of philoso-
phy, I cannot guess. But I am very sure that until reason
and intuition have been reconciled and become fellow-
workers in the quest of ideal truth, there will be no lasting
happiness for the human spirit.

The theme of this chapter is one on which volumes might
be written. I can do no more than touch on one or two of
its more vital aspects. I have spoken of the influence of
ecclesiastical feudalism on character and mentality. I will
now consider its influence on conduct, on the bearing of
man towards his fellow men. The aim of the Church was
to control the head-springs of man's inner life. In this aim
it succeeded only too well, chiefly because man shrank, as
he still shrinks, with something akin to terror, from the

SPIRITUAL FEUDALISM 49

mystery of his own inmost self ; and, fearing lest its head-
springs should send down the channel of his daily life a
sudden and devastating flood which he would be unable to
regulate, was more than willing that they should be placed
under strict control. But to control the inner life from
without is to externalize it ; and to externalize it is to
devitalize it. For in losing its inwardness it loses its
identity ; and therefore, as the life of man's life, it ceases
to be. It is with the social consequences of this change in
the centre of gravity of man's existence that I am now
concerned. How well the Church did the work that it took
in hand is proved by the fact that in the religious, as in the
secular world, the pressure of feudal authority on the human
spirit led, through externalism, to materialism, individ-
ualism, and egoism, and thus went far towards de-socializing
and even de-humanizing man's life.

Let us trace the steps in this sinister process. If the
Church was to secure obedience, it must be in a position to
promise rewards to the faithful and to threaten pains and
penalties to the rebellious. Such promises and such threats
it made freely ; and it was able to make them the more
freely because both the rewards and the pains and penalties
were to be in another world, and another life. Did this
mean that they were spiritual, not material ? Alas, no.
External rewards and external punishments are necessarily
material ; and the desire for the former and the fear of the
latter are necessarily materialistic. We cannot get away
from this. We may etherealize our Heaven as much as we
please. We may even try to etherealize our Hell. We may
transplant them both to other and wholly mysterious parts
of the Universe. We may project them into other and
wholly mysterious cycles of time. But so long as we think
of them as outside ourselves and outside our present lives,
instead of as states of the soul, states which we may take
with us into other worlds and other lives, but only because
they are ours here and now ; so long as we are virtuous for
the sake of what we shall enjoy or from the fear of what we
may suffer, instead of for the sake of virtue itself and its
inevitable reaction on the soul, — we are materialists at
heart : and though our lives may be correct, as measured
R

50 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

by outward standards, our ideals are perverted and our
outlook on life is wrong.

That the ethics of official Christianity are materialistic
at heart is proved by the fact that the fear of Hell fire has
always counted for more in the moral life of Christendom
than the hope of Heaven. When the power of the Church
was greatest, the fear of Hell fire, overhanging man's life
like a lurid storm-cloud, was the motive by which the
Christian was chiefly swayed. And it is a motive which
still sways the faithful in all Catholic lands. If you will go
into an Irish church during a mission service, or into a
Jesuit seminary when' the seminarists are receiving their
last exhortation, you will probably find that fear of Hell is
the motive to which the preacher makes his most impas-
sioned appeal. The reason why the fear of Hell outweighs
the hope of Heaven is that imagination, which is largely
sensuous, can picture the fires of a Hell which resists our
attempts to etherealize it, but cannot picture the joys of a
highly etherealized Heaven. The flesh shrinks with terror
from the prospect of intense, undying, quasi-physical
torture ; whereas the more we etherealize the joys of Heaven,
the more monotonous and therefore the less desirable do
they seem, so that for many minds the prospect of never-
ending bliss does not materially differ from the prospect of
never-ending ennui. Hence it is that escape from eternal
punishment is the only aspect of eternal happiness which
the ordinary mind can realize. Let Heaven be what it may.
If only the menace of Hell can be averted, the believer will
feel that he has saved his soul alive.

I have said that churchmanship, as a sentiment, was the
apotheosis of tribalism. The statement is, I think, substan-
tially true. But the tribesman's devotion to the tribe
differed from the churchman's devotion to the Church in one
important respect. The final end of the tribesman's action
was the well-being of the tribe. The final end of the church-
man's action was his own individual salvation. In his
devotion to the tribe the tribesman forgot himself. It is
true that the ruin of the tribe would have involved his own
ruin. But that for him was a matter of secondary import-
ance, The well-being of the tribe was his first and last

SPIRITUAL FEUDALISM 51

concern. It was otherwise with the churchman. The
Church, being under divine protection, could take care of
itself. As the Church of Christ, and therefore the Church
of God, it was in such good hands that its well-being was
fully provided for. In this life it might be the Church
Militant ; but in the next life it would assuredly be the
Church Triumphant. Being thus relieved from the neces-
sity of working for the salvation of the Church, the church-
man was free to work, with all his energy, for his own. His
devotion to the Church, however strong it might be, was
therefore fundamentally selfish. He might be fanatically
loyal to the Church, he might be scrupulously obedient to
its commands, he might toil for it, he might die for it on the
field of battle ; but the secret of his devotion was the con-
viction that it, and it alone, could open a way of escape for
him from the fires, the quasi-material fires of Hell.

This was individualism — and individualism raised to a
high power. In the secular world the individualist strove
for earthly prizes. Whatever might be the attractions of
these, they lacked two qualities which the prize of success
in the religious world possessed — finality and eternity.
Earthly prizes were, at best, incomplete and imperfect ;
and, if not actually perishable, they could not permanently
satisfy. The prize for which the believer contended was
perfect bliss, which would last, in its perfection, for ever.
Perdition, on the other hand, meant an eternity of absolute
pain. The addition of finality and eternity to the joys that
the believer hoped for and the pains that he feared intensi-
fied his desire for salvation and also intensified the selfish-
ness of his attitude towards his fellow men. Let him but
escape the doom of Hell, and win the prize of Heaven, and
the rest of the human race might perish. In entertaining
this anti-human sentiment, in thus separating himself from
his fellow men, he did but follow the example of the Church,
with whose personality he had, as we have seen, in some
sort identified his own. The Church, true to its Jewish
ancestry, claimed exclusive rights in the favour and bounty
of God, and exclusive possession of revealed truth. In
making this claim it separated itself from the rest of man-
kind, whom it regarded (apart from the " uncovenanted

52 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

mercies of God ") as beyond the pale of salvation ; and
though it was always ready to preach the Gospel in par-
tibus infidelium, its bearing towards those who rejected its
message was hostile and intolerant. If the non-Christian
peoples would not submit to its authority, they were ipso
facto excommunicate ; and it was well content that they
should perish everlastingly. For its own rebellious children,
for those who, having once belonged to its fold, rejected its
teaching and disowned its authority, it had in reserve the
dungeon, the torture-chamber, and the stake. When
Christian kings thought to atone for lives of wickedness by
the cruel persecution of heresy, when the burning of heretics
in batches was a Court ceremony and was counted as an
" act of faith," intolerance — the negation of sympathy, the
transmutation of self-love into anger and hatred — had
touched its limit. The story of the Inquisition is the darkest
chapter in the history of mankind ; but it was as much a
predestined chapter in the history of the Catholic Church
as were the Peasant Risings, with the horrors that attended
their suppression, in the history of mediaeval feudalism.
And the attitude of intolerance which found logical expres-
sion in the atrocities of the Inquisition, when acquiesced in
and reproduced by the loyal churchman, reacted on his
desire for salvation and intensified its inherent selfishness
and uncharitableness.

Individualism, raised to a high power, is egoism. The
religious devotee who was so intent on achieving his own
salvation as to be indifferent to the fate of others, whose
hatred of dissent was due to his fear lest it should shake his
own faith rather than to any interest in the welfare of the
dissenter, was the most self-centred of egoists. That it was
possible for him to think of himself as happy while the
majority of his fellow-men were in hopeless misery, shows
how destitute he was of the saving grace of sympathy, and
how completely he had been drawn into the ever-narrowing
vortex of his individual self. And his egoism was enhanced
by the fact that he honestly believed it to be acceptable to
God. A more hateful type of egoism it would be difficult
to imagine. When a man dedicates his vices — cruelty,
treachery, injustice, selfishness, or whatever they may be

SPIRITUAL FEUDALISM 53

— to God, their viciousness knows no limit. The scheme of
life is self-condemned which allows and even tempts a man
to do the work of the Devil, while professing to serve under
the banner of God.

I do not wish to suggest that the pressure of ecclesiastical
authority made individualists and egoists of all who yielded
to its influence. Different persons reacted to it in different
ways. Some did not feel the pressure. The Catholic
Church has had its full share of saints (in the widest sense
of the word) ; and the saint, being dead to self, can with-
stand all narrowing and hardening influences, and even
turn them to good account. Others were consciously self-
centred, but subconsciously sympathetic and unselfish.
Others, again, were more self-centred in sentiment than in
theory. But that a strong current was ever setting from
the Vatican in the direction of individualism and egoism
can scarcely be doubted. The merits and achievements of
the Catholic Church were many and great ; and it would
be folly to underestimate them. But, looking at things
from a social standpoint, I contend that, however much
is to be placed to the credit of the Church, two things at
least must be placed to its debit. As a community, it
was essentially separatist and intolerant. In claiming
universal dominion it broke away from the potential
fellowship of the churches and the nations ; it treated as
rebels, or at best as outcasts, all who were not of its fold ;
it excommunicated the greater part of the human race,
and in doing so excommunicated itself from the larger and
diviner church of Humanity ; and it waged war against
freedom and mutual tolerance, and therefore in part
thwarted and in part misdirected the spiritual development
of the human family, which is a movement towards unity
in diversity, not towards enforced uniformity. And its
spirit of self-assertion and exclusiveness was caught by its
children ; and as it taught them that they were to achieve
salvation by yielding obedience to itself rather than by
realizing their oneness, through God, with all their kind,
it became possible for the believer to promise himself an
eternity of happiness in Heaven, which would be unalloyed
and might even be enhanced by the knowledge that the

54 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

bulk of his fellow men were doomed to everlasting perdition.
It became possible, in other words, for a man to be fanati-
cally loyal to the Church, and }^et to be treasonably disloyal
to the indwelling spirit of God.

For many centuries the Catholic Church — the Head-
quarters of spiritual feudalism — had things all its own
way. What use did it make of its opportunities ? It
set out to evangelize the nations. Has it done so ? It set
out to impose moral and spiritual well-being on mankind.
Has it done so ? Need I answer these questions ? To ask
them at the time when Christendom seems intent on com-
mitting suicide is almost a mockery. The Church has always
kept the teaching of religion in its own hands. Have men
profited by its teaching ? Do they even believe what it has
taught ? Complaints of the growing infidelity of the age,
of the spread of agnosticism and atheism, of the gradual
relapse of Christendom into paganism, come from many
pulpits. And not from Catholic pulpits only. The High
Church Anglican and the strict Calvinist take an equally
gloomy view of the present state of the Christian world.
The orthodox believer has everything to lose by admitting
that Christianity has proved a failure. Yet these witnesses,
who all regard themselves as orthodox, not only admit
this but (by implication) insist upon it. If they may be
believed— and their evidence derives weight from the fact
tliat it tells "'against themselves—the Chiirch, as the result
of eighteen centuries of missionary activity, has paganized
rather then evangelized the world. The Church will perhaps
attribute its failure to the hardness of men's hearts. But
this would be equivalent to saying that it had failed because
it had failed. For its business was to soften men's hearts.
And if, on its own showing, it has been unable to do so, it
is surely self -condemned.

So far I have said nothing as to the interaction, in the
feudal era, of the religious and the secular world. That the
two worlds acted and reacted on one another continuously
may be taken for granted. But 1 have found it convenient
to think of their currents as flowing in separate, though
parallel, channels. There is however one matter in which

SPIRITUAL FEUDALISM 55

they have co-operated so effectively that they must be held
jointly responsible for the consequences of their action.
Feudal contempt for the mass of humanity, reinforced by
the religious belief in original sin and the corruption of
man's heart, has generated an immense underestimate of
man's moral and mental capacity and also of what I may
call his reserves of spiritual vitality. It was of course on
such an underestimate that the whole fabric of feudalism
was built. But it frequently happens that, when a tendency
of thought expresses itself in action, it is reacted upon and
profoundly modified by its practical results. And the
distrust of human nature which led to the substitution of
autocracy for democracy in both the religious and the
secular worlds has now developed, in general into a cynical
contempt for human nature, and in particular into a fixed
belief on the part of the " refined and cultured " upper
classes that the lower classes — the bulk of the human race
— are congenitally vicious, stupid, coarse-fibred, and semi-
brutal. This underestimate of man's capacity on all the
higher planes of his being is paralyzing our vital energies
and thwarting all our schemes of political, social, and
ethical reform. Its bearing on the problem of human
happiness is obvious. A life which is based on self -distrust,
not merely as a theory, but also as a sentiment and a con-
viction, is a life of lowered vitality ; and a life of lowered
vitality is an unhealthy and unhappy life.

But it was not only by generating distrust of human
nature that feudalism — secular and spiritual — lowered
vitality. It was also, and above all, by doing what it set out
to do — by trying to impose well-being (or what it was
pleased to regard as well-being) on the rank and file of
mankind ; by socializing and moralizing them, with or
without their consent ; by coercing them into correctness
of thought and sentiment and action ; by subjecting them
to the deadening pressure of irresponsible authority on all
the planes of their being ; by denying them freedom for
self-development ; by repressing their spontaneous activity;
by arresting the growth of their souls.

CHAPTER V

THE MORAL OF FAILURE

THE history of feudalism is the history of a great ex-
periment. What differentiated feudalism from other
types of tyranny was that it was more openly and more
directly based on supernatural sanction. It was in the
name of the supernatural God that feudalism, whether
spiritual or secular, denied to human nature the right to
live its own life and order its own goings. And its
machinery was so contrived as to transmit the pressure of
supernatural authority to all parts of the body politic.
The experiment had to be made. There have been many
phases in man's development. Feudalism — I am using the
word in its widest sense — was one of these. What happened
was this. The spirit of man, dreaming of its own perfection
and realizing how far it fell short of that ideal, smitten with
a sense of its inadequacy and unworthiness, projected its
dream into a world — partly real and partly imaginary—
outside itself ; personified it ; found a fitting abode for it ;
invested it with supreme power and authority ; humbled
itself in the dust before it and its supposed instruments, lay
and clerical ; and tried to find salvation in submission to
its will and obedience to its commands.

The experiment has lasted for many centuries ; and
though it is not yet over, we are in a position to say that
it has failed. For we are at least as far from peace and
joy as we were before we began it ; and one of the sources
of our unrest is our growing distrust of the very authority
to which we had gone for help and guidance, — a feeling
which is widening out into impatience of authority as
such. The Nemesis of dogmatism is that in the fulness of
time it provokes a reaction against itself, which calls the

THE MORAL OF FAILURE 5?

itical spirit into full activity, and that when those whose
beliefs had been dictated and whose opinions had been
moulded by authority begin to criticize, there is no
doctrine, however sacred, which they will not call in
question. The attempt to coerce men into correctness of
thought and sentiment and action may succeed for a time ;
but sooner or later it will lead to anarchy on every plane of
man's life ; and the more thorough the coercive discipline,
the more violent and revolutionary will be the anarchical
reaction.

It is true that the proscription of reason by the Church,
of which I have spoken, and its consequent retirement in
exile into the world of physical phenomena, have enabled
us, through the achievements of Science, to acquire a great
and ever growing mastery over the material resources of
Nature ; and it might be thought that this would have
given us what we were seeking. But though commer-
cialism and industrialism, following in the wake of scientific
discovery and mechanical invention, have given us a great
accession of wealth, a general rise in the standard of luxury
and comfort, and many facilities and conveniences which
had previously been beyond our reach, they have not given
us happiness. We are still feverish with discontent ; nay, we
are more than ever feverish with discontent ; for the
higher our standard of comfort rises, the more exacting are
our 'demands on life ; and when we try to diagnose our

mptoms, we find that the very influences which were to

ve healed us have aggravated our malady.

We are unhappy because we will not trust our nature, the
burden of responsibility : which trust in it would lay on us
being, as we think, too heavy for us to bear ; and because
in all living creatures trust in nature is the only basis of
a healthy life.

We are unhappy because in our self-distrust we go outside
ourselves for guidance and motive power, and are therefore
ince our natural tendencies continue to operate — the
ictims of an unending conflict between pressure from with-
out and pressure from within.

KWe are unhappy because, instead of being content with
tie environment which Nature provides for us, which is

oui

ours

riS

58 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

large enough potentially for all our needs, and which,
through our reaction on it, grows unceasingly with our
growth, we create for ourselves a supernatural environment
which, so far as it exists for us, our shallower selves re-act to
but our deeper selves react against us.

We are unhappy (some of us) because we still worship a
feudal autocrat who expects his subjects to pay court to
him, and because no courtier can be permanently happy.
His tenure of the royal favour is too precarious.

A breath unmakes him as a breath has made.

We are unhappy (others of us) because, though our out-
look on life is still feudal, we have renounced allegiance to
our feudal Overlord, and have therefore no master principle
of action, apart from self-interest and the right which is
inherent in might.

We are unhappy because our expansive instincts and
energies are continually thwarted and held back, the
pressure of external authority on the human spirit, which
was once consciously and systematically applied, though
now less formally exerted, having all the force and per-
sistence of a long-sustained tradition.

We are unhappy because, owing to the compulsory ex-
ternalization of our lives, we are the victims of false ideals
and false standards, which some of us are in secret revolt
against, but which have so closely interwoven themselves
with our normal environment and our daily lives that we
cannot openly defy them without imperilling the stability
of the whole social structure.

We are unhappy because, under the influence of our false
ideals, life has become a general scramble for material
possessions, and because the winners in that scramble, who
are few, are never fully satisfied, while the losers, who arc
many, are seething with envy and discontent.

We are unhappy because the basis of modern society is
still largely feudal, and because, as the result of this, there
are powerful influences at work which tend to stultify, if
they do not actually turn to base purposes, all our attempts
at social and political reform.

We are unhappy because self-distrust leads to exter-

THE MORAL OF FAILURE 59

uilism, externajism to materialism, materialism to indi-
vidualism, and individualism to egoism ; and because
egoism — the attempt of the soul to rest, for good and all,
in its own unexpanded life, the refusal of the soul to go out
of itself into a larger life, to find itself by losing itself — is
the very negation of healthy and harmonious growth.

We are unhappy because our old first principles are be-
coming discredited and our old beliefs are dead or dying ;
and because reason and intuition — each suffering from its
prolonged separation from the other, and each suspicious
of and antipathetic to the other — refuse to co-operate to
build up a new philosophy and a new faith.

In indicating the causes of our malady, I am suggesting
the appropriate remedy.

We are unhappy because we seek for happiness outside our-
selves, and because the only fountain of happiness, the only-
fountain of well-being, the only fountain of life, is within.

I will now summarize the contents of this section and
draw the moral to which it seems to point. We want to
discover the secret of happiness. We mean by happiness
the sense of well-being. If all is well with me, and I feel —
consciously or subconsciously — that all is well with me, I
am happy. What we really want to discover, then, is the
secret of well-being. How is well-being to be achieved ?
Under the feudal regime an elaborate attempt was made "to
impose it on man from without, to order his life for him on
all the planes of his being, his contribution to his own
salvation being limited to submitting himself to authority
and obeying the word of command. This attempt is ending
in disastrous failure, partly because the constant pressure
of authority has proved hurtful to the growing soul, partly
because the externalization of man's life has led him to
seek happiness for himself in outward things, — a search
hich is warping his character and disorganizing his social
e. Where, then, is the solution of our problem to be found ?
.e failure of feudalism suggests the answer to this question,
well-being is not to be achieved by submission to pressure
om without, it must be achieved by lesponse to pressure
from within — in a word, by growth.

PART II
THE MEANING OF GROWTH

CHAPTER I

THE LAW OF GROWTH

HE failure of feudalism has suggested to me that
happiness is to be won, not by submission to pressure
from without, whether coercive or attractive, but by re-
sponse to pressure from within. By pressure from within
I mean the pressure of those expansive, transformative
forces which are making us whatever we have it in us to
become. The due response to this pressure is what we call
self -development or growth. When growth is healthy and
harmonious, we have well-being. And when well-being
is consciously or even sub-consciously realized, we have
happiness.

The consentient voice of animate Nature ratines these
conclusions. On the physical plane of existence life is a
process which has a dawn, a meridian, and a decline. When
life is on the upward curve the organism is said to be grow-
ing. As it approaches its meridian — I am assuming that
the conditions are favourable — it attains to the perfection
of health ; and if the resultant state of well-being could
be consciously realized we should have the perfection of
happiness. When a plant is growing under entirely favour-
able conditions, it has all the outward signs of well-being ;
and as we contemplate these with delight and admiration
we begin to understand what the poet meant when he
confessed his faith —

that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The merry gambols of young animals suggest that the rising

of the s;

THE LAW OF GROWTH 61

•

of the sap of life is a pleasurable process. And on the
physical plane of human life, when growth is vigorous and
bodily health is perfect, we have the physical equivalent
of happiness, — high spirits.

But does human nature in its totality, does the life of
man in all its length and breadth and depth, come under the
law of growth ? I must be allowed to assume that it does.
I cannot by any mental effort think otherwise. Wherever
there is life there is growth (or the opposite of growth —
decay) ; and I find it impossible — I can use no weaker word
— to separate in my thought the idea of life from that of
growth. In the years of childhood and adolescence we see
the gradual unfolding, not of physical powers and tendencies
only, but also of those which are mental, moral, aesthetic,
spiritual. If that process of unfolding is not to be called
growth, I do not know what is the right name of it ; nor do
I know what growth means.

It does not follow that human life in its totality comes
under the law of physical growth. When Professor Bateson
says that " Shakespeare once existed as a speck of proto-
plasm not so big as a pin's head," he begs, as we shall
presently see, a very large question. If we are to predicate
growth of the whole human being, we must use the word
in its widest and most comprehensive sense, we must have
in mind only what is really essential in the process of growth.
Now what is essential in the process of growth is the realiza-
tion of potentiality, the transformation of a complex of
possibilities into a fully developed organism, of what can
be into what is. Such a transformation would not be
possible if the organism, the ultimate product of growth,
owever large and complex it might be, were not present,
in promise and potency, in the seed from which it grows.
Each seed is fraught with its own destiny. It will grow, if
it is allowed to grow, to what is in large measure a pre-
determined form. I mean by this that its expansive activi-
ties will move in a particular channel and arrive in the

Iness of time — if all goes well — at a particular goal. The
channel may not be accurately mapped out. The goal may
be a matter for conjecture rather than for positive know-

dge. But that the expanding life has a channel and a

62 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

goal of its own, is certain. The oak tree is in the acorn, not
in the beechnut. The banyan tree —

With all its thousand downward-dropping stems
Waiting to fall from all its thousand boughs,
And all its lakhs and lakhs of lustrous leaves
Waiting to push to sunlight —

is in the minute seed of the banj^an fruit, which, though
scarcely distinguishable from the seed of the ordinary fig,
is fraught with an entirely different destiny. If, then,
human nature in its totality comes under the law of growth,
the question at once arises : What are the possibilities of
human development ? What is it that is to the human
embryo what the oak tree is to the acorn or the banyan tree
to the seed of the banyan fruit ?

Before we attempt to answer this question we shall do
well to ask ourselves what is to be our starting-point in this
enterprise ? In other words, how far back are we to go in
quest of the human embryo ? By human embryo I mean
the embryo of the whole human being, not of the human
body only. The acorn may be regarded as the embryo of
the oak tree. But the acorn was once a mere speck on an
oak twig, and had to go through a long process of growth
before it was able to detach itself from the parent tree and
start on an independent course of growth. This analogy,
though we must not overwork it, is at least suggestive. It
is as a new-born baby that the embryo of the human being
starts on an independent course of growth. Let us, then,
make the new-born baby our starting-point. If we go
further back, if we go back to Professor Bateson's " speck
of protoplasm," we shall make the grave mistake of resolv-
ing psychology into physiology just when we are attempting
the solution of the greatest of all psychological problems.1

1 It is of course possible that the incarnating, or reincarnating, soul
(if there is such a thing) unites itself with the fertilized germ-cell and in
doing so forms the human embryo. But when Professor Bateson says that
Shakespeare once existed as a speck of protoplasm, he means that the sou]
of Shakespeare (if indeed he can be said to have had a soul) was in that speck.
Such a thing as an incarnating, or reincarnating, soul is not dreamed of in
his philosophy. The fertilized germ-cell which a " soul " has taken pos-
session of is an entirely different thing from Professor Bateson's speck of
protoplasm. We might, if we pleased, make the former our starting-point
hi our speculative enterprise, but we have nothing to gain by doing so,
and in any case it is safer to start with the new-born baby.

THE LAW OF GROWTH 63

What is it that is to the new-born baby v/hat the oak tree
is to the acorn ? With this question is bound up another.
Is the growth of the human being strictly predetermined ?
The plant and the animal are in the grip of physical neces-
sity, Their destiny has been marked out for them by their
breeding. They may fall far short of it. But they cannot
possibly transcend it. It is the same, though possibly not
to the same extent, with the body of man. But what of the
higher planes of his being ? There he feels — and the feeling
grows stronger as the dawning light of consciousness grows
fuller and clearer — that it is open to him to help or hinder
the process of his own growth. We cannot get behind this
feeling of freedom. A profound philosophy of life is implicit
in it. May we trust it ? This question is, I repeat, bound
up with the question as to the possibilities of human develop-
ment. To answer either question is to answer the other ;
and it matters little which we start with. As however, if
the sense of freedom is illusory, the enterprise on which I
have embarked has neither purpose nor meaning and had
better be abandoned at the outset, I will begin by asking
whether man, though subject to the law of growth, is
exempt from the necessity, which seems to bind all other
living things, of growing to a predetermined form ; and if
so, in what sense he is exempt and to what extent. The
attempt to answer this question will necessarily widen out
into a general survey of the problem of soul-growth.

CHAPTER II

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT

A. THE PHYSICAL PLANE *

I HAVE now raised the vexed question of heredity and
environment, and I must try to think it out. Growth
is, in its essence, the realization of potentiality. As far as
our experience goes, potentiality is always the product of
generation, not of creation, — an inheritance, not a gift ; and
the realization of potentiality is always effected through
reaction to environment. It follows that there are two
chief factors in growth — heredity, which gives us realizable
potentiality, and environment, which makes the realization
of potentiality possible. Why, then, is heredity so often
opposed to environment ? Why is there a controversy as
to the parts which environment and heredity, " nature "
and " nurture/' respectively play in human life ? Why
does Professor Bateson tell us that " the long-standing
controversy as to the relative importance of nature and
nurture ... is drawing to an end, and of the overwhelming
greater significance of nature there is no longer any possi-
bility of doubt " ? Why does Dr. Chalmers Mitchell say,
on the contrary, that " with regard to mental, moral, and
emotional qualities, which are of preponderating import-
ance in man . . . nurture is incomparably more important
than nature " ? How has this question arisen, and what is

1 When I speak of the physical plane I am thinking of the physical side
of physique and of that only. I do not forget that physique and spirit-
uality (to use a comprehensive term), however much we may try to
separate them in thought, will insist on overlapping and even interpene-
trating one another, — that expression, for example, is a quasi-spiritual
feature or aspect of the outer man, just as temperament, for example, is a
quasi-physical feature or aspect of the inner man. But, having found it
convenient, for the better ordering of my thoughts, to separate the physical
from the higher planes, I must as far as possible exclude from the former
whatever is not purely physical.

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 65

its real significance ? It has been said — and with some show
of reason — that heredity and environment are the warp
and woof of the tissue of life. But if these are the parts
that they respectively play, there is no controversy between
them. And perhaps if we could state correct ly the question
which, unknown to ourselfes, we are trying to answer, we
should find that our opposition of heredity to environment,
of " nature " to " nurture," was based on a misconception,
and that the question, as it was usually stated, was unreal.
Meanwhile, however, wre must face the fact that many
practical problems perplex us which raise, or seem to raise,
the question to which Professor Bateson and Dr. Chalmers
Mitchell have given diametrically opposite answers. For
example : the child of criminal parents, reared in a criminal
slum, becomes a criminal. Is his criminality " in his blood,"
or is it the result of his unfortunate environment ? Or, if
both causes have been at work, which has been the pre-
dominant influence ? Is the servility of the German people
in the blood of the German race (if there is such a thing), or
is it due to a tradition which has had an historical origin and
which now permeates the environing atmosphere into which
every German is born ? Is the apparent inferiority of the
" lower orders " to the " upper middle classes " (let us say)
in intellect, manners, and general culture vital or acci-
dental ? Is it due to an inferior strain of blood or to a less
favourable environment ? These are legitimate questions,
and their practical significance is obvious.

But do they really commit us to a consideration of the
parts which heredity and environment respectively play in
human life ? I think not. I think that the question which
is actually at issue has been obscured by a fog of confused
thought, and that the ultimate source of that confusion has
been our failure to distinguish between racial and lineal
heredity, between the common and the differential elements
in our inheritance. By the common elements I mean those
which we inherit from the whole human race and which we
therefore share with all our fellow-men. By the differential
elements I mean those which we inherit from our own more
recent line of ancestors and which are therefore in some
special sense our own. The distinction between what we

66 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

~- — .^

inherit from the whole human race (or perhaps from some
remoter source of being) and what we inherit from our own
lineal ancestors is a real one ; and it is a pity that it is so
often ignored. Examples drawn from the physical side of
human life will help me to make my meaning clear. Though
no two men are exactly alike, yet all men have the same
bodily structure, and each man inherits what is essential in
his bodily structure from the whole human race. Thus
every normal infant has so many bones arranged in such
and such ways, such and such organs arranged in such and
such ways, such and such limbs, such and such facial
features and senses, an elaborate system of veins, nerves,
and muscles, a series of skins, the beginnings of hair, nails,
and teeth. These constitute the infant's racial inheritance.
But infant differs from infant in respect of the size, form,
colour, and proportions, both of its frame as a whole and of
each of its constituent parts ; and these differential elements
constitute its lineal inheritance, for it owes them — not
wholly perhaps, but in large measure — to its more recent
line of ancestors, to what we call, loosely and inaccurately,
its " strain of blood."

Or put the matter thus. Racial heredity gives a man a
human nose. Lineal heredity helps to determine the contour
of his nose. Racial heredity gives a man a pair of human
eyes. Lineal heredity helps to determine the colour and
setting of his eyes. Racial heredity gives a man a human
mouth. Lineal heredity helps to determine the size and
shape of the mouth. And so on.

Now it is certain that when we oppose heredity to en-
vironment, we are thinking of lineal, not of racial heredity ;
of the differential, not of the common elements in human
nature. We take the common elements for granted. When
we speak of the physique which the child inherits, we take
for granted that he has so many bones, such and such
organs, such and such a system of veins, nerves, muscles,
and the rest. The child has these because he is a human
being, not because he is the child of certain parents or the
descendant of certain ancestors. We do not give a thought
to the common elements in his bodily structure. What we
are thinking of, when we speak of his physical resemblance

\..

1 Vx<

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT

o his parents or his ancestors, are the differential elements
— the build of his skull, the contour of his nose, the colour
and setting of his eyes, the size and shape of his mouth, the
tint and texture of his hair, his height, weight, colouring,
brm, proportions, bodily vigour, and so forth.

It is also certain that, when we oppose heredity to en-
vironment, we are thinking of environment as coming in
ome sort and some measure under human control.

These reservations are all-important. To oppose heredity
as such to environment as such, to ask which of the two
influences plays the larger part in the process of growth,
would be nonsense. As well might we ask (to revert to our
borrowed simile) which counts for more in the weaving of
a tissue, the warp or the woof. But when the reservations
which I have indicated have been made, we begin to see a
meaning in our much-debated problem. Does lineal heredity
count for so much in human life as to commit us to a fatal-
istic, and therefore pessimistic, " theory of things " ? If not,
how are we to counteract its influence, when it happens to
be harmful or unduly restrictive ? By giving a favourable
environment to its victim, is an obvious answer to this
question. But environment can do no more than enable
inherited potentiality to realize itself. How, then, can it
remove, or even lessen, the disabilities which are inherent
in one's " blood " ? In one way — and one way only. By
allying itself with racial heredity ; in other words, by allow-
ing the potentialities of our racial inheritance to realize them-
selves and play their several parts. The more the racial
element in one's inheritance outweighs the lineal, the more
the potentialities of one's racial inheritance outweigh the
actualities, the greater will be the scope for the transform-
ing influence of environment, and the less will heredity (in
the conventional sense of the word) count in one's life.

This much we can see at the outset. Let us now consider
a concrete case. A, the child of criminal parents, born and
reared in a criminal slum, grows up a criminal. Does not

is illustrate the force of " heredity " ? Let us assume
hat it does. But B, another child of the same parents,
born in the same slum, having been taken away from it

rly in life and brought up in respectable surroundings,

68 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

grows up a respectable member of society. What has
happened ? Has " environment ".triumphed over " hered-
ity " ? No, but racial heredity, having been given fair play,
has proved stronger than lineal heredity. It is probable
that B would not have been regenerated had he not been
given a favourable environment. But it is certain that he
would not have been regenerated had he not, as a human
being, had in him certain social and ethical potentialities
which were waiting to be realized. What environment did
in his case, what it does in all similar cases, is to enable
racial heredity, the nature of man as man, to bring its
appropriate reserves of potentiality into action.

The question, then, which we have to consider is not
what parts do environment and heredity respectively play
in human life, but what parts do racial and lineal heredity
respectively play in that great drama. Let us first consider
this question in relation to the physical plane of life. Our
starting-point is the body of the new-born baby. It is not
until the baby is born, that its environment comes in any
appreciable degree under human control. During its pre-
natal life its environment is under the control of " Nature ";
and though the mother can do much to thwart the action of
Nature, she can do nothing to aid it except in the sense of
giving it fair play.

Now in the baby's physical inheritance the preponderant
element is undoubtedly the racial. The possession of a nose
is of much more importance than the shape of the nose. The
possession of eyes, than the colour of the eyes. The posses-
sion of a mouth, than the size of the mouth. And so on. The
pressure of lineal heredity on the individual is the pressure
of a few centuries — at most perhaps, as in the case of the
pure-bred Jew, of twenty or thirty. The pressure of racial
heredity is the pressure of myriads of centuries — of all the
ages, one might almost say, since life began. The pressure
of lineal heredity is the pressure of a few scores of ancestors.
The pressure of racial heredity is the pressure of unnum-
bered millions of men.

Yet it is on the physical plane that the directive, and
therefore restrictive, influence of heredity is greatest, and
the transforming influence of environment least. The ex-

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 69

lanation of this is simple. On the physical plane there are
no great reserves of potentiality for environment to draw
upon. Or, if there are, its power of drawing upon them is
strictly limited. As far as it goes, the body of the new-born
child is an actuality, an accomplished fact. Years of growth
await it. But the process of growing will be carried on
within narrow limits and, in the main, along predetermined
lines. Environment can do much for the child. In a sense
it can do everything. But it cannot work miracles. It
cannot give him a third eye, or a sixth finger, or a thirty-
third tooth. Nor can it add appreciably to his predestined
strength or stature. If a child has it in him to grow, under
perfectly favourable conditions, to the height of six feet, a
bad environment may make him fall short of that limit,
but no environment, however good, will enable him to
transcend it. The influence of environment in what I may
call the downward direction is limited only by death. In
the upward diiection it is limited by the physical constitu-
tion of man. From the point of view of physical develop-
ment, the average environment of mankind, especially in
what are called civilized countries, is very far from ideal.
And because there is room in it for endless improvement,
we are apt to overestimate the transforming influence of
environment on physique. It is but right that we should
labour incessantly to improve the material conditions under
which men live. But even if we could give the growing
child an ideal environment, we should do no more than
enable him to fulfil his physical destiny. And that destiny
is strictly limited. Or if there is an element of ideality, and
therefore of infinity, in it, if even such physical perfection
as man, whether collective or individual, has it in him to
attain, is in a sense unattainable, the goal is near and cannot
be transcended. Favourable physical conditions, if con-
tinued for some generations, might raise the average height
of a nation by two or three inches ; but even if they were
continued for 10,000 years, they would not raise the average
height of the nation to six and a half feet. The movement
towards physical perfection is perhaps an infinite " series " ;
but if so, its infinity, like that of an arithmetical series which
vances by ever-diminishing fractions, has finite limits.

?o THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

The reason, then, why lineal heredity counts for so much
on the physical plane is that racial heredity has fixed the
typical form to which the individual is predestined to grow,
and that the transforming influence of environment in what
I have called the upward direction is therefore compara-
tively small.

It is true that A, whose physical inheritance is inferior
to B's, may, under the influence of a better environment,
become the stronger and healthier man. But the explana-
tion of this is not that A has been transformed beyond
recognition by his favourable surroundings, but that B,
living under unfavourable conditions, has seriously deterio-
rated. It is because man as man cannot alter his physical
frame or constitution, that the individual man cannot
materially alter (except for the worse) the face or figure or
constitution which he inherits from his forefathers. It is
because man as man cannot alter the arrangement and
general modelling of his facial features, that the individual
man cannot materially alter (except for the worse) the
build of his nose, or the colour of his eyes, or the shape of
his mouth. It is because man as man cannot transcend the
limits which racial heredity imposes on him, that the indi-
vidual cannot appreciably transcend the limits which lineal
heredity imposes on him. If " environment " is to triumph
over " heredity " — in other words, if the influence of en-
vironment on the individual life is to outweigh that of
lineal heredity, to the extent (for example) of removing or
seriously lessening " inherited " disabilities — it must, as I
have said, have large reserves of racial or common poten-
tiality to draw upon. On the physical plane it has not such
reserves, for the physical potentialities of the human animal
have to a large extent been realized in the course of his
evolution, and the margin in reserve is small.

In what relation, then, do lineal and racial heredity stand
to one another on the physical plane ? The latter is incom-
parably the larger and more important element ; but from
the point of view of the controversy between " environ-
ment " and " heredity " its preponderance scarcely counts.
Under the influence of a good environment a child will make
good growth. Under the influence of a bad environment he

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 71

will make poor growth. But in either case he will grow
towards a more or less precisely predetermined form. Pre-
determined, in the main and in the mass and also in system-
atized detail, by racial heredity ; but in outline and in
individuality of detail, by lineal heredity. And as it is the
outline which first catches the eye, as we are naturally
interested in what is differential in a man's face and figure,
as we instinctively take a man's racial inheritance — the
" constant and common " element in his physique — for
granted, we say— and (in spite of the great preponderance
of the racial element) we are on the whole justified in saying
•that lineal heredity counts for much in the bodily life of
man. And if we are asked what part it plays in his physical
development, we answer that it transmits to him his racial
inheritance and modifies it, puts the stamp of individuality
on it, in the course of transmission ; in other words, that it
determines the particular lines along which, in response to
the influence of environment — be that environment good or
bad — the individual child will realize his racial inheritance
and develop into an adult man.

CHAPTER III

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT— Continued

B. THE HIGHER PLANES

WHEN we leave the physical plane behind us, we pass
into another world — a world of mysteries and in-
finities, a world of fathomless depths, of dark spaces, of
unknown possibilities, a world of

Far-folded mists and gleaming halls of morn.

The body of the new-born child is a concrete actuality. Its
destiny — even its ideal destiny — is virtually fixed, partly
by racial, partly by lineal heredity. The child may easily
miss that destiny. The chances are that he will not fully
realize it. It is certain that he will not transcend it. His
" soul," on the other hand, is a complex of potentialities-
mental, emotional, aesthetic, moral, spiritual — an unde-
finable, illimitable, inextricable tangle of latent tendencies,
capacities, instincts, passions, desires. Some of these will
soon press for realization. Others will wait their time in
the background. Others, in the absence of a favourable
environment, will remain shadowy possibilities to the end
of the child's life. Others would remain for ever unknown
and unguessed at, unless, like a flash of lightning at mid-
night, some supreme crisis should suddenly reveal their
presence. Beyond these there is impenetrable darkness ;
but a wall of darkness is not necessarily a wall of limitation.
In this vast complex of potentialities how much does the
child owe to racial, how much to lineal heredity ? How
much is his because he is a human being, how much because
he is of such and such a " seed " ? We cannot say. The
question, as I have stated it, has not, I think, been fully
considered ; but by implication it has often been asked and

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 73

answered, though no answer has yet been given which can
be accepted as authoritative. For this is the point in which
the controversy between heredity and environment really
centres ; and in that controversy even the experts take
diametrically opposite sides, the Mendelians, for example,
assuring us that " of the overwhelmingly greater signifi-
cance of nature (heredity) there is no longer any possibility
of doubt," while the Epigenesists (if that is their correct
title) are equally confident that " nurture (environment) is
inconceivably more important than nature."

When doctors disagree, when they flatly contradict one
another, what can an amateur do but try to think the matter
out for himself ? This particular matter is, I need hardly
say, by no means easy for anyone, whether expert or
amateur, to think out. Indeed, it is the very magnitude
of the task that confronts him which justifies the amateur
in venturing to grapple with it. In the presence of what is
infinite and ultimate the difference between expert and
amateur becomes wholly negligible. The expert is one who
has specialized in a particular field of inquiry. But who can
specialize in the fundamental problems of life ?

When we try to determine the limits (if any) of our racial
inheritance, we are faced at the outset by one almost in-
superable difficulty. To say with any approach to accuracy
what potentialities other than physical are latent in a new-
born baby, is for obvious reasons impossible. That the
baby will in due season think, reason, plan, purpose, love.
sympathize, imagine, and so forth may safely be predicted.
But the range, the reach, the latent possibilities of these
great tendencies — in this case and in that, and even in the
average human being — are wholly unknown to us. Until
potentiality has begun to realize itself we know as little
about it as about the resources of an undiscovered land.
As the baby becomes successively a child, an adolescent,
and an adult man, his potentialities gradually realize them-
selves, and it becomes possible for us to study them. But,
unhappily, while this is going on, education (in the widest
and least technical sense of the word) is doing its deadly
work — a work which is not the less deadly because, things
being as they are, it is in large measure unavoidable — its

74 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

work of cramping, warping, atrophying, devitalizing the
growing soul. For, as a rule, only so much of our inherited
potentiality is drawn upon in each case as will enable the
child to play with decent success the part in life which
circumstances — controlled in the main by the accident of
his birth — are likely to assign to him. That amount varies
greatly from case to case. If a child is predestined to enter
one of the learned professions, an attempt will be made by
those who educate him to realize potentialities which would
remain dormant if he were predestined to become a peasant
or a miner. But at best the amount which will be realized
by the time the child arrives at maturity will be but an
insignificant, and probably ill-selected and inharmoniously
distributed, fraction of the mysterious whole. And the pity
of it is that, as students of human nature, we are apt to
assume that tendencies which have been left uncultivated
— artistic, musical, literary, scientific, social, or whatever
they may be — do not exist. The son of an agricultural
labourer grows up an uncouth and uncultured boor ; and
we assume off-hand that he had no inherent capacity for
refinement or culture ; but it is possible, to say the least,
that had he been brought up in a refined and cultured
family he would have made as good a response to the
stimulus of the environment as if he had been born a child
of the house.

Things being as they are, then, the student of human
nature has to choose between two alternatives. In the
baby the higher nature of man has not yet begun to reveal
itself. In the adult or even in the adolescent it has almost
certainly been marred and mutilated by injudicious and
inadequate " nurture." As it is better, on the whole, to
grope in the dark than to follow a misleading sign-post, I
propose to begin by exploring the unknown possibilities of
the undeveloped child. This me'ans that my adventures
and experiments will be imaginative rather than practical,
and that my appeals to experience will in the main be
appeals to reason and common sense.

At a very early age the baby will begin to talk. In what
language will he express himself ? That will entirely depend
on where and by whom he is reared. He has it in him to

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 75

speak a hundred different languages. A friend of mine has
brought up an Italian child who was rescued as a baby from
the earthquake of Messina. That child speaks English like
a native. Had there been no earthquake, she would now be
speaking a Sicilian patois. Had she been adopted by a
Russian, she would be speaking Russian ; by a Frenchman,
French ; by a Chinaman, Chinese ; by a Negro, a Negro
dialect . In brief, she had a capacity for learning any language
or dialect that happened to be spoken by those who sur-
rounded her. And so has every normal child. Her fore-
fathers may have been of pure Sicilian blood (if there is such
a thing) for countless generations ; but they transmitted
to her no special aptitude for their own language. She may
not have had a drop of English blood in her veins. But she
learnt English in English surroundings as easily as she would
have learnt her mother's tongue in Sicilian surroundings.
What was transmitted to her — along what line or lines of
descent I cannot say — was her racial inheritance, including
a general capacity for learning to talk. And as every
language and every sub-language — patois, dialect, or even
prominent accent — has behind it a particular way of think-
ing and feeling, a particular outlook on life, we may safely
conjecture that every child has it in him at birth to adapt
himself to as many ways of thinking and feeling and to
adopt as many outlooks on life as there are languages, and
sub-languages, in this world of ours.

When the baby emerges from infancy, he will have to be
educated. Now all systems of education, however much
they may differ in other ways, have one thing in common.
They take for granted that any child of normal ability can,
if reasonably industrious, learn any subject that is suitable
for his tender years. It does not follow, as some educa-
tionists seem to think, that every child ought to learn every
conceivable subject. Nor does it follow that the common
practice of forcing on children subjects for which they have
no natural inclination is justified. Still the fact that children
can, under compulsion, learn subjects in which they take no
interest and can see but little meaning, shows that even the
average child has in him large reserves of mental capacity,
and that the assumption which underlies all our educational

76 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

systems is to that extent well grounded. Nor does the fact
that many children, when they leave school, have lost all
their interest in mental work and much of their power of
utilizing their latent capacity, prove anything except that
a cramping and sterilizing environment can do much in the
way of robbing a child of his birthright. To argue from
what a child is when education has victimized him to what
he was at birth is in all probability to go very far astray.

As the child grows up, the choice of a vocation will
devolve upon his parents or guardians. What will they
do ? Will they examine his pedigree in order to see for what
calling his inherited tendencies have specially fitted him ?
No, they will look to his environment, past and present,
rather than to his lineage. They will look to their own
means, to the way in which he has been educated, to the
opportunities for continuing his education, to the possi-
bilities of his being apprenticed to a trade, to the local
demand for labour, and other such matters, and they will
make their choice for him by reference to these considera-
tions, unless indeed he has some strongly pronounced
inclination of which they approve and which they are in a
position to gratify. They will take for granted that if he
is of average ability and is reasonably industrious, he will
be able, sooner or later, to become proficient at any craft,
or trade, or profession for which his circumstances, includ-
ing his education, past and prospective, have fitted him.
They will take for granted that he has it in him to make
himself at home in a multitude of different callings, and that
it must in the main be left to circumstances to determine
which of these he is to adopt. It is true that aptitudes
vary. We cannot all do all things equally well. There is no
one who is not better fitted for some pursuits than for
others. But there is no one who cannot, if he chooses,
make himself tolerably proficient at any one of a large
number of different pursuits. And if the average adoles-
cent, in spite of the cramping pressure to which he has,
almost inevitably, been subjected, has it in him to earn his
livelihood in so many different ways, does it not follow that
his inherent adaptability is practically unlimited — in other
words, that he has boundless reserves of potentiality to

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT

upon ? Since the present war began, our army has
expanded to ten times its previous strength. How has this
been done ? By men going into it out of a hundred different
callings, and learning what was a new trade for each of them
the trade of war. And, though some of these apprentices
were doubtless apter pupils than others, so well has the
average Englishman, of whatever class or calling, learnt
this new trade, that our vast army is now as efficient as it
is resolute and brave. What better proof could be given of
the inherent versatility of human nature, of the infinite
resourcefulness of the soul ?

Here, then, lineal heredity counts for very little, whereas
racial heredity, controlled and guided by environment,
counts for nearly everything and seems to have an unlimited
range. But let us test the value of the conclusions which
we have reached, by making an imaginative experiment.
Let us arrange for a hundred babies — German, if you will —
to be born and reared in ten foreign countries, ten in each —
say in England, France, Russia, Spain, Italy, Holland,
Sweden, the United States, the Argentine, and Canada.1
Let us divide the inhabitants of each of these ten countries
into ten social grades — landowners, peasants, merchants,
shopkeepers, clerks, manufacturers, artisans, civil servants,
professional men, ministers of religion. And let us arrange
in each country for the babies to be brought up in these

1 In each of these ten countries the population is preponderatingly, if
not wholly, White. My reason for excluding other colours is that colour-
prejudice would introduce a disturbing element into environment which
would cause the proposed experiment to abort. If, for example, one of
the German babies was brought up by Chinese or Hindoo foster-parents,
the difference in colour and general appearance between him and his
compatriots by adoption would tend to isolate him from his fellows and
would make it difficult for him to share their social life. It must not, how-
ever, be supposed that I regard the White Race as congenially superior to
the rest of mankind. On the contrary, I am by no means sure that it is
congenitally superior to even the most backward and " degraded " of the
other races. The Australian aborigines are commonly regarded as one of
the lowest of races in the scale of civilization ; and we are apt to assume
that they are of an altogether inferior and indeed barely human type. Yet
a white teacher in an Australian school, writing of his aboriginal pupils in
a Government Report, says that "age for age and opportunity for oppor-
tunity, the attainments and mental powers of these children are equal to
those of the average white children." And one who has been Chief Pro-
tector of Aborigines in one of the Australian States writes that he has
" every reason for believing that the aboriginal brain can grasp any modern
idea or subject quite as readily as we."

78 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

ten social grades, one in each. Above all, let us arrange, in
each case, for German influences to be excluded from the
baby's life, if not from the day of its birth then from as near
to that date as possible. Let us then look forward some
twenty or thirty years. What will have happened ? Can
anyone doubt that a large majority of the German babies
will have become loyal citizens of their adopted countries,
and respectable members of their respective social grades ?
Some failures there will have been among them. But
probably not a higher percentage than if they had belonged
by birth to the various countries which I have specified,
and been born into the social grades in which I have placed
them. The chances are that each of them will have accepted
the " Kultur " of his particular country * and (whether
nominally or really) the religion of his particular foster-
parents, and will have adopted the prejudices and general
outlook on life of his particular social grade.

Consider what this means. Each of the babies had it in
him to play a hundred different parts — the part of an
English squire, of a French artisan, of a Russian peasant,
of an American manufacturer, of a Dutch merchant, of an
Italian priest, of a Swedish official, and so on. What vast
potential resources he must have had at his disposal !
Which particular part he had to play was decided by
" chance." But potentially he was equal to all the parts
and to as many more as we might choose to assign to him.
His adaptability in fine reflected that of the whole human
race, and the range of his latent capacity had no limits.

In this respect, if in no other, man stands apart from all
other living things. Even his friend and companion, the
dog, who probably comes next to him in mental and moral
development, is separated from him as regards adaptability
by an impassable abyss. It is true that the dog family can
play a great variety of parts. But this has been made

1 Were the career of one of these German babies to become the theme
of a story by one of our "heredity" novelists, we should probably be
told that when the baby became an adolescent he began to be tormented
with apparently unaccountable cravings for Sauerkraut and lager beer.
I do not think that those cravings would be felt. I think that from first
to last the transplanted German, provided that he got enough to eat and
drink, would be quite content with the food and drink of his adopted
country.

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT

possible, as anyone can see at a glance, only by very strict
physical differentiation. Hence the supreme importance of
breeding from the dog-fancier's point of view. Vocation,
among dogs, is handed down from father to son, not as a
tradition but as a tendency " in the blood." No amount of
training could convert a Newfoundland puppy into a sheep-
dog or enable a bulldog to course hares. With man it is
entirely different. In spite of the distinctions of colour,
with all that they imply, and in spite of a host of minor
variations in face and figure, there is but one dominant
human type. And that one type, besides being able to
adapt itself to all climates and to a vast range of material
conditions, can take up an unlimited number of different
interests and pursuits. The average baby has it in him, as
we have seen, to speak a hundred languages, to belong to a
hundred nations, to learn a hundred trades and professions,
to play a hundred parts in life.

And the infinitude of the racial inheritance which the
average baby brings with him into the world is of many
dimensions. The religious phenomenon known as " conver-
sion," with the sudden transition which it sometimes effects
from the very worst in a man to the very best ; the winning
of V.C.'s and other rewards of courage and self-sacrifice by
criminals and other " detrimentals " on the field of battle ;
the upsurging, in moments of supreme crisis, of heroism and
self-devotion from unsuspected abysses in some seemingly
commonplace soul ; the sudden melting of a hardened heart
in the sunshine of sympathy and kindness ; the trans-
forming influence of the passion of personal love on a man's
whole attitude towards life, — these and other phenomena
of a kindred nature, which, though necessarily rare (for
only exceptional combinations of circumstances can produce
them), are not therefore to be regarded as abnormal, seem
to show that the unfathomed depths of man's racial nature
are as illimitable as its lateral range. "It is a wonder,"
writes one of our war correspondents, " that never palls
but is always new : the spirit which these men of ours
possess from no matter what corner of the Empire they
may have come. One wonders where the grumblers, the
cowards, the mean people whom one thought one met in

8o THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

ordinary life have gone. They are not here. Or, if they
are, they are uplifted and transfigured. They doubtless,
many of them, could not express it, but some wind has
blown upon them, some sense of comradeship and brother-
hood inspires them, something has made true soldiers and
gallant men of them all." Such a transformation as is
described in this passage is inexplicable except on the
assumption that there are immense reserves of spiritual
vitality in the soul of the " plain average man," and that
though for the most part these forces lie dormant and un-
dreamed of, they can awake and energize when some great
crisis makes its mute appeal to the man's highest self.

What is the explanation of this fundamental paradox ?
Why is it that, whereas on the physical plane our racial
inheritance seems to be strictly limited, on the higher levels
of our being infinitude seems to be of its very essence ? The
answer to this question may be given in a single word :
Consciousness. What consciousness is, how we have ac-
quired it, into what factors it admits of being analyzed, we
cannot say.1 What we can say is, that though foreshadow-
ings and " weak beginnings " of it are to be found below
the level of human life, consciousness is a distinctively
human endowment, or rather it is the distinctively human
endowment, the feature which, more than any other,
differentiates us from all other living things and is there-
fore characteristic of man as man. Now consciousness,
by enabling man to look before and after, and also to look
all round an ever-widening horizon, throws open to him all
the resources of the universe, and in doing so reveals to
him — in posse, if not in esse — corresponding resources in
himself. In other words, it raises, or tends to raise, " to
infinity" all his powers and tendencies which are not
merely physical. Thus it transforms instinct into reason,
blind purpose into self-determining will, feeling into fellow-
feeling, perception into imagination, sensuous enjoyment
into the quest of ideal beauty, carnal desire into spiritual

1 We may, if we please, define consciousness as the self-awareness of
the soul, or, again, as the self-awareness of life. But no definition can
enable us to fathom its fundamental mystery. If we would know what
consciousness is, we must turn for instruction to consciousness itself, and
open our hearts and minds to its dawning light.

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 81

love, communal devotion into the "enthusiasm of humanity,"
the instinct of self-preservation into the thirst for " eternal
life."

In the awakening of consciousness, life begins to be aware
of its own limitless possibilities. Before consciousness
awakes, the current of life flows, blindly and instinctively,
a narrow channel between containing walls which it may
.ever overpass. As consciousness awakes, the channel
begins to widen, and a tidal wave flows up it fraught with

Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.

That message from the sea is the revelation of life to life,
of self to self. Can we wonder that the racial inheritancee of
the human soul has no limit, when consciousness, which is
its differential feature, is the very principle of infinitude in
man's life ?

In respect, then, of its racial inheritance the individual
soul either is in itself a reservoir of unlimited potentialities,
or else has such a reservoir at its command. What part
does lineal heredity play in its development ? We have
seen that on the physical plane our racial heritage is far
larger and far more significant than our lineal heritage, the
possession of eyes, for example, being of far more conse-
uence than the particular colour of the eyes, the possession
a mouth than the particular shape of the mouth, and so
on. Will it not be the same on the higher levels of human
life ? Will not the ratio between the two heritages be at
least maintained ? So one instinctively argues. But we
shall presently find it necessary to look at the matter from
different point of view. To speak of a ratio between two
ite or quasi-finite quantities is permissible. But when
e of the quantities is infinite and the other unknown, the
lation between the two is scarcely one of ratio, in the
cepted sense of that word.

But let us for the moment assume that the arithmetical
quasi-arithmetical point of view holds good. Let us
ume that our lineal heritage is a more or less calculable
quantity, and let us try to determine its dimensions. We
hall find that, far from being the preponderant element in
uman nature which it is sometimes supposed to be, it is

82 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

an elusive, a negligible, and even a vanishing quantity. We
shall find that by far the larger part of what we attribute to
lineal heredity may just as plausibly, and indeed with
better reason, be attributed to environment, — in other
words, to racial heredity being allowed to come into play.

Let us consider some concrete cases.

A, who is the child of disreputable parents, grows up a
ne'er-do-well. B, who is the child of respectable parents,
grows up a respectable citizen. Will it be seriously con-
tended that A inherits his disreputableness and B his re-
spectability from their respective parents ? Is it not more
than probable that, had A and B exchanged homes at birth,
B would have become the ne'er-do-well and A the respect-
able citizen ? From birth to maturity A has been exposed
to the influence of a bad, B of a good environment. Con-
sidering how impressionable and imitative children are, one
may surely argue that the vital difference in the respective
environments of the two boys is sufficient to account for
the divergence of their respective paths in life.

C, allowed from his earliest days to run wild in a dis-
orderly slum, acquires the language of the gutter, and uses
it with vigour and effect. Will it be seriously contended
that he inherited a " foul mouth " from his parents ? Is it
not practically certain that if a princeling had been exposed
at the same tender age to the same influences he too would
have become a master of oaths and obscenities ?

D, the son of drunken parents, takes to drink at an early
age. Was he born into the world with a latent craving for
alcohol ? He may have inherited from his parents some
slight infirmity of will. But in the main his downfall must
surely be attributed to his unfortunate environment. His
parents, in their moments of maudlin affection, may well
have initiated him into their own ways. In any case he
spent the most impressionable years of his life in a demoral-
izing atmosphere ; and a bad example was habitually set
him by those whom he was naturally prone to imitate.

E, having been persistently bullied by his parents and
school-teachers, takes to bullying his younger brothers and
smaller school-fellows. Is there a strain of bullying in his
blood ? We cannot say. What we can say is that in all

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 83

probability he, like D, succumbed to the influences of a
demoralizing atmosphere, and imitated those whom he
naturally made his models.

These are some of the failures in life. As it is with the
failures so it is with the successes. The respectable son of
respectable parents has been taught from his earliest days
to idealize respectability. The prosperous son of prosperous
parents has always been accustomed to regard prosperity
as his birthright. The refined and cultivated son of refined
and cultivated parents has grown up in an atmosphere of
refinement and culture. The musical son of musical parents,
the artistic son of artistic parent? — each of these owes
something to inherited temperament, but he owes at least
as much — and probably more — to the subtly plastic in-
fluences, musical or artistic, which began to act upon him
while he was still in his mother's arms.

I could add to such cases indefinitely. Whenever I hear
it said that such and such a disposition or such and such a
trait is inherited from parents or ancestors, I ask myself
whether an alliance between racial heredity and environ-
ment will not adequately account for the given phenomenon,
and I almost invariably find that it seems to do so. I ask
the same question — let me say in passing — and am able to
give the same answer when I am told by Mr. H. Chamber-
lain and others that national characteristics — the inde-
pendence and reserve of the Englishman, the " canniness "
of the Scot, the lawlessness of the Irishman, the pride of
the Spaniard, the arrogance and servility of the German —
are " in the blood " of the several peoples, for I find that in
every case the explanation of the predominance of the given
trait seems to be historical rather than racial (in the narrow
sense of the word) .

But if familiar causes suffice to account for a given
phenomenon, why should we try to account for it on grounds
which are at best dubious and insecure ? We know what we
are talking about when we say that children are impression-
able and imitative. We do not know what we are talking
about when we say that mental and moral qualities are " in
the blood." Let us at least exhaust the possibilities of the
known before we invoke the aid of the unknown.

84 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

How comes it, then, that the fantastic belief in lineal
heredity as the predominant factor in the formation of
mentality and character prevails so widely ? Partly, I
think, because the orthodox doctrine of the supernatural
origin of the individual soul is falling into disrepute, and
physiology seems to a certain type of mind to provide the
only alternative to it. But chiefly, I think, for two reasons,
each of which is based on an interpretation of facts which
really point to a widely different conclusion. We believe
in the constraining force of lineal heredity because the
infinite variety of human development and the infinite
diversity — or apparent diversity — of human gifts and en-
dowments leads us to concentrate our attention on the
differential elements in human nature and to lose sight of
the common elements. And we believe in it because " pure
breeding," whether in a family, a tribe, a people, or a class,
does in each case undoubtedly tend to preserve a particular
type of character and a particular outlook on life.

Let us first consider the former reason. The infinite
variety of human life, as it manifests itself in history or as
it unfolds itself, in all its length and breadth, before our
eyes — the fact that there seem to be innumerable types of
human beings, that in many cases each human being seems
to be a type in himself — has led careless observers to con-
clude that lineal heredity dominates human nature on all
its higher planes. Two men living in adjoining houses may
have so little in common, except on the physical and mental
planes, that they seem to belong to entirely different species.
A has moral and spiritual qualities which are not merely
lacking but are actually inverted in B. What then ? Is
there no such thing as human nature ? If two trees, similar
in many respects, bore edible and poisonous fruit respect-
ively, we should say that they belonged to different species.
Is it not the same with men ? If B hates where A loves, if
B lies where A speaks the truth, if B is self-centred where A
is self -forgetful, if B is self-indulgent where A is self -re-
strained, do not A and B belong to different species of the
genus Man ? If this is so, how are we to account for the
disruption of the human race into so many species ? If it
is not so, how are we to account for the facts ?

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 85

" To those who chattered Rousseau," says Dr. Hay ward,
" Herbart flung the question, ' What is the nature of
Man ? ' The naturalists who interest themselves in psy-
chology are divided, as we have seen, into two great schools,
the school of " Nature " and the school of " Nurture."
These schools have one doctrine in common — namely, that
there is no such thing as human nature, in the Herbartian
sense of the phrase, no such thing as the " true manhood "
of which Froebel dreamed, no such thing as a central,
magisterial, all-controlling, all-explaining stream of ten-
dency in human nature, which is waiting to assert itself in
every man and which is therefore characteristic of man as
man. But their interpretations of the fact on which they
base this negative conclusion — the bewildering diversity of
human development — are diametrically opposed to, and
may perhaps be held to cancel, one another. The " Nature "
school attribute that diversity to the unscientific inter-
mixture of the different " strains " of Humanity. The
" Nurture " school attribute it to the infinite variety and
complexity of man's environment, which causes a different
inscription, so to speak, to be written by the " moving
finger " of Fate on the " neutral clean sheet " of each indi-
vidual soul. There is a third interpretation which is, I
think, at once less fantastic and less fatalistic than either
of these, and more in keeping with the relevant facts. That
the variety of man's life reflects the variety of his environ-
ment may be freely admitted. But to predicate activity of
man's environment and passivity of man himself, alone
among living beings, is surely to invert the true order of
things. The oak-tree is in the acorn ; and in the absence
of convincing proof to the contrary, I must believe that
whatever a man may become, in response to the influences
that are brought to bear on him, that he has it in him to be.
If, then, the variety of man's life reflects the variety of his
environment, the reason is that in response to the ever
varying stimulus of his environment man develops himself
in ten thousand different directions ; and the reason why
he is able to do this is that he has inexhaustible reserves of
potentiality to draw upon — or, in other words, that his
racial, as opposed to his lineal, inheritance has no limits,

86 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

But here we must distinguish between the individual and
the race. For man as man the environment is world-wide
and infinitely varied. For this or that man the immediately
available environment is, as a rule, strictly limited and
comparatively monotonous. It is true that beyond the
immediately available environment there is room for in-
definite advance and expansion. A farm labourer, for
example, may also be a member of the Catholic Church,
and a citizen of the United Kingdom ; and he may have it
in him to react to the stimulus of each of these environing
communities. But the pressure of what I have called the
immediately available environment — the material con-
ditions of a man's life, the restrictions imposed on him by
his upbringing, the limiting influences inherent in his calling
and his social grade, and the like — is at all times strong,
and, as the years go by, may \vell acquire irresistible
strength. Potentially, however, this man or that man and
man as man may almost be said to coincide. The contrast
between the greatness of the individual's ideal destiny and
the littleness of his actual destiny is indeed the supreme
tragedy of man's life.

Yet in that supreme tragedy man holds the title-deeds
of his great inheritance. Because the environment of man
as man is world-wide and infinitely varied, and the en-
vironment of this or that man is by comparison narrow and
monotonous, there is room and to spare for each individual
environment to have a distinctive character of its own
which reflects itself in the character of the individual who
responds to it. And the inference to be drawn from this
fact is not that there are innumerable species of the genus
Man, but that man as man has it in him to respond and
adapt himself to any and every environment. In other
words, if each individual in turn can surround himself with
a little world of his own by reference to which his individ-
uality is developed and defined, the reason is that, on the
one hand, as A or B or C, he is strictly limited by material
and quasi-material conditions, and, on the other hand, as
a human being, he has the whole Universe at his command ;
and the reason why, as a human being, he has the whole
Universe at his command, is that its infinitude reflects

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT

in his, reflects itself in the limitless reserves of poten-
tiality which constitute his racial inheritance, and which
make it possible for him to respond to every pressure and
react to every stimulus. Thus the bewildering diversity of
human development, which has generated the belief in the
omnipotence of lineal heredity, in reality bears witness to
man's infinite adaptability ; and infinite adaptability, being
potentially common to all men, is inherited by a man, not
from his lineal ancestors, but from the whole human race.

And this is not all. It is not merely because he is infin-
itely adaptable that man is able to develop himself in so
many different directions, but because, as a conscious being,
he can react upon and even control his environment, and
through his control of it can bring an infinite variety of
transforming influences to bear upon himself. We have
seen that consciousness is the principle of infinitude in man's
life, that it raises to infinity all his higher powers and
faculties, changing, for example, instinct into reason, per-
ception into imagination, blind purpose into self-determin-
ing will, and so on. By raising his powers and faculties to
infinity, consciousness extends his environment, potentially
if not actually, to the uttermost limits of the Universe.
For we mean by a man's environment so much of the
Universe as he is able to react to ; and as man's perceptive,
reflective, and volitional faculties expand, the sphere of his
reactivity expands proportionately until he finds himself
the centre of an almost illimitable world. Or we may, if
we please, invert the order of causation and say that, by
indefinitely expanding his environment, consciousness raises
to infinity man's powers and faculties. For so greatly does
the world in which he lives expand in the dawning light of
consciousness, that he finds himself compelled in self-defence
to study the laws of his ever-widening environment, to
realize its latent possibilities, to make his choice, again and
again, among its resources. In his attempt to study its
laws, instinct gradually transforms itself into reason. In
his attempt to realize its latent possibilities, perception
transforms itself into imagination. In his attempt to choose
among its resources, blind purpose transforms itself into
self-determining will. As these characteristically human

88 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

faculties unfold themselves, it becomes possible for a man
not merely to react to his environment, but to react upon
it, to master it in some measure, to make experiments with
it, to modify it in many ways, to make it subservient to his
needs, to mould it to his desires, to open his heart to some
of its influences, to harden his heart against others, to
expand it till it embraces all the stars of heaven, to narrow
it till it shrinks to the dimensions of a miser's garret.1

In reacting on his environment, man reacts, through his
environment, on his own development. And his capacity
for so reacting is unlimited. The response of a plant or an
animal to environment is blind, instinctive, and involuntary.
The response of man, at any rate on the higher levels of his
being, is, in varying degrees, conscious, intelligent, and
deliberate. The difference between the two responses is
the difference between what is finite and what is infinite.
The communal devotion of ants or bees is mechanically
perfect, and varies nothing from ant to ant or from bee to
bee ; but it is what it is — " finished and finite " — and
cannot possibly become anything else. The communal
devotion of human beings varies from man to man and never
attains to perfection, which is an ideal, not an accomplished
fact ; but it is capable of soaring to the sublimest height
of patriotism or widening out into the " enthusiasm of
humanity/' And it owes its range and its variety to the
transforming influence of consciousness. This example is
typical. Consciousness, the most distinctively human of
all man's endowments, is the ultimate source of that be-
wildering diversity of human development which is apt to
blind our eyes to the fundamental unity of our higher
nature, — that diversity which the " Nurture " school of
psychologists try to account for by reference to the tyranny

1 With the power of modifying and even transforming one's own en-
vironment comes the power of affecting, in greater or less degree, the
environment of others. Each of us, as he goes through life, is the centre
of an ever-moving circle of disturbance. In some cases the circle is wide ;
in others — the majority — it is comparatively narrow ; but it is always
wide enough to involve many lives besides one's own. In a very real sense
each of us is his brother's keeper. His own bearing in life inevitably reacts
— for good or for evil — upon the lives of others, affecting some profoundly,
others only slightly, but touching many lives and influencing in some
degree all that it touches.

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HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT

of environment, and the " Nature " school by reference to
the tyranny of " blood." That bewildering diversity would
not be possible if each of us, as his racial birthright, had not
unlimited reserves of potentiality to draw upon. Still less
would it be possible if the dawning light of consciousness
did not reveal to us, little by little, our inward possibilities
and outward resources, and so stimulate us, each in his own
way and his own degree, to enter into possession of our
inheritance.

In conclusion. The profound differences between man
and man which suggest to some minds that the human race
has broken up, under the influence of haphazard breeding,
into a multitude of species, and that lineal heredity is there-
fore the main factor in man's development, and the supreme
arbiter of his destiny, really point to a diametrically oppo-
site conclusion. The differences between man and man are
caused by human nature — the nature of man as man —
striving to realize its vast potentialities, in response to the
stimulus of an environment which for each of us is ideally
infinite, but actually limited by material conditions and
other restrictive influences, and also perpetually reacted
upon and modified by the man himself and his fellow-men.
In other words, " the many " are generated by the self-
realization of " the One " ; and " the One " — the funda-
mental unity and totality of human nature — is at the heart
of each individual man.

I have said that another reason why the fatalistic belief
in the force of heredity prevails so widely is that pure
breeding, whether in a family, a tribe, a nation, a class, or
a caste, does undoubtedly safeguard and tend to perpetuate

e tradition that dominates the particular environment
.to which the individual is born. There is a widespread
•rejudice against marrying into another nation than one's
There is a still stronger prejudice against marrying

.to a lower social grade. And the prejudice against marry-
ing into another coloured race is so strong that those who

end against it, especially if they belong to the politically
ominant race, are regarded as social outcasts and shunned
by their relations and friends. These prejudices are by no

eans unreasonable. It not unfrequently happens that

90 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

the children of " mixed marriages " have the failings of
both breeds and the virtues of neither. But why ? Not
because their blood is impure, but because they are born
into two distinct traditions, and that those traditions mix
badly, if they do not actually refuse to mix. By a tradition
I mean the way of looking at life and dealing with life which
has grown up among and is now characteristic of a par-
ticular race, or a particular community, or a particular
class, or even a particular family. Pure breeding ensures
the maintenance of such a tradition ; and those who are
in the tradition and value it are right to object to
marrying into a tradition which is antagonistic to or even
seriously divergent from their own. But they are wrong
to give as their reason for objecting to it that they do not
wish to contaminate their blood. What they really mean
is that they do not wish to undermine or otherwise impair
the tradition in which they have been reared and to
which they cling. The notation in which we express our-
selves in such cases needs to be revised. When we say
that a man comes of a good stock or has good blood in his
veins, we mean that he is born into and brought up in a
good tradition. When we say that he is well-bred, we mean
that, owing to the accident of his birth, he has been, or at
least might have been, well brought up. We attribute to
" nature " what is really due to " nurture." I have else-
where referred to the case of the hybrid Eurasian and the
pure-bred Jew of the Pale ; and as what I said then still
seems to me to hold good, I may perhaps be allowed to
quote my own words : " It is sometimes said that the
Eurasian in Hindostan has the faults of both the races from
which he springs. In reality he has the faults of two widely
dissimilar environments. For he is in the unhappy position
of having a leg in each of two dissevered worlds. If he could
be brought up from his birth either as an Englishman or as
a Hindoo, all might be well with him. But it is his fate to
be brought up both as an Englishman and as a Hindoo, and
he is therefore perpetually torn asunder between two great
and ancient civilizations which have so long been kept
apart that they now refuse to blend. . . ." " The case of
the Jew is interesting and to the point. Hero, at any rate

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT

within the Pale/ purity of blood has been strictly main-
tained, and a social life, based on Pharisaic legalism, has
continued unchanged from the time of the Dispersal to the
present day. Does it follow that legalism is in the blood of
the modern Jew ? By no means. What has happened is
that the purity of his blood has given him a homogeneous
and practically unvarying environment, to the full force of
which each individual member of the race is exposed from
the moment of his birth. Where there are no marriages,
and therefore little or no social intercourse, with outsiders,
the same conception of life, the same scheme of life, the
same culture, the same civilization, are handed down from
generation to generation, and the pressure of their influence
on the individual is well-nigh irresistible. But let the Jew
emerge from the Pale, and intermarry with the Gentile, and
he speedily shuffles off the oppressive burden of the Law." l
If these things are so ; if the tragedy of the Eurasian is
caused, not by two widely different strains of blood meeting
in his veins, but by two widely different civilizations meet-
ing in his life ; if the legalism of the pure-bred Jew has
come down to him as a tradition, and only as a tradition,—
fifteen centuries of strict in-breeding having apparently
failed to infuse a single atom of it into his blood ; if (to
take another case) in Paraguay, at the present day, " thanks
to a homogeneous environment, we have remarkable homo-
geneity of character co-existing with almost unparalleled
hybridity of race," — can we resist the inference that the
response of human nature — the generic nature of man — to
the stimulus of environment is the main factor in the for-
mation of character, and that breeding only counts because,
and so far as, it serves to guide and control the formative
influences of environment ?

1 In Defence of What Might Be, pp. 364-6.

CHAPTER IV

THE THEORY OF STRAIN

FROM the position which -I reached at the end of the
last chapter I pass on to the conclusion that the
theory of " strain," as expounded by Professor Bateson
and other naturalists, though it may hold good in an appre-
ciable degree of man's physique, does not hold good of his
character. The psychological and sociological implications
of the theory of strain are so important that the question
of its applicability to the higher levels of human nature
deserves the most careful consideration. In his Address to
the British Association at Melbourne, Professor Bateson
supports his thesis that " of the overwhelmingly greater
significance of ' nature ' (in human life) there is no longer
any possibility of doubt " by an appeal to " the universal
experience of the breeder, whether of plants or animals,
that strain is absolutely essential, that though bad con-
ditions may easily enough spoil a good strain, yet that
under the best of conditions a bad strain will never give a
fine result." This argument begs the question which is in
dispute. To argue from the facts of plant and animal life
to the possibilities of human life is permissible — on two
conditions. The thinker must satisfy himself that, as his
argument develops, the analogy between the two kinds of
life continues to hold good. And he must decline to accept
the consequent conclusions until they have been verified
in greater or less degree, by observation or experiment, or
both. Neither of these conditions has been fulfilled by
Professor Bateson. He assumes at the outset that the
analogy between the two kinds of life is absolute and final ;
that it virtually amounts to identity ; in other words, that
man is an animal and nothing more. And he makes no
attempt to verify his conclusion. The question which is

THE THEORY OF STRAIN 93

y in dispute is this : Does the biological theory of
" strain " apply to the higher or more spiritual levels of
human nature ? If it does, the " universal experience of
the breeder " may fairly be appealed to. But until we have
satisfied ourselves that it does — until we have satisfied our-
selves, for example, that the " lower orders " are, in respect
of mentality and character, of an inferior strain to the
" upper classes " — the experience of the breeder counts for
nothing in this controversy, and Professor Bateson's argu-
ment must be ruled out of court.

In order to make his point of view clear Professor Bateson
reviews and criticizes a passage in my book What Is and
What Might Be.1 In order to make my point of view clear,
I will quote his criticism and then reply to it : —

" Having witnessed the success of a great teacher in
helping unpromising peasant children to develop their
natural powers, he (the author of What Is and What Might
Be) gives us the following botanical parallel. Assuming that
the wild bullace is the origin of domesticated plums, he tells
us that by cultivation the bullace can no doubt be improved
so as to become a better bullace, but by no means can the
bullace be made to bear plums. All this is sound biology ;
but translating these facts into the human analogy, he
declares that the work of the successful teacher shows that
with man the facts are otherwise, and that the average rustic
child, whose normal ideal is ' bullacehood,' can become the
rare exception, developing to a stage corresponding with
that of the plum. But the naturalist knows exactly where
the parallel is at fault. For . . . the bullace is breeding
approximately true, whereas the human crop, like jute and

1 Professor Bateson speaks of my book as " charming though pathetic."
am glad that it charmed so competent a judge. But why does he call it.
pathetic ? Does he think that I am one of the " educationists " whom
" faith, not evidence . . . encourages to hope so greatly in the ameliorating
conditions of life " ? If he does, let me assure him that, on the contrary,
it is evidence, not (mere) faith, which has made me an optimist as regards
e efficacy of " nurture " in general and education in particular. Fov
any years, if I did not actually believe, I certainly took for granted, that
the upper classes were of a superior " strain " to the lower, and I had
therefore but little faith in the transforming influence of education. But
experience, in " Egeria's " and other schools, convinced me, late in life,
that my arrogant assumption was a mere superstition, and that the lower
classes were as well able to respond to the stimulus of a vivifying education
as the upper.

94 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

various cottons, is in a state of polymorphic mixture. The
population of many English villages may be compared with
the crop which would result from sowing a bushel of kernels
gathered mostly from the hedges with an occasional few
from the orchard. If anyone asks how there are any plum-
kernels in the sample at all, he may find the answer perhaps
in spontaneous variation, but more probably in the appear-
ance of a long hidden recession . For the want of that genetic
variation, consisting probably, as I have argued, in loss of
inhibiting factors, by which the plum arose from the wild
form, neither food, nor education, nor hygiene can in any
way atone. Many wild plants are half -starved through
competition, and transferred to garden soil they grow much
bigger ; so good conditions might certainly enable the
bullace population to develop beyond the stunted physical
and mental status they commonly attain, but plums they
can never be." What does the last sentence in this para-
graph mean ? Is Professor Bateson denying my facts, or
is he merely denying the possibility of human bullaces being
transformed into human plums ? I think he is denying my
facts. Had I said that some of the Utopian bullaces de-
veloped into plums, and had I attributed this to " Egeria's "
transforming influence, Professor Bateson's explanation of
what happened would certainly have been worth consider-
ing. But I said then, and I say now with equal emphasis,
that before they left " Egeria's " school, all or nearly all the
Utopian bullaces had become plums ; in other words, that
the average child had developed certain plum-like qualities
which I enumerated in my book — namely, " activity,
versatility, imaginative sympathy, a large and free outlook,
self-forgetfulness, charm of manner, joy of heart." * When
I say this I am stating what I believe to be a fact. Now a
fact, or rather the report of a fact, must either be accepted
or rejected. If it is accepted, the logical consequences of
accepting it must also be accepted. If it is rejected, the
rejection must be based on one (or both) of two grounds.
The first is that the reporter either misread the evidence of
his senses, or, if he spoke from hearsay, was misinformed.
The second is that the reported fact is intrinsically quite

1 That these are plum-like qualities will, I think, be generally admitted.

THE THEORY OF STRAIN

incredible. Professor Bateson cannot from his own experi-
ence deny the fact that I have reported, for he never visited
" Egeria's " school. But because his theories fail to account
for the fact, he rejects it off-hand, though it is not intrinsi-
cally incredible, on purely a priori grounds. Such a pro-
ceeding is unworthy of a scientific mind. I have always
understood that when a fact collides with a theory, it is the
latter, not the former, that goes to the wall. A witty
Frenchman has made fun of the scientists who will not
allow that any phenomenon can take place which official
science has not authorized Nature to produce. Professor
Bateson goes further than this. For he will not allow that
human nature can bear any fruit which his biological
theories, based on the study of plants and animals only, have
not authorized it to bear. In taking up this attitude he
leans too heavily on the argument from analogy. It is
useless for him to tell me that because no amount of culture
can enable a bullace-tree to bear plums, therefore the
average Utopian child could not have developed the plum-
like qualities with which I credited him. I say that he did
develop those qualities, and that judicious and sympathetic
culture enabled him to do so.

But perhaps Professor Bateson is merely denying in
general terms that human bullaces can be transformed into
human plums. If so, he is probably right. But if he is, and
if my facts hold good, his theory of " strain," so far as it
applies to human beings, goes to the wall. I am grateful to
Professor Bateson for having compelled me to re-read the
passage which he criticized. For I see now that there is a
serious flaw in my argument, a flaw which escaped my
notice when I composed the passage. I assumed that the
rustic inhabitants of Utopia were a " bullace population " ;
in other words, that they belonged for the most part to an
inferior " strain." Whether I really believed this when I
wrote my book I cannot say for certain. It is possible that
a superstition of which I had but recently, under " Egeria's "
influence, begun to divest myself, still lingered in my mind
— the superstition that the " lower orders " are by birth and
reeding our inferiors in mentality and character. In any
!, I wrote as if I was still the victim of that superstition ;

96 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

and I therefore claimed by implication that " Egeria " had
wrought a miracle. Professor Batcson might have reminded
me that, as miracles do not happen, if " Egeria 's " pupils
really reached the plum level, they must have been plums
in posse from their earliest days. But instead of doing this
he assumed, with me, that the bulk of the Utopian children
belonged to the bullace breed, and argued from this that
they could not and did not develop into plums. My answer
to this argument — an answer which I will repeat as often
as it is called for — is that plums those children certainly
were, and plums of a very high quality, — that the average
Utopian child was in fact a better specimen of plumhood
than the average product of what we call " good breeding "
and " gentle birth." And I can now draw for myself the
inference from my own premises which Professor Bateson
might have drawn for me (if only to reject it, when drawn),
— that neither mentally nor morally are the lower classes
inferior at birth to the upper ; that the average peasant in
particular is not a bullace, but a plum — a plum which,
owing to the combined influences of poor soil, unfavourable
climate, and unskilful culture, has missed its high destiny
and fallen below the normal level of plum growth.

How completely Professor Bateson, as an interpreter of
human nature, is obsessed by the biological theory of
" strain " is shown by the following passages in his Mel-
bourne Address : " Modern statesmanship aims rightly at
helping those who have got sown as wildings to come into
their proper class ; but let not anyone suppose such a policy
democratic in its ultimate effects, for no course of action
can be more effective in strengthening the upper classes,
while weakening the lower." l ..." In all practical schemes
for social reform the congenital diversity, the essential
polymorphism of all civilized communities must be recog-
nized as a fundamental fact, and reformers should rather
direct their efforts to facilitating and rectifying class dis-

1 The theory which Professor Bateson has expounded must surely have
originated in Germany. One can imagine with what gusto the Hohen-
zollerns and the Prussian Junkers would lay its flattering unction to their
souls. One might even conjecture that the professor who elaborated it,
if of " bullace " origin, was raised to the " plum " level by royal mandate
and made a " von " in recognition of his newly-acquired superior strain.

THE THEORY OF STRAIN 97

tinctions, than to any futile attempt to abolish them. . . .
The instability of society is due, not to inequality, which is
inherent and congenital, but to the fact that in periods of
rapid change like the present convection currents are set
up such that the elements of the strata get intermixed and
the apparent stratification corresponds only roughly with
the genetic."

These passages set one thinking. When one remembers
by what methods the " upper classes " in this and other
countries, and in this and other ages, have gained the upper
hand, how largely they have owed their ascendancy to force
or to fraud or to a judicious mixture of force and fraud, how
much of their reputed ability has been sheer unscrupulous-
ness, how much of their reputed force of character has been
ruthless self-assertion, — one begins to wonder what are the
qualities, superiority in which differentiates the " high-
born " aristocracy from the " low-born " populace. Are
they the qualities which Christ pronounced blessed in the
Sermon on the Mount ? I doubt it. As I turn the pages of
history, I find that again and again the ungodly flourished
like a green bay-tree, — flourished so triumphantly that he
was able to bequeath his ill-gotten prosperity to the third
and fourth, and even to the tenth, generation of his de-
scendants. In such a case did the successful scoundrel
bequeath his character as well as his position and wealth ?
According to Professor Bateson he must have done so.
But, if he did, there is surely a flaw in his descendants' title
to social and political ascendancy.

Professor Bateson has raised an interesting and difficult
question. Will he help us to answer it ? Are his " upper
classes " an aristocracy of physique, of intellect, of morals,
of spirituality ? That they are " inherently and congeni-
tally " superior in all four directions is a proposition which
those who are well acquainted with both classes will laugh
to scorn, and which even Professor Bateson will scarcely
have the hardihood to maintain. Were the robber knights
of the Rhine, are the arrogant barons of East Prussia and
the Baltic Provinces " high-born " ? Are the Franciscan
brothers and sisters, whose ideal of life has always been
diametrically opposed to that of knight or baron, " low-

98 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

born " ? The pedigree of a dog or a horse is recorded in
certain unmistakable features. In what features, inward
or outward, does Nature record the pedigree of the " high-
born " or the " low-born " man ? This is a point on which
Professor Bateson would do well to enlighten us, but on
which he prefers to keep silence.

Let us try to answer the question which he has left un-
answered. He seems to take for granted that the upper
classes in this country — the nobility, gentry, and pro-
fessional men, let us say — are mostly plums, and that the
lower classes — the peasants, miners, and artisans, let us
say — are mostly bullaces. Wherein*, then, do the upper
classes show their inherent and congenital superiority to
the lower ? That they are richer, better educated, and have
more social and political influence goes without saying.
But in the first place a man may be rich, well-educated, and
influential, and yet be a base-souled villain ; and in the
second place riches, education, and social and political
influence belong to a man's environment rather than to his
blood. That the upper classes are of superior physique may
perhaps be admitted, though even in this respect the differ-
ence between the two classes at birth is comparatively small,
the physical superiority of the average adult specimen of
the upper classes being largely due to healthier surroundings
and better food. That they are superior in mental power is
disputable, to say the least. The adult peasant is no doubt
less cultured and less intellectual than the adult " gentle-
man " ; but he has been exposed from his birth, both at
home and in school, to much less favourable educational
influences, and it is to this rather than to any inherited
inferiority that his short-comings, cultural and intellectual,
are probably due. What the inherent and congenital
mentality of the lower classes really is, or how it compares
with that of the upper classes, we do not know. What we
do know is that the peasant, the miner, and the artisan are
born into a cramping and depressing environment, the
product of social and economic causes, from which they
cannot easily escape, and in which it is as difficult for their
mental powers to unfold as for a tree to thrive in an exposed
situation or a poor soil. This fact invites imaginative con-

THE THEORY OF STRAIN

jecture as to what might be or might have been. The
psychology of Gray's Elegy, which wisely limits itself to
" perhaps " and " may/' is, I believe, absolutely sound :

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire ;
Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre :

But knowledge to their eyes her ample page
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll ;
Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood ;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbade. . . .

Some such epitaph as this might be written on many a
nameless grave in country churchyard or urban cemetery.
It was said that in the Napoleonic armies every soldier
carried a Field-Marshal's baton in his knapsack ; and it is
a fact that some of the ablest of Napoleon's lieutenants rose
from the ranks. Why ? Because in Republican France the
superstition of the congenital inferiority of the lower classes
had been temporarily swept away by the Revolution, and
because the Republican tradition had been inherited by the
Empire and respected by the Emperor, whose own genius
had raised him from obscurity to supreme power, and who
was on the look-out for talent in the armies that he led.1 In
the British Army, where the soldiers fought " under the

Rid shade of aristocracy," the private who, had he been
1 " If Louis XVI had continued to reign," says Stendhal, " Danton and
>reau would have been advocates; Pichegru, Massena and Augereau non-
cnmissioned officers ; Desaix and Kleber captains ; Bonaparte and
Carnot lieutenant-colonels or colonels of artillery; Lannes and Murat
shop-keepers or kept a post-office ; Si6yes would* have been a suffragan
bishop ; and Mirabeau a minor diplomatist."

ioo THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

born in France, might have become a Field-Marshal, would
probably have won his stripes, or at best become a sub-
altern, and gone no further. The constitution of things was
against his rising to the height of his deserts. " His lot
forbade " his advancement.

The experiment which the Republican War Ministers
initiated and which Napoleon carried on is of lasting interest
and opens up a wide vista to speculative thought. Pro-
fessor Bateson will perhaps contend that the Marshals who
rose from the ranks were plums which had " got sown as
wildings." But no : a Field-Marshal is, in his own line, a
super-plum, not a plum ; and where there is one super-plum
there must be thousands and tens of thousands of plums.
In the Napoleonic armies, as in the Republican, there was a
temporary relaxation of a deadening pressure. If that
concession could enable many soldiers, who would otherwise
in all probability have lived and died in obscurity, to rise to
the very highest grade of all, what might not a general
equalizing of conditions do in the way of raising the lower
classes to the mental level of the upper ? This is a question
which the romantic stories of such men as Ney, Murat,
Hoche, Lannes, Massena, Augereau and others compel us to
ask ourselves. In our attempts to answer it we can, I think,
pass beyond the limits of mere conjecture. The " Egeria "
of my book was the first to convince me that, under favour-
able conditions, foremost among which is an attitude of
trust and encouragement on the part of the teacher, the
village boy or girl can rival the child of the upper classes in
all-round mental capacity, — in resourcefulness, in initiative,
in versatility, in intellectual power, in literary and artistic
taste. Other teachers have since taught me the same
lesson. Not long after my discovery of " Utopia," the
head master of an elementary school in the East of London
showed me some admirable drawings done by his pupils.
I asked him what proportion of his pupils could reach that
level. He answered : " Had you asked me that question a
year ago I would have said ' 5 per cent/ but now I can say
' 95 Per cent.' ' As a teacher of drawing he had recently
changed his aims and methods. Had he not done so, he
would have continued to take for granted that 95 per cent

THE THEORY OF Sf RAIN 101

of his pupils had little or no capacity for drawing. More
recently I was shown some thirty or forty poems written by
girls in a higher standard elementary school in one of our
northern manufacturing towns. The high level of feeling
and expression reached in these poems astonished me.1
The head mistress explained to me that being in need of
' copy " for the school magazine, she encouraged the girls
to try their hands at writing verse. The girls, who had long
had access to a good school library, containing many
volumes of poetry, responded with alacrity. The teacher
added that " our poetry is only a very small part of our
literature scheme,2 the carrying out of which is to the
children pure joy, and these poems are only first attempts."
Similar discoveries of latent taste and talent in the average
elementary school-child are constantly being made. They
point to serious defects in our system or systems of educa-
tion, which do so much for the child, of whatever social
grade, and leave so little to his spontaneous activity, that
his mind is still in large measure an unexplored land. If
education could be reformed in the direction of setting
children free to develop individuality and realize latent
capacity, it would, I think, be found that the mental ability

1 Here is one of the poems I—-
LATE OCTOBER

Patter of fitful rain,

Shiver of falling leaves,

And wail of wind which has left behind

The glory of fruit and sheaves.

Mist on the crowning hills,

Mist in the vales below,

And grief in the heart that has seen depart

Its summer of long ago.

A similar and equally successful experiment has been made in one of
the lower forms of a Girls' Municipal High School. " Original poetry by
children," writes Miss Fletcher, one of the teachers in that school, "is an
interesting subject, but space forbids full discussion here. Enough to
state that I have experimented independently in this direction, and am
amazed and delighted at the result. I believe that most intelligent children
of this age have within them, mostly latent, a vein of poetry, simple and
rhythmical, and need only the right stimulus to use and delight in the
power." Most of Miss Fletcher's pupils would be of " bullace " breed,
some being ex-elementary scholars and others the daughters of lower
middle-class parents.

8 This is quite true. The prose efforts of the children are as remarkable
as their poems.

102 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

of both the upper and the lower classes was much greater
than we had imagined it to be. But it would not be found
that the mental ability of the upper classes was appreciably
greater than that of the lower. Such at least is the convic-
tion which my recent educational experiences and my re-
interpretation, in the light which they cast, of former
experiences have forced upon my mind.

The idea that the upper classes are by nature morally
and spiritually superior to the lower is a dangerous delusion,
of which, for their own sakes, those who belong to the upper
classes would do well to rid themselves. If the lower classes
fill more than their share of our prison cells, the reason is
that many of them are born into and reared in criminal
surroundings, that they are beset by temptations to dis-
honesty and other forms of lawlessness to which the upper
classes are not exposed, and that, in spite of the desire of our
legislators to do justice to all classes, there is still one law
for the rich and another for the poor.1 Criminality is not
viciousness. The lower classes may be more criminal than
the upper, in the sense of being more frequently convicted
of offences against the law, but they are certainly not more
vicious.2 If anything, they are less selfish and less worldly.
But this too can easily be explained. The disadvantages
of environment are not all on the side of the poor. The rich
are exposed to temptations from which the poor are largely,
if not wholly, exempt. It was said of old by one who
taught with authority that it is easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into
the Kingdom of Heaven. Did not Christ mean by this that
outward prosperity, with its temptations to self-indulgence
(a hydra-headed vice), to worldliness (with the perversion

1 Sec Judge Parry's book, The Law and the Poor, passim.

8 The upper classes may possibly flatter themselves that they are more
continent than the lower. The author of A Student in Arms who, as a
private, a non-commissioned officer and a commissioned officer in Kitch-
ener's Army, mixed freely with all sorts and conditions of men, disputes this
claim. Commenting on the belief that the "lower classes" are "natur-
ally coarser and more animal than the upper classes," he writes : "I want
... to contradict that belief with all the vehemence of which I am capable.
Officers and men necessarily develop different qualities, different forms of
expression, different mental attitudes. But I am confident that I speak
the truth v.-hen I say that essentially and in the eyes of God there is nothing
to choose between them."

THE THEORY OF STRAIN 103

of ideals which it involves) and to arrogance (with its accept-
ance as final of an outward standard of value) , is ever tending
to distract the prosperous from the inward life ? Bearing
these things in mind, let us hold the scales even between the
two classes, and say that on the moral and spiritual planes
neither is inherently superior to the other. The present war
has proved to demonstration that there are vast reserves of
heroism and self-devotion in human nature, and that in this
respect the upper classes are not more richly endowed than
the lower, nor the lower classes than the upper. One of our
officers, writing from the front, says of his men : " I'm not
emotional, but . . . since I've been out here in the trenches
I've had the water forced into my eyes, not once, but a
dozen times, from sheer admiration and respect, by the
action of rough rude chaps whom you'd never waste a
second glance on in the streets of London, men who, so
far from being exceptional, are typical through and through,
just the common street average. . . . Under the strain and
stress of this savage existence these men show up for what
they really are under their rough hides ; they are jewel all
through . . . and the daily round of their lives is simply
full of little acts of self-sacrifice, generosity, and unstudied
heroism." And our men at the front have often written in
equivalent terms of their officers. The truth is that, in
response to the stimulus of this tremendous war, sublime
qualities are ever awaking which exist as possibilities in
those hidden depths of our nature where distinctions of class
and breeding are unknown, and which are therefore, in the
real meaning of the phrase, characteristic of man as man.
In the Kingdom of Heaven there is no such thing as " strain."
Thus the " inherent and congenital " superiority of the
upper to the lower classes, which Professor Bateson seems
to postulate, resolves itself, when carefully considered, into
a doubtful superiority in physique. When we ask the upper
classes to make good their claim to superiority in intellect,
in morals, in spirituality, the evidence which they bring
forward proves to be wholly inconclusive. On the higher
levels of human nature such phrases as well-born, high-born,
well-bred, good birth, good breeding, and their opposites, have
no meaning. Or rather, so far as they have a meaning, they

104 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

indicate superiority or inferiority in respect of inherited
environment, not of breed. The infinitude which is of the
essence of human nature is as much the birthright of the
peasant or the miner as of the plutocrat or the peer. The
biological theory of strain, when applied to human beings,
may lend its countenance to the arrogance of those who are
born into high places. But that proves nothing except
that, like the arrogance which it seems to countenance, the
theory, as an interpretation of human nature, is profoundly
materialistic at heart. The philosophy of life which resolves
psychology into physiology is vitiated by one fundamental
fallacy. It ignores the transforming, expanding, sublimating
power of consciousness. It ignores the soul.

CHAPTER V

THE ANCESTRY OF THE SOUL

WHAT, then, does a man inherit from his lineal
ancestors, near or remote ? Is his heritage purely
physical ? If " Yes " is my answer to this question, I must
at once modify it by reminding myself that on this plane of
existence and in this life the physical and spiritual sides of
man's nature cannot be disjoined. There is a physical side
to spirituality just as there is a spiritual side to physique.
Expression, for example, is a spiritual feature of the outer
man, and as such is much more within a man's control than
are the physical features which are transmitted to him by
his parents and other lineal ancestors. A man cannot, by
taking thought or action, alter the shape of his nose, unless
indeed by his own folly he exposes it to the ravages of
disease ; but he can by his manner of living alter and even
transform his expression. It is the same, mutatis mutandis,
with the inner man, the soul. If we think of the soul as
character, we see that there is a physical side to it, namely,
temperament. If we think of it as mentality, we see that
there is a physical side to it, namely, brain power. That
temperament and brain power, though they seem to belong
to the inner man, are in the main inherited (in the narrower
sense of the word) is, I think, as certain as that expression,
though it seems to belong to the outer man, is not inherited,
or is so only in a minor degree.

But temperament and brain power are only the lines or
surfaces of contact between the body and the soul. What of
the soul itself ? Have we any evidence that character, as
distinguished from temperament, or that mind, as distin-
guished from brain power, is transmissible from father to
son, or from ancestor to descendant ? I think not. Such
evidence as seems to be forthcoming is found, when carefully

105

106 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

analyzed, to be vitiated, either by lineal heredity having
been credited with influences which really emanate from
environment, or by temperament having been confused
with character, and brain power with mind.

On the other hand there is, I think, positive evidence that
the soul does not, or rather cannot, descend from father to
son. I have given my reasons for believing that the average
man has practically limitless reserves of spiritual and mental
vitality, reserves which are not the less real because he may
be unable to bring more than a very small part of them into
action. In other words, I have given my reasons for think-
ing that on the higher levels of life our racial inheritance is
infinite. If I am right, the question which I have asked is
answered. It would be as reasonable to suppose that the
Gulf Stream could flow through a drainpipe as that the
infinite reserves of mental and spiritual vitality with which
each of us is endowed could be transmitted through the
medium of a speck of protoplasm.

What, then, is the ancestry of the soul ? We are now in
a region of pure conjecture. When Professor Bateson tells
us that " Shakespeare once existed as a speck of protoplasm
no bigger than a pin's head," and that "to this nothing was
added that would not equally well have served to build up
a baboon or a rat," he is begging a very large question.
Because he is an expert at biology he is claiming the right
to lay down the law on a matter which is so great and has so
many implications that " the soul of the wide world " is
alone competent to deal with it. In doing this he is exceed-
ing the warrant of his credentials, high as these doubtless
are. It is possible that the statement which he makes so
confidently is entirely wrong. It is possible that at a certain
stage in the development of the Shakespearean speck of
protoplasm, something very important was added to it,
namely, the soul of Shakespeare. At any rate, the problem
which Professor Bateson solves in this off-hand way infinitely
transcends the province of any expert ; and therefore,
though no one is entitled to dogmatize about it, anyone who
will take the trouble to think is free to consider it.

The best way to approach such a problem is to examine
the solutions of it that at present hold the field. Of the

current solutions of the problem of the soul's origin there
re four which deserve attention :

i) The first is the theory of the supernatural creation of
the soul.

(2) The second is the theory of the protoplasmic origin of
the soul.

(3) The third is the theory of cpigenesis, or the building up
of the soul by environmental influences.

(4) The fourth is the theory of reincarnation, or the
volution of the soul through a sequence of earth-lives.

(i) According to the first of these theories, each soul in
turn is created by the supernatural God and enters the
growing organism during its pre-natal life. This theory,
which has the sanction of Christian theology, is rigidly
predestinarian in tendency ; and as, according to the same
theology, the destiny of the individual is either eternal
misery or eternal bliss, the theory in question lays a heavy
responsibility on him whose creative will is ever peopling
and re-peopling the earth. Calvinism has accepted this
responsibility on behalf of the Creator ; but the other
schools of Christian thought, shrinking from the logical
consequences of accepting it, have tried to minimize or to
evade it. I will not press this objection to the orthodox
theory ; for my own objection to it strikes at its very roots.
A theory which takes for granted the dualism of Nature and
the Supernatural is conceived, as it seems to me, in error.
But this is a point on which I do not propose to enlarge ;
for having elsewhere tried to show that our existing dis-
orders and discontents are largely due to our having accepted
supernaturalism as a philosophy of the Universe, and worked
it out, both in theory and practice, into a philosophy
of life, I feel that I need not take pains to disprove this
particular application of the fundamental postulate of super-
turalism. And even if I believed in the Supernatural,
should protest, in the name of logical economy, against
supernatural causes being invoked to account for natural
phenomena while the resources of natural causation were
still unexhausted.

nal
Is

loS THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

(2) I will therefore pass on to the second theory. If the
first is spiritually predestinarian, the second is physically
fatalistic. In the two sentences which I have quoted from
Professor Bateson's Address the protoplasmic theory is set
forth with uncompromising directness. I have given my
reasons for rejecting this theory. Posing as a reasoned
conclusion it resolves itself into the assumption that the
" significance " of " nature " (lineal heredity) as a factor
in human development is " overwhelmingly greater " than
that of " nurture " (environment). This assumption re-
solves itself into another, namely, that the laws of the plant
and animal worlds govern human life, govern it so rigorously
that the solution of psychological problems rests with
physiology, not with psychology. The positive evidence for
the " overwhelmingly greater significance of nature " is not
merely inconclusive, but actually admits of being so inter-
preted as to point in the opposite direction ; for again and
again we find that traits and tendencies which are supposed
to be " inherited " are really due to the racial or generic
nature of man, which seems to be infinitely adaptable and
resourceful, reacting to the stimulus of an infinitely compre-
hensive and variable environment. But my chief objection
to the protoplasmic theory is that in the act of accounting
for the soul it abolishes it. For, in order to pass the soul
through the narrow channel of a " speck of protoplasm," it
must needs deprive it of its infinitude ; and to deprive it of
its infinitude is to destroy its identity ; for consciousness,
which differentiates man from all other living things, is the
very principle of infinitude in his life. If the soul is nothing
more than a function of the body, the protoplasmic theory
of its origin is obviously correct. But in that case the soul
is non-existent ; and the body, with its powers and func-
tions, is the whole man. If Shakespeare once existed as a
speck of protoplasm, and if to this nothing was added that
would not equally well have served to build up a baboon or
a rat, then the soul of Shakespeare was no more of a reality
than the soul of a baboon or a rat.1 What then ? Will this

1 I mean by this that it belonged to the same order of reality (or un-
reality). The difference between it and the soul of the baboon or the rat
was a difference of degree, not of kind.

THE ANCESTRY OF THE SOUL 109

physiological solution of the master problem of psychology
permanently content the biologist ? No : he is no " vita-
list " ; and sooner or later, constrained by the logic of
his own conceptions, he will either have to abandon the
protoplasmic theory as inadequate or allow a mechanical
solution of the same problem to take its place. Life, as the
biologist who resolves psychology into physiology conceives
it, is bound in the iron fetters of necessity. The constraining
forces of heredity, acting through the speck of protoplasm,
are irresistible. The biologist will probably admit that a
man can modify his environment and to that extent react
on his destiny ; but this concession will do nothing to lift
the cloud of physical fatalism with which his theory of the
soul overshadows man's life. For the power of modifying
environment is as much inherent in the speck of protoplasm
which will become a man, as any other of its constituent
elements ; and when reaction on destiny is itself pre-
destined, it is an illusion to feel that one is free.

(3) The third theory is at once contradictory of and
complementary to the second. The basis of it is recogni-
tion, by another school of biologists, of the fact that " nurture
is inconceivably more important than nature." It has been
expounded by Dr. Chalmers Mitchell in his instructive book
Evolution and the War. Dr. Chalmers Mitchell is dealing
with the causes of national differentiation ; but his argu-
ments apply with equal force to the causes of individual
differentiation. His criticism of Mendelian assumptions is
outspoken and direct. He considers that Professor Bate-
son's " bold pronouncements " in Australia have " opened
the flood-gates to dogmatic quackery." And when Pro-
fessor Bateson tells his audience that " with little hesitation
we can now declare that the potentialities and aptitudes,
physical as well as mental, sex, colours, powers of work or
of invention, liability to diseases, possible duration of life,
and the other features by which the members of a mixed
population differ from each other, are determined from the
moment of fertilization " his critic observes that for the
inclusion of " mental potentialities and aptitudes in such a
generalization . . . there is no scrap of positive evidence."
He adds that " there is nothing but theory to support the

no THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

proposition that in the case of man nature ' has an over-
whelmingly greater significance ' than nurture."

What makes this criticism the more significant is that
Dr. Chalmers Mitchell's own standpoint is strictly physio-
logical. It is true that he lays great stress on the part that
consciousness and the sense of freedom play in human life ;
but though he deprecates Bergson's attempt " to associate
consciousness and the sense of freedom not merely with
human life but with all life," and though he holds that
" consciousness and freedom, purpose and intelligence," are
not "to be ascribed to lowly animals," he yet believes
" with Darwin, that as the body of man has been evolved
from the body of animals, so the intellectual, emotional,
and moral faculties of man have been evolved from the
qualities of animals." Nor does he " shrink from the impli-
cations even of the phrase that thought is a secretion of the
brain as bile is a secretion of the liver." How, then, has
the soul of man, as he reads its history, been evolved ?
" By the moulding pressure of environment," is his answer
to this question. In his opinion " the most important of
the moulding forces that produce the differences in nation-
ality are epigenetic, that is to say, they are imposed on the
hereditary material and have to be reimposed on each
generation." And what is true of the differences in nation-
ality is true of the differences in individuality. " It is after
the Miltonoplasm (the germ of the future Milton) has grown
into a sentient human being that the factors most potent
in shaping the direction, quality, and value of his mental
and emotional output come into operation. These factors
are in his environment, not in himself : they are products
of the ' Kultur ' of the nation in which he lives, and they,
at least, are created by human will and are subject to human
will." So far as " these epigenetic agencies . . . acting on
the mind and emotions " are concerned, " the mind and the
body of the infant are neutral, clean sheets on which many
kinds of writing may be impressed." From these passages
I gather that the epigenesists transfer activity from the
organism to the environment, and substitute for the phy-
siological conception of the organism reacting to the en-
vironment, the more mechanical conception of the environ-

THE ANCESTRY OF THE SOUL in

ment moulding the organism, moulding its " mind and
emotions " as well as its body. But whence does the en-
vironment derive its plastic force ? The answer to this
question is a startling paradox. " The factors most potent
in shaping the direction, quality, and value of " a man's
" mental and emotional output . . . are created by human
will and are subject to human will." How can this be ?
How can the environment derive its plastic force from the
victim of its own plastic pressure ? How can a " neutral
clean sheet " develop into a " creative will " ? To cover a
sheet of paper with script will not, as far as I can see, give it
the power of creating the writer's pen and ink, not to speak
of his right hand, his mind, and his will. Dr. Chalmers
Mitchell " asserts as a biological fact, that the moral law is
as real and as external to man as the starry vault." If this
is so, how can it be said that " its creation and sustenance
are the crowning glory of man " ? To criticize in detail a
theory which entangles itself in such paradoxes would be a
waste of time. The objections to it are at once fundamental
and obvious. Until Dr. Chalmers Mitchell can explain to us
how the transition, in the life of man, from absolute passivity
to the highest conceivable form of activity is effected, I must
be allowed to hold that the epigenetic, like the protoplasmic
theory of the soul, has failed to make good.

(4) When experts flatly contradict one another on matters
of vital importance, the amateur instinctively assumes that
the truth lies between them, that both are right and both
wrong, and that what is needed is a larger and more compre-
hensive conception, belonging perhaps to a higher level of
thought, by which their respective theories will be alter-
nately justified and condemned. The protoplasmic and the
epigenetic theories of the soul embody the attempts of
scientific experts to solve the central problem of psychology
in terms of physiological concepts. So far as I know, these
are the only physiological theories of the soul that hold the
field ; and as they cancel one another, I am driven to con-
clude that physiology cannot do the work of psychology,
that the soul must be accepted on its own evidence, and

tt all attempts to account for it on physiological grounds
st be abandoned as futile.

ii2 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

Now to accept the soul on its own evidence is to accept
without reserve the revelation of the growing and deepening
light of consciousness. For what is essential in the out-
growth of consciousness is that an inward source of light is
bearing witness to itself in the world-revealing rays which
it casts, just as the dawning sun reveals the treasures and
wonders of earth and in doing so bears witness to itself.
That inward source of light is what we call the soul or self.
As the soul becomes aware of itself and begins to distinguish
between itself and the world which it looks out upon, in the
very act of guaranteeing a dependent reality to the latter,
it claims intrinsic reality for itself. Recognition of the
validity of this claim is the basic assumption of psychology ;
and if we reject the rival theories of the biologists, we must
make this assumption our starting-point in our quest of the
true theory of the soul.

Can we do otherwise ? If consciousness, with the sense
of freedom which accompanies it, is, as Dr. Chalmers
Mitchell contends, " the centre from which all science, all
philosophy, all emotion, must set out in exploration of the
universe and to which they must all return " ; if it " trans-
forms all the qualities and faculties acquired by human
beings from the animal world and is the foundation of free
and intelligent existence " ; if it " puts man and the nations
he makes above the laws of the unconscious world " ; if it
" gives man the power of being at once the actor, the
spectator, and the critic " ; if it " enables him to distinguish
between self and not self " ; if it " brings with it the sense
of responsibility and reality/' — if consciousness is all this,
and does all these things, and if all attempts to account for
it on physiological grounds are, as Dr. Chalmers Mitchell
insists, disastrous failures (his own attempt being tanta-
mount to a confession that the mystery of its origin is
impenetrable), what course is open to us but to accept its
explanation of itself ? Now what consciousness tells us
about itself is that its subject, that which is conscious — the
soul, as we call it, — is not merely as real as the outward
world to which its body or outward self belongs, but has a
higher kind of reality which it — the soul — is alone competent
to investigate and value.

THE ANCESTRY OF THE SOUL 113

There shines no light save its own light to show
Itself unto itself.

Let us now go back to the protoplasmic and the epigenetic
theories, and, assuming that the truth lies between these,
let us ask ourselves how far each is right, and how far wrong.
The protoplasmists are right when they affirm that the
future man is in the human embryo ; but they are wrong
when they identify the human embryo with the fertilized
germ-cell ; for in so doing they bring the higher develop-
ments of human life under the control of physical necessity,
and thereby limit unduly the possibilities of the future man,
de-spiritualizing his spiritual life, lowering him to the
animal level of existence, and ignoring or at best minimizing
his power of transforming himself by reacting to the stimulus
of environment. The epigenesists are right when they insist
that the " possession of consciousness and the sense of
freedom is a vital and overmastering distinction between
man and beast " ; they are right when they affirm that the
possibilities of human development, under the transforming
influence of consciousness and in response to the stimulus of
environment, are practically boundless, even within the
limits of each individual life ; they are right when they
contend that the differences between man and man, as
between nation and nation, are largely environmental, not
congenital ; but they are wrong when they ascribe quasi-
creative activity to the environment and mere passivity
and receptivity to the human organism, and they com-
plicate their error and make nonsense of their philosophy
when they go on to speak of the environment as the product
of man's creative will.

What we need, then, is a theory of the soul, which will
hold, with the protoplasmists, that growth is always achieved
by reaction to the stimulus of environment, not by passive
acceptance of its " moulding " pressure ; and yet will hold,
with the epigenesists, that in each individual life the possi-
bilities of development, in response to the influence of
environment, are infinitely great ; a theory which will
affirm that each human embryo — the embryo of the future
serf not less than that of the future emperor, the embryo of
the future fool not less than that of the future philosopher,

H4 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

the embryo of the future felon not less than that 'of the
future saint — is a complex of limitless possibilities, mental,
moral, and spiritual, as well as physical ; which will affirm,
in other words, that the racial or characteristically human
element in the new-born infant enormously outweighs the
lineal or physically inherited element, and that therefore,
instead of being at the mercy of the tendencies which are
inherent in his own " blood," each human being is free
(apart from the disabilities which may be imposed upon
him by the particular environment into which he is born)
to range at will through the world which consciousness opens
to him, and to develop himself in response to its manifold
influences by drawing upon the reserves of potentiality that
surge up, when called upon to energize, out of the inex-
haustible fountain of his " soul."

Such a theory has long been familiar to the exoteric as
vvell as the esoteric thought of the Far East. According to
the doctrine of Reincarnation, the individual soul has not
been supernaturally created, has not entered the world in a
speck of protoplasm, has not been built up by the moulding
pressure of a particular environment, but has descended—
from an obscure and infinitely distant source — along the
line of its own continuous existence, bringing with it into
each new earth-life a heritage bequeathed to it by its own
former selves, and leaving behind it at the end of each
earth-life the same heritage — but enriched or impoverished
by the part that it has played on earth — for transmission to
its own future selves. This theory accepts the soul on its
own valuation, and, recognizing its potential infinitude,
allows it, not years but aeons for the work of self-realization,
thereby substituting for the idea of the soul being inherited
from one's lineal ancestors, the idea of the soul inheriting
from itself.

That we may the better discern the trend of this theory,
let us contrast it with the protoplasmic, with which, as it
happens, it has most in common, but to which it is also most
directly opposed. We have seen that on the physical plane
of his being a man inherits, lineally, from his own line of
ancestors, racially, from the whole human race ; his racial
inheritance being transmitted to him through the channel

THE ANCESTRY OF THE SOUL 115

of lineal heredity, and modified — stamped with the birth-
mark of individuality — in transmission. " It is exactly the
same/' says the protoplasmist, " on the higher planes of
man's being." " It is the same," says the believer in re-
incarnation, " but with a difference." On the higher, as on
the lower planes, the distinction between lineal and racial
heredity holds good, and a man's racial inheritance is
transmitted to him through the channel of lineal heredity,
and modified — stamped with the birth-mark of individuality
— in transmission ; but on the higher planes a man inherits,
racially, not from the human race only, but from the
fountain of all soul-life, and lineally, not from his own line
of ancestors, but from the line of his own former selves.

There are difficulties in the way of accepting this theory,
which I do not seek to minimize. The conception of the
soul as super-physical does not readily harmonize with our
instinctive assumption that the physical plane is the only
plane of natural existence, that the world is in itself what it
seems to be to our normal perceptive faculties, that the
limitations of our bodily senses determine the boundaries
of the Universe. But this assumption, with the fatal con-
traction of the idea of Nature which it involves, is a mere
superstition, and, as an argument against the theory of
reincarnation, carries no weight. The failure of physiology
to do the work of psychology compels us to accept the soul
on its own evidence ; and when once we have taken this
step, we must not shrink from its consequences, however
irreconcilable these may be with the unformulated axioms
of popular thought.

For my own part, I feel in my heart of hearts that the
theory of reincarnation holds the key to the riddle of man's
existence ; but how the key works I cannot pretend to
explain in full. In postulating a plane of being which is at
once natural and super-physical, the theory leads us into a
world of mystery in which the mind is not at home and
cannot expect to find its way. Any attempt that I might
make to work out the philosophy of reincarnation would be
largely imaginative, and would therefore reflect my own
personality and lead at last, in the event of controversy, to
the logical impasse which Cardinal Newman indicated when

n6 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

he reminded us that where there is no common measure of
minds there can be no common measure of arguments. I
will therefore content myself with pointing out that the
doctrine of reincarnation accepts and even insists upon the
fundamental truths which the two biological theories of the
soul respectively postulate, but to which, owing to their
refusing to entertain the hypothesis of the super-physical,
they do less than justice. The first of these is that the future
man is in the human embryo, whatever that may be. The
second is that consciousness, with the sense of freedom
which accompanies it, is the differential feature of the
growing man, and that the transforming influence of con-
sciousness on human life is unlimited. If we accept the
former conception, while rejecting the hypothesis of the
super-physical, we must, with Professor Bateson, identify
the human embryo with the fertilized germ-cell ; but in
that case, if we accept the second conception, we are faced
by the difficulty which the theory of epigenesis seeks to
evade, — that inasmuch as consciousness is the Protean
principle in man's being, the principle of limitless trans-
formation, it cannot itself come under the control of physical
necessity, and therefore that the subject of consciousness —
that which is becoming aware of itself — cannot pass through
the narrow channel of physical generation and lineal
heredity. According to the doctrine of reincarnation, the
future man, with all his possibilities, up to the last term of
ideal perfection, is in the human embryo ; but as conscious-
ness is the differential feature of his being, until the subject
of consciousness has united itself with his growing body, the
human embryo, as distinguished from the embryo of the
human body, has not been formed. When that union has
taken place, the human embryo — the new-born infant — is
ready to start on its career of self-realization ; but it is no
" neutral clean sheet " waiting for " writing to be im-
pressed " on it by its environment, but a living organism,
with limitless reserves of potentiality, which it is ready to
realize, not by passive acceptance of the impress of environ-
ment, but by active reaction to its stimulus.

Thus the doctiine of reincarnation, while bringing the
life of man in its totality under the master law of growth,

THE ANCESTRY OF THE SOUL ir;

withdraws the life of the soul from bondage to the laus of
physical growth. In other words, it recognizes two kinds
of heredity — the heredity of the body, which inherits from
the man's lineal ancestors, and the heredity of the soul,
which inherits from its own former selves.

This conception throws light on many problems. In
particular, it composes the quarrel between heredity and
environment, for it enables us to see that there is no such
quarrel. When Professor Bateson affirms that " nature
.... has an overwhelmingly greater significance " than
" nurture," he is as wide of the mark as is Dr. Chalmers
Mitchell when he affirms that " nurture is inconceivably
more important than nature." On the higher, as on the
lower, levels of man's being, nature and nurture, heredity
and environment, are in very truth the warp and the woof
of the tissue of his life. As a controlling factor in human
development, heredity counts for no more than environ
ment ; and environment counts for no more than heredity.
Each in turn counts for everything ; but neither counts for
anything apart from the other. Each postulates the other
Each is complementary to the other. Each measures the
other. But only because each is infinite. The nascent soul
is a complex of infinite possibilities. It realizes, or begins
to realize, these by reacting to the stimulus of an infinitely
wide and infinitely changeful environment. Apart from
such an environment, its possibilities would remain as
dormant as those which are wrapped up in a grain of mummy
wheat. If its heredity were physical and limited, its power
of reacting to environment would be strictly limited, and
the limits of its activity would be strictly predetermined ;
and we should then have to admit, not that nature counted
for more than nurture in the life of the soul, but that
necessity counted for everything and freedom for nothing.
But in that case there would be no soul. The physical side
of man's being would be the only side. When we spoke of
the soul, of consciousness, of freedom, of spirituality, we
should be cheating ourselves with empty words. The
doctrine of reincarnation, by its conception of super-
physical heredity, delivers us from these pessimistic con-
clusions. For it opens down the ages an ample channel for

ii8 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

the journeying soul, and so allows it in each successive
earth-life to take up anew the task of self -development,
ready to measure, with the infinitude of its inherited
potentialities, the infinitude of the environing world. In
fine, in the doctrine of reincarnation we have the only
theory of the origin of the individual man, which, without
invoking the Supernatural, safeguards the soul,

It is possible that some persons have attained to certitude
in these matters. If there are such persons they are in a
more advanced stage of mental and psychical development
than I am, and truth, for them, means something wider and
deeper, something more absorbing and constraining, than
it means for me. For both these reasons they, of all people,
would be the last to wish me to accept their teaching until
I could see for myself that it was true. For when we are
dealing with the master problems of life, the dogmatic
attitude, with its implicit assumption that truth is a thing
to possess rather than to be possessed by, is symptomatic,
not of certitude, but of secret self -distrust. None are so
tolerant or so unwilling to proselytize as those who really
know. I am not of the brotherhood of those who really
know, but I am not wholly blind to my own limitations.
And so, speaking as an ordinary man to ordinary men, I
repeat what I said at the beginning of this chapter — that
when we are considering the origin of the soul we are in a
region of pure conjecture, in which anyone with a spirit of
adventure is free to theorize, but in which no one may
count himself to have apprehended. My spirit of adventure
has led me to examine the four theories of the origin of the
soul which seem at present to hold the field ; and I have
now satisfied myself that the most illuminating of these
and the least open to destructive criticism is the theory of
a reincarnating and self-developing soul or ego, with which
the Far East has been familiar for thousands of years.1
Further than this I have not gone and have no wish to go.

1 The theory of reincarnation does not solve the problem of the soul's
origin. Indeed it is the only one of the four theories which does not
pretend to do so. What it does is to throw back the dawn of the soul's
life into so dark and remote a past that the problem of the development
of the soul takes the place in our minds of the problem of its origin.

CHAPTER VI

THE RANGE OF THE SOUL

THERE is a principle of infinitude in man which we
call consciousness. We mean by consciousness the
dawn of its o\vn light on the soul. Therefore the real
principle of infinitude in man's life is the soul itself. I have
tried to prove that each of us has limitless potentialities
waiting to be realized, limitless reserves of mental and
spiritual vitality waiting to be mobilized. This is one
aspect of the infinitude of the soul. Is it possible to advance
from this somewhat negative conception of infinitude to a
more positive conception ? I think it is.

Let us look at the matter from a somewhat different point
of view. Let us start with consciousness of self. In the act
of being conscious of my self I am conscious of the perma-
nent and inherent unity of my self, but I am not conscious
of its limits. I cannot define its boundaries in any way.
I know that it is intimately connected with what I call my
body, and that it can make the weal or woe of the body its
own. But I also know that it can identify itself with things
which seem either to be outside itself or to include itself,
and that it can make their weal or woe its own. For ex-
ample, I can identify myself with my family, with my clan,
with my city, with my country, with the whole brotherhood
humanity. I can also identify myself with my school,

y university, my profession, my guild or trade union, my
political party, my church or religious sect. I can even
identify myself with impersonal causes of various kinds,
such as the reform of education, the reform of social condi-
tions, the pursuit of beauty or truth. In each of these cases
I feel a sense of proprietorship in the community or the
cause with which I identify myself. I am proud of its
achievements as if they were my own. I take shame to

119

120 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

myself for its failures. I sympathize with its troubles and
sorrows.

But looking around me I see that some persons have what
I may call narrower selves than others, that they do not
readily identify themselves with the communities to which
they belong, or the causes that might be expected to appeal
to them ; that the communal spirit is wanting in them or is
only developed so far as it may serve their own selfish ends ;
that they are wrapped up in their own bodily well-being and
their own material pursuits and possessions. On the other
hand, I see that there are many persons whose capacity for
losing themselves in communal interests and impersonal
causes I can but envy and revere. Again, looking back to
my own earlier life I see that the range of my self is much
wider now than it was then, that I have more and larger
interests, that my power of identifying myself with other
persons and other things has gained to an appreciable
extent. From these facts I argue that the self varies, as
regards the actual range of its life, from person to person,
and that it is capable of growing and expanding, of widening
the sphere of its sympathies and interests, within the limits
of each individual life. And this expansion in the range of
the self is not accompanied by any diminution of what I
may call the vividness of its consciousness. On the contrary,
as the self widens, its consciousness seems to grow more
vivid and more alert.

The question now arises : Are there any limits to this
process of expansion ? Is there any a priori reason why
the self — the soul, as we may now call it — should not be
able to identify itself with the widest of all communities,
whatever that may be ? I know of no such reason. The
life of the community is the same, ideally if not actually,
for all the members of the community, each of whom can,
if he pleases, identify his individual life with the common
life. And however wide the community may be, this law
holds good. The fact that I am an ardent patriot, that I
identify my self — its pains and pleasures, its hopes and fears,
its aims and interests — with my country, does not prevent
millions of other persons from doing exactly the same. Nor
is there any a priori reason why each member of the human

THE RANGE OF THE SOUL

family should not develop a sense of oneness with all his
kind. Now the widest of all communities — wider even than
the Kingdom of Man — is the Kingdom of God, the Universe
itself. In what relation does each of us stand to this all-
embracing unity ? The universal life is one and indivisible.
We cannot, for example, draw a hard and fast line between
the spiritual and the physical life of man, or between the
life of man and the lives of other living things. And this
universal life, in its undivided totality, ranging between the
poles of physical energy and ideal spirituality, and having —
one may well believe — inner and innermost lives of its own,
is what we mean when we speak of the soul of the Universe.
The One Life takes innumerable outward forms ; and
in each of these cases of self -manifest at ion it is, as a rule,
content to move in a narrow channel, walled in by habit and
instinct, untroubled by any message from the infinite sea.
But when the One Life enters the channel of man's existence,
there comes a profound and far-reaching change. The lesser
life begins to be aware — faintly and dimly at first, then by
degrees more and more clearly — of its oneness with the
larger life. This growing sense of awareness is the dawn of
consciousness. Of the transforming influence of conscious-
ness on human life I have already spoken. It reveals to
man a universe outside himself, and a universe within
himself, and it suggests that these two are ultimately one.
Also, since perception of the infinite is of its essence, it
tends to raise to infinity all man's powers and tendencies.
I have asked if there are any limits to this process of self-
expansion, any limitations to the capacity which is inherent
in each of us, for going outside himself into a communal life.
Consciousness, with its message from the universal to the
individual life, is the abiding answer to this question. The
expansion of the self will not cease till the individual soul
has fully responded to the appeal of the widest of all com-
munities— the universal life.

We now begin to see the meaning, for man, of the process
of self-realization or growth. What the oak-tree is to the
acorn, that the universal life, the soul of the Universe, is to
the human embryo. The purpose of the process of growth
is to enable the individual to draw up into himself and

122 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

convert into himself the infinite life which underlies his
own. And the goal of this process is the consciously realized
identity of the individual — of each of a billion individuals —
with the universal soul. Till that goal has been reached, the
process of growth is incomplete, the true self has not been
found. When the goal has been reached, the individual has
fulfilled his destiny. For, in realizing, fully and finally, his
oneness with the universal life, he has entered into complete
possession of his racial inheritance, which has expanded,
while he was making good his claim to it, to cosmic dimen-
sions ; he has grown to the fulness of his predestined
stature ; and he is at last free to say " I am I."

But is his stature predestined ? Is he growing, as other
living things are growing, to a predetermined form ? I
asked myself this question at the beginning of this Part ;
and since I asked it I have been trying to clear the ground
for my answer to it. It is possible that the whole course
of cosmic life has been predetermined. It is even conceivable
that the whole drama of the Universe, as it unfolds itself for
us, is but the self-realization of a seed which has fallen from
a parent tree. But if we are to apply the word " predeter-
mined " to such movements as these, we must remind
ourselves at the outset that we are using the word in a sense
other than that which it ordinarily bears. When we say
that a movement which is infinite in all its dimensions has
been predetermined, we are obviously subordinating the
idea of totality to that of development, and the idea of
eternity, which is the temporal aspect of totality, to that of
time ; and this means that words are failing us, as indeed
they are bound to do when we try to bring to the birth
conceptions which exceed the compass of our thought.

But what of the individual life ? We may well believe
that this has its appropriate place in what I have called the
drama of the Universe, and we may therefore say, if we
please, that it has been predetermined by an infinite will.
But here, too, the word " predetermined " will do less than
justice to the idea that we are struggling to express. For
what is central in the evolution of the individual life is the
dawn of consciousness ; and consciousness is on the one

THE RANGE OF THE SOUL 123

hand the principle of infinitude in man's being, and is on
the other hand accompanied, as it dawns upon us, by the
growing sense of freedom, the sense of being able to choose
among competing courses of action. Now what is pre-
determined, in the accepted sense of the \vord, is both
subject to and limited by the stress of what we call neces-
sity ; and as the idea of freedom is antithetical to that of
necessity, it is clear that to speak of the growth of the
individual soul as predetermined is to predicate limitation
and subjection to necessity of what is ideally, and therefore
essentially, limitless and free.

Let us say, then, in answer to the question which I have
asked myself, that, though the general idea of the destiny
of the soul being predetermined will always haunt us, the
growth of the individual soul is not predetermined, as we,
with our experiences of purposing, planning, and executing,
understand that word ; that on the contrary, as each of us
has infinite resources outside himself to draw upon and
infinite potentialities within himself to realize, so he is free
to use these or to misuse them, and in doing so to help or to
hinder the process of his growth. And if his freedom is at
first a mere' possibility, he can sustain himself with the
thought that freedom, like every other human power and
prerogative, grows by being exercised ; that the nearer he
approaches to oneness with the One Life — which, being
universal, is presumably self-determined — the freer he
becomes from that constraining pressure from without
wrhich we call necessity ; and that when, if ever, he realizes
his sublime destiny, he will have united himself with the
fountain-head of all destiny and will therefore have worked
out to its last act a drama which, if predetermined in any
sense of that word, was predetermined by his own ideal
self.1

1 This is but a tentative and provisional treatment of one of the greatest
of all problems. The problem will be more fully treated in the first chapter
" Part IV.

PART III
THE PURPOSE OF GROWTH

CHAPTER I

THE POLARITY OF NATURE

IF we are to win lasting happiness we must make healthy
and harmonious growth. All attempts to win happiness
by other methods — by the pursuit of pleasure, for example,
or riches, or position, or power, or fame — are predestined
to end in failure ; for the enjoyment of such prizes cannot
permanently content us, and happiness is not happiness if
there is in it any germ of decay. History teaches us this
lesson, and our own experience confirms its teaching. But
how is healthy and harmonious growth to be achieved ?
By the effective realization of potentiality in general, and
in particular of those potentialities which are distinctively
human. In other words, by our allying ourselves with the
central tendencies of our nature. But how are we to find
out what are the central tendencies of human nature ? By
finding out, or trying to find out, what are the central
tendencies of cosmic or universal nature — of " Nature,"
as I will now call it. This is one answer to my question, an
answer which is suggested to me by the conclusion which I
reached in my last chapter. My study of the problem of the
soul has convinced me that the relation between the indi-
vidual and the universal soul, as between the individual
and the universal life, is — ultimately and ideally — one of
absolute identity. From this I infer that if I am to interpret
Nature I must do so through the medium of my interpreta-
tion of myself, and that if I am to interpret myself I must
do so through the medium of my interpretation of Nature.
Having to choose between these two starting points, 1 will

124

THE POLARITY OF NATURE 125

begin with Nature in order that from my interpretation of
her I may return in due course to a new interpretation of
myself.

As the being of man comes, or seems to come, under the
law of growth, so the being of Nature comes, or seems to
come, under the law of evolution, — which is growth "writ
large." It follows that if I am to determine the purpose of
growth in the human drama, I must first try to determine
the purpose of evolution in the cosmic drama.

What is that purpose ? From what beginning and
towards what goal is the course of evolution taking Nature ?
And what is happening to Nature as she passes from the
source to the goal ? Is she preserving or changing her
identity ? And in what relation do the ideal ends of the
process stand to one another ? Does the goal say Yes or
No to the source ? If the goal is supreme good or supreme
reality, what is the source ?

Here, as at the outset of every attempt to form a general
conception of Nature, we are confronted by the eternal
problem of the Two and the One ; and if we are to pass on,
we must reply to its challenge. If we act otherwise, if we
throw a sop to the guardian of the threshold and slip by
while it slumbers, it will awake and follow us wherever we
jo, and throw all our thoughts into confusion. In particular

will follow us, making confusion worse confounded, when
return from Nature to man. If, for example, on the one
hand, consciousness, with the sense of freedom which
accompanies it, is the differential element in man's being,
and, on the other hand, much of man's life is plunged in
unconsciousness and is in bondage to necessity, the question
arises, In what relation do these opposites stand to one
another ? Are consciousness and unconsciousness, are
freedom and necessity mutually exclusive alternatives ?
If they are not, what is the relation between them ? So,
too, when we look at man from other points of view, we see

it. he has a higher and a lower self, a wider and a narrower
a spiritual and a material self, a real and an apparent
that he oscillates between knowledge and ignorance,

it ween happiness and unhappiness, between good and evil.
,nd here, too, we must ask ourselves in what relation do

126 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

the opposites stand to one another ? In each of the given
antitheses is the opposition fundamental and absolute ? Is
the one term nothing more than the negation of the other ?
It will be dangerous for us to leave these questions un-
answered— for what is mere confusion of thought in the
sphere of theory may well become confusion of ideals and
principles and moral landmarks in the sphere of practical
life — and if we cannot now answer them by anticipation,
we can at least clear the ground for a serious attempt to
deal with them.

Let us try to think the matter out to bed-rock. The
movements of human thought are limited, and even con-
trolled, by the exigencies of human speech. We speak in
antitheses. Therefore, whether we call ourselves dualists
or monists, we are doomed to think antithetically. When
I say that we speak in antitheses I mean that our little
words, which are also our great words, — the simple, familiar
words which sum up whole aspects of Nature's being or
indicate whole meridians of Nature's infinite sphere — fall,
as a rule, into pairs of opposites. Such opposites are good
and evil, right and wrong, high and low, strong and weak,
swift and slow, light and darkness, knowledge and ignorance,
spirit and matter, freedom and necessity, Heaven and Hell.
The tendency of popular thought is to regard the opposites
in each of these antitheses as mutually exclusive alterna-
tives, and to fix an impassable gulf between them. In
philosophy this tendency is known as dualism. Now
dualism works badly in practice. The fundamental anti-
thesis of Nature and the Supernatural is responsible, as I
have tried to show, for many of our misconceptions of the
meaning and purpose of life and therefore for many of our
follies, failures, and miseries. Dualism also works badly as
theory. Its logical fallacies are easily exposed. Expert
thinkers criticize it and react against it, and their reaction
carries them into the opposite extreme, which we call
Monism. Dualism and Monism are the poles between which
philosophic thought swings in endless oscillation. Monism
emphasizes the fundamental unity of Nature's being and
ignores the duality of her aspect. Dualism emphasizes the
essential duality of Nature's aspect and ignores the unity

THE POLARITY OF NATURE 127

of her being. That these antithetical tendencies of thought
are both right and both wrong may surely be taken for
granted. What is wanted, then, is a larger conception which
shall reconcile them by showing that each is a one-sided
interpretation of Nature, which needs for its own sake to
be limited and supplemented by the other. In other words,
we must so think of Nature as to harmonize the duality of
her aspect with the unity of her being. We must think of
her as two because she is essentially one ; as one because
she is essentially two.

Along what line of thought are we to work our way to
such a conception ? We think antithetically because we
have no choice but to speak in antitheses. In each of our
antitheses each term seems to pass away into infinity. I
mean by this that we can follow it in thought in its own
direction without ever exhausting its possibilities. I cannot
think of intense cold without thinking of intenser cold. I
cannot think of intense heat without thinking of intenser
heat. Here a question suggests itself which may possibly
put us on the track of what we seek. In what relation do
the opposing infinities stand to one another ? Is each of
the opposites infinite only in the direction of its own ex-
treme ? And if so, from what line of demarcation or gulf
of separation does it start on its adventurous career ?
Popular thought will answer that antithetical tendencies
are infinite in the direction of their own extremes, but
finite in the direction of their opposites. Can this conten-
tion be sustained ? Let us see to what conclusions it
commits us. A familiar antithesis is that of swift and slow.
Let us test the popular theory by reference to it. There is
no motion so swift but the mind can conceive of a swifter ;
no motion so slow but it can conceive of a slower. As it
passes from swift to swifter, it tends to lose itself in what is
infinitely great. As it passes from slow to slower, it tends
to lose itself in what is infinitesimal or infinitely little. In
either case its horizon recedes perpetually : and if it recoils
and returns to its starting point, it does so because it is
exhausted, not because it has reached its goal.

This much will, I think, be generally conceded; and I will
therefore assume that it is true, But how will the mind act

128 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

when it moves downward from swift to slow or upward
from slow to swift ? Will its progress in either direction
be arrested by an abrupt change of kind ? In other words,
is there anything in existence of which swiftness or slowness
is absolutely and unconditionally predicable ? One's first
impulse is to answer, Yes ; and popular thought (as we have
just seen) generally yields to this temptation ; but- the more
steadily we face our problem, the stronger will be the
pressure put upon us to answer, No. It will perhaps be
said that the motion of light is absolutely swift, of a snail
absolutely slow. But even to these propositions we must,
in the interest of truth, refuse assent. For since there is no
motion so swift but we can conceive of a swifter, it must
needs be possible to conceive of a swifter motion than that
of light ; and by comparison with that swifter motion the
motion of light is swift no longer, but slow. Here, then,
where we seem to be approaching the very extreme of
swiftness, we are confronted by the idea of slowness, which
seems to have followed its opposite into its remotest strong-
hold and to be ready to follow it beyond the limits of
thought. In like manner, there is no motion so slow but
we can conceive of a slower, by comparison with which the
slowr motion, even if it be that of a snail, may be regarded as
swift. And so, when we say that each of the two counter-
tendencies is infinite in the direction of its own extreme,
we imply that it is also infinite in the direction of its oppo-
site, the one infinity being, as it were, the counterpart and
correlate of the other. This means that the two counter-
tendencies intermix continuously and perpetually, each in
turn ranging from its own extreme to that of its opposite.
It is true that they vary together in inverse proportion, the
one rising or falling as the other falls or rises ; but neither
is ever met with or can even be conceived in a state of
absolute purity, for no effort of thought can free either from
some slight alloy of the other. From this point of view we
see that what is called the finite is generated by the inter-
fusion of opposite infinities, and that our experiences and
our conceptions are made possible by the interaction of
counter poles of being which lie beyond the range of our
experience and even beyond the horizon of our thought.

THE POLARITY OF NATURE 129

Let us now come to close quarters with the popular con-
ception and see what its dualism involves. According to
the hypothesis which popular thought instinctively forms
and which language seems to sanction, there is a hard and
fast line of demarcation between swiftness and slowness, or
—to take a more significant example — between good and
evil. I contend that if this were so, and if this example
were typical, there would be nothing infinite in Nature
except the chasm which rends her asunder. For the
difference between good and evil, once it is allowed that
these are separate entities, being a complete difference of
kind — being in fact equivalent to diametrical opposition —
is infinitely greater than any difference of degree in the
range of either ; so much greater indeed that it tends to
dwarf all the latter to zero and to leave us at last with two
distinct and virtually homogeneous states or qualities
instead of with an infinite variety of shades.

A quasi-concrete example will help me to explain what I
mean. Experience has taught men that the tendency of
goodness is to generate happiness, and of evil to generate
misery. And so, arguing from the facts and laws of this life
to the possibilities of the next, they have conceived of two
opposite states of future existence — Heaven, in which
goodness is eternally and infinitely rewarded, and Hell, in
which evil is eternally and infinitely chastised. But between
these two they have placed, according to their wont, an
impassable abyss, the consequence being that just to fall
short of salvation is to be doomed to the hopeless misery of
Hell, and that just to escape perdition is to enter — in due
season — into the plenitude of heavenly bliss.

Now no one will seriously contend that all the inmates of
Heaven are equally holy and happy, or that any of them is
as holy and happy as the personal God whom they are
supposed to adore. At the same time no one will deny that
the difference, in respect of well-being and happiness,
between the lowest soul in Heaven and God himself is as
nothing compared with the truly appalling difference
between what is lowest in Heaven and highest in Hell. But
if the difference, within the range of Heaven, between man
and God is less and immeasurably less than that between

t30 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

Heaven and Hell, it is infinite (in the fullest sense of the
word) no longer, and Heaven ceases to be illuminated by
the light of an unapproachable ideal.

Moreover, though as regards their feelings and surround-
ings there is an infinite abyss between the lowest of Heaven's
inmates and the highest of Hell's, the difference between
them in respect of their earthly antecedents is almost
infinitesimal, the line of progression from abandoned
wickedness to supreme goodness being as a matter of fact
continuous ; and inasmuch as an infinitesimal difference in
causation cannot really produce an infinite difference in
effect, our inability to draw a true line of demarcation
between the sheep and the goats tends de facto (if not dejure
theologico) to bring both states of after existence within
measurable distance of our mortal life, and so to deprive
each of the infinity which is commonly regarded as one of
its most essential attributes.

Thus we see that, by interposing an impassable gulf
between Hell and Heaven, men have, as it were, drained
each of these antithetical worlds of its infinity, and trans-
ferred the latter quality to the abyss of nothingness which
the dualism of their thought has conjured into being.

Something akin to this would happen if the totality of
things could be brought under the sway of a single pair of
antithetical conceptions. When dualism divides the
Universe into the natural and the supernatural worlds,
each of these self-centred spheres of being limits at every
turn the expansion of the other, the result being that instead
of an infinite and all-inclusive Universe we have an infinite
vacuum separating two nominally infinite but really finite
worlds. Perhaps it would be nearer to truth to say that
both worlds are limited and reduced to finite dimensions
by the gulf that separates them : for in order to prevent
them from intersect iLg or otherwise intermingling at any
point, the intervening sea of nothingness must flow com-
pletely round each of them till at last they become mere
islets in its measureless and fathomless flood. It is because
dualism tends to produce this unsatisfying result, that the
mind is apt to recoil from it and take refuge in monism. In
the hope of saving reality from being submerged by the

THE POLARITY OF NATURE 131

rising tide of non-existence, critical thought tries to get rid
of the " estranging main " by proving it to be superfluous ;
in other words, by cancelling one of the two worlds that it
held asunder, and regarding the other as commensurate
with the Universe. But the attempt is vain : for the gulf
of separation reappears, with the ghost of the dead world
lingering on the brink of it, while the surviving world —
nature divorced from supernature, matter divorced from
spirit, or whatever it may be — instead of expanding till it
fills all the realms of being, does but contract the Universe
to its own finite dimensions, and, instead of rising to the
highest plane of reality, does but degrade the Universe to
the level of its own dubious and precarious existence.1

Thus it is only by ascribing to Nature continuity of
movement that we can safeguard the infinity of her range ;
and it is only by regarding her as infinite that we can save
her (in our thought) from ultimate annihilation, for when
once her reality has begun to drain away into any world-
dividing abyss of non-existence, a process of shrinkage has
begun to which there are no imaginable limits.

From the problem of the relation between antithetical
infinities we can now return to the larger problem which
divides the dualist from the monist. The conception of
continuous movement through an infinite range will, I
think, enable us to harmonize the duality of Nature's aspect
with the unity of her being. By the light which it casts
we see that the opposites into which Nature seems to fall
whenever or wherever we look at her, are not distinct and
alien principles, not independent entities, not self-centred
and self-included worlds, but poles, antithetical and yet
correlative, an unbroken stream of existence joining the
one to the other, while each in turn is lost in the darkness
of infinite distance. From pole to pole there is continuous
movement ; and movement implies change. Hence the

1 The pure matter of the materialist is but one degree removed from
non-existence. So is the pure spirit of the idealist. The supernatural
world is a dreamland. The " Nature " of the naturalist and the super-
naturalist is the material world centring in the physical life of man, a
world and a life which melt away under the solvent influence of scientific
analysis till nothing remains of them but those primordia rerum which
seem to be on the very confines of nothing.

132 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

two are diametrically and infinitely opposed to one another,
yet have this much in common that both belong to the
same meridian of being. There is no great gulf fixed between
them. They are at once infinitely sundered and infinitely
united ; and they are infinitely sundered just because they
are infinitely united. The endless and unbroken chain
which unites them is itself the unfathomable abyss which
parts them. What separates Heaven and Hell, for example,
is not a gulf of nothingness, but the entire diameter of
human life. The pure pole at either end is in every case
ideal rather than actual. The conception of swiftness (or
goodness, or whatever it may be) is one, which the mind
easily grasps. But our conception of absolute swiftness is
at best a mere negation ; for all we know about this distant
goal is that it lies beyond the range of our experience and
even of our imaginative thought, and that the mind which
goes in quest of it is doomed to reach on and on without
ever approaching it. If, in any given case, we are to have
experience of either goal, if we are to deal with it, perceive
it, think about it, imagine it, it must actualize itself by
entering into combination with its opposite, it must become
what it is not in order that it may be what it is. And how-
ever near a thing may approach to one or other of its ideal
poles, however convenient or even necessary it may be for
us to identify it with the one pole and disconnect it from the
other — to say, for example, that the movement of light is
swift, and the movement of a snail slow — it is none the less
in itself a compound product, two-fold in nature and
tendency ; it has at least some slight alloy of that very
influence which it is its function to oppose and deny.

Nature, then, as I think of her, is one because she is two-
fold and two-fold because she is one. The unity of her
being is the counterpart of her life ; for were she as inani-
mate as certain aspects of her sometimes seem to be, she
would be an " aggregate " rather than a " whole." Because
she is a whole — and therefore an organic whole — she looks,
as all life does, in opposite directions and ranges between
two infinitely distant poles ; but so entirely are these ideal
opposites, unattainable and unimaginable though they be,
of the essence of her being, that their eternal and all-

THE POLARITY OF NATURE 133

pervading interaction may be regarded as the very pulse
of her life.

Throughout this preliminary study of a large problem I
have taken for granted that neither dualism nor monism is
wholly true. This assumption is of course an inference from
the very theory of things which it has constrained me to
search for and even helped me to frame. My antipathy to
dualism forbids me to regard monism and dualism as rival
philosophies between which I must make my choice. My
antipathy to monism forbids me to assume that either
philosophy is absolutely true. Far from being called upon
to choose between these apparent alternatives, I feel called
upon to reconcile them, to bring them together and fuse
them .into a higher and wider truth. Both philosophies
have much to say for themselves ; but the one unanswerable
argument against each is that it is perpetually confronted
and held in check by the other.

I have suggested that dualism is a dominant tendency of
popular, monism of professional thought. This distinction
is possibly correct as far as it goes ; but it does not go far
enough. Looking below the surface of things one sees that
each of these theories has its anti-pole or necessary counter-
theory in the philosophy of the people as well as in that of
the schools ; and from this fact one is led to infer that the
two counter-tendencies of thought are normal constituents
of the human mind. The mind of the thinker, looking at
Nature as a whole, refers things either to two principles or
to one. As a rule, it finds rest in one principle ; but its
choice of one principle is always the outcome of a struggle
between two. The ordinary mind, moving along a particular
line of thought, sees either the violent contrast of two
qualities or the monotony of one. The more conscious side
of it is as a rule contented with the dualist ic view of things ;
but, unknown to itself, it often makes a final and decisive
choice . bet ween the alternatives that confront it.

I will now continue my attempt to show that the idea of
unbroken movement from pole to pole is the higher concep-
tion in which these rival attitudes of thought are alternately
justified and condemned.

134 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

Let us first consider the philosophy of the schools. The
theory of things which I have tried to expound holds that
Nature at every point and moment in her being looks in
two directions, that both as a whole and in each of her many
movements she is a process between two poles, and that
these are diametrically opposed to one another and infinitely
far asunder. It thus takes account of the fact of contrast,
without which there is neither colour, nor movement, nor
life. So far it is in accord with the basic assumption of
dualism. Again, it holds that the two poles of Nature's
being, and of each meridian of her being, though as anti-
thetical to one another as light is to darkness, have yet this
much in common that they are opposite ends of the one
axis on which her infinite sphere revolves, and that within
the illimitable limits of our experience they are always
interdependent and inseparable. It thus takes account of
the fact of unity, without which there is no order in Nature,
and if no order then, again, no colour, no movement, no
life. Herein it is in accord with the basic assumption of
monism. But though it touches each of these great counter-
positions of thought, it rests in neither. The moment of
its touching the one is the moment of its recoil to the other.
It says, with dualism, that there are two principles in
Nature, and adds in the same breath, " These are really
one." It says, with monism, that there is but one principle,
and adds, " This is really two."

In playing this dual part it does but reflect the deeper
movement of the mind of man. Though the instincts which
carry the mind towards dualism and monism respectively
are genuinely natural, the tendency to oscillate between
these alternatives is more natural, in the sense of belonging
to a yet deeper stratum of our nature. That there are
latent forces which make for oscillation is proved by the
fact that each philosophy readily transforms itself into the
other. Thus, in a dualistic system, if one of the rival
principles is regarded as less real than the other, the basic
assumption of dualism, by its exclusion of intervening
terms between reality and unreality, will, sooner or later,
rnitomatically reduce the less real principle to non-existence.
On the other hand a monistic svstrm is, as we have already

THE POLARITY OF NATURE 135

seen, a dualistic system with one of its two terms sup-
pressed ; and its ascription of reality to one, and one only,
of two rival principles is in itself a proof that the dualistic
division of things, and therefore the basic assumption of
dualism, has been tacitly accepted.

The instability of the mind in the presence of these
opposite conceptions of Nature becomes more clearly per-
ceptible when we turn from the philosophy of the schools to
the philosophy of the people. The tendency to see only
violent contrasts in Nature is balanced and counteracted
by the tendency to ignore all distinctions. More especially
is this the case when the ideas that occupy the mind have a
practical bearing, as, for example, when men are thinking
about good and evil, truth and error, Heaven and Hell.
In the eyes of one man these opposites are mutually ex-
clusive alternatives. In the eyes of another the difference
between them is either negligible or non-existent. The
tendency, half cynical, half indolent, to ignore all distinc-
tions is no doubt much rarer, as a fundamental conception,
than the tendency to exaggerate them ; but of the two it
lies nearer to action, and as it also sometimes becomes a
theory, it is well that it should be carefully considered. It
is easy to see how it arises, Men are told that the difference
between good and evil (let us say) is the difference between
black and white ; but they see that in point of fact good and
evil are everywhere intermingled and shade off imperceptibly
into one another ; and being thus unable to divide things
into the two classes which popular thought and popular
speech take for granted, they naturally conclude, in default
of the idea of continuity, that there is only one class.

The doctrine of continuous movement from pole to anti-
pole justifies each of these opposite tendencies of popular
thought, and condemns each of them just so far as it justifies
the other. For it tells us, on the one hand, that gradation
in Nature is a process so subtle as to be imperceptible when
studied in detail ; and it thus accounts for the tendency to
ignore distinctions. And it tells us, on the other hand, that
accumulated differences of degree amount at last to radical
changes of kind ; and it thus accounts for the tendency to
see only violent contrasts.

136 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

The relation in which the two tendencies stand to one
another may be looked at from another point of view. We
have seen that in philosophy, properly so called, the mind
of man oscillates between dualism and monism, finding
permanent rest in neither theory and passing readily from
the one to the other. We have also seen that the one theory
implies the other, postulates it as its counterpart and
correlate, and evokes it, as it were, in the course of its own
development. It can, I think, be shown that something
analogous to this goes on in the region of popular thought.
Here, indeed, where we are working for the most part below
the level of consciousness, the transition from theory to
counter-theory is as a rule practical rather than logical ;
but even when it is most practical, the process has a logic
of its own, which, though it cannot be systematized, admits
of being informally set forth.

An example will help me to explain myself, and will at
the same time enable us to realize that in this, as in other
matters, the connexion between theory and practice is
constant and close.

Asceticism and sensualism are typical characteristics of
human nature. Each involves a theory, and each has
received philosophical exposition. Asceticism is the con-
crete expression of a philosophy which sunders man into
soul and body and regards these as having fundamentally
conflicting interests. Feeling called upon to choose between
the two, it rightly assigns supremacy to the soul ; but the
impetus of its preference carries it so far that, instead of
being content to subordinate the body to the soul, in the
event of a collision between their respective interests and
impulses, it tells us that the body, with all that belongs to
it, is irredeemably evil, that it ought not to exist, that
there is no place for it in an ideal world. From this theory
it draws a practical inference. It warns man that his duty
is to crush the flesh, to reduce it as far as possible to non-
existence, to die to it, to thwart its desires and impulses
until they become atrophied by disuse. Thus asceticism
starts by affirming two antithetical principles and regarding
one of these as more real than the other. So far, well. But
since it is blind to the continuity of Nature and therefore

THE POLARITY OF NATURE 137

ignorant or forgetful of the fact that the mainspring of
every living principle is its ceaseless interaction with its
opposite, it is driven at last by the logic of its own miscon-
ception to refuse recognition to the lower principle, to deny,
if not its existence, at least its right to exist. In this way
asceticism, as a rule of life, is at variance with asceticism as
an abstract principle ; but the former is not less false to
the laws of human nature than is the latter to the postulates
of a true philosophy.

So false to the laws of human nature is asceticism on its
practical side, that it always tends to provoke a reaction
against itself, and often ends by calling its opposite into
vigorous activity. History tells us that to ages of asceti-
cism have succeeded ages of unbridled immorality. After
the fastings and penances of the " cowled and tonsured
Middle Age," came the Renaissance, with its rehabilitation
de la chair. After the austerities of Puritanism came the
harlotries of the Restoration. Sensualism, like asceticism,
has its theoretical side. The latter presupposes a dualistic,
the former a monistic conception of Nature. In the world
of the sensualist there are no distinctions of kind. Even
the primary distinction of good and evil ceases to exist.
Whatever is is right. All desires; all impulses, all actions
are alike natural and therefore alike lawful. The flesh is as
high and holy as the spirit. The claims of the flesh upon us
are as just as they are strong. There is nothing to be
ashamed of in human nature, nothing to be resisted, nothing
to be suppressed. Such a philosophy cannot rest in its
original position. The course of nature is against it. Dis-
tinctions and contrasts do exist. Body and soul are not
on an equality, and it is impossible to act as if they were.
Sensualism, having refused precedence to the soul, is com-

lled to give precedence to the body and finds its natural

tcome in abandoned profligacy. It starts by reconciling
y and soul, and ends by renewing the feud between
them and giving victory to the lower and losing side.

Here, then, we have a transition from monism in theory
to dualism in practice, just as in asceticism we have a
transition from dualism in theory to monism in practice.

e monist, who ignores the law of opposition, becomes a

138 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

dualist in spite of himself, and to his own undoing. The
dualist, who ignores the law of unity, becomes a monist in
spite of himself, and to his own undoing. So through our
errors and disasters Nature reveals and justifies her purposes
and avenges the dishonour of her laws.

In conclusion. There are two great conceptions which
bound our thought in opposite directions. We call them
monism and dualism respectively. It is in human nature
to move towards each of these poles and find rest in neither.
In the philosophy of the schools there is a movement from
conception to counter conception, through the medium of
erroneous theory. In the philosophy of the people there is
a similar movement, through the medium of disastrous
action. The true theory of things must be the expression
and embodiment of this oscillatory movement. It must be
for ever touching and for ever recoiling from each of the
opposite poles of thought. I claim for the conception of
Nature which I have tried to expound — the conception of a
fundamental unity which reveals itself in and through
continuous change — that it satisfies this condition ; that
it not merely accepts and registers the tendency of the mind
to oscillate between dualism and monism, but is itself in a
state of perpetual oscillation between them. And I infer
from this (though of course my reasoning is circular) that
it is nearer then either of them to the inmost truth of
things.

It remains for me to point out that this conception is in
harmony with the central tendencies of the present age.
This is pre-eminently the age of science ; and the culmi-
nating theory of modern science is that of evolution. In
framing the theory of evolution, science becomes aware of
its own dominant aim and purpose. Faith in the continuity
of Nature is the secret mainspring of scientific effort ; and
the desire to establish continuity is an instinct of every
scientific mind. The untrained observation of the ordinary
man is cognizant of obvious and strongly marked distinc-
tions. Science, while accepting these provisionally, refuses
to rest in them. Its function is to analyze, to resolve things
into their essential elements, to dissect them into their

THE POLARITY OF NATURE 139

vital parts. In doing this it finds that things which seem
to be disconnected have in reality points of contact, that
they spring from common causes, that they are compounded
of common substances, that they lose themselves in common
results. It understands a thing when it has made clear to
itself that the isolation of the thing is, as it has always
secretly believed, only on the surface ; when it has, further,
determined what are the laws or deeper properties which
assign the thing its place in the orderly host of natural
phenomena, and in virtue of which it is a vital part of a
living whole. A latent conviction that " all things are
implicated with one another " and that Nature is one, is
the potential starting-point of science : and every great
scientific discovery has been the outcome of an instinctive
effort to substitute one cause for many, and so resolve
differences of kind into differences of degree. But though
science has always believed that unity and continuity
underlie the seeming chaos of Nature, it has but recently
become conscious of its faith. In the doctrine of evolution
its latent conviction confronts it as a formulated theory.
When it applies the idea of evolution to Nature as a whole,
it deliberately ascribes to the vast and heterogeneous host
of existent things unity of origin and continuity of descent.
For the idea of evolution is but an expansion and reinter-
pretation of the familiar, but profound and mysterious, idea
of growth ; and to say that a thing grows is to imply that
it preserves its unity and self-identity through an infinite
series of infinitesimal and wholly imperceptible changes, —
a series which carries it at last from pole to anti-pole of its
being, from germination (let us say) to maturity, or, again,
from birth to the new-birth of death.

Thus the master-theory of our age embodies the very
conception which mediates, as it seems to me, between
dualism and monism, — the conception of Nature as combin-
ing in her own being fundamental opposition with essential
unity, unceasing change with unbroken continuity. The
taring of this conception on the problem which is the
leme of this book will disclose itself as we proceed.

CHAPTER II

THE POLES OF NATURE

NATURE is a process between two opposite poles.
From pole to pole stretches the whole diameter of
her being. Each pole in turn lies beyond the utmost limits
of our thought, its existence being the vanishing point of
an infinite " series " rather than a verifiable fact. Within
the range of our experience the two are always intermingled.
They vary together in inverse proportion. The more (or
less) there is of the one, the less (or more) there is of the
other. The opposition between them pervades the \\hole
of Nature and takes innumerable forms. Corresponding to
these are the many pairs of terms in which language abounds.
Each of these antitheses seems to carry us from pole to pole
of Nature's being — from infinity to counter-infinity ; but
its lateral range is as a rule so narrow that in following it
out we are confined to a single meridian of her sphere.
This means that the antithesis has its counterpart in a
particular mental attitude and covers no more of Nature
than can be seen from the corresponding point of view.
Some antitheses are, however, wider and more comprehensive
than others, just as from some points of view more of
Nature can be seen than from others. That being so, we
must ask ourselves which pair of terms is to be regarded as
supreme and all-inclusive, and therefore as best fitted to
express the fundamental fact of opposition under its widest
and most typical aspect ? In other words, by what names
are we to designate the absolute poles of existence, the poles
in which all meridians may be supposed to meet and blend ?
For an answer to this question we must turn to the
language of everyday life. What words do ordinary men
apply to those supreme counter-tendencies, the interaction
of which seems to pervade the length and breadth and

140

THE POLES OF NATURE

ipth of the world ? It is evident that the words which we
are seeking must satisfy certain primary conditions. To
begin with, they must be popular, not technical ; must
stand for what is normal in experience, not for what is
temporary or local. In the next place they must be large
and vague ; there must be as little as possible of what is
definite and concrete in the ideas which they tend to call
up. Above all, they must be able to open to us infinite
vistas, to carry us in a moment beyond the ordinary range
of our thought.

Such terms as good and bad, true and untrue, beautiful and
ugly, real and unreal, at once suggest themselves. They
satisfy all our conditions. But there is one fatal objection
to them. They are predicative terms, not substantive. I
mean by this that if the elusive distinction between things
and qualities may be provisionally recognized, these terms
are the names of qualities, not of things. The terms that
we are in search of must be the names of things, of sub-
stantial realities. At any rate they must seem to be so
when we first begin to think about them. Where can they
be found ? If we cannot otherwise solve our problem, let
us take Nature as we find her, let us take the world of our
experience and follow it backward and forward along the
line of our evolution. We shall find that its evolution is a
movement from a material origin towards a spiritual destiny.
The path of analysis, or disintegration, whether its method
be static or dynamic, will take us towards those primordia
rerum out of which the world, as we know it, was built up,
and of which it is still composed. These primordia rerum
are material, in the fullest sense of the word ; and the more
subtle and penetrative our analysis the more deeply do we
plunge into matter. The path of synthesis, or integration,
takes us towards the goal of evolution. As we follow the
path, energy changes into life, and life into soul-life, and
soul-life becomes more and more spiritual. As the natural
movement of our thought impels us to think of what is
ultimate in analysis as purely material, so it impels us to
think of what is ultimate in synthesis as purely spiritual.
At any rate our habitual usage of the words material and
spiritual points to this and no other conclusion.

142 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

Is not this, then, the antithesis which we are in search of ?
I think it is. The popular contrast between Spirit and
Matter seem to me to cover as much of Nature as can
possibly reveal itself to human thought ; the terms of the
antithesis being on the one hand so large and indefinite that
the corresponding ideas pass at once, both laterally and
lineally, into the " formless infinite," — and on the other
hand so simple and intelligible that anyone can use them
without having to explain what he means by them, and
anyone can understand from the particular context what
they are intended to mean. It may be doubted if there are
any words which both appeal to so large an audience and
have so wide a range.

When I say that we mean by matter what is ultimate in
analysis and by spirit what is ultimate in synthesis, I have
gone as near to defining the terms as it is possible to go.
For the rest, they must be left to explain themselves, and
to explain each other. One reason why they are indefinable
is that their respective meanings are always in motion,
never even for an instant quite at rest. The words mean
different things to different generations, to different peoples,
to different types of mind. Nay, the same person can use
them in a thousand different ways, according to the object
which he has in view, the matter of his discourse, the line
of his thought, and (to speak generally) the exigencies of
his context. Another reason why they are undefinable is
that the essential meaning of each is bound up with that of
its opposite. If we are asked what is meant by spirit, we
answer " the antithesis of matter." If, what is meant by
matter, " the antithesis of spirit."

Examples of their usage will, however, serve to indicate
in what direction their respective meanings naturally tend
to move. For the ordinary mind, the world without, the
world that is revealed to us by our bodily senses, is material :
the world within, the world that is revealed to us by our
higher emotions, is spiritual. Animals are spiritual beings
as compared with plants. Man is a spiritual being as com-
pared with the other animals. Civilization means, or ought
to mean, the outgrowth of spirit, the development of
spiritual faculties, the evocation of spiritual wants. The

THE POLES OF NATURE 143

Englishman of to-day is higher in the scale of spiritual life
than the Bushman. The European of to-day, than his
prehistoric ancestor. When we eat and drink, when we
walk and run, we put forth material energy : when we think
and love, when we believe and aspire, we put forth spiritual
energy. The love of sensual indulgence is a material motive
to action. The love of fame is by comparison a spiritual
motive. The love of one's fellow men is spiritual in a far
higher degree. The miser devotes his powers to a material,
the patriot to a spiritual end. Colour and sound are
material, beauty and harmony are spiritual properties of
things. Such events as the Battle of Marathon, the death
of Socrates, the devotion of Winckelried, the martyrdom
of Joan of Arc are on the one hand material phenomena,
perceptible by the bodily senses, producing effects which
have a narrow circle of disturbance and are measurable
(potentially, if not actually) in terms of force transferred
or matter displaced. And on the other hand they are
spiritual phenomena, making their appeal to reason and
emotion, producing effects which have an ever widening
and virtually illimitable circle of disturbance, and are for
that very reason discernible only by super-physical senses,
by trained and ripened experience of human nature, by
sympathetic insight into the tangled maze of history, and
in general by the " inward eye."

The bearing of this conception on the problem of self-
realization has now to be considered. If in the contrast
between matter and spirit we have the highest and most
comprehensive of the antitheses that measure the range of
Nature, — in the contrast between the real and the unreal we
have the highest and most comprehensive of the antitheses
that measure the range of speculative thought. I mean by
this that when we try to think about spirit and matter, the
st and the last category under which we can marshal our
.oughts is that of reality (with its opposite). I mean, in
her words, that the first and the last question which we
ve to ask ourselves with regard to the ultimate poles of
ature is : Which is the real or positive pole of existence,
d therefore — by right, if not by might — the magnetic
pole of our desires and endeavours ?

144 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

Before we can attempt to answer this question we must
bring it within the compass of our everyday life. Regarded
as the ideal poles of existence, matter and spirit lie beyond
the horizon of our experience and therefore beyond the
grasp of our imaginative thought. What we have to decide
is, which is the higher reality, which is to be preferred to
the other if wre are called upon to choose between them. In
order to solve this problem, is it necessary for us to fling
ourselves into the vortex of the eternal controversy between
materialism and idealism ? I think not. At any rate, so
far as the controversy is metaphysical we shall do well to
leave it alone.

" Pure materialism " and " pure idealism " may be
allowed to cancel one another. Like all monistic theories
of the Universe, they are the outcome of a dualistic move-
ment of thought, a movement which has substituted the
false opposition of the real to the non-existent for the true
opposition of the real to the unreal, and which has therefore
led us to think of spirit and matter as mutually exclusive
alternatives instead of as the poles — opposite and correla-
tive— of a doubly infinite process. Holding, as I do, that
spirit is nothing apart from matter, and matter is nothing
apart from spirit, I must needs think that each of these
rival philosophies has conjured away the Universe and has
given us in its stead a metaphysical dream-world, peopled
by the shadows of our own theories, — shadows which the
reflected glow of our imagination makes visible for a
moment on the wall of darkness that bounds our specula-
tive thought.

If our problem is insoluble on the plane of metaphysical
speculation, we must, I imagine, come down to a more
practical and more popular plane. At first sight it looks as
if, on that lower level, the problem was easy to state and
equally easy to solve. For those who hold that spirit and
matter are both real (each in its own way and degree), the
controversy between materialism and idealism resolves
itself, as I have already suggested, into a simple question
which seems to admit of a simple arswer. To say that
spirit is to be preferred to and exalted above matter is as
much of a truism as to say that light is brighter and more

THE POLES OF NATURE 145

glorious than darkness. The whole evolutionary movement
of Nature is marked and measured by the outgrowth of
spirit ; and in the minds of us who are involved in that
movement and whose beings have shaped themselves and
are shaping themselves in response to its pressure, there
must needs be an instinctive and inalienable prejudice in
favour of what is spiritual. The spiritual bias of our deepest
desires is at once a clear indication of the direction in which
the current of Nature is setting, and an argument in support
of idealism which cannot be gainsaid.

So, at least, it seems to me. But the question is not to be
so summarily disposed of. We have but to look around us
in order to convince ourselves that practical materialism —
the choice, in the conduct of one's own life, of the wrong
term in the great antithesis — is the source of nearly all the
evil and much of the unhappiness in life. And though
theoretical and practical materialism are not necessarily
conjoined in the same person (the materialist in theory
being sometimes a whole-hearted idealist in practice), in
logic — the deep logic of natural tendency — they cannot be
disjoined. It is well, therefore, that I should try to come to
an understanding and a reckoning with theoretical material-
ism— not the materialism of the metaphysical physicist,
which becomes more and more abstract and ineffective, as
the primordia rerum, eluding the grasp of science, recede
further and further into the impalpable — but the material-
ism which wages war against all our hopes and aspirations,
the materialism which chills and darkens life with the
shadow of despair and death, the militant materialism of
the man of science and the man in the street.

An ill-assorted couple these ! So one feels inclined to
say. But it is to the collaboration of this ill-assorted couple
that we owe the materialistic philosophy which has long
dominated human thought. The belief of the man of
science that the nearer we are to what is ultimate in analysis
the nearer we are to intrinsic reality, has allied itself with
the belief of the man in the street that the palpable is the
real. And the scientific conception of cause as law or order,
mergii g itself in, or rather corfour.dirg itself with, the
popular conception of cause as originating force, has gene-

146 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

rated the confusion between cause and condition on which
most of the arguments for materialism are hinged.

I will try to explain and justify these statements. The
primary postulate of popular (as distinguished from meta-
physical) materialism is that nothing exists, in the order of
Nature, except what is perceptible by man's bodily senses.
This postulate is the outcome and expression of an instinc-
tive feeling which is mental rather than emotional, but
which is so securely rooted that nothing can dislodge it but
a convulsive upheaval of the mind, — the analogue in the
sphere of reason of what religious people call " conversion."
So firmly convinced is the average man that Nature is
co-terminous in all her dimensions with the outward and
visible (or material) world, that in order to save the inward
and spiritual side of existence from annihilation he has to
find an asylum for it in a supplementary world which he
calls " the Supernatural." Break down his belief in the
Supernatural ; convince him that Nature is the " all of
being " ; and the latent materialism of his intellect will
become his accepted creed.

In formulating this creed he will go to the physicist for
counsel and guidance. The function of science is to analyze ;
and a professional prejudice in favour of his own calling
tempts the votary of physical science to assume that the
path of analysis leads in the direction of reality as well as
of scientific truth, — in other words, that what is ultimate in
analysis is absolutely real. This assumption is, as we have
seen, the basis of " pure materialism," a system of thought
which (on the principle of too far East being West) is
scarcely distinguishable from its opposite — " pure idealism,"
and which has nothing in common with the crass material-
ism of the average man. The ultLrate (or pennltiirate)
elements of things which the researches of the physicist have
unveiled to his mind are wholly imperceptible by his bodily
senses, however much the range of these may be extended
by mechanical aids ; and as those elements are more real,
in the sense of being nearer to the ideal goal of his analytical
labours, than the visible phenomena of Nature, he would
not hesitate to conjecture, if he had but the full courage of
liis professional prejudice, that the ultimate basis of exist-

THE POLES OF NATURE 147

ence was an impalpable and therefore (in the popular sense
of the word) an immaterial reality. And the further he is
carried by his analytical researches into the heart of matter,
the more impalpable does the Universe, as it reveals itself
to him, become. There was a time when he seriously
believed that in resolving matter into " atoms " — the
" bricks of the Universe " — he had reached the bedrock of
reality. But the discovery of radium awoke him from that
comfortable dream. As the " bricks of the Universe "
gradually melted away into whirls of energy, he ought to
have begun to realize that, even in his sense of the word
reality, the impalpable is the real. But if on one side of him
the physicist is the man of science, on another side he is,
what each one of us is, the man in the street, the plain
average man. And as he is therefore swayed by the average
man's prejudice in favour of the data of the bodily senses,
he trusts his own quasi-professional bias in favour of the
products of scientific analysis only so far as it gives a general
countenance to the popular conviction that the outward
and visible world is the whole Universe. He knows from
experience that the outward and visible side of Nature is
much more amenable to scientific treatment than the
inward and spiritual side ; and, as a scientific expert, he
infers from this what, as an ordinary man, he is already
predisposed to believe — namely, that the outward and
visible side is the only side. Thus the popular postulate
that the visible world is the real world absorbs into itself
(in the mind of the physicist) just so much of the scientific
postulate that analysis is the only revealer of reality, as it
is able to assimilate. In other words, the physicist is not
above countenancing the popular belief that the palpable
is the real, so far as this gives support to his own hypothesis
that analysis is the only road to reality, and will even (so
much of the average man is there in the average scientist)
avert his eyes from the logical consequences of his own
hypothesis, so far as these conflict with the materialism of
popular thought.

There is a similar illogical alliance between popular and
scientific prejudices in the arguments by which materialism
is supported, as distinguished from the assumption on which

148 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

it is based. The arguments for materialism are all hinged
on a single conception — that of cause. Of all conceptions
this is the least able to bear the strain of philosophical
controversy, with the ceaseless swing and counterswing of
thought which it involves. The word cause has many
meanings and sub-meanings, and is not only apt to suggest
different ideas to different minds, but is even ready to take
a fresh shade of meaning from every change of context.
Such a word can be used with perfect safety so long as there
is a tacit understanding between the speaker and his
audience as to the sense in which it is to be employed ;
but it is always liable to stultify the arguments of the man
who uses it in the development of a philosophical or quasi-
philosophical conception. An iron bridge is blown down by
a violent blast of wind. What is the cause of the disaster ?
The fury of the storm is one answer. The unsoundness of
the iron is another. The weight of a passing train. The
miscalculations of the engineer. The dishonesty of the
contractor. The carelessness of a foreman. Each of these
is a possible answer to the question, and each in turn might
be accepted as adequate if it happened to respond to what
was passing in the mind of the inquirer. The truth is that
the meaning of the word cause is in the first instance subjec-
tive rather than objective, the search for cause being always
a search for mental satisfaction, and the cause of a thing
having been sufficiently determined whenever the mind
finds rest in the account of the thing that is submitted to it.

As our ideas of causation vary from mind to mind, from
standpoint to standpoint, and even from context to context,
it behoves us to ask ourselves on what principle they are to
be classified ? It will, I think, be found that they range,
for the most part, between two widely divergent concep-
tions,— the popular conception of cause as originating or
producing force, and the scientific conception of cause as
law.

The former has its origin in man's experience of the action
of his own will as a causative force. As the action of the
will precedes the result which it produces, the idea of
priority in time becomes inseparably associated with the
conception of cause. Also, as the result, when will is at

THE POLES OF NATURE 149

work, is felt to be subordinate to the cause and to belong to
a lower order of things, men instinctively assume that the
cause is always higher and more real than the effect, and
that the latter is dependent on and even owes its being to
the former.

Now when a man looks around him and sees that a given
phenomenon A is constantly followed by a given pheno-
menon B, his first impulse is to assume that a will like his
own has been at work. In other words, he personifies the
antecedent phenomenon A, and regards B as subordinate to
it and dependent on it, as the passive product of its active
force. This anthropomorphic tendency, as it is called — a
tendency which in bygone ages gave a Naiad to every
stream and a Dryad to every tree — recedes as science
advances ; but the corresponding conception of cause is
never wholly eradicated. Ordinary men instinctively
assume that the cause is prior in time to the effect, and that
it is in some sort higher in the scale of things and more
real.

The conception of cause which Science, in her attempt to
account for things, has gradually evolved, is entirely
different from this. The projection of self into the
outward world, which has given us the conception of cause
as oringiating or producing force, is foreign to her aims and
methods. All outward phenomena are equally real in her
eyes ; or rather, all outward things are phenomena, the
problem of reality being one with which she has no direct
concern. Experience has taught her that some phenomena
are less palpable than others, and have a proportionately
wider range ; and this is the only distinction that she
recognizes. In her attempts to account for a palpable
phenomenon she gradually works her way towards certain
impalpable tendencies which underlie it, and the operation
of which it duly exemplifies. These impalpable tendencies
are known to her as laws ; and when the relations between
a given phenomenon and all the laws that underlie it have
been fully determined, the cause of the thing has, for the
purpose of science, been fully ascertained. In fine the cause
of a phenomenon is the phenomenon itself as fully under-
stood and explained.

150 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

But does Science ever really solve the problem of causa-
tion ? Surely not. Even in her own sense of the word
cause, her solution of the problem is never more than
partial and provisional, for to determine the relation
between a given phenomenon and all the laws that underlie
it is obviously impossible. But this is by the way. We
must look beyond the scientific conception of cause. The
search for cause, whatever form it may take, is always a
search for mental satisfaction. Does the mind of man rest
in the scientific account of the phenomenon ? The mind of
this or that man, who has a particular object in view, may ;
but the general mind of man does not. For as soon as
Science has explained a phenomenon in terms of the laws
that underlie it, the thoughtful mind is sure to ask — and
something of anthropomorphism is sure to weave itself into
the question — " But what is the cause of those underlying
laws ? " And when this question has been answered,
another of the same character will suggest itself ; and so
on ad infinitmn. The truth is that Science, far from solving
the problem of cause, puts off the solution of it as long as it
possibly can. In the pre-scientific ages a separate cause (in
the popular sense of the word) was demanded for each
separate phenomenon ; but Science has shown us that
" each thing is implicated with all," the organization of
Nature through her hierarchy of laws being so complete,
that to ask the cause of one thing is, in the last resort, to
ask the cause of the whole Universe. In fine, Science
abandons the search for cause — for vera causa — as hopeless,
and substitutes for it the work of studjdng organization
and tracing order.

But what will happen when the average man and the
scientist come together, perhaps in the same person, and
begin to discuss psychological problems from the stand-
point of causation ? A man receives a blow on the head,
and his mind is either permanently or temporarily affected
by it. His food disagrees with him, and his temper suffers.
In each of these cases the physical or material phenomenon
is the cause of the psychical or spiritual. So the scientist
will contend : and we must not quarrel with him for doing
so. He may even go so far as to say that every psychical

THE POLES OF NATURE 151

state has its exact counterpart in a physical state. Let this
be granted, and let it also be granted that there is a point
of view from which the scientist is justified in regarding the
physical state as the cause of the psychical. Does it follow
that the physical state is real and the psychical state
illusory ? By no means. To draw such an inference is
beyond the province of Science ; and in point of fact the
inference is never drawn by Science as such. But when the
average man is told that a certain injury to the brain is
almost invariably followed by certain mental symptoms,
and that the former phenomenon may therefore be regarded
as the cause of the latter, his own conception of cause as
originating force — a conception which carries with it the
subsidiary notions of reality, superiority, activity, priority
in time, and so forth — comes into play, and he jumps to the
conclusion that the material phenomenon (the injury to
the brain) is the active cause, and the spiritual phenomenon
(the mental symptoms) the passive effect ; and when he is
told, further, that every spiritual phenomenon — every
thought, every emotion, every purpose — has its material
counterpart in the brain and nervous system, he naturally
passes on to the further conclusion that the material side
of man's being is the substance, and the spiritual side the
shadow, — a conclusion which is pregnant with all the
dogmas of materialism. There is something as it seems to
me, of dishonesty (or is it self-deception ?) in the attitude
of the scientist who uses the word cause in one sense and
allows his disciple (his " lay " self, perhaps) to use it in
another. In any case, an argument which has for its basis
a complete confusion of thought is too hollow to deserve
careful criticism. The popular or anthropomorphic con-
ception of cause owes its origin to man's secret and ap-
parently inalienable conviction that will is the only
originating force. To denounce anthropomorphism in one
breath and appeal to the anthropomorphic instinct in the
next, is unworthy of a serious thinker.

Socrates in the Phcedo speaks of the confusion current in
his day, between cause and condition : "It may be said that
without bones and muscles and the other parts of the body
I cannot execute my purpose. But to say that I do so

152 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

because of them, and that this is the way in which mind
acts, and not from the choice of the best, is a very careless
and idle way of speaking. I wonder that they cannot dis-
tinguish the cause from the condition, which the many,
feeling about in the dark, are always mistakir.g and mis-
naming." The distinction which Socrates draws between
the cause (TO atriov TW OVTI] and the condition (eKetvo, avev
ov TO CUTIOV OVK civ 7TOT «>? cL*Tiov) cannot be too strongly
insisted upon, for the tendency to confuse the two still
prevails. To say that because I cannot do a kind action
without using my brain and my limbs therefore the kind
action is done by my brain and my limbs rather than by
my self, is equivalent to saying that because a steamship
cannot be handled except through the medium of her
engines therefore she is controlled and guided by her engines
instead of by the mind and will of the officer who is in charge
of her. When brain-disorder produces mental derange-
ment, a mechanical explanation of human life is apt to
obtrude itself on one's thoughts ; but, after all, the inability
of the mind (if mind there be) to use the brain when the
latter has been seriously injured, no more proves the non-
existence of the mind than the unmanageableness of a ship,
when her engines have broken down, proves the non-
existence of her captain. It is with conditions, not with
causes (in the Socratic sense of the word), that scientific
investigation is concerned. When will the men of science
learn that the conception of cause which is at the root of all
controversies as to the reality of spiritual phenomena — a
conception, the validity of which (anthropomorphic though
it be) is unconsciously taken for granted by the materialist
quite as much as by the idealist — is one with which, as men
of science, they have no concern ; that when the word cause
enters into their treatises, it bears, or ought to bear, an
entirely different meaning ? Perhaps they will never learn
the lesson ; for the anthropomorphic instinct is of the
inmost essence of human nature, and they will never cease
to be men.

The dialectical basis of popular materialism is a perverse
confusion between the anthropomorphic and the scientific

THE POLES OF NATURE 153

conception of cause, — conceptions which have nothing in
common except that they are at opposite poles of the same
meridian of human thought. But the real basis is, as we
have already seen, instinctive rather than dialectical. What
makes the average man incline, in his speculative moods or
moments, to materialism is his latent conviction that
nothing exists except what is perceptible by his bodily
senses. We have seen that scientific analysis, which, in its
quest of ultimate reality, advances further and further into
the impalpable, has already undermined this position. But
for the final disproof of it we must appeal from the average
man's consciousness to his sub-conscious self, from " what
he thinks he feels ''to " what he feels indeed."

His belief in the intrinsic reality of the palpable is the
resultant of three assumptions. The first is that there is a
standard of reality. With this assumption we need not
quarrel. If there is no standard of reality there is no such
thing as reality, and the antithesis of the real and the unreal
(or the real and the apparent) has no right to exist. That it
does exist, that it is a centre round which our disordered
thoughts are again and again rallied and reformed, is a
sufficient answer to the sneer of the sceptic. A living critic
has permitted himself to say that " beauty is as real as
beer, but not a whit more real." This is equivalent to
saying that the idea of reality is wholly illusory. Nothing
is easier and nothing is more futile than to flout human
nature in the name of what is miscalled " common-sense."1
The very cheapness and shallowness of scepticism might
well give the sceptic pause. The standard of reality is as
real (I cannot help using the word) as the standard of heat
in the physical world, or of goodness in the sphere of conduct.
That it is less tangible than the latter standard and far less
tangible than the former, is nothing to the purpose. All I
contend for is that the standard of reality is as real as the
idea of reality, which indeed would lose its meaning if
phenomenalism and individualism were to dominate human
thought. After all, the sceptic can do no more than say that
there is no real standard of reality, or again that phenomen-

1 The true " common-sense " of the matter is that beauty is cither
much more real than beer, or much less real.

154 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

alism is a truer philosophy (truth being the counterpart of
reality) than its rival.

The second assumption is that the standard of reality is
subjective (in the generic, not the individualistic sense of
the word). This assumption, like the first, is too deeply
seated to be open to criticism. In anthropocentricity,
rightly understood, we have the only available base of
operations for the speculative enterprises of human thought.
Man's impressions of things form an environing atmosphere
which he cannot, by any effort of thought, outsoar. He
may scrutinize his impressions, analyze them, systematize
them, but he cannot get beyond them. His very sense of
their inadequacy is itself an impression of things — one
among many ; and though it may modify and even trans-
form the rest, it does not and cannot supersede them.
Man's being, with its multifarious powers and faculties, is
the cardinal assumption on which his philosophy is always
hinged ; and his supreme object in thinking is to give
satisfaction to some or all of his mental faculties, or, in a
word, to himself. Nothing is vainer or more illusive than
the attempt to escape from self into a region of objective
reality. In conceiving of an " Absolute " we relate it to
our own minds ; and so self accompanies one even into the
inter-stellar darkness of the Unknowable.

It follows that man can no more cease to be anthropo-
centric in speculation than he can change his identity or
abrogate the conditions of his existence. When I climb to
a mountain height and survey the surrounding country, I
necessarily make myself the centre of the world that is
encircled by the horizon, or boundary of my vision. And
though I know that there are many lands and seas beyond
that apparent limit, I must needs think of them as sur-
rounding the world that surrounds and centres in me. As
it is on the spatial plane, so it is on the cosmic. Man has no
choice but to place himself at the centre of his own environ-
ment ; and the widest environment with which he can
surround himself is his own vision of the Universe. To say
that the nature of man is, for man, the rule and measure of
reality, is to state a self-evident truth.

But it is the whole man, it is the real nature of man (so

THE POLES OF NATURE 155

far as this can be ascertained), that we must place at the
centre of things. It is here, as it seems to me, that popular
materialism goes astray. Its third assumption — that man
through his bodily senses sees the world as it really is — is
not merely gratuitous but demonstrably false. The answer
to materialism is that, though in a certain stratum of his
consciousness man inclines to a view of things which makes
materialism logically inevitable, he is all the time in the
depths of his being — at the real headquarters of his life —
an incurable idealist. The true standard of reality, besides
being personal and subjective, is in a sense ready to one's
hand. It is not to this or that side or aspect of human
nature that the Universe reveals itself, but to human nature
in its totality, to the whole range — potential and actual —
of our perceptive faculties. This revelation must be taken
as given. Some of our perceptive faculties announce them-
selves as being higher and stronger than others, as having a
clearer vision and a wider and longer range. We must
believe that these are what they claim to be, for we have no
means of criticizing their pretensions. In other words, we
must believe that certain aspects of existence are higher
and more real than others. The organization of our per-
ceptive faculties, the arrangement of them according to
their several " stations and degrees," is done for us, not by
us ; for there is no standard save that with which they
themselves provide us, by which we can measure their
worth.

In arranging themselves in order of dignity and worth,
our perceptive faculties solve the problem of reality. They
solve it in effect, if not in logic. In accepting the natural
order in himself, a man accepts it in the Universe. Idealism,
like materialism, begins at home. What a man feels himself
to be, that he believes the Universe to be. He does not
necessarily argue from himself to the Universe. The
macrocosmic belief is no mere inference from the micro-
cosmic. It is the microcosmic belief raised to a higher
power and operating on a larger scale.

But the transition from the lesser belief to the larger is
also logical. And the logic of it is somewhat as follows.
When we exercise our perceptive faculties we experience

i50 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

feelings of various kinds and degrees. Some of these are of
a higher order than others. I mean by this that, in the act
of experiencing them, we feel that, by comparison with
other feelings, they are pure, lofty, large, magisterial. And
I mean that one's sense of the comparative value of the
feeling is in every case a vital part of the feeling itself.
What are we to infer from this fact ? If feeling is the sub-
jective side of experience, the surface of contact between
the organism and its environment, — if, wherever there is
feeling, there must needs be something to be felt, — may we
not argue that the feelings which are higher than the rest
are produced by contact with things which are higher in
the scale of being than the ordinary objects of our experi-
ence, or, in other words, which are more real ? If, for
example, the feeling that is generated by a resplendent
sunset or an inspired poem announces itself as being higher
than the feeling that is generated by a pate defoie gras, may
we not conclude that the sunset and the poem are higher
realities than the pate. This conclusion seems to be not
merely legitimate, but irresistible. Either we must give up
using the word real, and in doing so must take upon ourselves
the responsibility of cancelling an entire category of human
thought, or we must admit that the worth of the feeling
measures in every case the degree of reality in the thing that
is felt.

But how is the worth of the feeling to be determined ?
There is but one answer to this question. We must value
our feelings as they value themselves. By what standard
do they value themselves ? And how far is it possible for
us to work by that standard ? It will, I think, be generally
conceded, that our feelings may be classified under two
principal heads — sensation and emotion* and that the
feelings which belong to the latter class are of a higher
order than those which belong to the former. Now the
things that generate sensation in the percipient subject are

1 For this apparent relapse into dualism the limitations of language
are responsible. I speak as if feeling were always either emotional or
sensational. I know quite well that (apart from what is purely physical)
it is usually both. When I say that a feeling is emotional, I mean that it
is predominatingly so. When I say that an emotion is high and pure, 1
mean that the dross of sensation has been almost wholly refined away.

THE POLES OF NATURE 157

as a rule palpable and material ; and the things that
generate emotion are as a rule impalpable and spiritual.
When I use the word impalpable I am thinking, not of the
impalpability which is reached by accepting the palpable,
and then analyzing it into its parts and elements, but of
the impalpability which is reached by transcending the
palpable, by transfiguring it and even in some sort re-
creating it. The latter, the spiritual impalpability which
is the counterpart of spiritual experience and the object of
spiritual desire, is the true antithesis of that material pal-
pability which popular materialism regards as the proof and
counterpart of reality.

It can, I think, be shown that emotional feeling is in
almost every case the response of the soul to an impalpable
— spiritually impalpable — influence. Many, perhaps most,
of our emotions are awakened by contact with other human
souls. I receive a letter from one who is ten thousand miles
away ; and, as I read it, I am filled with profound emotion.
What is the telepathic influence that has affected me so
strongly ? Nothing but a message from an impalpable
entity — a sister soul. The words of one whom I have never
seen — a great teacher or a great poet — bring tears to my
eyes. The writer is dead ; his body has crumbled into
dust ; but his soul still speaks to mine, and the emotion
that thrills me is my silent answer to his silent voice. We
are too often cool and even indifferent in the presence of
the living ; for, except in rare cases, the veil of what is
palpable hangs between us and them. But our intercourse
with the mighty dead is always immaterial and always
emotional. I read of a deed of heroism ; and my heart is
fired with unselfish enthusiasm. I meditate on a life of
self-sacrifice ; and a flood of spiritual aspiration sweeps
through the channel of my soul.

Other emotions are kindled by contact with those higher
social syntheses which are generated by the evolution of
the human spirit. Such emotions are love of one's country,
devotion to one's church, disinterested zeal for one's political
party. What impalpable entities are these magnets of the
heart's desire ! What is my country ? The land in which
I live is a mere symbol, The everflowing tide of its national

158 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

life is but one of the many aspects of its being. Think of
the flood of thoughts, visions, memories, associations ;
think of the cross-currents of sentiment — love and pride,
fear and doubt, — that surge and seethe through the mind at
the bare mention of the word England, or of the phrase The
British Empire ; and you will realize how immense and how
impalpable is the " Mighty Being " which kindles in one's
heart the pure emotion of patriotism, how undefinable are
its limits, how many are the planes of its life.

Sometimes it happens that strong and enduring emotion
is kindled by ideas, such as that of loyalty, of liberty, of
feudal devotion, of freedom of conscience, of democratic
equality. Here the things that affect us are obviously
impalpable. These ideas for which men live and die — what
are they ? By-products of human thought. Theories
steeped in sentiment. Dreams of an over-heated brain.
But how vividly, how directly, how lastingly they affect
us ! Compare the feelings of the man who offers his life for
the cause of liberty with the feelings of the man who slakes
a parching thirst. The sense of relief from thirst is vivid
while it lasts, but it soon vanishes ; and when it is gone
nothing remains but the consciousness that one's body has
been restored to its normal condition. The feeling of
devotion which the idea of liberty kindles proclaims itself
as high and sacred ; and in the act of doing so, in the act of
ennobling the soul that it inspires, it tells us that its object,
far from being shadowy or illusory, is real in a sense which
overshadows all our conventional notions of reality.

There is another class of emotions which may seem to be
kindled by material objects. When we listen to beautiful
music, when we look at a beautiful scene, our bodily senses
are appealed to, and yet our souls are deeply stirred. Are
we to infer from this that emotion can be kindled by what
is palpable ? Not for a moment. I mean by palpable what
is perceived by the bodily senses, as such. In a beautiful
sonata what is palpable (that is, perceptible by all ears) is
so much noise ; what is impalpable (that is, perceptible by
few persons and therefore not perceptible by the sense of
hearing, as such) is the beauty of the music ; what is yet
more impalpable is the message from the musician's soul.

THE PULI^ OF NATCRL

In a starlit night what is palpable is a vault of dark
studded with points of twinkling light ; what is impalpable
is the beauty of the scene ; what is yet more impalpable is
the message of the midnight sky, — the spiritual suggestions
of purity, serenity, and majesty that burn (for the soul that
can receive them) through the beauty of the midnight, just
as beauty burns (for the heart that can discern it) through
the starlit darkness of the midnight sky. It is through our
ears, but not with our ears only, that we receive the message
from the musician's soul. It is through our eyes, but not
with our eyes only, that we receive the message of the
starlit night. If we received either message with our bodily
senses only, all men whose senses were normal would
receive it, and all men would be equally and similarly
affected by it. The fact that few men are affected by such
messages and that those few are affected by them in different
. ecs shows that they appeal, not to our eyes or ears only,
but also to inward and spiritual senses which look through
our eyes and hear with our ears, but which, being still in
process of evolution, are differently developed in different
souls and have but an embryonic existence in nine men out
of ten. When we contemplate a scene of surpassing beauty,
is not our highest emotion directed towards what is im-
palpable, immaterial, imperceptible, or perceptible only for
fleeting moments — towards what is suggested and symbol-
ized— towards the unattainable, the ideal, the unimaginable,

The light that never was on sea or land ?

May we not even say that what intensifies our emotion on
such occasions is our feeling that the real soul of the thing
cannot possibly be apprehended ? And may it not be that
the feeling of being unable to apprehend the real soul of
the thing is our very way of appreherdii g it ? It is the
endless reaching on of the heart towards what seems to fly
before it that makes our emotions (when we are transported
by beaut}*) so poignant and so strong ; but it may well be
that in our apparently hopeless and even aimless yearning
—the quintessential flame of our kindled fire — the hidden
soul of things is intimately near to us, its very impercepti-
bility being the counterpart of its transcendent realitv. If

160 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

this is so, then what is most real in the Cosmos is not that
outward, tangible, material side or aspect of it which
appeals to our bodily senses, but that inward and spiritual
essence of it which constitutes its unity and its life, and
which, glowing through and making beautiful the veil of
its outward existence, appeals to intuitive senses which are
more or less akin to itself.

There are doubtless fire-springs of emotion which lie deeper
than any that I have yet indicated. There are moments in
our days (if I may regard my own experiences as normal)
when we seem to understand all things, when life has no
secrets from us, when the meaning of existence is as clear
as the fact, the end (the reXo?) as inevitable as the process.
An inspired passage in a poem or other work of genius may
for a moment so entirely change our sense of proportion as
to give us a new standard of reality and, in doing so, to
transform our experiences of life and nature and reveal
to us new aspects of existence. The death-bed of a dear
friend may for a moment cancel whatever is physical and
instinctive, whatever is unamenable to the healing influence
of religious faith or philosophical meditation, in our inborn
fear of death. Even the outward world which (as we have
just seen), in the act of appealing to our sense of beauty,
sends spiritual messages to our hearts, may sometimes send
us the most spiritual of all messages — may lift the veil of
beauty which sunders the soul of Nature from the soul of
man, and initiate us for a timeless moment into the inmost
mystery of Nature's life.

May we trust these transcendental experiences ? We
may because we must. In the moments of which I speak,
not only are wre conscious of being swayed by feelings which
are as strong and vivid as they are new and strange, but we
are also conscious that the feelings carry with them high
credentials, — trust, complete trust, in the genuineness and
significance of the feeling, in the strength and justice of its
claims upon us, in its might and in its right to rule our
hearts, being in every case an essential part of the feclirg
itself. And so, though we rr.ay be unable to analyze those
experiences, or do justice to them even in thought, we can
at least feel sure that their objects, though impalpable in

THE POLES OF NATURE 161

every sense of the word, are real (if the quality of the
feelings that they kindle counts for anything) in a sense
which transcends all our wonted conceptions, and stultifies
all our wonted standards, of reality. The impermanence
of the feeling — the instantaneousness, the apparent time-
lessness, of its coming and going — need not disconcert us ;
for while it lasts it is overwhelmingly strong, and the im-
pression that it leaves, or rather the memory of that im-
pression, is ineffaceable. A lightning flash has pierced our
darkness ; and we know now — or at any rate we know that
we have known — what are the realities that life, in our
narrow sense of the word, veils from our sight.

In each of the cases which I have considered, emotional
feeling has proved to be generated by the response of the
soul to an impalpable influence — impalpable in the sense
of transcending the palpable, not of underlying it. The
higher the feeling, the more impalpable is the generating
influence, and the higher (we must needs believe) is the
reality to which it bears witness. From this we may surely
conclude that, in spite of the prejudice of man's surface
self in favour of the palpable, it belongs to his deeper
nature to identify the impalpable — what is ultimate in
synthesis — the spiritual, in a word — with the real:

But the final proof that man, though a materialist in
theory, is an idealist at heart, lies in the fact that his re-
ligious creeds are all dominated by the idea of the Super-
natural. In evolving this idea man has provided himself
with a materialistic antidote to the poison of materialism.
When he consciously magnifies the Supernatural at the
expense of Nature, he is unconsciously magnifying the
spiritual or impalpable aspect of Nature at the expense of
the material. It is because he believes in the supremacy of
what is inward and spiritual, and yet cannot present this
truth to his consciousness, that he has denaturalized re-
ligion in his endeavour to spiritualize it, and, in doing so,
has imposed on his life the heavy yoke of priest -craft, has
allowed his conscience to become entangled in a network
of casuistical rules and ceremonial observances, and his
heart (which cannot energize properly except in an atmos-
phere of spiritual freedom) to enter the prison-cell of a

162 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

formulated creed. The supernatural world, which his
pictorial imagination has called into being and which for
him is the highest of all realities, *s the spiritual world seen
through a materialistic medium, presented to thought by
the aid of material images, set forth in a materialistic
notation, in terms of space and time. An apologist for
supernatural religion has said that the supernatural is the
real. This is not so ; for the supernatural is at best a
shadow ; but it is the shadow cast by the spiritual, and the
spiritual is the real.

I have taken pains to disprove the vulgar assumption
that the palpable is the real, for I see clearly that it is the
ultimate basis of the materialism which is practical as well
as theoretical, — the materialism of popular thought. It is
not, however, because it is impalpable that I ascribe reality
to spirit, but because it is the product of synthesis, of
integration, — in a word, because it is whole. If what is
spiritual is impalpable, the reason is that wholeness needs
for its direct apprehension senses other than those which we
speak of as " bodily," that it is the object, not of sight or
hearing, but of " contemplation," of " vision," of the " in-
ward eye." It will be understood, then, that whenever I use
the word spirit (and the words that are akin to it) I have in
mind my own definition of it, — I am thinking, not so much of
what is impalpable, immaterial, ethereal and the like, as of the
principle of wholeness, of organic unity. The idealist, the
man who believes that the spiritual is the real, stakes every-
thing— so strong is his bias towards wholeness — on the
Universe being in the last resort an organic whole. This,
though he may not know it, is the fundamental assumption
which determines the whole tenor of his thought.

CHAPTER III

THE DIVINE CIRCLE

THE world, as we know it, is a process between two
diametrically opposite and infinitely distant poles.
These poles, by whatever names we may please to call them,
bound all the movements of our thought and all the flights
of our imagination. In what relation does each of them
stand to the other, on what I may call the further side of
itself, the side which is turned away from us ? On the
hither side, the side that is turned towards us, the two
ceaselessly interact and interpenetrate each other, and, in
doing so, generate the world of our experience. When they
pass beyond the confines of that world, what happens to
them and to the process which they dominate ? Are we to
think of the Universe — whether its movement be temporal
or logical — as emerging from an infinitely distant void of
darkness behind us and disappearing into another infinitely
distant void of darkness beyond us ? No, for in that case
the Universe would cease to be universal. With regions of
mystery closing in upon it from behind and from before, its
infinitude would be limited, and its claim to include all
things would no longer hold good. The truth is that the
darkness which our thought so readily conjures up repre-
sents nothing but our inability to approach either pole.
It is on the hither side of each pole, not on the further side,
that the wall of night rises up to bar the advance of our
thoughts. Beyond its impenetrable barrier the process
moves on towards each of its ideal limits ; but if its orbit
can no longer be traced by our mind, the general character
of its movement seems to be determined by a primary
necessity of our thought. If the process is really all-
inclusive, if it is really commensurate with the Universe,

163

164 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

its beginning and its end must coincide. Just as within the
range of our experience the opposite tendencies of things
are always intermingled, so it is (we must believe) when
they pass beyond the range of our experience in the direc-
tion of their respective poles. What seems to us to be a
straight line, never deviating from its straightness, is really
an arc of an infinite circle. In an infinite circle all things
must needs be included and all loopholes of escape must
needs be closed. The vision of the poet who

saw Eternity the other night
Like a great ring of pure and endless light

went to the very heart of reality.

We have seen that in Nature duality of direction is
balanced by unity of being. How can this be ? It cannot
be, unless the movement of Nature is circular, unless the
two poles of her being are one. In this and in no other way
are dualism and monism — the two eternal poles of human
thought — to be fused into the larger idea that underlies
them both. If I stand on the bank of a river and look
either up or down stream, I am looking at one and the
same moment towards the goal and towards the source of
the river ; for every drop of water that passes me is both
moving from and moving to the infinite sea. This " circula-
tion of water/' as we call it, is symbolical of the cosmic
process. An eternal and infinite movement from source to
source and from goal to goal — this is Nature, this is the
Universe, and outside this there is nothing.

A strange conclusion this, and one which bears directly
on the problem of destiny and duty — the problem of the
purpose of growth. We can approach it from another
quarter of thought. I have given my reasons for thinking
that Spirit and Matter are the master poles of existence.
Spirit, according to the definition of the word that I have
formulated, is what is ultimate in synthesis ; and it stands
to reason that what is finally ultimate (if I may be allowed
the pleonasm) is the totality of things regarded as a living
whole. The spiritual properties of things are revealed to
us by quasi-creative faculties which build things up, in the
act of perceiving them, into real, though impalpable,

THE DIVINE CIRCLE 165

structures, or fuse them into indivisible wholes. These
faculties announce themselves as being of a higher order
than the bodily senses ; and in the act of doing so they
tell us that the spiritual aspects of Nature are higher and
more real than the material. This law of our nature — a law
which we are not competent to over-rule or even ignore —
determines the " law " (in the mathematical sense of the
word) of our infinite series, the equation to our infinite
curve. The path of synthesis, which takes us in the direc-
tion of what is spiritual, takes us also in the direction of
what is real ; and the ideal goal of the movement — the
supreme, all-inclusive whole — is on the one hand pure
spirit and on the other hand absolute reality. From this
conclusion we may draw7 the further inference (not by any
logical process, but by a mere re-arrangement of our
thoughts) that pure spirit — the ideal goal of the synthetic
movement — is both all-inclusive and absolutely real, in a
word, that it is Everything.

Let us now see to what ideal goal the path of analysis is
predestined to lead us. As we tread this path, as we resolve
things into their constituent elements, as we resolve facts
into their underlying laws, the life, the beauty, the reality,
the very actuality of the Universe seem to fade slowly
away ; until at last — beyond the atoms or ions of the
physicist, or whatever other primordial elements are for
the moment to be regarded as ultimate — the pale abstrac-
tions of the mathematician (generalizations perhaps from
man's sub-conscious and even pre-human experience of the
primary elements of things) begin to loom up, like cloud
mountains, along the horizon of human thought. It is true
that the states of matter which our analysis of the actual
leads us to conceive of, if not to believe in, are pure, im-
palpable, imponderable, ethereal substances which seem to
have a quasi-spiritual beauty of their own ; but it is a
beauty of material, not of form, a beauty which is wholly
formless and therefore wholly potential, the very beauty of
nothingness, the very splendour of an elusive dream. I
speak as an average man, whose starting point, whether he
follow the path of analysis or of synthesis, is acceptance of
the actual. On either side of the actual lies an impalpable

i66 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

world. The impalpability which synthesis reveals to us
appeals to our hearts and seems to be aglow with the flame
of life and the sun-like light of intrinsic reality. The im-
palpability which analysis reveals to us has momentary
flashes of light which are suggestive of a far-off glory ; but
apart from those flashes, which only mock and tantalize
our thoughts, it seems to have the darkness and the coldness
of interstellar space. When we meditate on these matters
we must needs draw our premises from ourselves. The
stress and bias of our nature constrain us to believe that the
products of synthesis are more real than the products of
analysis ; and if we allow ourselves to be guided, in our
speculative adventures, by this seemingly inalienable
prejudice, we shall arrive in due course at the conclusion
that what is ultimate in analysis is absolutely void of
reality — is, in a word, Nothing. The very function of
analysis is to unweave the tissue of Nature, to deprive it
of form, to reduce it to a state of pure potentiality ; and
what is purely potential is of course actually null and void.

We have now worked our way to the conception that
Spirit, the positive pole of existence, is the pole of Every-
thing, the pole of absolute and all-inclusive being, whereas
Matter, the negative pole of existence, is the pole of pure
potentiality and therefore of infinite and absolute Nothing-
ness. And yet — and yet — for our minds, through which, if
we are to think at all, we must do all our thinking, Every-
thing, when we begin to meditate upon it, is found to be
but another name for Nothing. Omnis determinatio est
negatio. Before we can begin to know a thing we must be
able to distinguish it from other things. What cannot be
so distinguished is absolutely unknowable, and is therefore,
for our minds, non-existent. It stands to reason that
Everything has no limits, no features, no qualities. There
is not a single proposition that we can make about it except
that it is not anything ; that it is no thing ; that it is
Nothing. In trying to grasp the totality of things we find
that we are embracing a phantom. As our minds move
towards pure spirit, they seem to be moving towards
absolute reality ; when they reach their goal — by a supreme
and momentary effort of thought — they find themselves face

THE DIVINE CIRCLE 167

to face with the hollowest of all abstractions. The light of
which they dreamed blinds them so completely that they
can see nothing but impenetrable darkness.

What escape is there from this seemingly hopeless im-
passe ? There is no escape but that of accepting it and
resting in it. Let us arm ourselves with the courage of
despair and say boldly that Everything is — Nothing. In
saying this we shall have solved our otherwise insoluble
problem. For if Everything is indeed Nothing, then the
two poles of existence, the positive and the negative, have
become one : pure spirit has transformed itself into pure
matter ; the circuit of being has been completed ; the
eternal process of creation has been eternally begun. Just
as the finite is the meeting ground of Infinity and Zero, so
is the world of our experience — the world of finite things —
the meeting ground of Everything and Nothing. And just
as every movement is both slow and swift, and every altitude
is both low and high, so is each thing in the world of our
experience both Everything and Nothing — un tout a I'egard
du neant, un neant a I'egard du tout. But it is not only within
the range of our experience that spirit and matter, Every-
thing and Nothing, are inseparable. When we follow spirit
out into its lonely purity, we find that it has matter — pure
matter, the potentiality of all things which is in itself
Nothing — as its eternal counterpart. The same timeless
flash of thought which reveals to us Everything reveals
Nothing as its other self. But if the relation of pole to pole
is, from one point of view, the relation of identity, from
another it is the relation of diametrical opposition and
infinite aloofness. Absolute swiftness is indistinguishable
from absolute slowness, which is absolute rest ; but the
transition from the latter pole to the former includes and
immeasurably overlaps at either end the transition from
the speed of a snail to the speed of light. So, though spirit
(which is Everything) can become matter (which is Nothing)
in a timeless moment, if matter is to transform itself into
spirit it must pass through the entire circuit of existence.
Stooping into matter (which is perhaps the swoon of its own
life) spirit generates and animates the Universe. Emptying
itself into Nothing, Everything becomes something, be-

168 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

comes many things, and at last streams back to itself as all
things.

I do not allow myself to be imposed upon by this word-
play. The conclusions that I have reached have been
suggested to me by trains of thought which have evolved
themselves in response to the accumulated pressure of
experience, and which owre their constraining force to the
spontaneousness of their origin and the naturalness of their
movement rather than to the cogency of their logic. But
I do not allow myself to rest in the dangerously abstract
conceptions to which these trains of thought have led me,
except so far as they countenance and are countenanced by
a profound emotion which seems to be a vital part of my
inner life. It is my feeling of " divine homesickness " (to
quote Heine's words) which really convinces me that I am
returning to the source from which I came ; and it is this
feeling, struggling to clothe itself in form so that it may
present itself to consciousness, which constrains reason to
spin theories that shall countenance it, and then weave
those theories into a system of thought.

The feeling of " divine homesickness " is the source of
much of what is best and purest in the popular belief in
God. So far I have said but little about God ; and I have
had reasons for my reticence. The word God has been used
so lightly, so recklessly, so familiarly, so dogmatically, so
fanatically, so profanely, so hypocritically, and has served
as the battle-cry of so many bitter enemies of spiritual
freedom and therefore of soul-growth, that I sometimes
wish it could be expunged for a while from our vocabulary,
and that meantime the ideas of spiritual development, of
natural retribution, of the reality of the soul, and of the
supremacy of love should be the regents of our inner life.
Under the tutelage of those ideas a new conception of God
would gradually evolve itself, and at last, when the time
had come for it to re-ascend the throne of the human spirit,
would reveal itself as the paramount source of their influence
and authority.

The current conceptions of God fall for the most part
under two heads — Supernaturalism and Physical Pantheism.

THE DIVINE CIRCLE 169

The ideas of supreme power and absolute reality are in-
separable from the idea of God. So much will be generally
conceded. Starting from this latent postulate, super-
naturalism conceives God as the Creator of the Universe,
and in doing so places him outside Nature and outside
human life ; while physical pantheism identifies God with
the visible Universe, and in doing so places him outside the
percipient spirit of man. Both these conceptions (or mis-
conceptions) of God owe their origin to man's over-curious
desire to know about God as one knows about a mineral or a
plant — to possess God, so to speak, in a formula, instead of
being content to be possessed by his life and his love.1 If we
wish to know about a thing, if we wish to think about it, to
investigate it, to make statements about it, to write treatises
about it, we must be able to separate it from ourselves. It
follows that, if we are to think about God, we must begin
by separating him from ourselves, we must conceive of him
as living a life external to our own. But inasmuch as man
is the Alpha and Omega — as well as the centre — of the world
of his own experience, it follows further that, in separating
God from ourselves, we are also separating him from Nature
(as we understand the word). Where, then, does God
dwell ? Evidently, since Nature is bereft of his presence,
in some glorious world above and beyond Nature, which,
for lack of a fitter name, we must call supernatural. As our
knowledge of Nature extends and our conceptions of Nature
widen, the interval between us, who are at the centre of
Nature, and God, who is at the centre of the supernatural
world, grows greater and greater, until at last the very
effort that we make to think about God drives him beyond
the utmost confines of our thoughts. Drives him, not
merely into exile, but even, in the last resort, into non-
existence. For as our conceptions of Nature widen, as each
discovery prepares the way for a newer voyage of discovery,
as the horizon of the Unknowable recedes further and

1 It is of course possible to study the genesis of these antithetical creeds
from other points of view. In Part I, Chapter II, for example, the evolu-
tion of the idea of the supernatural has (pp. n, 12) been traced back to the
inherent dualism of human speech. There is no real discrepancy between
the two points of view. Each is valid as a point of view, that is, as afford-
ing a partial survey and a provisional explanation of a large and many-
sided problem.

170 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

further from our vision, the conviction begins to dawn upon
us that the Supernatural is but a dreamland, the far-
projected shadow of our own ignorance of Nature.

In this way supernaturalism, obeying the unformulated
laws of the soul's secret logic, leads at last to the denial of
God. The inevitable rebound from this gives us physical
pantheism. If the supernatural is a dreamland, God must
be brought back from an exile which threatens his very
existence with annihilation, and reinstated on the throne of
Nature. But as the desire to know about God still dominates
our minds, we must take care, even while we restore God to
Nature, to separate him from ourselves. What will this
involve ? It is by projecting himself into Nature, by
becoming one with her, by fusing inward and outward into
a new and a higher synthesis, that man makes of Nature a
living whole. His spirit is creative in its very receptiveness.
It constructs the totality of things in the very act of appre-
hending it. What, then, will be left of Nature if man
withdraws himself from her in order that he may fit her for
the presence of his knowable God ? Nothing but that
aspect of Nature which man, by separating himself from it,
is able to think about and know about — the material aspect,
the despiritualized outward world. Nothing, in other words,
but the aggregate of her physical phenomena, the temporal
and spatial extension of her being, the mechanical counter-
part of her infinite life. The deification of this aspect of
Nature gives us the lower pantheism, which should be
carefully distinguished from, but is too often confounded
with, the higher or spiritual pantheism of mystical thought.
The obvious objection to it is that, though it adds an
emotional element to popular materialism, it differs from
it in no other respect. And the practical refutation of it
lies in the fact that the emotional element, being as a rule
the product of a theory rather than a faith, is a volatile
essence which easily passes away. The general mind of
man may rest — for a while — in a materialistic conception of
Nature. But the general heart of man, in spite, or perhaps
in virtue, of its anthropomorphic tendencies, will always
refuse to rest in a materialistic conception of God ; and if
it should ever abandon the belief in the Supernatural, it

THE DIVINE CIRCLE 171

would assuredly pass on, in the absence of a radical re-
interpretation of Nature, to denial of the Divine.

Supernaturalism and physical pantheism may safely be
left to cancel one another. Each in turn is disproved by
the fact that, though the other is its necessary correlate
and complement, it is also its direct negative. If further
proof be needed that both creeds are false just so far as they
pretend to be true, it will be found in the fact that super-
naturalism is bound by its primary postulate to regard
Nature as essentially evil, and that physical pantheism is
bound by its primary postulate to regard every detail of
Nature as divinely good : and that each of these conclusions
(with its endless train of moral consequences) is perpetually
refuted by the logic of experience and of common sense.
The failure of each creed was in truth pre-determined by
the fundamental assumption which generated both. The
division of the Universe into " Nature " and " the Super-
natural " drains reality away from each of these dissevered
worlds. In doing so it undermines the very foundations of
religion, for reality — supreme, self-dependent reality — is the
first and last attribute of the Godhead.

What lessons are we to learn from the failure of these
attempts to solve the greatest of all mysteries ? The first
and most obvious lesson is that God is the Unknowable, in
the sense that with regard to him every affirmation is a
denial, every belief an infidelity, every dogma a blasphemy,
every formula an outrage on truth. The old story of Eros
and Psyche is eternally true. If we yield to the desire to
see our Divine Lover, to know all about the life that em-
braces and interpenetrates our own, we shall have to pay
the penalty of our curiosity — the penalty of driving the
Divine Lover into exile. Theology is the true atheism.
Agnosticism is the first condition of faith. The Unknown
God is life of our life and breath of our breath. The known
God is a phantom with which we terrify ourselves in vain.
Conceived of as within us — and therefore as unknowable —
God is an irradiating light. Conceived of as without us —
and therefore as knowable — God is an overwhelming dark-
ness. If we insist on lifting the veil of that darkness we shall
find Nothing behind it.

172 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

Are we, then, to keep silence about God ? Is the word
never to pass our lips ? No, we may say much about God, but
in all that we say we must observe three primary conditions.
The first is that whatever we say must be the outcome and
expression of spiritual emotion, guided perhaps and system-
atized, by reason, but never losing its emotional character.
The second is that whatever we say must admit of being
interpreted emotionally and therefore in accordance with
the prejudices and personal convictions of its various
hearers — prejudices and convictions which our words may
modify and even transform, but which we cannot afford to
ignore. No proposition about God is even incipient ly true
which does not carry different meanings to different minds.
To develop such a proposition scientifically, to draw formal
inferences from it, to fit it into a system, to elaborate it into
formulas, is to deprive it of its life, its force, and its meaning,
and to change it at last into a string of empty words. The
third condition is that whatever we say must be readily
translatable into the confession that God is unknown and
unknowable. The echo of every creed, of every psalm, of
every prayer, must be the cry of the Hebrew prophet
" Verily thou art a hidden God."

The next lesson to be learned from the respective failures
of supernaturalism and physical pantheism is that if we are
to arrive (within the limits prescribed by the above-named
conditions) at a conception of God which is true in any sense
of the word, we must fuse these anthithetical theories into
the larger and deeper idea that underlies them both. Each
has its own weakness ; but the presence and persistence of
each proves that it has also its own strength. The strength
of supernaturalism is that in its higher moods it insists on
the reality of spirit, that in worshipping God it does homage
to the creativeness and omnipotence of spiritual energy, or,
in a word, of will. The strength of physical pantheism is
that it rescues God from the shadow-world of the Super-
natural, and restores (or tries to restore) him to reality, to
Nature. The higher creed must be the resultant of these
apparently divergent tendencies. It must identify the
spiritual God whom it worships with Nature ; it must place
his creative energy at the very heart of Nature ; it must see

THE DIVINE CIRCLE 173

in the course of Nature the eternal expression of his will, his
thought, and his love.

What relation other than that of ideal and ultimate
identity can there be between God and the world in which
we live ? We are so constituted that we must needs regard
the world — Nature from one point of view, the Universe
from another — as a cosmos, an organic whole. So vital a
part of us is our faith in its ordered unity, that it is this
blind, instinctive feeling, struggling to define and express
itself, which has been the mainspring of all our efforts-
social, political, moral, artistic, scientific — our efforts to
organize knowledge, to organize emotion, to organize
conduct, to organize life. If this faith is justified — a faith
which reflects man's subconscious realization of the essential
unity of his own spirit — if the totality of things is at heart a
cosmos, not a chaos, in what relation does it stand to that
fountain-head of reality which we call God ? Are we to
say that God dwells apart from it and controls it from
within ? No : for in the first place, if the Universe is, as
we must needs believe, infinite on all its planes and in all its
dimensions, there is no room for God outside it : it is in
itself the All of Being, and apart from it there is nothing.
In the second place, if it is a living whole, the spring and
centre of its life must be in itself. If God really controls it,
he must be at the heart of it, he must animate it from
within. In the third place, since God is, ex hypothesi,
supremely real and alone real (in the full sense of the word) ,
if the Universe were separated from him it would be drained
of all reality, and in spite of its palpability, in spite of its
being visible, tangible, measurable, ponderable, it would be
a world of shadows and dreams.

Or are we to say that God is a part of the Universe, the
highest part of it, the part to which all other parts owe
allegiance ? No ; for just as the former hypothesis detracts
from the infinitude, the vitality, and the reality of Nature,
so the latter hypothesis detracts from the supremacy of
God. In an organic whole the different parts owe allegiance,
in the last resort, to the whole rather than to any one of
their number ; and their several functions are subordinated,

the last resort, to the function or functions of the whole.

I74 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

What, then, is left but for us to identify God with the
Universe, and to echo the words of the son of Sirach : " We
may say much and come short, wherefore in sum he is
all ? "

And it is no mere phase or plane of the Universe, infinite
though this may be, that we are to identify with God. It is
the living whole, the organized totality, the Universe seen
as it really is, the Universe seen as God himself sees it. We
who live in the midst of the cosmic process cannot see the
Universe as it really is. A sense of fundamental blindness
is a vital part of every act of sight. But inasmuch as the
Universe presents different aspects to our different percep-
tive faculties, and inasmuch as these faculties arrange
themselves (in us who use them) as higher and lower, and
constrain us to accept them on their own valuation, we are
naturally led to believe that some aspects of Nature are
higher and more real than others ; and so, looking up from
lower to higher, and from higher to higher still, we arrive
at last at the conception of what is ideally highest and
therefore supremely real. It is this aspect of the Universe
— unknowable, unimaginable, unthinkable, and yet in some
sort the inevitable, though unattainable, goal of our specula-
tive thought — it is this final term in our infinite " series,"
transcending all other terms, and yet summing them up in
itself, which we must regard as Divine.

What do we know of this final term ? Nothing, except
that it draws our thoughts towards itself with a magnetic
force which is all its own. Nothing, except that the path of
synthesis, the path of spiritual development, leads us in its
direction. The positive pole of existence, pure spirit, the
supreme synthesis, the All of Being concentrated in its own
quintessential life, — is not this what we mean by God ?

It is in his attempt to account for the existence of the
world in which he finds himself that man has evolved the
idea of God. He feels that the world, as it reveals itself to
him, is not the causa sui ; that it owes its existence to some
transcendent reality in which it lives and moves and has its
being, some paramount power, the withdrawal of which
from Nature would cancel the whole phenomenal Universe,

THE DIVINE CIRCLE 175

yet without subtracting one atom from the sum-total of

reality : Though earth and sea were gone,

And suns and universes ceased to be,

And thou wert left alone,

Every existence would exist in the .

Man's premature identification of " Nature " with his own
material environment has led him to think of this creative
power as above Nature, and to speak of it as supernatural.
But as, with the gradual enlargement of his conception of
Nature, the Supernatural tends to fade away into non-
existence, it becomes necessary for him to reconstruct his
idea of creation. The attempt to solve the problem of the
world's origin is the final outcome of his instinctive search
for cause. We have seen that the popular mind, looking
out upon the world which surrounds it, refers all things to
the action of a supreme and all-powerful will ; and that the
scientific mind, surveying the same scene from a different
standpoint, refers each thing in turn to the action of Nature,
regarded as an all-inclusive whole, operating through a
hierarchy of laws. For the solution of the largest of all
problems the co-operation of these two conceptions of cause
is needed. The creative will must be identified with what
is central in the course of Nature ; with what is supreme in
her hierarchy of laws. Nature must be thought of as the
causa sui, as the eternal source of her own being, as the
author and disposer of her own energies, as the lord and
giver of her own life. But we must, I repeat, understand
by Nature what is real in Nature, the positive pole of her
existence, the final synthesis of her elements, the ideal goal
of her movement.

Looking at things from this point of view, we see a new
meaning in the problem that confronts us. We see that
creation is no definite act in an infinitely distant past,
but the eternal correlation of the positive with the negative
pole of existence, of pure spirit with pure matter, of pure
form with pure potentiality, of Everything with Nothing.
In and through this act of correlation — which must needs
be, for the positive pole has the negative as its necessary
counterpart — the circle of being is eternally begun and
eternally completed, and the riddle of existence finds its

176 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

practical solution, the only solution of which it admits. The
vulgar idea of creation as the calling of the Universe into
existence out of nothing, is incurably dualistic, and, like
every other dualistic hypothesis, tends to reduce both terms
in its final formula to zero, or something akin to zero, a
phantasmal deity being confronted by a phenomenal world.
For this idea we must substitute that of an eternal outflow
of being from an aboriginal source — aboriginal, and yet
eternal — which we call God. God pours himself away, sends
himself as it were into exile ; and this emanating energy is
ever seeking to return to its home. This twofold movement
of flowing forth and returning home constitutes the life of
the Universe and — from our point of view — the being of
God.

It is worthy of note that the descent of God into matter
is the central idea of Christianity, and that the idea was
generated by the effort of the human mind to make good
the failure of its own earlier thoughts. The creation of the
world from without, by the fiat of a supreme will, turned
out badly ; for the finished product of an all-powerful and
all-righteous Creator, which might have been expected to
be perfect, proved to be full of imperfection. The story of
Creation had therefore to be supplemented by the story of
the Fall. And the story of the Fall had to be supplemented
by the idea of the Incarnation. For, if the divine failure was
to be retrieved, it was needful that God should stoop to the
level of fallen Nature and draw her back to himself. Owing
to the geocentric character of ancient thought, the redemp-
tion of Nature meant no more than the redemption of
Humanity ; and this was achieved by the birth and death
of Christ. The geocentric standpoint is no longer tenable.
Creation and redemption are correlative aspects of the same
process. The idea of the Incarnation must either widen its
scope or become discredited. It is not by descending into
the womb of a woman, it is not by becoming flesh, that God
redeems a ruined world. It is by descending into Nothing,
by charging Nothing, so to speak, with the potentiality of
his own perfection, that God creates, sustains, and redeems
— or draws back to himself — not a ruined world, but an
undeveloped and therefore self-realizing Universe.

THE DIVINE CIRCLE 177

If this elusive idea is to be presented to thought it must
clothe itself in figurative language. The circulation of water
in the physical world has always seemed to me symbolical
of the circulation of being in the Cosmos. As the mists that
rise from the sea return to the sea in the influx of a multitude
of sea-like rivers, so do the' forces that emanate from the
spirit of God stream back to their source as a multitude of
God-like souls. But this simile, though illuminative, and
effective up to a certain point, is obviously inadequate ; for
in the cosmic drama, which is presumably self-contained
and all-inclusive, there is nothing analogous to the part
which is played in the physical drama by external influences
such as the heat of the sun or the varying temperature of
the air.

Can any other simile give us light in our darkness ? One
of the difficulties that confront us is that matter seems to
have a maximum of density which is entirely different from
its maximum of purity ; and that, therefore, there seem to
be two negative poles of existence — one which is diametri-
cally opposite to pure spirit, separated from it by the whole
diameter of the circle of being, and another — the pure
matter, or pure energy, towards which analysis leads us —
which is either (according to the direction in which we look)
all but identical with pure spirit, or separated from it by
the whole circle of being. If from one point of view what is
ultimate in analysis is antithetical to what is ultimate in
synthesis — pure energy to pure spirit — from another point
of view the real negation of the latter is that gross, dense,
inert state of matter from which we start in our physical
researches, and which seems to us to be wholly soulless and
even lifeless. How has the latter state been reached and in
what relation does it stand to the two extremes that seem
to meet ?

At the root of all religion lies the idea that self-sacrifice,
leading first to self -loss and then to self-realization, is the
supreme law of man's higher life. In feeling its way to this
idea, religion has divined one of Nature's deepest secrets
and discovered one of her paramount laws. For not only
is it true that beyond a certain stage in man's development
self-sacrifice is the form which growth necessarily takes,

178 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

but it may even be said that something akin to self-sacrifice
—the giving up of the actual in favour of the ideal — is at the
heart of all growth. The highest motive to self-sacrifice,
and the only genuine motive, is love — love of a person, love
of a community, love of a cause, love of an ideal, love of
Nature, love of Man, love of God. The instrument of self-
sacrifice is will. The energy of love sets in motion and
sustains the energy of will. As religion purifies itself and
widens its outlook, the idea of self-sacrifice ascends from
man, the worshipper, towards God, the object of his worship,
that it may re-descend — with a larger scope and a purer
purpose — into the life of man. If man has indeed been
made in the image of God, and if the capacity for self-
sacrifice is the highest attribute of man, then self-sacrifice—
the going out of self in order to find new life — must be of the
essence of God. This idea is, I need hardly say, central in
Christianity — central both in the teaching and in the life of
Christ. His sublime saying, " Whosoever shall seek to save
his life shall lose it : but whosoever shall lose his life shall
preserve it," dominates all his other maxims. And his own
sublime self-sacrifice is his true title-deed to Divinity.

Let us, then, think of God as performing an eternal act
of self-sacrifice, as going out of himself in order to find new
life, not a new life which is higher than his own, for God is
himself ideal perfection, but a life which, beginning as
unconscious energy, will at last be raised to the level of
his own ; let us think of him as sending forth from himself
this emanating energy — radiant and ethereal, but seemingly
lifeless — by the propulsive force of his will, and then drawing
it back to himself, out of the depths of unconsciousness and
seeming nothingness, by the attractive force of his love.
Let us now go back to our geometrical simile. Let us again
think of the process which we call the Universe as an infinite
circle. And on that circle let us take three contiguous
points, A (pure spirit — the divine source of being), B (the
emanating energy which we have hitherto spoken of as pure
matter) and C (the emanating influence of love), B and C
being on either side of A ; and let D be the opposite end of
the diameter which starts from A. If B, which (with C) is
of all points nearest to A, stands for matter at its maximum

THE DIVINE CIRCLE 179

of purity, D, which is of all points furthest from A, will
stand for matter at its maximum of density. The move-
ment from A to B takes place in a timeless moment ; but
if it is to be continued in its own direction it will have to
pass through D — the point at which the divine efflux, once
pure and ethereal, will have become most densely material
— and then complete the entire circuit before the return to
A can be effected. But why should the movement from A
to B be continued along the circumference of the circle ?
Why should it not be tangential rather than peripheral ?
Partly, no doubt, because the circle, being presumably
infinite, has no tangents ; but also — the second reason
governing and explaining the first — because from the very
beginning the movement which is initiated by the propulsive
force of will comes under the other aspect of God's being,
the attractive force of the divine love, and is thus bent
back, as it were, continuously from the tangential course
which it might otherwise take. Or we may say, if we please,
that as every straight line is the arc of an infinite circle, the
movements of the respective energies of will and love,
though exactly opposite to one another, must both be
circular and both end at last in their eternal source. Or
perhaps, more simply, that because efflux and reflux,
sending forth and drawing back, are of the essence of the
divine life, therefore the cosmic process is an infinite circle,
and therefore every straight line, even in space, is the arc
of such a circle.

If my thoughts lead me to such paradoxical conclusions
as that the divine circle has no geometrical centre but is
itself an ever-moving centre, and that the diameter of the
circle, instead of being a straight line passing through the
geometrical centre, is half the circle, I cannot help myself.
My excuse for indulging in these fanciful speculations1 is

1 We may, if we please, indulge in speculations which are even more
fantastic than this. We may try to construct the cosmic drama with some
approach to detail. We may think of the divine effluence as coming forth
in a state of ethereal purity and electrical energy, but also of spellbound
trance. We may think of it as returning to its eternal source, — not along
the path which it has traversed, for the will which expelled it, and went
forth with it and in it as force, cannot call it back, — but towards the other
side of God's being, the side of love. We may think of it, while the first
half of the circle is being traversed, as losing its ethereal purity, owing to
its ever-increasing distance fron its spiritual source, and sinking, little by

i8o THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

that I am trying to present to my consciousness and, if
possible, justify to my reason certain mental feelings of
which I cannot rid myself, and which have, I feel sure, a
real content. But I know only too well how futile are my
similes ; I know well that if there is such a divine efflux and
reflux as I have dared to imagine, both processes are eternal
rather than temporal, logical (in the deeper sense of the
word) rather than actual, the infinite round of existence
being, as it were, the very pulse of the divine heart, which
lives its life — its own serene, eternal, self-sufficing life — in
and through this two-fold process of giving and receiving,
of " creating " and " redeeming," or, again, which is in
itself the eternal efflux of itself from itself and reflux of
itself to itself. The attempt to survey from a temporal
standpoint a movement which transcends time, the attempt
of the part to think about the whole, is a failure in its very
inception ; and the similes in which one tries to express the
thoughts that such an attempt sets in motion are bound to
break down the moment they feel the weight of serious
criticism.

The emotional interpretation of my thoughts on these

little, into the darkness of material density. But as, even from the begin-
ning of things, it has come under the attractive influence of the divine love
— the eternal source of life — we may also think of it as waking, little by
little, to the light of conscious life. When the turning point of the circle
has been reached, the emanating substance has attained to its maximum
of density, while in and through its apparently lifeless medium, the soul,
which slumbered most deeply — so deeply that it seemed to be non-existent
— when its substance was most ethereal, will have waked to consciousness
and made an appreciable measure of spiritual growth. From this point
onward the development of conscious life is accompanied b}' the pro-
gressive refinement of the substance in which life embodies itself. For as
the degres of " spirituality " in the emanating substance varies inversely
with the distance of the substance from its eternal source, it is clear that
once the turning point of the circle has been reached, matter will begin to
regain its lost radiance and purity ; and it is also clear that the life, which
had gone far along the path of spiritual development even while its vehicle
was becoming more and more densely material, will advance along that
path, now that its vehicle has begun to purify itself, with ever-increasing
celerity. Words fail us, imagination, mocks us when we try to picture to
ourselves the glorious destiny of the expanding spirit, which, on the one
hand, passes onward from plane to plane of outward being — each new
plane being purer, more radiant, and more ethereal than the one which
was left behind — and, on the other hand, in its own inward life, climbs
higher and higher up the awful heights of thought and sinks deeper and
deeper into the fathomless abysses of love. At last the distinction between
inward and outward, which had long been tending to efface itself, becomes
wholly obliterated, and the spirit, having grown to the fulness of its pre-
destined stature, becomes one with God.

THE DIVINE CIRCLE 181

matters is no doubt nearer to truth than the dialectical. As
an argument for the divine efflux and reflux, the feeling of
" divine homesickness " of which I have spoken is worth
many theories of the Universe. But there is another
interpretation which is still nearer to truth. When the
divine emanation, having completed its circle of develop-
ment, enters in full consciousness into union with the
Divine Lover, it returns to its source, not as one spirit,
but as an infinity of souls. How or why this " individualiza-
tion of the infinite " has been accomplished we do not, we
cannot know ; but that it is being accomplished, that each
of us is at once individual and infinite, is a truth which has
written itself in living, breathing, moving characters on the
scroll of human life. The Divine Spirit, which is one and
indivisible, is the true self of each of us ; and yet each of us
has his own life to live, his own nature to evolve, his own
soul to expand. We may, if we please, try to find words
for this mystery ; we cannot even begin to explain it. The
meaning of it is something which each of us must realize in
his own existence, must live out — there is no other way to
discover it — in and for himself. / find myself in the midst
of the infinite movement of cosmic Nature. The stream of
evolution is sweeping me onward towards the infinite sea.
Therefore the practical interpretation of the thoughts and
feelings that haunt me is the interpretation that really
counts. If the movement of cosmic Nature is indeed a
circular movement, from and towards the goal of spiritual
perfection, what follows with regard to myself ? Destiny,
when individualized, reveals itself as duty. If the destiny
of Nature is re-union with her divine source, what part am
I, a child of Nature, to play in that mighty drama ? My
being comes under the master law of growth. In the light
of the conception of Nature which I have been trying to
express, do I not begin to discover — and is it not time for
me to begin to realize — in myself, in my way of thinking,
feeling, doing, living — the purpose of growth P

CHAPTER IV

THE POLES OF KNOWLEDGE

FROM Nature let us return to human nature. What
we have found in Nature we may expect to find in
human nature — unity of being, duality of direction, contin-
uity of movement, infinity of range. The central fact in
human nature is consciousness. The central phenomenon
in human life is the dawn of consciousness. The movement
which we call the dawn of consciousness is commensurate
with the movement which we call development or growth.
If these things are so, and if human nature, like Nature,
comes under the law of polar opposition, we may safety
conjecture that consciousness and unconsciousness are
opposite poles of human life.

But this conception is too vague to be helpful. Let us
try to limit it. If consciousness and unconsciousness are
poles of human life, of what aspect of human life are they
the poles, of what great " stream of tendency " are they the
unknown beginning and the unknown end ? The answer to
this question is not far to seek. In life, as we know it, there
is an unceasing interplay between knowledge and action ;
and there is a point of view from which this interplay seems
actually to constitute life. Consciousness (with its opposite)
is predicable of both knowledge and action : but that it is
primarily predicable of knowledge will, I think, be generally
admitted. So intimate indeed is the relation between con-
sciousness and knowledge, that we cannot define the former
term except in terms of the latter. The dawn of conscious-
ness, which is characteristic of the life of mankind, and
which re-enacts itself in the life of each individual, is the
dawn of a new kind of knowledge, a higher kind of know-
ledge, a kind which differentiates man from all other living

THE POLES OF KNOWLEDGE 183

things. It follows that only by thinking of consciousness
and unconsciousness as the opposite poles of knowledge, and
studying them as such, can we hope' to determine what
parts these " mighty opposites " play in the drama of man's
life.

When I speak of consciousness and unconsciousness as
poles of knowledge I am using language which may seem to
savour of paradox. One's first impulse is to assume that
knowledge which lies below the threshold of consciousness
is not knowledge, and that the phrase " unconscious know-
ledge " is therefore a contradiction in terms. The only way
to meet this criticism is to think, or try to think, the whole
matter out. Such matters are best studied in the concrete ;
and I will therefore begin with an example. In playing a
game of billiards it is desired to produce a certain result.
With this end in view, it is necessary that the ball should
be hit on a certain spot, with a certain degree of force, with
a certain inclination of the cue, and so forth. One of the
players, though quite ignorant both of the science and the
practice of the game, manages by a kind of instinct so to
strike the ball as to produce the desired effect. This correct
action on his part implies a certain measure of acquaintance
with mechanical laws ; but the man's knowledge, such as
it is, has not risen into consciousness ; it is wholly latent
and implicit. He could not have told a bystander, even
approximately, where or how he intended to hit the ball.
Still less could he have told him at what point the ball was
to hit the cushion, at what angle it was to leave it, or, in
general, by what precise steps it was to reach its goal. So
far was his knowledge below the threshold of consciousness,
so largely was it confined to the physical side of his nature,
that it was only in the instant of outward action that it was
in any degree realized and displayed.

There might be another player, ignorant of the theory of
the game, but so well acquainted with the practice of it as
to have evolved for himself certain rules for playing it,
which, though disconnected, unexplained, and seldom con-
sciously referred to, yet enabled him to play with consider-
able success, and in evolving which he must have acquired,
unknown to himself, an intuitive and unscientific knowledge

184 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

of mechanical laws. In the case which I am considering
such a player might be able to tell a bystander with some
degree of accuracy where and how the ball was to be struck,
and what course it was to take ; but he would probably
be unable to explain why all this was to be done. And so
his knowledge, though of a higher order than that of the
first player, would yet faD short by many degrees of the
highest form of knowledge ; for " verum scire est per
causas scire," — to know a thing fully is to throw the
light of consciousness far out on all sides of it, to
approach it through the laws which it exemplifies and the
causes which combine to produce it. A third player might
be able to give a scientific explanation of the proposed
action. He might be able to bring the case in point under
mechanical laws as studied in their bearing on the game,
and through these to solve the problem which was involved
in the position of the balls. In other words, he might be
able to tell us why he did whatever he happened to do.
Such a player might not be so skilful or successful as the
second or even the first ; but his knowledge would be of a
higher order and would be more likely to serve for any new
conjuncture.

Here, then, are three kinds, or rather degrees, of know-
ledge. They are degrees in a scale which ranges between
the actual and the potential, between the light of conscious-
ness and the darkness of the unconscious life. To know
with clear consciousness, to separate one's knowledge from
oneself and to present it to one's mind in the form of
reasoned conclusions and precise statements, is to realize
the ideal of science. From this ideal there is a gradual
declension, till at last the distinction between subject and
object becomes effaced, and the word knowledge ceases to
apply.

Let us look at other examples. A man speaks correctly.
That implies knowledge of the rules of grammar. Another
man knows the rules and consciously applies them when any
difficulty arises. That implies knowledge of the principles
of language. A third knows the principles and consciously
applies them when there is any doubt as to the rules. Here
again we have three degrees of knowledge ; and here again

THE POLES OF KNOWLEDGE 185

the degree of knowledge is measured by the degree of con-
sciousness. Examples of what I may call sub-conscious
knowledge, of knowledge which is potential rather than
actual, instinctive rather than rational, latent and implicit
rather than consciously realized, meet us at every turn. It
has often been remarked that ~ people reason correctly who
know nothing about logic. They reach right conclusions,
not always intuitively, but sometimes by moving along
legitimate lines of proof, though they have never so much
as heard of the syllogism or given a thought to the methods
of induction. Again, it is a matter of everyday experience
that children — to say nothing of adults — use words correctly
which they could not possibly define or explain : they will
even use an abstract noun so accurately as to show that they
apprehend its precise shade of meaning ; and yet, if asked
to explain in terms, however vague and general, what the
word meant, they would probably be at a loss for an answer.
Those who do understand the meanings of words seldom
have recourse to their knowledge when they speak or write.
They trust themselves to the guidance of instinct, which
works far more rapidly and delicately and often far more
surely than reason. " The ear trieth words as the mouth
tasteth meat." The poet who invents new and beautiful
metres is not always able to account for their melody or
even to analyze them into their component feet. The
writer of well-balanced sentences cannot always explain on
what principle he constructed them or wherein lies the
secret of their charm. What abstruse mathematical calcula-
tions are made by one who takes aim with a bow ! They
are made by his eyes and fingers rather than by his head.
Similar calculations are made, only more mechanically and
also more consciously, by the artillerymen who points a gun.
But I need not multiply instances. I scarcely exaggerate
when I say that we unconsciously apprehend the laws of
motion and the mechanical properties of matter in every
movement of our bodies, the laws of language in every word
that we utter, the laws of thought in every inference that
we draw, the principles of morality in every whisper of
conscience, the facts of the spiritual world in every stir of
spiritual emotion.

i86 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

Recognition of the reality of unconscious (or sub-
conscious) knowledge is fatal to that cheap and shallow
dualism which assumes that all existent things are either
knowable or unknowable, and that there is no intermediate
state between knowledge and no knowledge.1 Nor need
we, when we distinguish conscious from unconscious know-
ledge, fall into the toils of a new dualism. One who believes,
as I do, in the unity and continuity of Nature, will expect
to find that the outgrowth of knowledge, both in the race
and the individual, is on the whole a continuous process,
and will protest on a priori grounds against the doctrine
that from no-knowledge to knowledge — from the darkness
of midnight to the light of noonday — there is but a single
step. And this expectation and this protest will be con-
firmed by experience. For, whether we look at the life of
the individual or the history of the human race, or survey
with the aid of science the ordered gradation of the vegetable
and animal worlds, we shall find that the transition from
unconsciousness to consciousness is effected not by sudden
movements but " by degrees scarce to be perceived." With
the dawn of consciousness on the world of life, there is a
gradual and indeterminable advance from mere being,
through feeling, in the direction of knowing. It follows that
knowledge is not, as is commonly supposed, the definable,
name of a definite mental state. On the contrary, the word

1 Huxley (the late Professor) says that " the admission of a state of
mind intermediate between knowledge and no knowledge is fatal to all
clearness of thought." Perhaps it is ; but what a circular bit of reasoning
this is ! Huxley seems to take for granted that we must either think
clearly about great matters or not think at all. But that is precisely what
is in dispute. If there is no intermediate state between thinking clearly
and not thinking at all, then it is certain that there can be no intermediate
state between knowledge and no knowledge. To tell those who contend
that there are intermediate states between knowledge and no knowledge,
that their contention is fatal to all clearness of thought, is (by implication)
to ask them to concede what they are busily engaged in denying. For
when they say that it is possible to know sub-consciously, they of course
imply that it is possible to think darkly and dimly, obscurity of thought
being as obviously the counterpart of sub-conscious apprehension as
clearness of thought is of conscious knowledge. It is better, as Huxley's
opponents contend, to think truly than to think clearly ; and as there are
matters in which (to quote Joubert's words) " toute precision est erreur,"
it seems to follow that what is " fatal to clearness of thought " is not
necessarily antagonistic to truth. In any case, one who lays great stress
on clearness of thought ought to avoid the logical fallacy involved in
proving an assumption by means of itself.

THE POLES OF KNOWLEDGE 187

can be used in many ways and with many shades of mean-
ing ; and of the thing there are many kinds and innumerable
degrees. These are degrees in a line which has no clearly
marked limit at either end. All we can say of it is that it
looks backward towards feeling and instinct and dim un-
conscious apprehension, and forward towards reason and
understanding and that clear, conscious, far-seeing grasp
of a subject which is the ideal type of knowledge, and to
attain to which in every sphere of its labour is the dream of
the human mind.

To this general conclusion there are some important
corollaries. The First is that unconscious apprehension is
prior in time to conscious knowledge and is at any given
moment working in advance of it. That man acts, feels, and
sees before he thinks ; that instinct is in the field before
reason ; that genius works ahead of intelligence ; that
knowledge must exist before one can become aware of its
presence ; that perception must prepare the way for infer-
ence ; that the yarn of experience must be spun before it
can be woven, — all these are truths too obvious to need
demonstration. Science is pre-eminently the product of
consciousness ; and every science and every quasi-science
had a practical beginning, having gradually shaped itself
out of a tentative and experimental handling of its subject-
matter, in which its principles were unconsciously appre-
hended and applied. Thus thought is of older standing than
logic ; art than aesthetics ; literature than literary criti-
cism ; morality than ethics ; social life than social science.
The germs of physical science are to be found in that
instinctive knowledge of the laws and properties of external
nature which enables the more backward races of mankind
(destitute as these are of science) and even the animals and
plants, to adapt themselves with much apparent skill and
with more or less success to their material environment.
Speaking generally, it may be said that the theoretical side
of every art, handicraft, sport, and game has been gradually
evolved by practice. Men spoke grammar long before they
laid down its rules, and wrote verses long before they dis-
covered the laws of prosody. Campaigns were conducted

i88 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

before strategy became a science ; and seas were crossed
before navigation was taught in schools. The methods of
induction were practised by the pioneers of science before
Mill formulated its laws. There were reasoners before
Aristotle, successful despots before Machiavelli, utilitarians
before Bentham, economists before Adam Smith.

As it is in the life of the race, so it is in the life of the
individual. We are all learners from the cradle to the
grave ; and it is in the process of learning, that the superi-
ority of instinct to consciousness, as a pioneer and guide,
is most clearly manifest. The child learns the use of his
limbs by using them, not by studying anatomy or mechanics.
His conscience is developed by intercourse with his equals
and superiors, not by the inculcation of moral maxims and
principles. He learns to speak his mother tongue by hearing
it spoken, and masters it much more speedily and thoroughly-
than the adult, with his grammars and dictionaries, can
master German or French. When one is acquiring a new
accomplishment, one begins to act correctly long before
one is acquainted wirh a single rule or principle. When one
is learning a new science (though here the experience of the
race is available for the instruction and guidance of the
individual) how little is gained, or rather how much is lost,
by beginning with formal propositions, with definitions,
rules, and the like ! If one wishes to lay a lasting founda-
tion, one must begin with what is concrete. Let the law or
principle be first apprehended unconsciously, in and through
an instance or series of instances. Then its meaning will
be realized. Till then it may be learnt by heart when set
forth in a formula, it may be accepted as true, it may even
be understood in the moment of demonstration, but it will
not be assimilated.

I need not say more in support of this thesis. I am
insisting on what is probably self-evident. The common
language, and, in spite of many exceptions, especially in the
sphere of education, the common practice of mankind con-
firm what I say. Experience teaches. Practice makes
perfect. Example is better than precept. Such maxims as
these are on my side. Men habitually act on the assumption
that instinct and intuition work in advance of consciousness.

THE POLES OF KNOWLEDGE 189

If a boy wants to learn a handicraft, he does not read books
about it, he is apprenticed to a master craftsman. If he
wants to learn golf, he gets a professional golfer to take him
round the links. If he wants to learn medicine or law, he
walks a hospital or enters a lawyer's office. If he wants to
learn French, or at any rate to master French, he goes to
France. All this implies a latent conviction that the un-
conscious side is, as it were, more deeply seated, more
intimately one's own, more near to the realities of Nature,
than is the conscious side of one's being.

This leads me to my Second Corollary, which is an obvious
extension of the first. As the unconscious side of a man is
ever working ahead of his consciousness, it is also ever dealing
with higher realities and ever nearer to the truth of things. I
am expressing the same idea in other words when I say that
conscious apprehension of a truth implies unconscious
apprehension of a higher and wider truth. Thus consciously
to discern the solution of a practical problem, is uncon-
sciously to grasp the appropriate theory. Consciously to
pass an isolated judgment, is unconsciously to apprehend
and apply a principle. Consciously to purpose a noble
action, is unconsciously to grasp and cleave to a spiritual
idea. But the theory is higher and wider than the problem.
The principle is higher and wider than the judgment. The
idea is higher and wider than the impulse to action.

The Third Corollary, though scarcely more than a re-
statement of the second, has a significance which is all its
own. To say that the unconscious self is at any given
moment dealing with higher realities than those which
present themselves to consciousness is to imply that the true
life of man is buried ; that the true self is a hidden self ; that the
higher side of man's being, the side which is in touch with
Nature's inner mysteries, lives and works for the most part in
the darkness of the unconscious life. That we may the better
realize the significance of this conception, let us consider the
phenomenon of genius, and examine the attempt that has
sometimes been made to interpret it in terms of divine
inspiration.

We are all familiar with the phenomenon of genius. We
call a man a genius when he does work which, besides being

icjo THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

excellent of its kind, is of a high order and on a large scale.
This is the first thing that strikes us about him ; but, as we
shall presently see, the differential property of genius lies
deeper than this. Now in bygone times the power of doing
or saying wonderful things was regarded as the gift of God.
Some one man stood forth among his fellows and spoke
words of luminous wisdom or dazzling beauty or burning
truth. Those who heard him were penetrated by his
influence ; and feeling that his work was far above the
ordinary level of human achievement, and being at a loss to
account for such pre-eminence, they said he was inspired,
breathed into by the Spirit of God. This idea expressed
itself in various forms. The Lawgiver, the man of super-
human wisdom, was either a semi-divine person or one who
had direct and special intercourse with Deity. The Poet,
the embodiment of soaring genius, was regarded as the
mouthpiece of Phoebus, as the child of the Muses, as the
vates sacer. Men spoke of his phrenzy and his divine mad-
ness, the " madness which is the special gift of Heaven and
the source of the chief est blessing among men/' The
Prophet prefaced his rebukes and warnings with " Thus
saith the Lord " ; and his claim to hold a commission direct
from the Eternal was as freely allowed as it was boldly
advanced. Something of this faith in inspiration lingers yet.
We believe that the writers of the Bible were mouthpieces
of the Spirit of God. We believe, in other words, that on
the highest and most sacred of all themes those who thought
and felt most truly drew their knowledge and power from a
supernatural source. And though in theory we reserve the
epithet " inspired " for our sacred Scriptures, we find it
easy to apply the term to pre-eminent achievements in
other fields, especially in those of art and song. This shows
that it is natural for man to regard the highest developments
of genius as gifts of Heaven rather than as products of earth.
What is there in genius that constrains us to take this
view of it ? Socrates — the Socrates of Plato — has answered
this question. His search for a man wiser than himself led
him at last to the poets, who, he felt sure, would be able to
convict him of ignorance. " Accordingly," he tells us, "I
took them some of the most elaborate passages in their own

THE POLES OF KNOWLEDGE 191

writings and asked what was the meaning of them, — thinking
that they would teach me something. Will you believe me ?
I am almost ashamed to confess the truth, but I must say
there is hardly a person present who would not have talked
better about their poetry than they did themselves. Then
I knew, without going further, that not by wisdom do poets
write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration. They
are like divines or soothsayers who also say many fine
things but do not understand the meaning of them." In
the Meno Socrates speaks of divines and prophets " includ-
ing the whole tribe of poets " as being " inspired and
possessed of God, in which condition they say many grand
things, not knowing what they say." This divine possession,
or " madness," as he elsewhere calls it, is essential to the
true poet. In poetry " the sane man is nowhere at all when
he enters into rivalry with the madman." And the proof
of this divine madness is that those who are possessed by it
" say many grand things, not knowing wrhat they say."

The properties of genius that are dwelt on in these
passages — its blindness and its inevitableness — are the pro-
perties that have engendered the current belief in inspira-
tion. When all the natural agencies that mediate between
visible effects and ultimate causes appear to be wanting, the
mind falls back in its perplexity on the supreme cause of all
things, on the operation of God himself. Hence it is, to
take an obvious example, that we pray for sunshine and
rain. The laws of meteorology are so little understood, and
our knowledge of them, such as it is, is confined to so small
a circle of savants, that ordinary men can see no middle term
between the atmospheric phenomena of which they have
direct evidence and the ruling or overruling Power in whom
they believe. In the same way, when we see that wonderful
results are produced by human agency and that those who
produce them can give no explanation of their aims and
methods, it is but natural that popular thought, which
confounds personality with consciousness and therefore
draws a sharp distinction between the man of genius himself
and the power that seems to constrain him, should identify
the latter with the spirit of the supernatural God. Thus the
belief in inspiration is found, when analyzed, to rest on the

192 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

assumption that genius is the product of irresistible forces
working below the level of human consciousness.

That this assumption is correct can scarcely be doubted.
We know from experience that the man of genius can give
no account of what is most eminent and distinctive in his
work. He is no critic, in the ordinary sense of the word.
The critical faculty, which is predominatingly analytical,
rarely co-exists with the creative, and very rarely with the
highest developments of the latter. Were the man of genius
to reflect on what he did and to ask himself how and why he
did it, he would become uncertain of himself when he had
most need of assurance. His hand would falter and hesitate
and would end by losing its cunning. Poets would often be
startled if they could learn what depths of meaning, what
niceties of artistic skill had been discovered in their verses.
" They said wonderful things, not knowing what they said/'
Diderot found in some work of David the painter certain
excellences of design and effect which the latter, as he con-
fessed, had never intended. " Quoi," cried Diderot, " c'est
d votre insu ; c'est d'instinct que vous avez procede ainsi . . .
c'est encore mieux." When Haydn was asked the reason for
a harmony he could but answer, " I have done it because it
does well " : nor could he confute the impertinent critic
who found fault with a beautiful passage in one of his works
because it violated conventional rules. Ruskin says that
great discoveries, such as those of the Thirteenth Century
artists in floral ornaments, are " never made philosophically,
but instinctively," that is "by the penetrative imagination,
acting under the influence of strong affection." The same
authority tells us that the Chinese and Hindoos can colour
better than we do because " their glorious ignorance of all
rules " enables " their pure and true instincts to have play
and do their work, — instincts so subtle that the least warping
or compression breaks or blunts them."

These examples illustrate a law which is never really
violated. Let us take the case of a poet in his season of
inspiration. However deeply he may have studied the
poetic art, however thorough may be his knowledge of its
rules (so far as it has rules), however clear his insight into
its principles, however diligently he may apply his mind to

THE POLES OF KNOWLEDGE 193

the task that he has set himself, the fact remains that the
greater part of his work, and all that is best in it, will have
to be done by the unconscious side of him — by an originat-
ing power whose methods transcend all formulated rules —
by a fountain of creative energy directing itself again and
again at an object which is known to it rather than to him,
and which it attains to perhaps only after repeated failures
—by the delicate sympathy of his artistic temperament—
by the subtle criticism of his trained and gifted ear. What-
ever theories we may hold about genius, we take for granted
that it is not self-conscious. Thus we do not ask Shake-
speare to give us a coherent philosophy of life. We read his
poems. We rightly assume that his philosophy, profound
though it be, is no theory ; that it is part of his inner nature,
and as such is diffused through those creations of his genius
in which his inner nature finds its truest expression. We do
not ask Phidias to lecture on the laws of plastic art or
the deeper laws of form-poetry. We study his sculpture.
" Every man of genius," says Lessing, " is a born critic. He
has in himself the test of all rules." These words may
seem to contradict my statement that the critical faculty
seldom co-exists with the creative ; but in truth they bear
it out. The man of genius is the greatest of all critics in that
he is in full possession of the rules of his art — the real, not
the conventional rules — rules which criticism, properly so
called, can at best but partially discern and imperfectly
apply. But both his discernment and his application of
them, though full and effective, are for the most part
instinctive and blind. He seldom consciously criticizes,
and never when he is genuinely inspired. There is no need
for him to do so. " He has in himself " — in the " abysmal
deeps " of his personality — " the test of all rules." He does
not know the truth by which his works are permeated. But
he does more than know it. He is in permanent contact
with it. It is a part of himself. Indeed it is the glory of
genius that in this respect it lowers the greatest of men to
the level of the least of living creatures. " From a bee,"
says Ruskin, "to Paul Veronese all master-builders work
with this awful, this inspired unconsciousness."

But though unconsciousness is essential to genius, it is by

194 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

no means peculiar to it. The least of us is at every moment
doing things blindly and unconsciously. The very animals
show a knowledge of Nature in all that they do ; and yet
their whole life seems to be below the level of consciousness
(as the word is ordinarily understood). It is not uncon-
sciousness as such, any more than it is success as such, that
constitutes the differentia of genius. It is the combination
of the two. The man of genius differs from us lesser men in
that (in his blindness) he does great and wonderful things
while we do small and ordinary things. He differs from us
in this, but in no other way. What we do, under the guid-
ance of instinct, does not arrest our attention or constrain
us to dwell upon it. His work, on the other hand, forces
itself upon our minds. We cannot help gazing at it and
wondering what it means and whence it comes. But the
riddle is insoluble, and so in our perplexity we have recourse
to the direct agency of God. In that we rest, for beyond that
there is nothing.

Now we have recourse to the same agency in the case of
the lower animals. We say that their instincts are divinely
implanted ; that the bee is an inspired master-builder ;
that God teaches the beaver to dam rivers and the bird to
build its nest. I have no fault to find with this language ;
but I wish to fathom its meaning. Instinct, which, according
to the current hypothesis, belongs to animals and men of
genius, belongs also to ordinary human life, the greater part
of which is lived under its direct control. That being so,
the theory which attributes the actions of great men and
dumb creatures to the inspiration of God, but that of
ordinary men to some other source, is plainly untenable ;
and we must substitute for it the assumption that all
instinct comes from God. Furthermore, if we are to reduce
genius (in respect of its origin) to the level of animal instinct,
we must be prepared to reduce it still lower. If we may not
draw a hard and fast line above the bee, there is no reason
why we should draw one below it. We say that the honey-
comb is made under the direction of God. Shall we not say
the same of the rose or of the crystal ? Shall we not say
that the forces which fashioned these works of art were and
are directed by the same power ? We do say this, and we

THE POLES OF KNOWLEDGE 195

say well. But mark what follows. The rose and the crystal
are the products of natural forces acting in obedience to
natural laws. There is nothing miraculous or supernatural
about them. Where, then, does the supernatural element
come in ? Not when we pass the boundary line between
plant and animal life ; for that boundary line is unstable
and undefinable. Not when we pass from brutes to men ;
for the hypothesis which we are examining places brutes in
the same category with the greatest men. Not when we
pass from talent to genius ; for the hypothesis which brings
bees into line with creative artists brings ordinary men into
line with both. It follows that if we are to regard the
movements of inanimate forces and the growth of plants as
directed by the God of Nature, we must attribute to the
same source the inspiration of the artist and the instinct of
the bee. In any case, if we admit that instinct of every kind
and grade is divinely inspired, we commit ourselves to the
assumption that the God who inspires it is the God of
Nature ; for " what is universal is natural," and what is
natural and normal cannot also be supernatural and ex-
ceptional.

Thus a natural explanation of the phenomenon of genius
seems to be forced upon us ; and the form that it takes is
the conception of the " buried life/' the conception of
Nature working below the level of consciousness, yet surely
and irresistibly, in the soul of man. It is Nature that is at
work, blindly as it seems to us, but inevitably, in the
chemical forces of the earth when they form the crystal,
in the plant when it puts forth its flower, in the bee when it
shapes its cell, in the bird when it builds its nest, in the
beaver when it makes its dam. It is the same Power that
is at work, scarcely less blindly and scarcely less inevitably,
in the artist when he composes and in the poet when he
sings. When Nature is at her highest level, is in her sub-
limest mood, is doing her best and truest work, then her
instrument, whoever he may be, is the man of genius. But
Nature retains her identity even when she climbs to these
umvonted heights. I grant that in passing from the rose or
the crystal to the poem or the picture, or again from what
is automatic in human action to what is held to be inspired,

196 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

we are passing from pole to pole of Nature's being. But the
movement from pole to pole is continuous : there is no
abrupt transition, no catastrophic upheaval, no change of
kind.

Now if excellence of result and unconsciousness of method
are in equal degrees essential to the work of genius, may we
not conjecture that our highest and best work is of necessity
unconsciously done ? We all admit that the man of genius
is, in his inspired moments, nearer to truth than the rest of
us. And we all admit that he can give no account of what
he says or does. May not these two facts be causally com-
mitted ? Is it not because he deals with the highest truths
and is in direct contact with the sublimest realities, that he
fails to understand what he does or what his words mean ?
Is it not because his ways are so mysterious and his works
so wonderful, that he can give no account, even to himself,
of either ? The objects of his intuition are at once too large
to be comprehended, too vague to be denned, too far from
his daily life to be reasoned about, too near to his heart to
be clearly discerned. But with the search-light of spiritual
emotion he penetrates the inner mysteries of Nature, and
under the subtle guidance of imaginative sympathy feels his
way through a tangled labyrinth of causes and motives, to
which conscious thought can never find the clue. Thus it is
scarcely a paradox to say that genius works well because it
works unconsciously, and works unconsciously because it
works well. If this be so, does it not follow that what is
best and truest in human nature — its highest intuitions, its
largest tendencies, its strongest forces, all that is prophetic
in it, all that is clairvoyant (in the spiritual sense of the
word) — belongs not to the conscious, but to the buried life ?

In comparing instinct with consciousness, we must of
course distinguish between the individual and the collective
life. It often happens that a man makes profession of high
moral principles, and yet, following his own lower instincts,
leads an immoral life. In such a case it looks, at first sight,
as if theory were in advance of instinct, not instinct of
theory. But this is not so. The man's moral (or immoral)
instincts are his own, whereas the principles which he pro-
fesses embody the experience of the race, and are in no sense

THE POLES OF KNOWLEDGE 197

the products of his own consciousness. In the world at
large instinct is in the field before consciousness and works
in advance of it ; but in the case of the individual, who
profits by the experience of the race, this order is often
reversed.

But if the comparison between instinct and consciousness
is to be made under perfectly favourable conditions, if all
disturbing influences are to be excluded, we must broaden
the basis of man's life and look at things from a point of
view which is at once cosmic and human. When we survey
the scientific achievements of mankind and compare them
inter se in respect of accuracy and certainty, we find (to
make a general statement) that it is the outward and visible
side of Nature, not the inward and spiritual side, which
admits of being consciously known. This fact can easily be
accounted for. The students of evolution tell us that
Nature worked her own work, followed her own tendencies,
obeyed her own laws, fulfilled her own ends, long before she
became conscious of what she was doing or made even her
earliest effort to interpret the laws and principles of her
being. JEons seem to have passed before she outgrew this
blind, instinctive life and woke to self-knowledge in the soul
of man. The ground which was thus lost to consciousness
in " the beginning of things " has never been regained. The
rays of light which are shed from the lamp of consciousness
fall backward rather than forward. Having entered the soul
of man, Nature continues to advance along the path of self-
development, leading a spirit-life which, like the life of her
earliest days, is for the most part unconscious and instinctive.
That this higher life will come under the ken of a higher
consciousness, that such a consciousness is being gradually
evolved, and that the higher life is being gradually
brought under the sway of its light, is what, arguing
from analogy, we may well believe. But meanwhile the
light of consciousness does not fall, or falls but dimly, on
the mighty movement which is going on in the inner life of
man ; and when it does begin to illuminate that movement,
we may guess that new developments of spirit -life are
taking place beyond its range. The growth of Nature is
marked and measured by the outgrowth of consciousness ;

ig8 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

but the outgrowth of consciousness is accompanied, step
for step, by the evolution of the buried life, and from first
to last the latter leads the way. These considerations seem
to point to one significant conclusion. If evolution is, as we
must needs believe, an upward movement, the inference is
irresistible that the unknown and hidden side of Nature is,
in every phrase of her development, her later, her higher,
and her more real self. From first to last, what she is is a
profounder truth and a more vivid reality than what she
knows or believes herself to be.

To my general conception of the range and movement of
knowledge there is a Fourth Corollary which I will now try
to formulate. I have not forgotten, though I may seem to
have done so, that consciousness is the very quality which
differentiates man from all other living things, and that the
dawn of its mysterious light has been commensurate and
even coincident with the evolution of the human race. I
have said that the unconscious side of man's being is at any
given moment working ahead of his consciousness and is at
any given moment conversant with higher realities. The
words which I have emphasized are all important. It is
possible to regard instinct and intuition as the pioneers in
man's onward movement, and yet to hold that conscious
knowledge of a truth is a better thing than unconscious
knowledge of the same truth, — better, because a truth which
is consciously realized becomes, or may become, the posses-
sion of all men ; better, because in the light of conscious-
ness the various implications of the truth and its practical
bearings begin to be clearly discerned ; better, because in
consciously realizing a truth we begin to discover its rela-
tions to other truths and so to find a place for it in a system
of truth, through which its influence will be indefinitely
extended ; better, above all, because (as we shall now see)
when unconscious has been transmuted into conscious
knowledge, a fresh current of unconscious knowledge sets in
from those remoter recesses of the buried life which are
nearer to reality, to take the place of that which has been
consciously realized.

In one respect my language has, I admit, been more or

THE POLES OF KNOWLEDGE 199

less misleading. I have hitherto spoken about consciousness
as if its sole function were to garner the fruits of the buried
life, or (like the r.dministrative officials who follow in the
wake of a conquering army) to organize the provinces which
instinct and intuition have won from the seeming nothing-
ness of chaos. The time has come for me to remind myself
that consciousness has a far deeper meaning than this and a
far higher function. We have seen that conscious apprehen-
sion of a truth implies unconscious apprehension of a higher
and wider truth. But it does more than imply unconscious
apprehension of a higher and wider truth : it prepares the
way for it : it makes it possible. The very fact that a man
has become aware of the knowledge that he possesses is a
stimulus to further effort on the part of his unconscious self.
For it is a tendency of human nature — a master tendency
which operates on every plane of man's being — to be dis-
satisfied with what has been won and to press on towards
the unattained. And so the man who consciously appre-
hends a fact is already, though he may not know it, dis-
contented with the fact as such. He has already begun to
ask himself, in some secret recess of his mind : What does
the fact mean ? What is its place and purpose in Nature ?
What causes have produced it ? What tendencies does it
exemplify ? His mind is already beginning, blindly and
gropingly, to feel its way towards the law or wider fact in
which the isolated phenomenon is grounded and through
which it is explained. So, too, when a man becomes aware
of an emotional idea which has long ruled his heart, in the
very act of bringing it under the control of his consciousness
he causes it to draw in from far and near its hidden reserves
and supports (that through these it may justify itself to his
reason) — to draw these into a region of his subconscious life
in which it is possible for them to shape themselves by slow
degrees and by a spontaneous process of which he has no
cognizance, into new emotional ideas, ready, when their
turn comes, to be transmuted by consciousness into new
thought. These examples suggest to us that consciousness,
by stimulating the unconscious self into ever fresh activity, plays
a leading part in the evolution of the inner life. They suggest
this, and more than this. They suggest that consciousness

200 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

plays the leading part in that great drama. They even
suggest that there is a point of view from which conscious-
ness seems to be the only force which can awake the uncon-
scious self from its spell-bound slumber.

When first I spoke about consciousness, I said that it was
the supreme transforming influence in man's life. We now
begin to guess the secret of its magic power. When water is
pumped up from a deep well, fresh supplies of water come in
from the underground reservoirs that feed the well, to take
the place of what has been drawn to the surface ; and so
the buried waters, instead of being allowed to stagnate, are
kept in constant motion, and their reserves are unceasingly
drawn upon. Something analogous to this happens in the
buried life of man when its reserves begin to be consciously
realized. To believe in the unity of Nature is to believe in
the unity of life. Physical energy, physical life, soul life,
divine life, all are different, yet all are one, — one infinite
reservoir of vital energy. This reservoir of life is at the
service of every living thing ; but below the human level
the organism, controlled as it is by blind instinct and
tyrannous habit, is a well from which there is no overflow,
and which therefore cannot draw upon and set in motion
the hidden source of life. With man it is different. Whether
we think of consciousness as causing the overflow, or as
being the overflow, matters little. What does matter is that
there is a ceaseless overflow from the well of human life.
When consciousness awakes, the conscious self becomes
aware of things, and, in becoming aware of them, seeks to
understand them ; for the desire to understand — the desire
to relate this thing or that thing to other things and in the
last resort to all other things, the desire for more and more
light and for more and more experience — is latent in every
feeling of awareness. In its effort to understand things, the
conscious self draws more things and still more things —
inward things as well as outward things — within the ever
widening sphere of its awareness ; and so, while continually
expanding its environment, it sets in ceaseless motion the
hidden waters of life.

In his book on Evolution and The War, Dr. Chalmers
Mitchell writes as follows : " We may agree with Professor

THE POLES OF KNOWLEDGE 201

Bergson that unconscious instinct is closer to the heart of
life [than conscious action], and that it is the highest es-
pression of the vital force, or we may believe that the re-
placement of instinct by conscious, responsible, intelligent,
experimental action is the fine flower of evolution, but at
least we must accept the distinction as fundamental and as
obliterating any possibility of useful comparison." In this
sentence something of a fallacy lurks, as it seems to me, in
the word "or." " Unconscious instinct " may be " closer
to the heart of life," and yet the " replacement " of it " by
conscious, responsible, intelligent, experimental action "
may be "the fine flower of evolution." The controversy
between instinct and consciousness is as unreal as the
controversy between heredity and environment. The rear-
guard of an army has as worthy a part to play as the advance
guard. It is the well-being of the army as a whole that
matters, not the dignity of this or that part of it. If uncon-
scious knowledge is superior in respect of the reality of its
object — if intuition, for example, is in touch with higher
realities than reason, — conscious knowledge (which is the
basis of " conscious action ") is superior in respect of what
are commonly regarded as the characteristic attributes of
knowledge — certainty, accuracy, clarity, intelligence. To
lift unconscious knowledge into the light of consciousness
—to awaken consciousness in the depths of the buried life
— should therefore be the central purpose of our days.

Let me say in conclusion that if consciousness does
nothing more than arouse the unconscious self from its
slumber and set its latent activities in motion, it does
everything ; for it is in and through the buried life that
man, if he could only know it, holds intercourse with God.
When instinct is transformed into reason, the brute becomes
the man. When instinct is transformed into spiritual
intuition, the man becomes more than man. It is a great
thing to guess the secrets of Nature ; but it is a greater thing
to commune with her soul.

CHAPTER V

THE POLES OF ACTION

WITH consciousness comes the sense of freedom ; and
with the sense of freedom comes the sense of re-
sponsibility. Antithetical to and correlative with the idea
of freedom is that of necessity. As consciousness, in the
life of man, seems to be slowly emerging from the depths of
unconsciousness, so freedom seems to be slowly extricating
itself from the enveloping network of necessity.

To think rationally about freedom is well-nigh impossible.
For the function of reason is to discover the all-pervading,
all-controlling order in Nature, which it begins (unknown to
itself) by postulating ; and freedom introduces into human
life — the highest plane of Nature that is known to man — an
element of apparent disorder, or at any rate of incalculable-
ness, which threatens to stultify all the operations of reason,
all its efforts to understand the world. The result is that
reason can find no place for freedom in its provisional
scheme of things, and is therefore subconsciously preju-
diced against it even before it begins to examine its title
deeds. Hence the inherent futility of the arguments against
— and for — freedom. The history of philosophy tells us that
the problem of freedom is at the centre of one of those
whirlpools of controversy which are ever changing their
scope and their position, but which continue to rotate with
unabated energy and which seem as if they would never
whirl themselves to rest. The question has been again and
again restated, but the answer to it has not been found. Each
thinker, in turn, tries to untie the knot, and ends by cutting
it. One subtle and insidious fallacy vitiates every argument
that has ever been employed in this most barren of logo-
machies— the assumption that the question is open to

202

THE POLES OF ACTION 203

discussion. One might as well try to prove or disprove the
existence of colour on purely a priori grounds as ask, in
disregard of the direct testimony of consciousness, whether
freedom is or is not a vital attribute of the soul of man. All
the arguments for freedom, though they may fill volumes,
amount to no more than this : I feel that I am free ; there-
fore I am free. And all the arguments against freedom,
though they may fill hundreds of volumes, amount to no
more than this : I can find no place for freedom in my
theory of things ; therefore I am not free.

Can the defender of freedom do more than plead the
cogency of the sense of freedom ? To defend freedom on
metaphysical grounds, to pretend to fit it into a reasoned
scheme of things, is to play into the hands of the necessi-
tarians (as they call themselves). What really happens in
the freewill controversy is that the sense of freedom holds
the key to the position against a beleaguering host of
theoretical objections. The argumentative defence of
freedom should therefore limit itself in the first instance to
an attempt to expose the fallacies of the necessitarians. Out
of a critical study of their arguments a theory of things may
evolve itself which will countenance freedom on dialectical
grounds. But to begin by trying to prove that men are free
agents is to assume by implication that the question is open
to discussion, and in doing so to weaken the authority of the
sense of freedom, and therefore to imperil the safety of the
beleaguered fortress.

That the question cannot be discussed on its own merits
is proved by the fact that in nine cases out of ten the corre-
sponding controversy turns out to be a mere episode in the
larger strife between the materialistic and the idealistic
tendencies of human thought. The Calvinist and the
Mussulman, whose sole concern is for the power and glory
of their supernatural God, do indeed regard Man as the
victim of a compulsion which is at once spiritual and quasi-
mechanical. But, with these exceptions, necessitarianism
deprives man of freedom in the interest of material forces
and physical laws. For, as a rule, the necessitarian ap-
proaches the problem of freedom from the standpoint of
physical science. In doing so he necessarily prejudges the

204 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

question ; for physical science finds it needful to deprive
the world of freedom (which would introduce utterly indeter-
minable factors into its problems) before it can even begin
its appointed work. But it is not freedom only that physical
science finds it needful to withdraw from Nature, or rather
from that abstraction which it miscalls Nature, but every
spiritual quality. The result of this is that the triumph of
necessitarianism is as barren as it is cheap. The aim of the
necessitarian is to bind man's will in the chains of mechani-
cal causation ; but in the very act of being seized and
fettered its victim escapes from his grasp. For the argu-
ments by which he deprives me of freedom prove nothing
except that / — the self, the living soul, the living will (for
will is soul on the threshold of action) — have ceased to
exist.

Even the determinism (to use a less uncompromising
word) which, without actually breaking with the popular
psychology, tends to regard every action as the resultant of
motives, is as destructive of man's personality as the doctrine
of human automatism. We do not need determinists to
teach us that no man can act except from motives. The
question is : Where do these motives come from ? From
external sources only, or also from the inner life of the man
who acts ? One knows from experience that every influence
which comes or seems to come to a man from without is
coloured and otherwise modified by the man's personality.
Indeed it is only by entering into quasi-chemical combina-
tion with a man's personality that an external influence
can transform itself into a motive ; and the same motive
can transform itself into a thousand different motives by
entering into combination with a thousand different minds.
The sight of a bottle of brandy is a strong temptation to one
man, a matter of indifference to a second, a source of disgust
to a third. It follows from these premises that if all motives
are, as determinism usually assumes, external to me, I do
not exist. For something of me (so vital is my connexion
with my environment) has immingled itself with each of
the many motives that govern my conduct ; and that some-
thing is abstracted from me whenever the motive in question
is regarded as wholly external to my will. Therefore, when

THE POLES OF ACTION 205

all my motives have been transformed by determinism into
external forces, of which I am the supposed victim, nothing
of me remains. But if / do not exist, it is a waste of time to
debate the question of my freedom. My will is an essential
part of myself. If I am nothing but a shorthand symbol,
my will is obviously non-existent, and as such can neither
be bound nor free.

There is one aspect of the problem which the disputants
on both sides are apt to lose sight of. As freedom and
necessity are antithetical and therefore correlative terms,
the vanishing point of either idea must needs be the vanish-
ing point of the other. It follows that if there is no such
thing as freedom in Nature, there can be no such thing as
necessity. Necessitarianism deludes itself when it claims to
have demonstrated the unreality of freedom. What it has
really done, if its arguments are as conclusive as it believes
them to be, is to cancel an entire category of human thought.
But its arguments are inconclusive, in the sense that the
more triumphant is their vindication of necessity, the more
effectually do they safeguard freedom. For wherever there
is necessity there is constraint ; and wherever there is
constraint there is a constraining power. This power may
itself be the victim of a higher necessity, but the chain of
effect and efficient cause must lead us at last (ideally, if not
actually) to a power which, having nothing beyond or out-
side it, is self -const rained and therefore free. Thus accept-
ance of the idea of necessity compels us, sooner or later, to
recognise the a priori possibility (not to say necessity) of
freedom.

Now it is obvious that if the a priori possibility of freedom
be conceded, Nature, in the cosmic sense of the word,
Nature in her totality, is free. For since her limits are pre-
sumably illimitable, since her being is presumably the all in
all of existence, it is clear that she cannot be controlled by
any superior power and that the end of her activities cannot
be alien to herself. Though all lesser things be the victims
of necessity, she at least is free. She at least is the arbiter
of her own destiny, the orderer of her own goings, the lord
and giver of her own life. No current stronger than herself
bears her along on its waves, for she is herself the master

206 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

current in which all rivers of energy begin and end, the
stream of living waters that moves in an eternal circle from
sea to cloud and from cloud to sea.

But when we study the Universe, detail by detail, the
freedom that belongs to the whole seems to vanish from our
sight. No one would dream of saying that a cloud was free
because it moved across the sky ; that a stone was free
because it rolled down the mountain side ; that a flake of
snow was free because it floated down to the ground ; that
a plant was free because it put forth leaf and flower and
fruit. Nor need we go far to seek an explanation of what
common sense accepts as an obvious fact. For in the first
place each detail in the complicated machinery of material
existence acts under the stress and pressure of the whole.
The proof of this statement rests with physical science,
which is ever discovering new links in the chains of causa-
tion that bind each thing to all and all things to each. And
in the second place the ends for which each particular thing
is working lie beyond the scope of its own individual exist-
ence. Indeed the ultimate end of its action may be said to
coincide with the ultimate end of the Universe. Nor is it
only in the lesser details of material nature that necessity
reigns supreme. As science advances from effect to cause,
and from cause to law, freedom flies before it and finds no
rest for her feet. The Dryads have long since left the woods,
and the Naiads the streams ; and the physical forces that
have taken their place are to the full as blind and helpless
as are even the least of the phenomena that are supposed to
have been produced by their agency and to be governed by
their laws. There are no limits to this process. Potentially,
if not actually, science is master of the whole material
universe. There are islands and continents which it has not
yet had time to conquer : yet even on these it has landed
and hoisted its flag, the flag of mechanical necessity and
physical law.

Where, then, it will be asked, is freedom to be found ?
I answer " at the heart of the Universe." The true self of
Nature, the world seen as it really is, is free. In attaining
to the spiritual goal of her movement, in completing the
process of self-integration, Nature becomes what she

THE POLES OF ACTION 207

really is. All the terms in the infinite series are then
summed up in the final term. All laws, all forces, all phases
of development, all planes of being, are gathered up and
finally absorbed into the one self-dependent, self-sufficing
life. The last semblance of control from without, the last
shadow that fate may seem to have cast, has vanished, and
the fulness of freedom has been won.

The heart of the Universe, then, is the fountain-head of
freedom. The higher self of Nature, the spiritual pole of
existence, the supreme synthesis, is free. What follows
with regard to man ? In what sense and to what extent is
he free ? He is free, with the full freedom of unfettered
Nature, so far as he can draw life into himself from the
heart of the Universe, so far as he can identify himself with
the supreme synthesis, so far as he can live to the spirit, so
far as he can live in the infinite and the eternal, so far as he
can make the soul or higher self of Nature his own. So far
as he can do these things, or rather this one thing — for the
one thing has innumerable facets — he is free. So far — but
no further. The goal of absolute freedom, as we contem-
plate it, seems infinitely distant and wholly unattainable ;
yet every step that takes us towards it brings its emancipa-
tive influence more and more fully into our lives. We are
apt to divide things into the bond and the free ; but
freedom, like every other natural tendency, is an ideal
rather than a possession, a process rather than a fact. The
germs of freedom are present in the germs of spirituality,
wherever these may be found ; and the degree of freedom
is measured by the degree of spirituality, from the first
stirrings of mere vitality up to the highest imaginable
development of spiritual life. Thus (to take obvious
examples) adults are freer agents than children ; men of
culture than savages ; human beings than animals ; animals
than plants ; plants than machines or stones. If necessity
is the law of the world without us, freedom is the law of the
inner life of man. Compulsion from within, spiritual com-
pulsion, the compulsion of one's "own highest and widest
self — is freedom.

It is well that we should sometimes remind ourselves that
freedom is an ideal rather than a possession, a prize to be

ao8 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

won rather than a privilege to be paraded and enjoyed. For
it is as easy to overestimate as to underestimate the degree
and the range of human freedom. Orthodox Christianity,
for example, has always been too ready to assume that the
will of man is absolutely and unconditionally free, and that
his short-comings are therefore due to perversity rather
than to infirmity of will. And there are modern thinkers
who seem to share this view. Dr. Schiller, the Oxford
philosopher and critic, has recently said that " there is no
natural law in progress " and that " we shall never find our
way to God unless we realize how entirely free we are to go
to the Devil, and how imminent and constant is our danger of
going there." Here we have Nature dehumanized and human
life denaturalized in order that the freedom of the human will
may be duly — or unduly — exalted. If there is no natural
tendency towards progress, or betterment, in human society,
there can be no natural tendency towards good in man. Is
this really so ? Every other living thing is endowed with a
natural tendency towards the good, or rather towards the
perfection, of its own type or kind. Such a tendency is of
the essence of growth. Is man the only exception to this
seemingly universal rule ? Is his the only life that does not
come under the master law of growth ? The general tenor
of the work on which I am now engaged is my answer to this
question. The reason that Dr. Schiller gives for the faith
that is in him does not shake the faith that I instinctively
oppose to his. Because man is free to go to the Devil,
therefore there is no natural tendency towards progress.
Acceptance of Dr. Schiller's assumption would not neces-
sarily bind me to ratify his conclusion. But I am doubtful
as to the soundness of his assumption. Is man " entirely
free to go to the Devil " ? In the abstract, perhaps he is.
But what of this man or that man ? What of the average
man ? The average man is as little able to go, at will, to
the Devil, as to enter, at will, into oneness with God. If
anything, he is less able to go to the Devil, for his natural
tendency is, as I contend, towards good and therefore
towards God. A man must be high in development, must
have won a quite exceptional measure of freedom, if he is
to qualify for admission to either Heaven or Hell. The

THE POLES OF ACTION 209

average man is no automaton ; but he is, at best, partially,
provisionally, and (in the main) potentially free. Inherited
tendencies, inherited traditions, compulsorily formed habits,
dictated rules of conduct, prescribed ends of action, preju-
dices of various kinds, his own childhood, his own youth,
press in upon him on all sides and seriously restrict his
freedom. To suppose that he can at will free himself from
the pressure of these influences and go straight to God, or
the Devil, as the case may be, is to ignore the teaching of
experience. Let a man use such freedom as he possesses,
to win more freedom, and let him co-operate, as best he
may, with his natural tendency towards good. We can ask
him to do as much as this, but we cannot in reason expect
him to do more.

Absolute libertarianism (if that is its correct title) is
probably as far from the truth of things as is the strict
determinism which I have lately criticized. What is
needed, as it seems to me, is a theory of freedom which will
mediate between these extremes, which will harmonize
freedom with natural tendency and natural law, control
of one's own destiny with submission to the pressure of the
natural forces which are making, in man as in other living
things, for development, for growth, — a theory which will
tell us that man, unlike other living things, can transform
development into self -development, and, though not exempt
from the necessity of growing, can himself direct the process
of his growth. Such a theory I am trying to think out. In
identifying freedom with self -constraint, with spiritual
necessity, in regarding it as an ideal to be realized and a
prize to be won, I stand (to the best of my belief) midway
between the unqualified affirmation of freedom and the
point-blank denial of it.

In order to test the worth of my theory and of the claim
that I am making on behalf of it, let us confront it with one
or two of the difficulties in which any theory of freedom is
bound to involve itself, and see how it deals with them.

There is a point of view from which, even in the sphere
of moral action, man seems to be under the dominion of
irresistible forces and inexorable laws. History is ever
teaching us that the ends of human conduct are immeasur-

210 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

ably larger than man himself intends or conceives them to
be. Again and again, as we study the records of the past,
we are forced to confess that men are, as it were, instruments
in the hands of some wide and mighty power—the " Provi-
dence " of the Christian, the " Destiny " of the Mussulman,
the " Nature " of those who can call it by no other name.
We aim at this or that immediate object or personal end.
Later on either we or those who come after us are able to
see that in working for it we were working for ends which
we never dreamed of compassing, ends which transcended
the range of our desire as far as they transcended the limits
of our sight. It sometimes seems as if our impulses, our
tendencies, our instincts, desires and passions, our very
lusts and propensities to evil, were all being used by Nature
for secret purposes of her own. ^When this feeling takes
possession of us, we are tempted to say, with Renan, " II y
a quelque part un grand egoist e qui nous trompe." " Nous
sommes exploit e*s." " Quelque chose s 'organise a nos
depens ; nous somnes le jouet d'un ego'isme superieur."
At any rate the feeling of helplessness in the hands of
Nature is a real feeling ; and the wider our experience and
the larger our view of things, the stronger does it tend to
become.

But when it leads us to think of our Lord and Master
(whoever he may be or whatever we may call him) as a
" great egoist " who is exploiting us for purposes of his own,
and of ourselves as

Impotent pieces in the game he plays,

then the spiritual theory of freedom comes to our rescue
and provides us with an antidote to our specious but shallow
pessimism. For it tells us that, inasmuch as freedom is the
counterpart of spirituality both in Nature and in us, we have
but to spiritualize ourselves in order to share in Nature's
freedom, and to make our destinies coincide, potentially and
ideally, with hers. The slave who toils at the bidding of
another has no part or lot in the fruits of his labours ; but
man, even when he seems to be a passive instrument in the
hands of Nature, is toiling for ends which he may, if he
pleases, make his own. The sense of helplessness which

THE POLES OF ACTION 211

sometimes overwhelms him is really the sense of the pressure
to which the central tendencies of things are subjecting
him ; but this despotic pressure is the very source of his
freedom, for Nature (so far as she reveals her purpose to
him) realizes her own destiny by spiritualizing his life ; and
the end for which her central tendencies are working is the
evolution of his soul (which is also hers), and its consequent
emancipation from the forces that fetter its freedom and
impede its growth. That I am clay in the hands of the
potter, matters nothing, for it is only in the mould of
spiritual freedom that my true self can be shaped. As I
expand my being in response to the pressure of Nature's
vital forces, I draw those forces little by little within the
scope of my own inner life and at last absorb them all into
myself.

There are other experiences in the sphere of moral action
on which this conception of freedom seems to throw light.

There is one in particular which no one who studies his
own feelings can fail to observe. In yielding to a lower
impulse — to the passion of anger, for example, or to a
fleshly lust — we feel as if we were scarcely free agents. We
yield either because we are the slaves of an acquired habit,
in which case we are no longer free, or because the impulse
comes upon us like a whirlwind and constrains us, as it
seems, from without . On the other hand, when we surrender
ourselves to the pressure of a higher motive, we feel that we
are free ; and the higher the motive, the stronger does our
sense of freedom become. I find it difficult to account for
these feelings except on the hypothesis that freedom is
spiritual necessity, or compulsion from within. The man
who does right is constrained by a higher impulse. But
the higher impulses belong to the spiritual side of man's
nature or, in other words, to the true self : and action that
is initiated by one's true self is obviously free. Moreover
the ends of righteous action always coincide with the ends
of the true self. The man who habitually does right has
allied himself with the real or spiritual tendencies of Nature,
and in virtue of this high partnership has placed himself
(potentially, if not actually) at the centre of the Universe,
the point from which all the energies of Nature radiate and

212 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

to which they all return ; and so he controls the aboriginal
sources of his own action and reaps its ultimate results.
The bad man, on the other hand, is acted upon from without.
The lower impulses which issue in wrong doing belong,
either directly or indirectly, to that more animal side of
our nature in respect of which we belong to the material
universe, and are therefore in bondage — in some sort and
some degree — to physical necessity. And the ends towards
which they move us are always foreign to our true life and
adverse to our higher interests, as is proved by the fact that
we curse ourselves for having gained them. Nay, the
sources of the motive power that constrains the vicious are
not unfrequently external objects which act upon the lower
self as a magnet acts upon steel. Thus the drunkard is
constrained by the brandy bottle ; the profligate by a
seductive face or figure ; the thief or the miser by the
glitter of gold.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds
Makes ill deeds done !

Yet there are times when even the best of men become
conscious, perhaps more vividly conscious than the rest of
us, of their helplessness in the hands of mightier powers ;
and while this feeling lasts they, if not the rest of us, are
ready to disown their freedom and glory in their bonds.
Religion, speaking as the interpreter of man's spiritual ex-
periences, tells us that when we do right it is not we who do
it but God who dwelleth in us. Is this " constraining grace "
of God compatible with the freedom of man ? If the vicious
are slaves to their own lusts, and the virtuous to the grace of
God, are not all of us the bondsmen of necessity ? No, for
the pressure of the Divine Will is a source of freedom, not of
bondage. In the last resort, indeed, it is the only source of
freedom. For to be constrained by God, who, being the
spiritual pole of the Universe, dwells in each human soul as
its unattainable ideal, is to be constrained by one's best and
highest self ; and to be self-constrained (in the deepest
sense of the word self) is to be free.

The difference between virtue and vice shows itself most
clearly in the reaction of conduct on character. By yielding

THE POLES OF ACTION 213

to lower impulses men form bad habits and so forfeit their
freedom. By responding to higher impulses they gradually
acquire a mastery over the lower self, and so free themselves
from the trammels of necessity. In brief, freedom is lost
or won by conduct. This fact — for we know from experi-
ence that it is a fact — is easily accounted for on the hypo-
thesis that freedom is the counterpart of spirituality. For
to be virtuous is to live to the spirit ; and to live to the
spirit is both to be and to become free. The vicious man, on
the other hand, by degrading his life to the level of its own
material subsoil, gradually accustoms himself to the yoke
of physical necessity, and in so doing forfeits his birthright
arid degenerates into a slave.

It follows from these premises that the man who does
right without an effort, and therefore without any apparent
exercise of volition, is really freer than the man who feels
that his will has been in battle and that resistance has been
met and overcome. The moral struggle is at heart a struggle
against coercion and therefore for freedom : with the
gradual acquisition of freedom the tension of the struggle
diminishes ; and if freedom should ever be fully and finally
won, the struggle would have ceased. Those who do right
because they cannot help themselves, because the compul-
sion from within is overwhelmingly strong, are the freest of
men.

Thus there is an intimate connexion between virtue and
freedom, and between vice and necessity. Yet nothing
short of the total extinction of my freedom can absolve me
from responsibility ; and when my freedom has been finally
extinguished, I, the self, the ego, shall have ceased to exist,
and the question of my responsibility need no longer be
discussed. So long as I survive, I am potentially free ; and
the presence of this germ of freedom suffices to condemn
me when I do wrong. When necessity has finally triumphed,
nothing will be left for it to coerce. When freedom has
finally triumphed, I shall know at last that all the while I —
the real I — have been free.

Having tried to justify the conception of freedom as
spiritual necessity, by showing that it resolves difficulties
and throws light on obscurities in our ethical experiences,

214 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

I will now conclude my defence of it by interpreting it in
terms of my own instinctive feelings and secret convictions.
On one point I have never wavered. I am as free as I feel
myself to be. This feeling is its own guarantee ; and no
argument that draws its premises from a lower level of
experience can invalidate it in the court of reason or shake
my faith in its authority. But my sense of freedom, though
it never sinks to zero, is an exceedingly variable quantity.
Sometimes I feel as if my freedom were absolutely unfettered.
Sometimes I feel as if I were the plaything of world- wide
forces, as helpless — almost — as a straw on a rushing stream.
The truth is that the question as to my freedom resolves itself
into the question as to the limits of my self. If I am nothing
but a "conscious automaton/' I am obviously the helpless
victim of mechanical necessity ; but in that case there is no
/ to be victimized. If, on the contrary, I am a spiritual
being, a sharer in the inner life of Nature, freedom is my birth-
right, and the degree of my freedom varies directly with the
extent to which I have developed my potencies of spiritual
life. In other words, the expansion of my self is accompanied
and progressively measured by the expansion of my freedom.
It is the movement of the stream of spiritual life through
the channel of my being on the way to its own ocean source,
that endows me with freedom ; and it is the self-same
movement that is developing my spirit and making me what
I really am. I become free by becoming myself, and I
become myself by becoming free. I am not I, in any sense
of the word, until I have won some measure of freedom. I
am not I, in the true sense of the word, until I have made all
the forces that constrain me my own. It follows that the
question Am I free ? is so far from admitting of a definite
and final answer, that it has to receive a fresh statement and
a fresh answer and perhaps also an ever changing answer,
in the case of each individual man. The terms of the
question are always fluid and unstable, and the answer is
always moving forward — with the movement of the human
spirit — in the direction of its own ideal, the direction of an
unqualified and all-embracing " Yes."

In the sense of freedom, which is characteristic of man as

THE POLES OF ACTION 215

man, Nature becomes aware of her own unity and totality
and of her consequent exemption from external constraint.
In the sense of will-power, which is the counterpart of the
sense of freedom, Nature begins to realize that there is a
purpose which animates her life. In the sense of freedom,
and the accompanying sense of will-power, man becomes
aware of his potential oneness with the totality of Nature,
and of his partnership with her in the freedom which she
enjoys, and — above all — in the purpose which animates her
life. That purpose is the realization of potentialities — in a
word, growth. The purpose of growth is the realization of
spiritual potentialities, or soul-growth ; for we mean by
spirit what is ultimate in synthesis ; and the realization of
potentialities is in its essence a synthetic and therefore a
spiritual movement, a movement towards organic unity, a
movement — in the case of the totality of Nature — towards
the finding of the universal soul. When we say that con-
sciousness is dawning on man, we mean, on the one hand,
that the universal soul is becoming aware of itself in the
individual life, and, on the other hand, that the individual
soul is becoming aware of itself in and through its oneness
with the universal soul. When we say that the true life of
man is " buried," we mean that what is real in the individual
life is the life beyond individuality, the life of Nature in her
unity and totality, the life of the All. To realize that life,
to realize his oneness with the eternal, changeless soul of
Nature, to realize that his inmost soul is her soul, that his
true self is her self — to realize this supreme truth, not as a
formula, nor as a proposition, nor even as the central idea in
a system, but as the central fact of his own being — to
realize it by living it, by growing into oneness with it, by
being embraced by it, by being absorbed into it, — this (if
he could but know it) is the ideal end of man's existence and
the central purpose of his life.

PART IV
THE PROCESS OF GROWTH

CHAPTER I

GROWTH THROUGH DESIRE

IDEALLY and potentially men is free — free to choose
among conflicting ideals, conflicting ideas, conflicting
motives, conflicting standards of worth, conflicting courses
of action — free, therefore, to direct and control the process
of his own growth. But growth, as far as our experience of
it goes, is always a movement towards a more or less pre-
determined form. The oak-tree is in the acorn. The bird
is in the egg. The " baboon " and the "rat," as Professor
Bateson reminds us, are in their respective " specks of
protoplasm." If these things are so, if growth is indeed the
realization of potentiality and therefore the fulfilment of
destiny, and if the growth of the human spirit is indeed
accompanied by the outgrowth of freedom, with all that
freedom implies, we are up against a tremendous practical
paradox. By fulfilling his destiny man acquires the power
of either aiding or thwarting destiny. By yielding to a
relentless pressure — for what pressure is so relentless as
that of growth ? — he becomes free either to resist that
pressure or to intensify it. By growing, blindly, helplessly,
instinctively, he becomes able to direct and control the
process of his growth. How can these things be ? How can
self-determination be pre-deter mined ? How can the very
stress of necessity set its victim free ?

In the last chapter of the Second Part of this book I
considered this problem, and came to the conclusion — a
conclusion which I regarded as tentative and provisional—
that though the idea of pre-determination or destiny would
always (and rightly) haunt us, the growth of the soul was

216

GROWTH THROUGH DESIRE 217

not pre-determined, in the sense which the word ordinarily
bears. But the idea of pre-deter ruination continues to
haunt me, for one ; and pre-determined in some sense the
growth of the soul must needs be, — pre-determined in this
sense, if in no other, that as the future oak-tree, with all its
typical characteristics, is in the acorn, so the future man,
with all his typical characteristics, is in the newborn infant.
If this is so, the growing soul is in some sort under the
control of destiny ; and the question arises, how is the pre-
determining pressure of destiny to be reconciled with the
sense of freedom — freedom to map out the course of his own
life — of which man cannot divest himself, and which seems
to gain in strength in proportion as he fulfils his destiny by
making healthy and harmonious growth. To this question
there is, as far as I can see, but one answer. When I was
considering the meaning of growth as the master law of
human life, I worked my way to the conviction that in the
growth of the individual soul we are witnessing the self-
realization, or self -revelation, or self -affir mat ion (I know
not which is the fittest word) of the universal soul ; and that
the universal soul — the supreme integer, the totality of
things in its organic unity — is therefore the true self of each of
us. If this conviction is well-founded ; if the universal soul,
which is absolutely free in the sense of being wholly exempt
from external constraint, is indeed the true sel/ of each of
us ; if it exists as a possibility in each human embryo, just
as the forest-like banyan tree (to borrow a pregnant simile
from the Upanishads) exists as a possibility in each of its
own speck-like seeds, — then the ideas of freedom and pre-
determined growth are reconcilable through the paradoxical
conception that growth, self-integration, however fully it
may be pre-determined, is in its essence a movement
towards the achievement of freedom, and therefore that man
is pre-destined to become free. And if this is indeed his
destiny, then, while he is fulfilling it, he must be winning
freedom through his fulfilment of it, and must therefore be
free either to thwart it or to ally himself with it. And as,
by using his freedom to thwart his destiny, he will gradually
forfeit his freedom and become the slave of his own lower
desires and impulses — the hereditary enemies of his spiritual

218 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

growth — so, by using his freedom to co-operate with his
destiny, he will win an ever fuller measure of freedom,
thereby fitting himself for the work of co-operation, in an
ever higher degree. Indeed there is a stage in his develop-
ment, beyond which his destiny cannot fulfil itself without
his active co-operation. Thenceforth, the more effectively
he co-operates, the more willing is destiny to hand over to
him the duty and responsibility of directing his own growth.
At last, in the fulness of time, he will become his own
destiny ; and pre-determination and self-determination will
become one. From this point of view one sees that in man,
as in every other living thing, the current of natural tendency
is setting towards the goal of perfection, the perfection of
the given type, and yet that the individual soul is free — not
absolutely, as Dr. Schiller seems to suggest, but within ever
varying limits — to go to God or to the Devil, to make or mar
itself.

It sometimes happens that ideas which are irreconcilable
and even mutually exclusive on the normal levels of ex-
perience and thought, admit of being reconciled, and even
harmonized into a higher and more comprehensive idea, on
that supernormal level which we indicate by the formula
" at infinity " ; and it certainly seems as if the apparently
irreconcilable ideas of freedom and destiny ceased to be
irreconcilable when viewed from the standpoint of the ideal
and ultimate identity of the individual with the universal
soul. Realizing, then, as I do to the full, that the supreme
mystery will ever remain mysterious, I must henceforth be
content to find rest (such rest as it affords — the rest of
eternal motion) in the conception to which the central
experiences of my life — the sense of freedom and the sense
of pre-destination — as I follow them out in thought, direct
my mind, a conception which is a paradox in itself and
paradoxical in all its developments, — the conception that to
universalize myself, to become one with the soul of all
things, is my ideal destiny, and that I can either thwart
that high destiny (in the strength of the freedom with which
it invests me) and so become the thrall of a lower destiny,
or escape for ever from thraldom to destiny by striving to
fulfil my own.

GROWTH THROUGH DESIRE 219

Using this paradox,

Which comforts while it mocks,

as my starting point, I have now to ask myself what is to
be the process of my growth. Here, as elsewhere, the end
must determine the way. If to unite myself with the soul
of all things, to become one with the infinite and the eternal,
is the ideal end of the process of my growth, it must be my
st eadfast aim so to direct the process as to live, or at least
begin to live, in the infinite and the eternal. What does
this mean ? It means, for one thing, that, while accepting
limitations as inevitable and even salutary, I must resist
all limiting influences, so far as they claim to be final. This
claim, as we know from experience, has to be met and
combated again and again. For of the limiting influences
which affect the soul, there are few, apart from those which
are obviously minor and subsidiary, which do not claim,
directly or indirectly, to be final. That this should be so is
inevitable. Slowly emerging from a stage of development
in which growth, under the guidance of heredity, is blind,
instinctive, and compulsory, into a higher stage in which he
is called upon to become the free and conscious director of
his own growth, it is but natural that man should be held
back by the very forces to which he has long been in
bondage, from responding to that emancipative appeal. It
is but natural, in other words, that spiritual indolence —
reluctance to order one's own goings, reluctance to exercise
oneself in great matters, reluctance to accept high responsi-
bility, the shrinking back in alarm from the mysterious and
the unknown, the clinging to rules, formulas, traditions,
conventions, customs, the readiness to obey for the sake of
obeying and to conform for the sake of conforming — should
be the besetting weakness of the partially emancipated soul.
This resistance, in man's inner being, of the actual to
the attractive force of the ideal has its parallel, we may well
believe, in other grades of organic life ; but in the case of
man the tendency has a character and a meaning which are
all its own. If man could not consciously resist the expan-
sive forces that are brought to bear on him, he could not
consciously co-operate with them. In this, as in other

220 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

matters, it is consciousness which differentiates him from
all other living things. Let us try to think the matter out.
The Universe is energy. At the heart of physical energy is
the higher energy of life. At the heart of the energy of life
is the higher energy of soul-life. Physical energy is one and
indivisible. So is physical life. So is soul-life. So is life in
its totality, ranging as it does from the pole of unconscious
energy to the counter-pole of self-conscious and therefore
spiritual life. Life manifests itself in countless outward
forms. The One Life is in each of these, inspiring and
sustaining it within its narrow limits, ready to answer all
its demands, ready to fulfil all its desires, ready to pour
itself into the channel of the individual life. There is no
life so lowly, but it has the One Life, in its totality, at its
service. The ocean is in each of the seas, with all their
ramifications, that open out of it. It is in each of the sea-
like rivers which its tidal wave ascends. It is in each of the
tributary streams, greater and lesser, down to the slenderest
rivulet that is fed by the distilled essence from its limitless
flood. Nor is it only in the running waters and stored up
waters of the earth. It is also in the mists, the clouds, the
raindrops, the dews. In fine it is everywhere. Is it not the
same with the ocean of life ? But so long as the organism
is blind and unconscious, it can draw in from that infinite
reservoir no more than will serve to fill the narrow channel,
walled in by instinct and habit, by the tradition and the
heritage of a thousand generations, in which the current of
its life moves. In other words, before consciousness begins
to awake, the resistance of the organism to the emancipative
forces which are latent in it is virtually1 absolute. In man
the tendency to resist remains ; but, with the dawn of
consciousness, the attractive force of the emancipative
influences becomes stronger and ever stronger until at last
the tendency to resist finds itself confronted by the counter-
tendency — the tendency to respond to the call of the infinite
and the eternal, to serve under the banner of the ideal, to

1 Virtually, not literally. It is possible that in every living thing there
is an infinite capacity for ulterior development ; but below the human
level the consequent movement towards ideal perfection may at best be
likened (as has already been suggested) to an infinite " series " which is
limited by a finite number.

GROWTH THROUGH DESIRE 221

work for it, to work with it, — and the real drama of man's
life begins.

The tendency to resist expansion has behind it the
pressure of all the ages since the first stirring of life on
earth ; and it is only with infinite pains and trouble that
the counter tendency is able to assert itself and win its way.
Hence the immense, persistent, and self -renewing strength
of what I may call the lure of finality, — a lure which is
potent, as we all know from experience, in every stage of
our development. Hence the alarm — the terror, one might
almost say — with which we shrink back from the shadow of
the infinite as it begins to steal across our thought, — shrink
back from the prospect of endless development, of starting
on a journey which will carry us, beyond all familiar
horizons, into the heart of the mysterious and the unknown.
Hence the secret desire, from which no one is wholly exempt,
to find rest, for good and all, in some theory of life, or in
some scheme of life, or perhaps in some attitude towards
life which is at once a theory and a scheme.

How will the dread of the infinite and the consequent
thirst for finality affect the growth of the soul ? The soul
grows through its activity ; but activity is the outcome of
desire. Let us begin, then, with desire. The fountain-head
of desire is the instinct to live. The character of desire is
therefore determined by our conception of life. We begin
by desiring the continuance of physical life. Each of us
desires to feed the flame of his own life and to pass on the
torch of life to the next generation. This is sensual desire.
It in itself is natural and necessary. But if we allow our-
selves to rest in it, through our inability to rise to a
higher conception of life, the quality of our desire will begin
to deteriorate. The gratification of sensual desire gives us
sensual pleasure, and sensual pleasure may come to be
desired for its own sake. This is the first stage in the
deterioration of desire. The second stage is to desire over-
eagerly the means to the gratification of sensual desire.
These means may be summed up under the general head of
money or material possessions. The initial reason why
material possessions are so much desired is that they enable

222 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

us to buy all that the body needs. A secondary reason is
that they enable us to buy more than the body needs, —
comforts, luxuries, and pleasures of various kinds. And the
more they give us of these things, the more we ask for. As
the means of enjoying life are added to, the standard of
living rises. What is luxury to-day may be counted as bare
comfort to-morrow, and as less than comfort at a later date.
Hence it is that of material possessions, if they are desired
as the means to the gratification of selfish desires, there can
never be enough to go round. This enhances their value in
the eyes of most men, and is a further reason why they are
desired. For they become a source of pride to their
possessor. They place him high among his fellows. They
give him position and distinction. They cause him to be
looked up to and envied. And this is not all. They give
him opportunities for self -improvement which are denied to
his poorer brethren. They give him leisure for serious as
well as for frivolous pursuits. They make it possible for
him to indulge refined and aesthetic tastes. They bring
education, culture, travel, and a general widening of experi-
ences and interests within his reach. Above all, they give
him power over his fellow men ; and this, besides minister-
ing to his pride, gives him further opportunities for en-
riching and otherwise aggrandizing himself at their expense.
Hence it is that in the present stage of man's develop-
ment the desire for material possessions is of all desires the
most widespread and one of the most absorbing. It is also
the most fundamentally selfish. For the supreme attraction
of material possessions is that they enable a man to grasp
and keep for himself a disproportionately large share of
what are called "the good things of life." Under the
pressure of this sinister desire our social life has become
(from one point of view) a chaotic scramble for worldly
goods, nation fighting against nation for territorial and
commercial aggrandizement, while individuals compete
with one another, jostle one another, trample one another
down, cheat one another, plunder one another, maltreat and
even murder1 one another in their " fierce race for wealth."

1 I wonder how many millions of lives, of all ages, have been wantonly
sacrificed, in mine and furnace and factory, to the Moloch of commercial
greed ?

GROWTH THROUGH DESIRE 223

It is true that this race for wealth has led men to exploit
with feverish energy the material resources of the earth,
and has thus given them an ever-growing mastery over the
physical forces of Nature ; but it is probable that had they
co-operated for this purpose they would have gone even
further in that direction, and it is certain that they would
have appreciably raised the general level of material well-
being ; whereas competition, though it has greatly enriched
the rich, has in doing so unduly raised the standard of well-
being, and has therefore impoverished the poor.

And the desire for possessions has done worse things even
than these. With the passing of tribal communism and the
consequent release of the individual from socialistic pres-
sure, two counter-tendencies of human nature begin to
assert themselves, — individualism and idealism, the shrink-
ing back into self, and the going out of self into the ideal
and the infinite. The former was at first by far the stronger
tendency, the collective selfishness of the tribe having
prepared the way for it ; and as it found expression for
itself in the private ownership of property, so it made that
institution the centre of its resistance to the call of the
higher and wider self. For a time, indeed, the sentiment of
devotion to the community survived as a strong sense of
duty to the State ; and this sense of duty counteracted the
growing individualism of the citizens and held their nascent
love of Mammon in check. But as the attractive force of
possessions grew with the acquisition of them, their sense of
public duty gradually waned, and the love of Mammon
became the ruling passion of their lives. Generated as it
was by man's growing individualism, this desire for material
possessions reacted upon and intensified that contractive
tendency. Whatever a man might be doing, whatever cause
he might be serving, on however high a plane he might be
working, however much he might seem to be co-operating
with others, he was ever tending, under the secret influence
of this insidious desire, to play for his own hand, to think,
first and foremost, of himself. His very idealism, as it
began to develop itself, was corrupted and perverted by
this subtle poison. Even when he coveted earnestly the
best gifts, his desire for them had in it a base alloy of self-

224 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

interest. If he did good work for his country, he expected
to be publicly honoured and rewarded for it. If he achieved
" success " in art or letters, he expected money and fame.
His desire for ideal truth (if he ever rose to the level of that
desire) degenerated into a desire for finality, for certitude,
for possession of a formulated creed. His desire for ideal
happiness, instead of lifting him on the wings of aspiration,
sank to the level of desire for comfort, for luxury, for enjoy-
ment, for repose. Indeed, in far too many cases it merged
itself in the desire for possessions (as the source of all those
" good things ") and strengthened and stimulated the latter
in proportion as it de-idealized itself. When the idea of the
Universal God began to dawn upon man's consciousness, his
instinctive desire to possess what he valued made him dream,
if not of monopolizing the Eternal, at least of establishing
proprietary rights in his favour and his saving grace.
Lastly, when he looked beyond the grave, his individualism
clouded his vision. He thought, and was well content to
think, of himself as one of a few who were to be saved when
the rest of the human race perished everlastingly. Having
long been accustomed to see in the secular life a scramble
for material possessions, he found it easy to think of the
spiritual life as a scramble for the greatest of all possessions
— " eternal life."

When the feudal system associated political power, and
all that it implied, with the ownership of land, an immense
impetus was given to the desire for " property," the effect
of which has lasted to this day. As time went on, the
feudal baron gave way to the capitalist, and the robber-
knight to the company-promoter. But though rapacity
changed its methods and its immediate ends, it did not
change its purpose. Or, if it did, it changed it for the worse.
We have seen that, with the passing of the feudal system,
the duties and responsibilities which were inherent in the
ownership of property ceased to be obligatory, whereas
most of the rights and privileges remained. The result of
this was that the desire for possessions became more and
more individualistic and selfish, and the pursuit of them
more and more absorbing and more and more widely
diffused. The consequent externalization of our aims,

GROWTH THROUGH DESIRE 225

materialization of our ideals, and debasement of our
standards are evils which we now take for granted, so much
so indeed that those who denounce them or even deplore
them are either laughed at as visionaries or sneered at as
hypocrites. And the pity of it is that our philosophy of
life completely dominates our philosophy of education,
stamping its own fallacies and misconceptions on the
system of education which has long passed as orthodox,
and through that system — which, being feudal in spirit, is
despotic and dogmatic — transmitting from generation to
generation the externalism and materialism which are
poisoning our souls. Can we wonder that the most selfish
of all desires is still in the ascendant, when each generation
in turn takes infinite pains to kindle it in the heart of the
next ?

I have painted a gloomy picture of the order of things
which I find myself. If I have unduly deepened its gloom,
the reason is that I have revolted, perhaps too vehemently,
against the complacent fatalism which accepts what ought
not to be as what must be, and regards as of divine dispensa-
tion, as pre-ordained by " the everlasting purpose of God,"
what is really no more than a particular stage in a great
social experiment, — the experiment of permitting private
ownership of property in general and of landed property in
particular. But the gloom of the picture, however deep it
may be, does not move me to despair. Tremendous as is
the pressure to which the prevailing misconception of the
meaning and value of life subjects each of us, the latent
idealism of man's heart stands firm against it. It may need
a supreme crisis to call that latent idealism into activity ;
but it is there, in the depths of man's buried life, waiting
for its summons.

When its summons comes, what form will its response
take ? I have said that the desire for possessions had its
origin in the legitimate desire for the preservation and
reproduction of life. If man could have gone on to desire
the expansion of life, all would have been well. A few men
did. These became the prophets, the torch-bearers of
Humanity. But in most men desire took (perhaps inevitably)
a wrong turning. The lure of finality was too strong for
Q

226 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

their undeveloped souls. To desire the expansion of life
is to desire what is limitless and therefore, as a possession,
unattainable. From this the heart of man shrank back
as from an adventure which would carry it beyond all
its familiar landmarks. Yet, if it continued to desire life,
that desire would of inner necessity transform itself into
the desire to expand life, to explore its inexhaustible
possibilities. What could it do, then, if it was to satisfy
its longing for finality, but make the accessories of life,
rather than life itself, the object of its desire ? It was pre-
destined, one might almost say, to take that turning. But
this does not alter the fact that in taking it the desire of
man's heart went astray.

How is that mistake to be corrected ? The instinct to
live is the fountain-head of desire. Let that instinct have
its way without let or hindrance. Let it reach on into the
infinite and the unknown. Let the idea of life widen its
scope till it becomes all-embracing. Then at last the current
of desire will run pure and free. The desire for material
possessions, by reacting upon and intensifying the selfish-
ness that begat it, has done more than any other influence
to thwart the expansive tendencies of man's nature, to
arrest the growth of his soul. Let life itself, then, with all
its limitless possibilities, become the main object of man's
desire, — and material possessions will lose their charm. For
the desire for them is, in its essence, a desire for property (in
the literal sense of the word), for proprietorship, for things
which a man can claim as his very own. This desire, which
has darkened the world with strife and misery, must give
way to the desire for possessions which no man can keep to
himself, which each man can share with all, — possessions of
which there is enough and more than enough to go round.
Such a possession, such a complex of possessions, is life
itself, — life in all its infinitude, in all its mystery. The whole
sea of life is at the service of each of us. This is the funda-
mental paradox which confounds the arithmetical notions
on which the desire for property is based. The sea of life
can give itself freely to all who desire to possess it, can pour
itself for ever into each of a million million souls, and yet keep
its infinitude unimpaired The poet of love has told us that

GROWTH THROUGH DESIRE 227

True love in this differs from gold and clay,
That to divide is not to take away.1

As it is with love, so it is with life. We can draw upon the
fountain of life unstintingly and unceasingly, without
robbing our neighbour of a single drop of it.

The desire for the fulness of life, then, is thejonly desire
for possession which is inherently unselfish. Indeed it is
in itself a desire to become unselfish, to go out of self into
an ampler life. If the word possession suggests, as it too
often does, inclusion in self, or circumscription by self, then
the desire to expand life is a desire for something more than
possession. It is also, and above all, a desire to be possessed.
No man can have proprietary rights in the infinite. Desire
to possess life in its fulness is a desire to be lost, to be
ravished, to be absorbed. On the higher levels of man's
being, activity and passivity in possession are in the last
resort the same.

So little indeed of aggressive selfishness is there in the
desire to expand life, that in entertaining that desire one is
merely laying claim, in one's inmost heart, to what is and
has always been one's very own. For the fully expanded,
the fully developed self is the real self. It is not until a man
has arrived at the maturity of his " true manhood " that he
is free to say " I am I." To lose the apparent self is to find
the genuine self ; and to find the genuine self is to become
what one really is.

It follows that the desire to expand life is the only desire
which is both self -regarding and unselfish, — in other words,
which is both effective and pure. Altruism, in the proper
sense of the word, is impossible. The springs of action are,
and must ever be, in one's own self. But if the springs of
action are to be purified, self must expand till it has been lost
and re-found. Egoism will prove to be the truest altruism
when, by a life of self-realization through self -surrender, the
ego has outgrown — and found — itself.

From whatever point of view we may look at things, we
see that the desire to live is better than the desire to possess.
The latter desire can seldom be gratified except at the
expense of other persons. Therefore it tends to separate

1 Shelley, Epipsychidion.

228 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

man from man, and to become a principle of disunion, of
disintegration, of disorder, of strife. Whatever else it may
do for mankind, it does not work for the general happiness.
On the other hand, it is impossible to gratify the desire to
expand life, without rendering service, directly or indirectly,
to one's fellow men. For we expand life through kindness,
through sympathy, through the spirit of comradeship,
through unselfish devotion, through love ; and the goal of
soul-expansion is oneness, in and through the One Life,
with all one's kind. Indeed it is only in becoming one with
others that a man really finds himself. One of the reasons
why it is hard for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of
God is that riches tend to raise a man above his fellows and
therefore to separate him from them. The man who stands
apart from his kind, however exalted may be his position,
however great his power, however strong his will, has fatally
contracted the bounds of his own life. Could he but see
himself as he really is, he would know that he was a degene-
rate, and a prisoner, and a slave. And though he has
gratified the desire of his heart at the expense of the happi-
ness of others, he has not won happiness for himself. For
he had set his heart on what was finite and attainable ; and
therefore, instead of the joy of pursuit, a joy which is as
imperishable as the object of pursuit is unattainable, he has
found the disillusionment, the sense of satiety, which is the
Nemesis of "success."

The moral of all this is that if the soul is to grow it must
desire to grow, it must desire a larger and a fuller life ; and
that if its growth is to be an adventure into the infinite, it
must desire to launch out into the infinite, to explore it, to
find its home in it. Nothing less than this must content it ;
and the desire for this must be the master passion of its life.
At present the " mania for owning things " seems to be
man's master passion. This mania, in which the resistance
of self to all expansive and emancipative influences seems
to centre, and the indulgence of which has conspicuously
failed to make men happy, must give way to a diviner
madness, — to the desires to possess (or be possessed by) the
mysterious infinitude of life.

wh;

•

CHAPTER II

GROWTH THROUGH BELIEF

FROM desire let us pass on to activity. There are two
great spheres of human activity, belief and conduct.
Let us study our problem as it bears on each of these. I
shall be reminded that belief and conduct are not so much
two spheres as two aspects — the mental and the moral — of
the same sphere ; that belief is ever tending to express
itself in, and therefore to govern and direct, conduct, and
that conduct is ever tending to react upon, and therefore to
modify and even transform, belief. I have not forgotten
this elementary truth ; but I find it convenient, for the
better ordering of my thoughts, to begin by separating the
two spheres (as I will provisionally call them), so far at least
as they will allow me to do so.

In both spheres the dominating influence is the attitude
of the soul towards things in general. In the sphere of
belief this attitude translates itself into ideas ; in the sphere
of conduct, into action. One can see at the outset that in
both spheres the cult of finality will tend to arrest growth :
in the sphere of belief, through dogmatism, to arrest mental
growth ; in the sphere of conduct, through egoism, to arrest
moral growth.

In the sphere of belief the dread of the infinite, by which
we are all haunted, gives rise to a cry for authoritative
guidance which has echoed through all the ages : " Tell
me what to believe, and I will believe it." To this cry for
guidance, this heartfelt (though perhaps unavowed) prayer
of the alarmed and bewildered soul, we owe all our formu-
lated creeds. And not our creeds only. From " Tell me
what to believe, and I will believe it," there is but a step —
so easy is the transition from belief to conduct — to " Tell

229

230 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

me what to do, and I will do it " ; and in response to this
appeal our creeds become codes, conventions, customs, and
our formulas become rules of life.

But let us begin with the formula and the creed. They
have their uses ; and we could not get on without them.
When ground has been won they help to secure and consoli-
date a part of it.1 But they exact a heavy price for their
services. For, having secured for the growing soul some
measure of progress, they proceed to arrest its growth by
imprisonimg it behind their own redoubts and earthworks ;
and if they could have their way, they would arrest its
growth for good and all.

What is their procedure ? I have tried to prove that in
the " buried " or subconscious life man is in touch with
larger realities and in possession (partially and potentially)
of profounder truths than those which he consciously deals
with. The organ of the " buried life " is intuition, which
ranges from the " tact " or direct perception which dis-
covers what is fitting in this case or in that, to the adven-
turous imagination which is conversant in ways of its own
with the ultimate and the universal. As it belongs to the
higher intuition to feel and respond to the attraction of the
infinite, as it is bound by its charter (one might almost
say) to sail in unknown seas, the lover of finality must at
all costs reduce it to inaction. Till this has been done he
cannot sleep in peace. Posing, then, as the champion of
orthodoxy, he forbids his intuition to exercise itself in the
great matters which attract and stimulate it, assuring it
that the truth about those matters is in the keeping of
" authority " and that it is not for it or for him to call the
ruling of authority in question. If his intuition allows
itself to be intimidated by his veto, it will abdicate its high
function, and, becoming gradually atrophied through in-
action, will at last cease to energize. This means that the

1 Only a small part of it. For the pioneers and pathfinders are always
in touch with the infinite, and they therefore open up endless vistas to the
journeying soul. To these vistas the creed-makers, who are in thrall to
the lure of finality, are constitutionally blind ; and much of the spirit of
the Masters to whom they profess allegiance escapes of inner necessity
through the"network of their uninspired thoughts. This has always been
so, and will'always be so, as long as the need for creeds and formulas
continues to be felt.

GROWTH THROUGH BELIEF 231

" leader " of the growing soul will wither on its stem, and
that the growth of the soul on the mental plane will be
brought to a standstill. " Where there is no vision the
people perish " ; and vision ceases when the inward eye,
having been compulsorily blindfolded, at last becomes
blind.

If dogmatism says No to intuition, it says No as peremp-
torily and as effectively to reason. Indeed it is reason
rather than intuition that first comes under its ban. For
reason is the organ with which a man consciously, and
therefore openly and even defiantly, investigates the great
problems that challenge him. In using his reason for this
purpose, a man deliberately exercises his right of private
judgment ; and that right the lover of finality must, for his
own peace of mind, disallow. He will therefore try to
silence his reason 1 by telling it that the questions which
interest it have already been settled by duly constituted
authority, and are therefore no longer open to discussion.
If reason allows itself to be warned off the field of high
thinking, it will retire (as I have already pointed out) to
the field of positive science ; and, by working exclusively
in that field, by confining its activities to the investigation
of material phenomena, with regard to which there can be
certainty and even (in a sense) finality, it will gradually
unfit itself for dealing with matters in which, pace the
dogmatist, there can be no certainty and no approach to
finality. It will unfit itself for high thinking, by ceasing to
co-operate, and at last becoming unable to co-operate, with
intuition. For it is by reacting on intuition, and through
intuition on the " buried life/' that reason, as an explorer
of fundamental mysteries, does its best work. It sifts,

1 The antithetical correlate to dogmatism is ultra-docility. Both
tendencies are as a rule united in the same person. The three chief embodi-
ments of the dogmatic spirit which History has made known to us are the
Jewish Law, the Catholic Church, and the Prussian State. The Pharisee,
the typical product of Jewish legalism, was as dogmatic an exponent of
the Law as he was a docile student of it. In the Catholic Church authority
is dogmatic because, it is ostentatiously docile, and the docile are deliber-
ately taught to be dogmatic. Under the Prussian State the officer or
official is as servile towards his superiors as he is arrogant towards his
underlings, arrogance and servility being the ethical counterparts of
dogmatism and ultra-docility. I am therefore justified in assuming that
man (in the abstract), as the lover of finality, is both dogmatic and ultra-
docile.

232 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

arranges, and organizes the data of intuition, not so much
in order to arrive inductively at general conclusions (though
that may be its avowed purpose) as in order, by convincing
intuition of the inadequacy of what it offers, to provoke it
to fresh exertion and to a more careful and also more
adventurous exercise of its " vision/' To quote my own
words : " When a man becomes aware of an emotional idea
which has long ruled his heart, in the very act of bringing
it under the control of his consciousness, he causes it to
draw in from far and near its hidden reserves and supports
(that through these it may justify itself to his reason] — to draw
these into a region of his subconscious life in which it is
possible for them to shape themselves, by slow degrees and
by a spontaneous process of which he has no cognizance,
into new emotional ideas, ready, when their turn comes, to be
transmuted by consciousness into new thought." It follows
that when reason, gagged by authority, ceases to interest
itself in first principles, and when the higher intuition is
thereby deprived of its stimulating control, stagnation will
take the place of activity in those hidden reservoirs of spirit-
uality which are the real head-springs of the ideas that rule
the world. In brief, to silence reason is to paralyze the
" buried life."

In the divorce controversy, of which we have recently
heard so much, we have an apt illustration of the paralyzing
influence of dogmatism on mentality. The problem in
which that controversy centres is complex and intractable
in the highest degree. There is no conceivable solution of
it which does not bristle with difficulties — economic, social,
ethical, spiritual. But to leave things as they are is to
perpetuate such glaring evils that those who are interested
in the problem are bound at all costs to try to solve it.
Great qualities are demanded in those who would embark
on such an enterprise, — the power of diagnosing existing
evils, the power of calculating the probable effects of pro-
posed remedies, a capacity for evolving and applying large
constructive ideas, an ample measure of imagination, in-
sight, and sympathy. Yet the first Anglo-Cat holic curate
whom you meet will solve the problem off-hand by con-
demning divorce as such, the ground of his condemnation

GROWTH THROUGH BELIEF 233

being a reported saying of our Lord ; and if his ecclesias-
tical superiors will allow him to do so, he will give practical
effect to his off-hand solution by refusing to admit to Holy
Communion even the most innocent of divorces. The
devotion of the Anglo-Catholic curate to his Master is
admirable up to a certain point ; but it may be doubted if
it is wholly disinterested. It is possible that there is woven
into it a feeling of gratitude to the Master for having
saved his followers the trouble of exercising their
mental powers. At any rate the Anglo-Catholic curate and
those who think with him are well content to solve their
knotty problem by sheltering themselves behind a text
which shuts it out from their mental vision, just as the
advocates of corporal punishment in the nursery and the
school-room have sheltered themselves for many centuries
behind the letter of the saying " Spare the rod and spoil the
child."1

To refuse to think out such a problem as that of divorce
is, by implication, to refuse to think out the larger and
deeper problems that underlie it. In the spheres ef ethics,
economics, and politics different concrete problems attract
different minds ; and each of these problems, if we honestly
try to solve it, will force us to meditate on the ultimate
issues of life and will therefore give us glimpses of infinitely
distant and ever-receding horizons. And he who, through
dread of those distant horizons, refuses to think out the
particular problem that interests him, subscribing, it may
be, to some passing or some party orthodoxy, or, like the
Anglo-Catholic curate, deducing a solution from the letter
of some Master's teaching, is shirking the burden of exercis-
ing himself in the more fundamental problems of life, and
is therefore atrophying his higher mental powers and
arresting his mental growth.

But it is not only the " orthodox " who succumb to the
lure of finality. The desire to go to sleep on a formula is

1 The persecution of heretics has been defended by Catholic apologists
on the ground that St. Paul smote Elymas, the sorcerer, with blindness.
Could anything be more puerile ? Yet this is a fair sample of the kind of
argument with which, when great matters are seriously debated, men who
subordinate reason to authority delude themselves and try to delude
others.

234 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

common to all of us, and it is difficult for even the most
adventurous of pioneers to resist it. The soporific formula
which the lover of finality is in search of is not necessarily
a formulated creed. Any conception of life, any theory of
things, in which one rests and beyond which one refuses to
look, becomes such a formula. The thinker who has worked
out for himself a complete system of thought, if he allows
that system to dominate his mind, degrades it to the level
of a formula, and falling asleep on it forgets that what first
set him thinking was his waking dream of ideal truth.
Agnosticism itself may easily become a soporific formula,—
a negative dogmatism which has allowed its protest against
official orthodoxy to develop into hostility to high thinking
as such. I know many men who call themselves agnostics.
Some of them are merely incurious and indifferent. The
rest are for the most part dogmatic materialists at heart.
When dogmatism is in the air, it infects the heretic and the
sceptic as well as the " faithful " ; and as the basis of non-
conformity is usually narrower than that of a dominant
creed, it frequently happens that the heretic, being better
able to concentrate his self-assertive energies, ends by out-
dogmatizing the dogmatists whose teaching he repudiates,
and becoming more intolerant than the Inquisitors who
once sent his kindred to the stake. But it matters little
what creed or system, positive or negative, a man may
happen to subscribe to. If his subscription to it is final, if
he allows himself to rest in it, if he allows it to come between
him and the infinite and the ideal, the ideas that inspire it
will sooner or later degenerate into lifeless formulas, and the
principles of conduct that it countenances, into mechanical
rules. Then his faith will have become a pillow to slumber
on, instead of a flag to sail under on a never ending voyage
of discovery.

The consequent loss to his inner life will not be merely
mental. The veto which he imposes on his own reason and on
his own intuition, he imposes, of inner necessity, on the reason
and the intuition of each of his fellow men. What is true
for him, if finally true, must be true for every man. Dissent
makes him distrust himself, dispels his dream of finality,
disturbs his slumbrous repose. Hence it is that the cult of

GROWTH THROUGH BELIEF 235

:y is ever tending to generate intolerance, the most
fruitful and most permanent source of the most anti-human
of all passions — hatred. Hatred, the passion which, more
than any other, separates a man from his kind, imprisons
him in himself, and therefore arrests his soul-expansion or
spiritual growth, has many sources and takes many forms.
But as a rule it is a shortlived passion, violent rather than
intense, and is directed towards a particular person or, at
most, a particular party, a particular community, or a
particular cause. The hatred that intolerance generates is,
on the other hand, a fixed attitude of mind which, if pushed
to what I may call its logical conclusion, embraces the
greater part of one's fellow men, and is capable of attaining
to a maximum of intensity which leaves even the violence
of the murderer far behind.1 And this is not all. Intoler-
ance can do worse than generate hatred. The man who
hates his fellow men is not wholly detached from them. He
still takes an interest in them, an active though perverted
interest, and is therefore not wholly shut up in himself.
But the lover of finality who, whether as an individual or
as a member of a community, has convinced himself that
he has proprietary and quasi-exclusive rights in God's truth
and God's favour, is isolated and self-centred in the highest
conceivable degree. Even his communal sentiment, if, as
is probable, he belongs to a particular religious communion,
becomes subordinate to, and may at last be absorbed into,
his all-consuming egoism. And the smaller the circle of the
" elect," the more complete is the self -absorption of each of
its members. It is even possible for the intensity of the
" believer's " egoism to deliver him from intolerance, but
only by killing in his heart all interest, other than what is
purely mundane, in his fellow men. Such cases are probably
rare ; for, as Pascal has said, " La nature soutient la raison
impuissante et 1'empeche d'extravaguer jusqu'a ce point
la." But the man who can find happiness in the prospect of
being " saved " while the bulk of his fellow men perish
everlastingly, is by no means a rarity ; and the logic of
intolerance demands that he should be one of many millions.

1 In support of this statement I appeal to the history of religious perse-
cutions and wars.

236 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

But I am straying beyond the proper limits of this
chapter. So difficult is it to draw the line between belief
and conduct, that in my attempt to show what havoc the
cult of finality works in the sphere of belief, I find myself
contending that intolerance, the characteristic defect of the
dogmatic believer, by ministering to egoism on a high plane
and on a great scale, becomes a demoralizing influence of
the first magnitude and therefore works serious havoc in
the sphere of conduct. The influence of the cult of finality
on conduct will be the theme of a later chapter ; and I will
therefore return to the sphere of belief.

In the sphere of belief the cult of finality is the chief
cause of arrested mental (and moral) growth. It follows
that if growth is to be healthy and vigorous, the lure of
finality must be strenuously and steadfastly resisted. No
creed, no dogma, no theory of things, no conception of life,
no assumption, no prejudice must be allowed to dominate
the soul. Even the concrete embodiments of belief, the
schemes of life, the traditions, the conventions, the customs,
by which social life is regulated, must, on occasion, be
challenged and asked for their credentials. Whatever belief
the soul may be dominated by, whatever theory or sub-
theory of things it may accept as final, is sure to crystallize
into a formula ; and the soul that finds rest in a formula
has missed, or is in danger of missing, its destiny. The
seeker for the health which is happiness must therefore, at
whatever cost to his own comfort, keep the growing surfaces
of his mind, or at least the unfolding tendrils of its leading
shoots, fresh and pliant. If he allows them to become
indurated, by ceasing to feed them with the sap that rises
from his buried life — the sap of critical, speculative, imagi-
native thought — they will gradually wither and die, and
his mind, though it may develop or over-develop itself in
this or that direction, will cease to grow as a harmonious
whole.

No lesson is so hard to learn as that of renouncing the
desire for finality. No lesson, when learnt, so richly re-
wards the learner. For it gives him the greatest of all
rewards, that of allowing him to approach truth eternally

GROWTH THROUGH BELIEF 237

without ever reaching it. In doing this it keeps in constant
motion the current of intuitional activity which is ever
setting from the dark recesses of his buried self towards his
more conscious life. It is through a ceaseless influx from
the buried into the conscious life that the process of soul-
growth is carried on ; and it is only by keeping open the
channel of communication, by clearing away the dogmas
and other prejudices, personal and impersonal, which are
ever tending to accumulate and obstruct it, that such an
influx can be maintained. The ideal end of belief is intrinsic
truth. The truth of things, which is another name for the
inner reality of things, is in each of us ; and it will gradually
invade us (after the manner of silently rising waters) and
enfold us and possess us, if we will but give up our vain
dream of possessing it. Not that in giving up that dream
we are to cease to desire truth. Nay, it is because we desire
truth above all things, desire it more than we desire comfort
or peace of mind, that we can be content to wait for it to
possess us.

A great faith can co-exist with this seemingly agnostic
attitude. A great faith, and a great faith alone, can make it
possible, — faith in intrinsic reality, the faith that things are
what they are, not what we may have concluded them to be,
not what we may believe them to be, not what we may even
imagine them to be, the faith that

The world is what it is for all our dust and din.

ie pessimist, the man whose faith is bankrupt, may call
himself an agnostic ; but he is really a negative dogmatist.
The positive or affirmative dogmatist may call himself an
optimist ; but he is really optimistic only for himself and
for those who think with him, be they many or few. His
optimism does not embrace more than a fraction of man-
kind. Still less does it embrace the Universe. The faith
which does embrace the Universe, which believes — this is
its only dogma — that light, self -kindled and self-sustaining,
is at the very heart of the Universe, has no choice but to
wed itself to silence. In the presence of the unfathomable
mystery of self-dependent reality, speech is an impertinence
and may readily become a profanation. " I were but little

238 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

happy," says one of Shakespeare's characters, " if I could
say how much." " I had but little faith," says he whose
optimism binds him to silence, " if I could say what I
believed and why I believed it."

It might be thought that the higher agnosticism would
produce a general paralysis of moral and social activity.
But there is no reason why it should do so. Nay, there is a
weighty reason why it should not. The man whose mind is
open, in the sense of being in touch with the infinite, — open,
not from apathetic indifference but from devotion to ideal
truth, — will always be exposed to the influence of great
ideas ; and great ideas do not merely illuminate, but also
stimulate and inspire. In social life, though he is keenly
interested in the problems that challenge him, and though
on the plane of speculation he is the freest of free lances, he
will cheerfully obey established rules and regulations, so
long as this does not involve him in disloyalty to the great
ideas that attract him. In nine cases out of ten he will be
well content to be one of the majority. The egoistic desire
to be always in an unpopular minority will not appeal to
him. Yet he will not stand selfishly aloof from the turmoil
of political and economic strife. It will be open to him, as
to other men, to choose among conflicting ideals, causes,
programmes, parties, and the like ; and though he will not
believe whole-heartedly in any of these, there is no reason
why he should not whole-heartedly prefer this ideal, this
cause, this programme, this party to any of its rivals ; but
his detachment, in his inner life, from the din and dust of
the arena will make him charitable and tolerant, and he
will always respect the opinions of others and try to see
things from their points of view. For — above all — he does
not regard truth as the monopoly of any school, or sect, or
party, as a prize to possess and be proud of possessing. On
the contrary : knowing that, if he will resist the lure of
finality, the infinite which is in him will gradually reveal
itself to his consciousness, he waits serenely for truth to
take possession of him. Serenely, but not passively. If he
seems to be passive, especially to those who confound
activity with fussiness, the reason is that, as a seeker, he is
active on a high plane and on a great scale. " Grow, and

GROWTH THROUGH BELIEF 239

you will know/' is one of the precepts by which he tries to
regulate his life. And this precept is balanced by another :
" Know, and you will grow." In other words the activity
of the pursuit of knowledge is ever merging itself, in his
spirit, in the activity of self -directed growth.

Resistance to the lure of finality is not necessarily con-
fined, as I may have seemed to suggest, to the high levels of
imaginative thought. Those who have no turn for high
thinking, and who find it necessary, as a basis for action, to
profess some formulated creed, if they cannot consciously
keep open their communications with the infinite, can at
least cultivate the virtue of tolerance. They can at' least
learn, in the sphere of belief, as in other spheres of human
activity, to live and let live. If they will do this, their hold
on their own creed, which will not cease to guide and inspire
them, will gradually relax its rigidity ; and they will come
sub-consciously into contact with larger and freer truths
than those which they consciously profess their faith in.

For, whatever may be the mental calibre of him who
resists the lure of finality, if his resistance does nothing else,
it does one thing which includes all other things, — it safe-
guards or tends to safeguard his spiritual freedom. The
source of freedom in a man is, as we have seen, the presence
of the infinite in his buried life. The man who resists the
lure of finality is living in and living to the infinite, and is
therefore both using his freedom and winning an ever fuller
measure of it. The lover of finality, on the other hand, in
shirking the burden of his own infinitude, shirks the high
responsibility of freedom, and, by surrendering himself to
direction and dictation, sells himself into captivity, the
price that he receives from the buyer being the enjoyment
of what he miscalls peace of mind. In my chapter on
Freedom and Necessity, I spoke of those opposites as the
poles of action. And undoubtedly it is with action that we
primarily associate them. But the lines of demarcation
which we find it convenient to draw are not necessarily
respected by Nature ; and freedom to act has its counter-
part, in the sphere of belief, in freedom to know. The
latter freedom is indeed more than the counterpart of the
former : it is a vital part of it. Without freedom to know —

240 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

to know right from wrong — freedom to act would be so
severely restricted, owing to the ever growing need for
precise direction and casuistical decision, that.it would at
last cease to be. So true is this, that it is freedom to know,
rather than freedom to act, of which the lover of finality,
when he delivers himself into the keeping of embodied
authority, first divests himself. In order to do this, he
silences his reason, and, by depriving his intuition of the
stimulative criticism of reason, impairs its activity, and so
suspends, in part at least, his intercourse with his own
buried life. He who would live to the infinite will reverse
this procedure. By resisting the lure of finality in the
sphere of belief, he will strengthen his intuition — the organ
of the buried life — and will thus preserve and develop his
freedom to know. And he will reap the reward of his self-
restraint, not in the sphere of belief only, but also in the
sphere of conduct. For, as he passes from belief to conduct,
he will find that freedom to know the real from the unreal
becomes freedom to know right from wrong, and that
intuition takes the familiar form of Conscience.

CHAPTER III

GROWTH THROUGH CONSCIENCE

r I ^HE principal link between belief and conduct is
JL conscience. A man's beliefs about the larger issues
of life dominate, or are supposed to dominate, his con-
science ; and his conscience regulates, or is supposed to
regulate, his conduct.

What is conscience ? And how does it work ? I will
first look at the matter from my own point of view. It
frequently happens that one has to choose between con-
flicting motives to action. In such cases one feels the need
of enlightenment. As a motive is always an external or
apparently external influence transformed into a spiritual
force by passing through a personal medium, the choice
between conflicting motives is really a choice between the
interests of conflicting selves. By what standard of worth
are these interests measured ? When the lower self comes
into collision with the higher, how am I to know which is
the lower self and which the higher ? The ideal answer to
this question is not far to seek. The distinction between
higher and lower is of the essence of my nature, and the
higher or more spiritual self announces itself as such when-
ever I allow it to speak. This voice of the higher self is the
voice of conscience. The claim put forward by the spiritual
side of one's being — the claim to be the true self, to be the
central axis of one's existence, to be the main concern of
one's life — a claim which adapts itself to every change of
circumstance and therefore takes innumerable forms, yet
remains unswervingly true to its final aim — which is again
and again dishonoured and rejected, yet never relaxes its
hold upon us, — this all-pervading and all-controlling claim,
this ceaseless effort of the spiritual germ to assert its hidden
R 241

242 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

presence by realizing its hidden life, is in very truth the light
which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
The light is in us, not outside us. The end, the aim, the
standard, the measure, the guiding lamp, the warning voice,
the accuser, the advocate, the witness, the judge, — all are
ours. It is because the spiritual pole of the Universe is in
me, not actually but potentially, not as a possession or an
achievement but as an ideal to be realized or a life to be
evolved, that the light of conscience falls freely on the path-
way of my days.

When I say this, I am appealing to the everyday experi-
ences of each of us. Nothing is more certain than that in
nearly every case of moral indecision (as distinguished from
moral perplexity) we know quite well what choice we ought
to make ; and nothing is more certain than that the source
of our enlightenment is an inward and spiritual pressure,
the stress of an authoritative and self-assertive tendency of
our nature, which shows us our road by impelling us towards
it, yet in the very act of impelling us invests us with freedom
to defy its authority and thwart its will. Again, nothing
is more certain than that, in yielding to the inward and
spiritual pressure which guides and enlightens us, we rise
(or seem to rise) above the plane of mechanical necessity
and attain to consciousness of freedom, whereas, if we
successfully resist the pressure, we begin to forfeit the very
freedom which has made our resistance possible. Thus the
seemingly paradoxical theory that spiritual freedom is
generated by spiritual compulsion is supported by the
normal experiences of Humanity, and holds good of the
working of conscience not less than of that of will. The
more closely we commune with ourselves in our seasons or
moments of moral strife, the more clearly do we see that
freedom to know is the very counterpart of freedom to act.
It is the ceaseless flow of the real or spiritual tendencies of
Nature through the channel of human life that gives us
liberty ; and it is the self -same movement that gives us light.
That we should be able to resist the pressure of those
infinite and eternal forces, that we should be able to choose
bondage and darkness rather than freedom and light, seems
inexplicable until we remind ourselves that the very pressure

GROWTH THROUGH CONSCIENCE 243

which emancipates and enlightens us must needs give us
freedom to resist itself.

The anomalies and ambiguities for which conscience is some-
times reproached are easily accounted for when looked at from
this point of view. In the infinite stream of spiritual evolution
there is a central movement, and there are many side currents
and surface eddies. The former represents what is vital and
essential, the latter what is temporalor local, in human progress.
Of the side currents and surface eddies some are in advance of
the central stream ; others are more or less abreast of it ; others
lag behind ; others again are backwashes and represent an
apparently retrograde movement. The genius of a people
is one such current ; the spirit of an age is another ; a
particular creed is a third ; a particular social ideal is a
fourth. The general movement of the mighty river is in a
measure the resultant of the various sub-movements. Some
of these it will follow in preference to others. Here or there
is one which absolutely determines the line of its advance.
But, to speak generally, it utilizes and absorbs into itself
each and all of these separate efforts. There is no current,
however weak or seemingly ineffectual, from which it has
not something to learn or gain. Even the vortices, though
apparently stationary, and the backwashes, though appar-
ently retrogressive, are in reality borne forward towards the
common goal.

This distinction between the central stream and the side
or surface currents, between what is catholic and what is
sectarian in Nature, must needs reproduce itself in con-
science. Some of the rulings of conscience are universally
valid. They embody the judgment of the orbis terrarum.
They are the distilled essence of human experience, the
concentrated wisdom of the nations and the ages. To deny
their authority is heresy. To depart from their paths is
schism. To fall below the level of the morality which they
inculcate is to fall below the normal level of human life.
There are other rulings of conscience which belong to an
epoch or a people, to a class or a profession, to a phase in
social progress or a zone of climate, rather than to the world
at large. These rulings are not universally valid, though
the ordinary man — the man whose ideas are bounded by

244 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

the horizon of his circumstances — may be pardoned for
assuming that they are. Lastly, there are the decisions of
conscience which " private interpretation " has helped to
frame. The light which is generated by the spiritual energy
of Nature must needs take a colour from every medium
through which it passes ; and the medium of idiosyncrasy
varies from man to man.

That all men should be equally enlightened is indeed as
little to be looked for as that all men should be equally free.
The stream of human evolution is Nature's effort (or one of
her many efforts) to realize her own spiritual ideal ; and
the advance of the stream towards its goal is marked by the
outgrowth of spirituality in the life of man. Wherever there
is spirituality there is freedom — freedom to act and freedom
to know : but the outgrowth of spirituality takes innumer-
able forms, passes through innumerable stages, and is
measured by an infinite scale ; and as no two men are in the
same stage of spiritual development, so no two men are
equally enlightened or equally free. Potentially, all men are
equal, for all men are divine : actually, they differ from
one another in every conceivable way. Those controlling
forces which I have likened to side currents in the great
stream of human progress — the spirit of an age, the genius
of a people, a particular creed, a particular social ideal, and
the rest — may with equal fitness be likened to refracting
media through which the pure light of spirituality has to
pass on its way to the individual consciousness, media
which on the one hand absorb and reflect the light and on
the other hand distort and obscure it. These media are
many in number and are in a state of perpetual change and
flux. They vary from age to age, from place to place, and
from man to man : and within the limits of each individual
life they vary from period to period, from circumstance to
circumstance, and in the last resort (so potent is the reaction
of conduct on character) from deed to deed. When men
are agreed as to the end to be pursued, they often differ
radically as to the means to be taken, and differences of
this sort may easily become " conscientious." The know-
ledge that is demanded for the solution of a moral problem
is not moral only, but also intellectual, in the widest sense

GROWTH THROUGH CONSCIENCE 245

of the word ; and the differences of idiosyncrasy that
refract and otherwise modify the illuminating rays of con-
science, belong to every stratum of our being, from the
most purely spiritual down to the most grossly material
What wonder, then, that I should think right what another
man thinks wrong, or that I should condemn to-day what I
approved of ten years ago ? Perhaps the only thing to
wonder at is that conscience does not contradict itself more
often and more glaringly than it does.

It is worthy of note that when two men conscientiously
differ from or even oppose one another in the sphere of
moral action, each is aiming at, and each believes in all
sincerity that he is doing, what is right. In other words,
the light of conscience, however much it may be refracted
or otherwise obscured by the media through which it passes,
always reveals itself to those who sincerely desire to see it,
as light, as the presence of an ideal. The light that makes
its way to my consciousness is probably the purest and
strongest light that my inward eye is for the time being able
to bear ; and if I did not believe in its purity I should perhaps
be less ready to accept its guidance.

There are times, however, when my power to discern the
light — even the refracted light — that lightens me from
within, fails me either wholly or in large measure. Then
the problems that confront me seem to be insoluble, and my
will is paralyzed by the darkness that envelops my path.
These cases of genuine moral perplexitjf are comparatively
rare ; but if they are unwisely dealt with, they may easily
become numerous, so numerous indeed as at last to invade
and overrun the larger part of life. When they occur,
conscience is on trial, and the education which it has re-
ceived— for the use which is made of it is its education, good
or bad — is put to a searching test.

How ought conscience to be educated ? Let us try to get
back to first principles. I am assuming that conscience is
the realization in consciousness of an inward pressure and
an inward light, and that the source of this pressure and this
light is the higher nature, the ideal self, the infinite in man ;
and I have been trying to show that our experiences of the

246 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

working of conscience bear out this interpretation of it.
But it is possible to look at conscience from other points
of view. We teach our children that conscience is the voice
of God ; and amid all the variations and fluctuations of our
teaching this doctrine stands firm. Even the agnostic poet
addresses his deity as one

whom the hours of mortal, moral strife
Alone aright reveal.1

As is the God, so is his voice ; so is his revelation of himself
in the hour of moral strife ; so is the nature of that strife.
If we worship an inward God, conscience is a voice from
within. If we worship an outward God, conscience, though
it may seem to come from within, and though in a sense it
does and must come from within, is in the main a voice from
without. In our terror of the infinite, in our terror of the
unknown depths of our own buried life, in our terror of the
" hidden God " whose voice is at first a deep silence and
whose light is at first a great darkness, we worship Gods of
our own creation — Gods who reveal themselves to chosen
instruments, who found Churches, who dictate Scriptures,
who deliver Laws. This outward God — for though he takes
many forms he is one in spirit and essence — speaks to us
through his commissioners and delegates, not through our
own hearts. His voice is therefore the voice of the finite,
the voice which the seeker for finality loves to hear, and
which he listens to so reverently and attentively that at last
he can hear no other voice, and mistakes it for the voice
of his own inmost soul. When this point has been
reached, his conscience has lost the freedom which is the
proof of its inwardness, and has become enslaved to outward
influences, — to the letter of a law, to the text of a scripture,
to priestly direction, to casuistical interpretation. And not
to these influences only. For as, with the progress of
scientific research and critical thought and the consequent
enlargement of our conception of Nature, the idea of the
Supernatural loses its hold on us, and the object of our
worship, though still an outward deity, becomes gradually
secularized and even materialized, conscience shares in its

1 A. H. Clough, Qui Laborat oral.

GROWTH THROUGH CONSCIENCE 247

degradation. The man who worships respectability, for
example, may be meticulously conscientious in his loyalty
to his quasi-divine ideal.

I have said that for him who worships an outward deity
conscience is a voice from without. I mean by this that
what is really a voice from within — for the ultimate source
of conscience is the inner life — is gradually transformed into
a voice from without. Transformed beyond recognition, —
despiritualized, mechanicalized, fettered, enslaved. For
conscience is another name for intuition — intuition at work
is a particular sphere of human activity, the sphere of
conduct ; and what the cult of finality does to intuition in
general, it does to conscience in particular, — it forbids it to
discharge its proper function, suspends its characteristic
activities, atrophies its higher nerve-centres, arrests its
spiritual growth.

Let us return to those cases of moral perplexity, in which,
as we have seen, the use that has been made of conscience
is put to the test. When such cases occur, the lover of the
infinite appeals to principles, the lover of finality to rules.
This is the first and most obvious difference between them.
But there is another difference which goes deeper than this
and has an even wider significance. The two differ from one
another as regards the occasions of moral perplexity. The
lover of the infinite is seldom perplexed about the details
of conduct. In dealing with them he relies on his moral
intuition, which, being kept healthy and vigorous by
constant exercise, acts so rapidly as not to leave him time
for perplexity. It is with regard to the larger issues of life,
and therefore to the general courses of conduct, that he is
sometimes in grave doubt. On such occasions he appeals to
principles, not to rules ; and as a principle cannot be inter-
preted except through the medium of a wider and more
magisterial principle, in order to resolve his perplexity as
to certain large issues of life, he is led on to deal with larger
and still larger issues until he comes at last into the presence
of the fundamental mysteries of existence. In thus appeal-
ing from principle to principle, he uses his intuition under
the stimulating control of his reason, and so receives illumi-
nation from the only source which he regards as authorita-

248 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

live, — from the infinite in himself, from the depths of his
own buried life.

When the lover of finality is involved in moral per-
plexity, this process is exactly reversed. It is not with
regard to the general courses of conduct that he is troubled
— these have been mapped out for him by external authority
— but with regard to the details, when, as must sometimes
happen, new circumstances arise which the rules or direc-
tions on which he relies have not provided for and cannot
deal with. As a principle cannot be interpreted except
through a wider principle, so a rule, if it be regarded as
intrinsically valid, cannot be interpreted except by the study
of its own wording, — of the letter which killeth ; and such
an interpretation gives rise to sub-rules and fresh sub-rules,
and therefore to an ever-increasing interest in what is
meaningless or trivial. For, as conscience deteriorates and
the intuition becomes less and less able to function, the
occasions of moral perplexity become, of inner necessity,
more numerous, more trivial, and less moral. This tendency
has been aptly and abundantly illustrated in the legalism
of the Pharisees and in the casuistry of the Catholic Church.
When the interpreters of the Jewish Law decided that the
difference between keeping food warm for the Sabbath in
coarse tow and keeping it warm in flax tow was the differ-
ence between right and wrong, and when the conscientious
Jew accepted such a decision as binding, legalism was
reduced to an obvious absurdity, — obvious to the least
enlightened of onlookers, obvious to all except to those who
were immersed in such trivialities, — and the quest of finality
was fittingly rewarded by the descent of the soul into the
lowest depths of the infinitesimal.1 That such a decision
should have been seriously given and seriously accepted,
that it should not have been instantly laughed out of court,
shows that in the doctor of the law and his disciples con-
science had died out into ultra-scrupulous conscientiousness,
and that the intuition had ceased to work.

1 The quest of finality is, after all, the quest of what is intrinsically
unattainable. No man can find permanent rest in the finite. Our choice
lies, though we may not know it, between the infinite proper and the
inverted infinite, which we call the infinitesimal. If we will not struggle
upwards to the former, we shall have to sink to the level of the latter.

GROWTH THROUGH CONSCIENCE 249

When the moral intuition ceases to work, the lower self
finds its opportunity. The degradation of reason which
necessarily follows when, divorced from intuition, it is used
to elaborate rules of conduct into sub-rules, makes it all too
ready to pander to those baser desires and passions which
are ever waiting to assert themselves, and which are natur-
ally most active and insurgent when the sense of moral
proportion has been lost. In the development of an external
morality, a time is sure to come when the votary of the law
will devote his ingenuity to keeping the letter of it, while
evading or violating the spirit, and when casuistry —
whether professionally or privately practised — will become
the art of inventing excuses for wrong-doing. It is said that
predatory financiers in the United States and elsewhere
have lawyers in their pay, whose business it is to enable
them to cheat and rob on a large scale without actually
transgressing the letter of the law. When conscience, in its
dread of the infinite, becomes enslaved to external authority,
there is a danger, to say the least, of the lower self playing
the part of the predatory financier, and reason the part of
the unscrupulous lawyer. It is a danger to which we are
all exposed ; and the surest safeguard against it is to keep
the moral intuition alert and vigorous by exercising it
freely — even at the cost of communing, or striving to
commune, with the infinite — in regard to the weightier
problems of conduct and the larger issues of life.

For, if the wrong way to educate conscience is to fetter
it with rules and enslave it to detailed direction, the right
way is to allow it to function freely. This means, in the
first place, that there must be no limit to the sphere of its
activity. I have said that conscience mediates between
belief and conduct. If it is to function properly in matters
of conduct, it must be allowed to exercise itself freely in
matters of belief. For, when it deals with cases of moral
perplexity, it works by secret and subconscious methods of
its own. What those methods are we cannot say with
certainty or precision. But we may be pretty sure that if
conscience is healthy and vigorous, it will solve the given
problems by applying — instinctively and therefore swiftly
and unerringly — principles to rules, and ideas to principles.

250 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

For this to be possible, the soul, of which conscience, like
mind and will, is a vital aspect, must be in touch with what
is ultimate and innermost, and must therefore have success-
fully resisted, and must still be successfully resisting, the
lure of finality. It follows that if conscience is to guide us
aright in small as well as in great matters, we must cling
tenaciously to the right of private judgment, in great as
well as in small matters, recognizing that each of us must
use the channel of his own individuality in order to escape
from bondage to individualism and egoism, that freedom
to know is as sacred a heritage as freedom to act, and that
the supreme authority to which conscience owes allegiance
is the ultimate source of its own enlightenment — the
infinite in man.

This is one aspect of the education of conscience. There
is another which is of almost equal importance. If con-
science is to function properly in cases of moral perplexity,
we must always and unhesitatingly obey its intuitive
decisions. For if we disobey them, we shall probably try
to find reasons for rejecting them, and in doing so we shall
interfere with the secret subconscious methods by which
conscience solves the problems that confront it ; and, in
interfering with them, we shall tend to derange and dis-
organize them, with the inevitable result that we shall
either paralyze conscience by making it unhealthily self-
conscious, or sophisticate and pervert it. The old paradox
that if we would know the will of God we must do it, is the
expression of a profound and vital truth. The very con-
stitution of our being tells us so much about our duty and
destiny that, if we will but follow its implicit guidance, it
will not fail to tell us more and more. The theory of life
that is incarnate in each of us resolves itself into a single
precept : " Turn towards the light that is in you." This
precept is as easy to understand as it is hard to obey. Obey
it, begin by obeying it, and you will learn what it means
and to what goal it will eventually lead you. Set your face
in the right direction, look towards the magnetic pole of
your being, — the pole that permanently attracts those
desires and instincts which you feel to be higher than the
rest. Do this, and you have already entered the path of

GROWTH THROUGH CONSCIENCE 251

duty. Keep on doing this, and every moral problem will
solve itself as you proceed. It is the desire for ideal good,
the desire to live to and for and in the infinite, which makes
you ask for enlightenment ; but the desire will itself en-
lighten you if you will but yield yourself to its guidance, for
the man who desires strongly has already in some sort
discerned his goal.

It will perhaps be contended that the sense of duty is an
essential element in conscience, and that the sense of duty
is the sense of obligation towards what is outside oneself.
That there is a vital connexion between conscience and
duty goes without saying ; but it is through the medium of
spiritual freedom, not of bondage to external authority, that
the connexion is maintained. When the interests and inclin-
ations of the lower self collide with those of the higher, the
latter (as we have seen) asserts itself to be higher by making
us feel that its desires and impulses are superior to those of
the lower self, superior in ideal worth if not in actual
strength, superior in ideal worth and therefore, in spite of
all appearances to the contrary, superior also in actual
strength. This is a two-fold feeling. On the one hand there
is the feeling of being warned and directed and guided.
When this feeling predominates, we say that we are obeying
the voice of conscience. On the other hand there is the
sense of latent compulsion, the feeling that pressure is
being put upon us by an inward and spiritual power. When
this feeling predominates, we say that we are acting from
a sense of duty.

The truth is that freedom (of both kinds) and duty are
absolutely inseparable. Freedom, divorced from duty, is
not freedom, but lawless and aimless licence. Duty,
divorced from freedom, is not duty, but the despotism of
material force. The sense of duty, like the sense of freedom,
is a sense of inward and spiritual pressure, combined with a
sense of exemption from external control. When we use
the word freedom, we dwell on the sense of exemption rather
than on the sense of pressure. When we use the word duty,
we dwell on the sense of pressure rather than on the sense of
exemption. But neither sense can exist apart from the

252 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

other : or rather each sense is of the very essence of the
other. When I say that I have a sense of duty, I mean that
I am conscious of a claim being made upon me, a lawful
claim which I cannot resist by any but violent or quasi-
material means, — a claim the very enforcement of which is
a source of spiritual freedom, in that it disdains to enforce
itself by any but spiritual means, and so leaves me free (the
paradox is unavoidable) either by resisting it to forfeit
freedom, or by meeting it to win freedom, the very freedom
by which alone it can be met. And I am conscious, further,
that the claim upon me is made by myself, by what is
highest and most real in me. My sense of duty is the sense
of pressure put upon me by the infinite in me, by my own
ideal self. The sense of pressure is present because the
attraction of the infinite is a real force. The sense of freedom
is present because the ideal self is the real / and because
action which is initiated by me, the real me, is necessarily
free. Indeed I am never really free except when I yield to
the pressure of my ideal self ; for in yielding to that pressure
I allow the true self to energize ; and then for a moment it
is /, the real I, wholly self -constrained and therefore wholly
free, who act.

Freedom, Conscience, Duty, — it matters little which of
these names we use when we try to find words for that
singular experience, that feeling of being at once coerced
and free (the coercion being the very source of the freedom)
which is the central feature of man's moral nature. The
experience must be taken as given. To construct it a priori
is as impossible as to disprove it on a priori grounds. Argu-
ments against it which are drawn from lower levels of
experience fall to the ground when confronted by a feeling
whose very presence in our hearts is a call to us to lift our
thoughts and our theories on to higher levels of experience,
and to widen the whole horizon of our minds. If we wish
to account for the feeling, we must ask it to help us to
construct a theory of things in which a fitting place will be
found for it. Whether we are conscious of its help or not
matters little. That a sense of compulsion should have a
sense of freedom as its other self is inexplicable except on
one hypothesis, namely, that the forces which constrain my

GROWTH THROUGH CONSCIENCE 253

inner life — unlike the material forces which act upon me
from without — are my own, in the sense of belonging to
what is real, though perhaps as yet unrealized, in me. The
latent pressure of this hypothesis on my thoughts was no
doubt the chief factor in the evolution of that paramount
theory of things which I have been trying to expound, and
in the light of which I can now see a meaning in the central
paradox of man's inner life. The Universe, as it seems to
me, is an infinite process from and to the ideal goal of
spiritual perfection. The life of man is one of the channels
through which the ocean river of cosmic energy takes its
appointed course. This stream of Nature's central forces
through the life of man in the direction of a goal which is
hers and his — hers in that it is the real or positive pole of
her being and therefore the magnetic pole of all her desires
and efforts, his in that it dwells in every man as an infinitely
distant yet ever present ideal — this flow of spiritual energy
reveals itself as Freedom, whenever the pressure that it
exerts is realized as originating in man's own ideal (and
therefore real) self ; as Conscience, whenever the pressure
is realized as guidance and stimulus from within ; as Duty,
whenever the pressure is realized as the advancement and
enforcement by a high authority of an incontrovertible
claim. In other words, that compulsion from within which
reveals itself to me, now as a sense of moral obligation, now
as a warning, a guiding, and an inspiring voice, is the only
source of the only freedom which is worth dying — and
living — for, the freedom which is the counterpart of life.

CHAPTER IV

GROWTH THROUGH CONDUCT

A. THE AIM

/TTNHE pressure of the central tendencies of Nature (in
J. and through their efforts to realize themselves) on
the individual life and personality generates the sense of
duty, with all that duty implies. The being of Nature is an
eternal struggle, and that struggle re-enacts itself in each of
us. There is, however, a change, as we pass from the larger
to the lesser stage, — a change from destiny to duty, from is
to ought, from might to right. By generating the sense of
duty, Nature makes each of us, in the region of " free con-
scious action," the instrument of her will. The tendency that
is winning presents itself to consciousness as the tendency
that ought to win. When we say that we ought to do so
and so, we mean that we are biased in favour of such and
such a course of action, that our sympathies are enlisted in
behalf of such and such a cause. And it is by setting up in
our minds a bias in its own favour, by enlisting our sym-
pathies in its own behalf, that the tendency which is winning
ensures its ultimate triumph and proves its inherent strength.

Destiny determines duty. The real tendencies of Nature
are the well-springs of the ideal. The flow of the stream of
cosmic energy through the channels of the human soul gives
a central aim and purpose to each individual life. To
become conscious of this central aim and purpose is wisdom :
to co-operate with it is goodness. Let us ask ourselves what
it is.

When we say that destiny determines duty we have given
our first answer to this question. Just as what I do believe
in the secret recesses of my heart coincides with what I
ought to believe, so what I am doing (what is being done in

254

GROWTH THROUGH CONDUCT 255

me, for me, and through me) in the depths of my buried
life coincides with what I ought to do. The real movement
of Nature, the movement towards her own ideal, which is
carried on in me and in each of my fellow men, not merely
determines but may even be said to constitute the central
aim and purpose of my life.

I have given my reasons for thinking that the real move-
ment of Nature is a spiritual movement and that the ideal
of Nature is pure spirituality. If this is so, the duty of man
is to spiritualize himself, to aim at spiritual perfection. This
is the goal towards which we are all being carried, with or
without the consent of our foresight and our will. It is for
us to decide whether we shall swim with or against the
current of our destiny, a current which is strong enough to
sweep us towards its own goal even when we seem to be
stemming its waters. To swim with it, to co-operate with
the forces that are making for the evolution of our spiritual
nature, is, for obvious reasons, our wisdom, our duty, and
(in the truest sense of the word) our happiness.

But what do we mean by spiritual perfection ? It is well
that we should ask ourselves this question. In the idea of
spirituality there are many pitfalls. Associations cling to
the word which are ever tending to narrow, degrade, and
emasculate our interpretation of it. Let us, then, get rid
of these by going back to what is elementary and abstract
in our usage of it. We have seen that the path of synthesis
takes us in the direction of what is spiritual, and the path
of analysis in the direction of what is material ; and we
have inferred from this that pure spirit — the spiritual pole
of existence— is the supreme and all-inclusive reality,
the last term in Nature's infinite " series," and the term in
which all other terms are at once transcended and summed
up. We have seen, in other words, that the idea of
spirituality is the resultant of two fundamental conceptions.
For we may think of the last term in the cosmic series as
transcending all the other terms, as rising (in the loneliness
of its perfection) above their lower and grosser levels
of existence — in a word, as being absolutely pure. Or we
may think of it as summing up all the other terms, as
absorbing them into itself, as being the principle of unity

256 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

in their multiplicity and diversity — in a word, as being
absolutely whole. These two conceptions — purity and
wholeness, spirituality proper (as, in deference to popular
usage, we may perhaps call it) and all-embracing reality-
are the divergent sub-ideas, of which the central idea
of spirituality (in the widest and deepest sense of the word)
is the resultant. It is in the highest degree important
(as we shall presently see) that each of these conceptions
should at all times balance, limit, and support the other.

This interpretation of the word spiritual throws a pene-
trating light on the problem which we are trying to solve.
To spiritualize his being is the first and last duty of man ;
and to spiritualize one's being is something more than to
refine and purify it ; it is also, and above all, to universalize
it, to expand it till it becomes commensurate with the
highest and widest of all communities, till it becomes one
with the totality of things, one with the world-soul, one
with God It is towards the light of this infinitely distant
ideal that man does and must set his face.

This conclusion, which my mind, in its speculative orbit,
has already touched, but to which it now returns, with a
clearer consciousness of the part that it has to play and a
fuller realization of its meaning, is something more than a
quasi-logical inference from metaphysical premises. The
deepest experiences of the soul bear it out. The desire for
re-union with God is the central feature of that mystical
(spiritually mystical) element in religion, which dogmatism,
with its instinctive antipathy to whatever is natural,
spontaneous, and spiritual, has always either frowned upon
or ignored, but which has been the very life and soul of
every living creed. " To become one spirit with God " is
the master desire of the Christian mystic, whatever may be
the church or sect to which he happens to belong ; and
though this fervent dream far transcends the normal scope
of Christian thought and feeling, the significant fact remains
that the cardinal doctrine of Christianity is the expression
in a quasi-concrete form of the idea that the soul of man is
potentially commensurate and even identical with the soul
of God. In the Far East the desire for re-union with God is
more widely diffused and more openly professed than in

GROWTH THROUGH CONDUCT 257

Christendom, and has a more pantheistic flavour, manifest-
ing itself for the most part as a longing for re-absorption
into the living Whole. Whatever form the desire may take,
it is sure to be scoffed at by " common sense " and radically
misinterpreted by popular thought. The idea that under-
lies it is so essentially inward and spiritual that the mind
which thinks (as most mindsBdo) in pictures and images, must
needs turn it into nonsense before it has begun to criticize
it. Even Tennyson, one of the most imaginative of poets,
was not imaginative enough to do justice to this grandly
mystical idea. For him, as for most of us, absorption into
the living Whole implied the loss of consciousness and the
destruction of personality.1 In reality it implies the exact
opposite of each of these. It implies a development — an
expansion and illumination — of consciousness, which carries
it far beyond the horizon of our thought ; and it implies the
rinding of the real self, which is impersonal indeed, but only
in the sense that it is the very fountain-head of personality.
It is because popular thought separates God from Nature
and from Man, that it regards re-union with the divine as
intrinsically impossible ; and it is because it identifies the
Cosmos with the visible universe that it shrinks from a
destiny which it regards as but one degree removed from
annihilation. It is not until the Cosmos has been first
spiritualized and then deified, that the inward meaning of
the desire for re-union with it can disclose itself to human
thought. I am, qua body, a part of the material universe,
but in no sense one with it. On the contrary, all of it that
is outside my body is a vast " Not -myself "; my con-
sciousness severs me from it. Inclusion in a whole is an
entirely different thing from oneness with it. If I am but
a drop in the wide ocean of being, my life is distinct
both from the lives of all other drops and from the life of
the ocean as a whole. We must dismiss from our minds all
mathematical and mechanical notions and all material

1 That each, who seems a separate whole,
Should move his rounds, and fusing all
The skirts of self again, shall fall
Remerging in the general soul,

Is faith as vague as all unsweet 1

In Memoriam.

258 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

images when we ponder on the spiritual mystery of re-
absorption into the divine life. If I am to become one with
the Universe, I must become one with it qud soul. I must
expand my being till it becomes identical and commensurate
with the essence of all things. I must absorb the divine
soul into mine as truly as my soul is absorbed into the
divine. I must make the All-consciousness my own.

An infinitely distant goal this, and one which, though
eternally approachable, is also eternally unattainable. Yet
nothing less than this can content me as the ideal end of my
existence. And it is only in making this goal the ideal end
of my existence that I can see a meaning in that cosmic
circle of being in which I have already professed my faith.
As each wave of effluent life completes its infinite movement,
it streams back to its divine source, not as a mere refluent
wave of vital energy, but as a host of godlike souls. This is
the fundamental miracle of existence, that the One life
becomes Many, and in the fulness of time (or of eternity)
lifts each of the many lives to the unimaginable level of its
own purity and perfection.

If, then, the spirit of man is to fulfil its destiny, it must
labour unceasingly to widen the sphere of its vision, to
enlarge the scope of its energies, to develop all its powers,
to deepen all its depths, to exalt all its heights, so that at
last, " at infinity/' it may be able to share in the divine
consciousness, and to merge its being — to lose itself and to
find itself — in the divine life.

What is the way to this ideal end ? The time has come
for us to prepare for a descent into the sphere of practical
life, of conduct. We have studied the problem of growth in
the sphere of belief. We are now in the borderland between
belief and conduct. We have come to the confines of that
borderland, and we must be prepared to leave it. When I
ask how the process of soul-growth is to be carried on, I
am thinking, now and henceforth, of growth through
conduct.

We have seen that the end of the process of soul-growth
is spiritual perfection, — another name for which is union
or re-union with God ; and we have also seen that the idea

GROWTH THROUGH CONDUCT 259

of spirituality is the resultant of two fundamental concep-
tions, " spirituality proper " (by which we mean absolute
immateriality or transcendent purity) and " all-embracing
reality." Here we have two distinct ways of thinking about
God, the spiritual pole of the Universe ; and it is well that
we should think about God, when we are about to pass from
belief to conduct, for duty to man, which is so large an
element in conduct, is regulated, in the last resort, by one's
conception of duty to God.

The two ways of thinking about God are really one, in the
sense that neither discloses its true meaning until it has
merged itself in the other ; but we shall find it convenient,
at any rate in the first instance, to regard them as two. We
will begin, then, by giving two rival answers to the question
which we have asked ourselves ; and when we have set forth
each answer and exposed its inadequacy, we shall perhaps be
able to bring the two together and fuse them into a higher
truth.

Let us first think of God as pure spirituality, in the
narrower sense of the latter word. If God is pure spirit-
uality, and if union with God is man's destiny, it stands to
reason that it is man's duty to lead a purely spiritual life.
How is this to be done ? As a matter of fact each of us is
at any given moment leading many lives — the animal life,
the domestic life, the social life, the business life, the pro-
fessional life, the artistic life, the literary life, the scientific
life, the political life, and so forth. Each of these lives is so
varied and complex and has so many sub-lives dependent
on it that the environment, even of the average man,
seethes and surges with the cross currents of a thousand
aims, interests, pursuits, and pleasures. That being so, a
new question arises : Are not these lives and sub-lives,
these aims, interests, pursuits, and pleasures so many
hindrances to and distractions from the true Godward life,
the "life of " pure spirituality " ? Ought not one to turn
one's back on these lower and lesser lives, to renounce
them, to die to them ? In fine, is not the path that leads
through self-denial to inward and spiritual aspiration and
effort the only way of safety for the soul that seeks to be
" saved " ?

260 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

A logical process, which is vital rather than formal, and
which is based, in part at least, on the popular confusion
between spirituality and immateriality, has led many men
to answer " yes " to this question. The ascetic ideal has a
strong, though intermittent, fascination for the human
spirit ; and the corresponding life, the life of holiness or
saintliness, the life which holds itself aloof from "the
world," has won for itself, from men who do not attempt to
lead it, a degree of almost superstitious reverence which no
student of human nature can afford to ignore.

Yet the inadequacy of the ascetic ideal is too patent to
need demonstration. The form which asceticism takes is,
as a rule, that of monasticism, the withdrawal of the ascetic
into a communal life which keeps him entirely aloof from the
world. In India the wandering ascetic takes the place of
the monk. And where Puritanism survives, the ascetic,
though otherwise withdrawn from the world, is allowed to
live the lives of domesticity and " business " and is not
expected to mortify his flesh. Were the monastic ideal
widely and consistently pursued, the secular activity of
what we call the civilized world would be almost entirely
suspended, and the life of man on earth would come to an
abrupt end. But, apart from these practical objections to
what is undoubtedly the most popular form of asceticism,
it is easy to see that, even as an ideal for the individual soul,
the ascetic life is fatally defective, that in spite of its con-
suming zeal for spirituality, its spiritual merits are small.
Each of the many lives which ordinary men are doomed to
lead and content to lead has its counterpart in an environing
" world." Thus there is the world of the senses, the world
of the domestic affections, the social world, the professional
world, the world of business, of art, of letters, of knowledge,
of public action. If each of the corresponding lives is to be
renounced by the man who is seeking after God, does it not
follow that each of these worlds is destitute of God's pres-
ence ? Where, then, is God to be found ? In the " abysmal
deeps " of one's own soul ? But what is left of the soul when
self after self (for each environing world centres in a separate
self) has been cast aside as a mere ' ' body of death " ?
What will be the issue of this process, of this progressive

GROWTH THROUGH CONDUCT 261

denaturalizing of the spiritual world and despiritualizing of
Nature ? Will not God at last be driven away from the
world which he animates and sustains, — driven beyond the
horizon of human experience, beyond the " flaming walls "
of the environing Universe ? Will not the God whom the
" saint " seeks after prove to be the visionary ruler of a
phantom world ? And what shall we say of the life that is
devoted to the pursuit of this illusion ? Can the powers of
the soul grow to maturity in a vacuum ? Is it " goodness "
to be destitute of human sympathy, to have stifled natural
affection, to let one's talents and energies rust in disuse,
to be blind to the wonder and glory and beauty of Nature,
to be insensible to the magic of art and song, to be indifferent
to the progress of knowledge and the evolution of thought ?
If these negative virtues, each of which tends in its own way
to restrict the scope of man's life and to narrow or rather to
mutilate his soul, — if these constitute " saintliness," and if
soul-expansion is the ideal end of human action, can we say
that the saint — be he a Trappist monk, a sanctimonious
Puritan, or an Oriental ascetic — is leading the ideal life ?

Let us now ask ourselves what form the growth of the
soul is likely to take in the life of one who thinks of God, not
as pure spirituality, but as all-inclusive reality, as all-
sustaining energy, as the All of Being, as the living Whole.
For such a mind the goal of soul-growth — oneness with God
— seems to be comparatively easy of access. It is the destiny
of each of us to live many lives, to have his being in many
worlds, to adjust the respective aims and claims of many
selves. One has but to live each of these many lives freely
and fully (so the pantheist instinctively argues) in order to
find the God whose presence illuminates each of these many
worlds, and in finding him to realize the divine potencies of
one's own many-sided self. The merits of this pantheistic
conception of life must not be made light of ; and the
sweeping condemnation which holiness is apt to pass on the
resultant manner of living must be regarded as the outcome
of a narrow mind and an unsympathetic heart. The atmos-
phere of freedom with which the soul that has a large out-
look on life surrounds itself is eminently favourable to
growth ; and the tolerance, the good-humour, the breadth

262 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

of sympathy, the far-reaching interest in things, which the
life of vivid and varied experience tends to generate, are
probably quite as near to the true centre of gravity of
human life, to the " Kingdom of God/' as are the purity,
austerity, and singleness of heart of the ascetic saint.

Quite as near — but no nearer. The defects of the life that
is based on self-indulgence (even in the widest sense of the
word) are as real and as fatal to soul-expansion as are the
defects of the life that is based on ascetic self-denial. The
man who sees God in each of the many worlds that surround
him, and who, having ceased to conceive of God as a spiritual
ideal, has lost his standard of comparison, will tend to
regard all the worlds, all the spheres of activity, as equally
divine, and will end by losing sight of the primary distinc-
tion between higher and lower, between real and unreal,
between right and wrong. That such a conception of life
is fatal to the pursuit of an ideal, fatal to self-culture, fatal
to soul-growth ; that it tends to unweave the fabric of
man's higher life and transform the cosmos which his spirit
is slowly evolving into a formless chaos ; that it tends to
degrade the divine from the highest summit of the soul's
aspiring dreams to the lowest level of the actual, — is a self-
evident truth which I need not take pains to demonstrate.

But the more directly practical consequences of the
pantheistic hypothesis are so grave and their ulterior
tendency is so disastrous, that I must be allowed to try to
forecast them. When the distinction between right and
wrong is deliberately ignored, a view of life begins to prevail
which is at first simply non-moral, but gradually, under the
stress of subtle spiritual forces, becomes immoral and even
defiantly anti-moral. The attempt of the pantheist to live
freely and fully in each of the many worlds that surround
him — to live as freely and as fully in this world as in that
— is foredoomed to failure, for the obvious reason that the
various worlds are more or less in competition with one
another, and therefore will not allow him to divide himself
impartially among them. Whatever view of life we may
take, we must admit that, as a matter of plain experience,
we are again and again called upon to choose between con-
flicting motives to action. In such crises the soul that

GROWTH THROUGH CONDUCT 263

regards all courses of action as equally right will be apt, in
the absence of a guiding principle, to yield to the pressure
of momentary desires and impulses, the strength of which,
when the counter-influence of a moral ideal has been with-
drawn, may well become irresistible. If every desire and
every impulse is divine, the grosser desires and baser im-
pulses have as strong claims upon us as those which come
from higher and purer sources. Let this be admitted ; and
the grosser desires and baser impulses will speedily develop
an energy so cyclonic as to sweep away all moral restraints
and in the end to obliterate all moral landmarks. The
practical value of principle in the region of conduct lies in
this, that it opposes a constant and permanent resistance to
the short-lived violence of lust and passion, and so sustains
the soul until the tempests that assail it have worn them-
selves out and died away. In the life that is wholly destitute
of principle there is a serious danger lest might, the mere
quasi-physical might of the passing desire or impulse,
should become the sole measure of right. Were this to
happen, a new principle of action, a perverted and anti-
moral principle, would have been introduced into human
life. It may be doubted if any life can be carried on for long
without the support and guidance of principles. If moral
principles are openly disavowed, the very absence of princi-
ple— the conscious acceptance of the impulse of the moment
as authoritative — will itself become a principle of action, a
demoralizing principle which will disorganize human life
and make at last for the degeneration, the living death of
the soul. The man who has got to regard good and evil as
virtually interchangeable terms will sooner or later pass
beyond the point of perfect neutrality — a point at which
no one can rest for more than a moment — and restore the
distinction between good and evil, but in an inverted form.
The spiritual influences which denounce and resist the
aggressive claims of lust and passion and selfishness will
become the object, not of the tolerance which his philosophy
ought to extend to them, but of his active antipathy.
Having begun by saying that evil (or what passes for such)
is no worse than good, and good no better than evil, he will
go on to say : " Evil, be thou my good."

264 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

As each of these one-sided conceptions of life has proved
a practical failure, we must now bring them together in
order that they may combine their respective merits and
correct each other's defects. We have deduced our ethics
from our theology. The former having failed to satisfy us,
we must go back to the latter and endeavour to purify the
springs of action at their fountain head. We must begin by
reminding ourselves that the seemingly divergent concep-
tions of God which we have found it convenient to regard
as two are virtually and essentially one, that neither of
them is what it really is or means what it really means, so
long as it is divorced from the other. Pure spirituality and
all-embracing reality are one and the same thing. The
actual world of which we have experience may possibly be
a mere phase or aspect — one among many — of the actual
Universe. But, whatever may be its limits or dimensions,
" it is our all " ; and to seek God apart from it or beyond it
is to reduce both it and him to non-existence. It is not by
emptying the actual world of its substance that we arrive
at spirituality. It is by informing the actual world with all
that is truly substantial (in the proper sense of the word)
— with life, with soul, with unity, with reality. The actual,
divorced from the spiritual, is a chaos of " jarring atoms " ;
an infinity of virtual nothingness. The spiritual, divorced
from the actual, is a pure illusion, a mere figment of specula-
tive thought. The imaginative mind is apt to think of pure
spirit as either an empty metaphysical abstraction or a
highly volatilized cosmic essence. It is neither of these : it
is the most concrete, the most substantial of all realities.
The spiritual is the life, the soul, the unity, the totality of
the actual. If it is not this, it is null and void. We must
seek for it in the actual, or give up our quest. But in
seeking for it in the actual, in pursuing it through all the
details of life as a realizable though infinitely distant ideal,
we gradually transform the actual into the real. The
synthetic processes which are evolving the spirituality or
vital unity of Nature, are making the actual what it really
is. The intuitive faculties which discern the spirituality of
Nature reveal the actual as it really is. In the supreme
synthesis which men call God, the actual — the all-embracing

GROWTH THROUGH CONDUCT 265

totality of things — becomes (we must needs believe) both
purely spiritual and absolutely real.

If this conception of God is to find appropriate expression
in the sphere of moral action, the two theories of life which
we have set forth and criticized must be combined by some
quasi-chemical process into a new theory of life, larger,
saner, and more harmonious than either of its component
parts. The ideal of spiritual purity and perfection must be
steadily pursued ; this is the beginning of wisdom and of
virtue. But it must be pursued through the environing
medium of the actual. In this way and in no other can we
give substance and reality, meaning and purpose, to what
would otherwise be the vainest and most illusive of quests.
We must count nothing in Nature as common or unclean.
The worlds that surround us are all illuminated, each in its
own manner and degree, by the light of God's presence. We
must therefore try to live freely and fully in each and all of
these, as freely and as fully as is compatible with the due
recognition of their respective degrees of dignity and worth.
But if we wish to arrange them in their natural order, we
must apply to them, each and all, the one infallible test with
which Nature has equipped us. Whether we consciously
pursue an ideal or not, we must, if we wish to live wisely
and well, again and again make our choice between con-
flicting motives. In these seasons of inward strife we must
either have recourse to our dream of spiritual perfection
and subordinate all motives to this one paramount aim, or
we must allow might — the might of each momentary im-
pulse— to become the measure of right. Our more imme-
diate motives, however many and various they may be, will
all, in the last resort, come under the control of one or other
of these competing principles of action. Thirst for the ideal
is, whether we realize its influence or not, the suzerain
motive of our lives. This " master-presence," this haunting
vision of spiritual perfection, will itself (if we allow it to
have its will) arrange, by reference to itself — arrange in
order of natural worth and intrinsic reality — the various
lives that we lead, the various worlds that environ us, the
various desires, aims, and interests that compete for our
favour, the various motives to action among which we are

266 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

called upon to choose. Armed with the clue of faith in the
ideal, the soul can find its way through all the mazes of the
actual. Deprived of this master clue, it has no sense of
scale and no standard of value ; and in its attempts to
order its goings, it will infallibly lose itself in what has
become, for it, the most bewildering of labyrinths.

To the question " How is soul-growth to be achieved ? "
we can now answer " By the pursuit of the ideal — the ideal
of spiritual perfection — in and through a vivid and varied
life in the actual."

The thesis of this book is that happiness is the concomi-
tant of " healthy and harmonious growth/' The conclusion
which I have just reached throws light on the part which the
word " harmonious " plays in this formula. The growth of
a thing is always carried on in all the " dimensions " of the
world to which the thing belongs. In this outward and
visible world from which all our similes are drawn, there are
three spatial dimensions ; but when we talk about the
growth of material things, we find it convenient to let two
of these dimensions coalesce into one. A tree, for example,
which, in virtue of its majesty and beauty, may be regarded
as a fit symbol of the growing or expanding soul, is said to
grow in two dimensions only, — upwardness and outwardness,
height and girth. In the tree that grows naturally, healthily,
and under the most favourable conditions, there is (or, at
any rate, there may be supposed to be) a perfect harmony
between the two modes of growth. When trees are planted
close together, their upward growth is fostered at the expense
of their outward. When trees are " pollarded," their out-
ward growth is fostered at the expense of their upward.
The mast -like growth of the former type is as far removed
from the symmetry and beauty of a harmoniously developed
tree as is the bush-like growth of the latter. It is the same
with the soul. The healthy soul is one which grows strongly
upward and strongly outward, and maintains, on the whole
and in the long run, a progressive balance between the two
modes of growth. This balance is of the very essence of the
soul's life and health. Each mode of growth must be
carried on, not only for its own sake, but also for the sake
of the other. Unless the soul grows steadily upward, its

GROWTH THROUGH CONDUCT 267

outward growth, besides being unsymmetrical and otherwise
unlovely, will neither be varied nor full. The ideal, and the
ideal alone, gives to the various lives that man leads their
proper values ; and unless each life has its proper value
assigned to it, unless each branch takes its due direction
and grows with its due degree of strength and luxuriance,
it will impede or be impeded by the growth of other branches,
its output of twigs and leaves will be either excessive or
defective, and the general lateral growth of the tree will be
confused, inharmonious, and unproductive. So, too, unless
the growth of the tree in girth — a growth which carries
branch-growth with it — is duly proportioned to its growth
in height, the tree will not ascend in safety, except while it
remains in the cloistered shade of its woodland life. Trans-
planted into the open — and sooner or later every soul must
breathe the air of spiritual freedom or give up the business
of growing — the soul that has made no branch-growth,
except at the top of its stem, where branch-growth produces
top-heaviness, will probably fall a victim to one of the many
storms that are waiting to assail it ; its morbidly narrow
idealism will expose it to reactionary influences which may
well level it to the very ground ; and it is even possible that
in the end its loss of an ideal will be as complete as its
pursuit of an ideal was fanatical and uncharitable. The
soul that combines outward with upward growth will ascend
at last to higher levels of spirituality than the soul that
thinks of nothing but ascending, and neglects, after each
fresh upward effort, to widen the basis of its growth. In the
soul that is growing symmetrically and productively, the
steadfast ascent towards the ideal, towards what is at once
central and supreme, is carried on quite as much through
the lateral development of the branches — each developing
itself in due subordination to and in due harmony with the
growth of the whole tree — as in the vertical development of
the stern. The maintenance of a balance between the two
modes of growth is quite as important as the maintenance in
each dimension of a vigorous habit of growth. Indeed,
without the maintenance of the balance, vigorous growth in
either dimension is impossible.

Soul-expansion, then, or soul-growth, is a continuous

268 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

movement of the soul in the two dimensions of upwardness,
or inward and spiritual aspiration, and outwardness, or
many-sided interest and sympathy. Each mode of growth
should be as vigorous and as persistent as is compatible with
the vigour and the persistence of the other ; and it is by
duly and permanently maintaining the balance between
the two modes of growth, that the full development and final
triumph of each is assured.

CHAPTER V

GROWTH THROUGH CONDUCT

B. THE WAY

IT is in the sphere of Conduct that ordinary men — men
who are unintellectual and unimaginative, men who
have no turn for high thinking or cosmic feeling — make or
unmake their souls. For such persons the battle that is
being waged in the sphere of belief is of vital interest, but
chiefly because in that sphere and in the course of that
battle ideas are formed and transformed, and because ideas,
through their control, first of belief and then of conduct,
rule the world. But it is not to the ordinary man only that
the sphere of conduct offers the choice between life and
death. For the more exceptional man, the man who has a
turn for high thinking and cosmic feeling, the sphere of
conduct has a twofold interest and a twofold meaning.
Through the reaction of his conduct on his character the
thinker, as we may call him — and after all there is some-
thing of the thinker in each of us — makes or unmakes his
own soul ; and through the reaction of his conduct on his
whole attitude towards life, and therefore on his ideas, he
helps to make or unmake the soul of others.

In the sphere of conduct the desire for finality which is
generated by our instinctive dread of the infinite, takes the
deadliest of all forms. If it is bad for a man to find rest in
a formula, or a rule, it is far worse for him — it is death itself,
or at least the beginning of death — to find rest in his own
undeveloped self. The man who finds, or tries to find, rest
in his own self, whatever form his cult of finality may take,
is an egoist ; and egoism is the beginning and end of im-
morality. That the conception of the meaning and purpose
of life for which I am pleading is borne out by the collective

269

270 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

experience of mankind, seems to be proved by one significant
fact. If we examine our unwritten codes of moral law, we
shall find that in each and all of them whatever is accounted
evil — be it a desire, an act, a quality, or a habit — tends
either to contract the soul or (at best) to arrest its growth.

Let us start with the ordinary self and ask ourselves how
its various vices and moral weaknesses react upon it. Let
us first consider those which are commonly regarded as the
lowest and grossest, — incontinence, intemperance (in food
and drink), indulgence in drugs, uncontrollable anger, the
lust of cruelty, and the like. All these " war against the
soul." In other words, they tend to degrade it to the level
of its own animal plane of existence. This they do in two
ways. They set up in the soul affinities for material ends
and objects, and so drag it back into the mire (for mire it is
until it has been transfigured and spiritualized) out of which
it is ever struggling to emerge. And they bind the soul in
the iron chains of immutable habit, thereby depriving it of
freedom, which, as we have seen, is the very counterpart of
spirituality and therefore one of the vital conditions of
spiritual development. Thus they not merely hinder the
soul from growing but they actually reverse the process of
its growth, — contract it, degrade it, unweave the fabric of
its higher self.

Next to these carnal vices come the moral failings which
are generated by petty egoism, — vanity, self-conceit, self-
importance, self-will, envy, jealousy, malice, slander, and
other forms of uncharitableness. By petty egoism I mean
that attitude towards life which reflects the reluctance of
the soul to meet the demands that self-development makes
on its energy and devotion, and its consequent attempt to
find a substitute for self -development in self-assertion.
When a man loves himself (as it is but right that he should
do) and yet will not take the trouble to earn self-love by
self -development, he must needs try to persuade himself
that his actual, undeveloped, self-centred self is worthy of
a sentiment which is really his initial response to the call of
the ideal self. With this end in view, he must, if possible,
get others to think well of him, or at least to think much of
him, and so provide him with an antidote to his own secret

GROWTH THROUGH CONDUCT 271

self-distrust. He must try to bulk large in the eyes of his
neighbours, to impose himself upon them, to assert himself
against them, to bend them to his will, to exalt himself at
their expense, to get himself talked about, to make himself
envied, applauded, followed, imitated. The sphere of his
influence may be a very narrow one, but it will probably be
large enough for his purpose. If he can but be the centre
of a circle, it matters little how small that circle is. In his
desire to push himself to the centre, or to what he conceives
to be the centre, he necessarily disregards the rights and
interests, the feelings and susceptibilities of others, and so
sets up a habit of selfishness which at last becomes his
second nature. But the real source of his moral failings lies
deeper than men suspect. From first to last his life is based
on self-deception. When his secret doubts have at last been
silenced, when his secret self-distrust has been removed,
when he has convinced himself that his ordinary self is
worthy of the high esteem in which he desires to hold it,
worthy of the love which really belongs to his ideal self, —
then the process of soul-growth has been arrested, and
degeneration of his moral tissue has set in.

There is a third group of vices which is the outcome of
egoism working more boldly, more aggressively, and on a
larger scale. The desires for wealth, for power, for position,
for fame, lead men to practise every kind of injustice and
unkindness towards their fellow-men, to oppress them, cheat
them, rob them, ruin them. And these desires are all
generated by the effort to aggrandize the ordinary self
instead of expanding it, to enrich it with the accessories of
life instead of with life itself. The soul in which covetous-
ness and ambition — vices which have ever deluged the
world with blood and darkened it with misery — flourish
most vigorously is one in which self-love, though strong and
insatiable, has been entirely divorced from spiritual aspira-
tion. The effect of these vices on the soul that harbours
them is, on the one hand, to destroy its sense of proportion
and its standard of reality, and at last to materialize and
externalize its whole outlook on life, — and, on the other hand,
to make it more and more self-centred, till at last it is drawn
by an irresistible current into the bottomless vortex of its

272 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

own ever-narrowing self. Consciously, we condemn these
anti-social vices because of the ruin and woe that they work
among men. Unconsciously, we condemn them because
they harden, debase, contract, and warp the soul.

There are other evil tendencies which are compatible with
a comparatively high degree of spiritual development. It
is possible to be proof against all the solicitations of sensual
desire, to rise superior to every form of petty egoism, to
despise wealth and power and fame, to have successfully
practised self-control and self-culture, and yet to be pos-
sessed by demons of pride and hatred. In these vices
resistance to the centripetal tendencies of Nature starts
from a far higher level than in any other : for that very
reason it is stronger, more effective, and more injurious to
the soul that practises it. The last, the highest, the most
spiritual, the most deadly of all forms of iniquity — pride,
and the hatred which pride engenders — are the products of
an intense and far-seeing individualism ; the fruits of a soul
in which dread of the infinite has changed into abhorrence
of the infinite, and which is therefore ready to spiritualize
itself in order that it may meet with their own weapons the
spiritual influences which it fears and detests, — ready to go
far along the road of self-expansion in order that it may
strengthen itself to resist the higher expansive forces which
must sooner or later be brought to bear upon it, in order that
by setting these at defiance it may separate itself — in the
madness of its self-exaltation — separate itself fully, finally,
and irretrievably, from the soul of the Universe, from the
spirit of God. A wise instinct has led men to think of the
master spirit of evil, the " Prince of Darkness," as possessed
by the most egoistic, the most centrifugal of all passions, —
as the very personification of pride.*

1 The genesis of spiritual egoism may be studied from a somewhat
different point of view. When the desire for absolute freedom allies itself
with revolt against the haunting claim of the infinite, the resultant way of
living will be egoistic in the fullest and deepest sense of the word. For if
the universe is a living whole, the only way for each of us to integrate him-
self (and so win freedom) without disintegrating it, is to become one with it,
to merge his being in the infinitude of its life. He who thinks to win free-
dom, not by growing into oneness with the living whole, but by becoming
a living whole on his own account, by integrating himself independently of
the supreme integer, by separating himself from the cosmic life and finding
the fulness of life in a little world of his own, has renounced his high birth-

GROWTH THROUGH CONDUCT 273

In each of the four types of evil living which I have
briefly described the dominating motive is the desire for
finality, the desire to find lasting rest in the undeveloped
or partially developed self, in defiance of the demand for
self-realization which the inward ideal, the infinite in man,
is ever making, and, until its voice has been finally silenced,
will never cease to make.

In the first life, the life of self-indulgence, or animal
egoism, distraction from the haunting claims of the inward
ideal is sought in sensual pleasures of various kinds. That
such distraction should have to be sought shows that the
inward ideal is pressing for recognition, and that its claim
has not been rejected and is not yet wholly ignored.

In the second life, the life of self-assertion, or petty
egoism, the claim of the inward ideal is not deliberately
rejected, but, partly from spiritual indolence, partly from
lack of imagination, it is persistently ignored. No attempt
is made to develop self. No serious attempt is made to lift
self above the average level of human achievement. Am-
bition, even of the worldly type, is wanting. So far as an
attempt is made to magnify self, it usually takes the nega-
tive form of belittling other persons and depreciating their
work. Such as the self is, undeveloped and undistinguished,
with its petty aims and interests and its narrow sphere of
activity, — recognition and acceptance are demanded for it ;
and to secure these, by whatever means and at whatever
cost to others, is the central purpose of what is in effect, if
not in intent, an essentially selfish life.

In the third life, the life of self-aggrandizement, or
aggressive egoism, the claim of the inward ideal is more or
less consciously rejected, and outward ideals are adopted in
its place. Wealth, power, position, fame are regarded as
ends in themselves and are pursued ruthlessly and un-
scrupulously, in entire disregard of the feelings and interests

right to the act of laying claim to it prematurely, and has become a disin-
tegrative and morbific influence in the body politic of the great world to
which, in spite of himself, he still belongs. Separatism, spiritual egoism,
when it is deliberately adopted as a scheme of life, is the sin of sins, the
malady of maladies, the equivalent, in the pathology of the soul, of the
disease of rebellious and therefore malignant growth which we call cancer,
in the pathology of the body. And the end of it is not freedom, but im-
prisonment in an ever narrowing self.

274 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

of others. To achieve greatness, not by becoming great—
by " growing in wisdom and stature " — but by seeming to
be great, by energizing on a great scale, by being the centre
of a great circle of disturbance, by wielding power over
many men, is the summit of the soul's ambition. In such
a life success, as the world interprets the word, is the proof
and measure of reality ; the shadow of power — power over
others — is preferred to the substance of power — power over
self ; and the pomp and glitter of life are mistaken for life itself.

In the fourth life, the life of self-development for self's
sake, the life of spiritual egoism, the inward ideal seems to
be consciously accepted, but it is pursued for the sake of
self, not for the sake of liberation from self. This distinc-
tion is all-important. Self -development, when the stress is
laid on development, is the one unfailing antidote to selfish-
ness. Self -development, when the stress is laid on self, is
selfishness raised to the highest imaginable power. In the
life of spiritual egoism, the inward ideal is pursued up to a
certain point, but only in order that the rebellious soul
may learn (taught by its enemy) how best to resist and
defy it.1

There are two features, then, which all vices, all bad
habits, all forms of moral evil have in common, — two features
which are really one. They are all generated (if we go back
to their fountain head) by the desire to find rest in the
actual self, whatever that may happen to be, — to find
shelter in it from the pursuing shadow of the infinite, to find
release in it from the hateful necessity of growing in mind
and spirit, of realizing an inward ideal in one's own character
and one's own life. And they all tend, in their various ways,
to arrest, if not to reverse, the process of soul-growth.

There is an obvious moral to these reflections : Be good,
if you would be happy. Be wise, also, if you can. But in any

1 There is no reason why all these lives should not be lived by the same
person. I have found it convenient to separate them, but I know well
how ready they are to intermingle their respective influences ; and I doubt
if there are many men who have not at one time or another felt the attrac-
tive force of each kind of life. The attractive force of the third and the
fourth lives may be rarely felt, and may be evanescent when it is felt. Yet
most men know from personal experience the meaning of the words
ambition and covetousness ; and there are few men who have not had their
moments (if not their seasons) of spiritual pride.

GROWTH THROUGH CONDUCT 275

case, and above all, be good. There are few men who can,
even if they will, be wise. But there are few who cannot, if
they will, be good. Be good — but why ? Because growth
makes for happiness, and goodness makes for growth. Am
I then bidding men be good for selfish reasons ? No, but
for the most unselfish of all. For the growth that makes
for happiness is never-ending growth, growth that reaches
on and on into the infinite, growth that makes men outgrow
self, and escape from self, and forget self.

How then, is goodness — moral goodness, virtue, righteous-
ness, right conduct — call it what you will — to be achieved ?
By resisting the lure of finality, by refusing to rest in self,
by trying to escape from self. This is an obvious answer to
my question. Let us see how it bears on each of the four
vicious lives. In the life of self-indulgence, the lure of
finality takes the form of the lure of the senses, and escape
from self means escape from the animal self, from bondage
to the flesh. How is this escape to be effected ? Mainly by
the exercise of self-control. Other influences, such as the
cultivation of sympathy and the enlargement of the sphere of
interest, will count for something, in some cases for much.
But the supreme emancipative influence, and the one which
can never be dispensed with, is self-control. For the life of
self-indulgence is not necessarily anti-social. In some of
the most odious and demoralizing of sensual vices the
vicious man is the only sufferer. It is true that systematic
self-indulgence unfits a man for social service. And it is
true that if the sensualist finds it necessary to sacrifice the
well-being of others to the gratification of his own desires,
he will do so with but little compunction. But it is also
true that in his general attitude towards his fellow-men he
is not consciously or even subconsciously selfish. He does
not wish to assert himself against his neighbour, or to
dominate him, or to aggrandize himself at his expense. Still
less does he wish to stand aloof from him. As often as not
he is by nature friendly and good-natured, and in some of his
failings he finds that the sense of companionship enhances
his pleasure. What he does wish is to indulge his own
desires and passions, at whatever cost to his own well-being
or (if it must be so) to the well-being of others.

276 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

The self-control that keeps the animal in man in its place,
reacts on and strengthens the will ; and a strong will is an
essential element in a strong character. But a strong char-
acter is not necessarily a good character ; and a strong will
may be used for purposes of evil as well as of good. Let us
go on to the second type of life — a type with which we are
all familiar — the life of petty egoism, the life of him who,
succumbing to the lure of finality, tries to find rest, for
good and all, in his ordinary, average, everyday, superficial
self, — undeveloped, unexpended, unaggrandized, unadorned.
Unlike the life of self-indulgence, the life of petty egoism is
necessarily selfish, in the sense of being anti-social in ten-
dency,— instinctively rather than deliberately selfish, but
selfish to the very core. Its selfishness is, however, restricted,
in aim and in scope, by want of character, by weakness of
will. The obvious antidote to petty egoism is the cultiva-
tion of sympathy, of the power of going out of self into other
selves and other lives. Here sympathy takes its place by
the side of self-control as one of the great emancipative
influences in man's life. And it is well that it should do so.
For if selfishness, unalloyed or insufficiently alloyed with
sympathy, were to unite itself with force of character, the
life of petty egoism would automatically expand into the
life of aggressive egoism, of self-aggrandizement, the differ-
ence between the two lives being that in the latter there is
not only greater mental power and a larger outlook on life,
but also, and above all, a stronger will.

In the life of self-aggrandizement, as in the life of self-
assertion, the antidote to the poison of selfishness is the
cultivation of sympathy. But as the will is stronger and
the whole scope of life is wider, a fuller measure and perhaps
a higher kind of sympathy will be needed if the poison is to
cease to work. Let us pause for a moment and see where
we stand. In the sphere of conduct there are two great
factors in self -development, — self-control, which enables a
man to subdue the animal in him and in general to master
the lower self, and sympathy, which enables a man to
escape from " self " by the widest and most open of all
channels, by the overflow of his life into the lives of others.
That we should keep the balance between the two factors,

GROWTH THROUGH CONDUCT 277

that progress in each should be met by progress in the
other, is essential if " growth in grace " is to be duly main-
tained. In particular, the stronger the will, the greater the
force of sympathy that will be needed in order that the
selfishness which, when allied with will-power, tends to
become ruthless and aggressive, may be disarmed.

What the loss of the balance between the two factors may
mean, the fourth type of life, the life of spiritual egoism,
will bring home to us with convincing force. Neither in the
life of self-assertion nor in the life of self-aggrandizement is
the capacity for sympathy wholly wanting. The fact that
both lives are anti-social, in their respective degrees, shows
that those who lead them take some interest in social life.
The petty egoist has his cliques and coteries ; he takes
sides in quarrels ; he plays off his friends against his
enemies. The more adventurous egoist has his allies —
partners in his schemes of self-aggrandizement — and his
followers, This means that the spirit of comradeship has
not died out of either heart. But spiritual pride completely
isolates a man from his kind. Nay, it does worse than
isolate him. No man can balance himself for more than an
instant on the knife edge of absolute indifference. In our
general attitude toward mankind, we must choose between
sympathy and antipathy. And our choice, when once
made, will carry us very far. We have seen that in spiritual
egoism dread of the infinite has become hatred of the
infinite. But to hate the infinite is to hate the ideal element
in man. It is to hate the divine spirit which is the true self
of each of us. It is to hate mankind in the act of hating
God. The choice between sympathy and antipathy becomes
at last the choice between love and hate. To live the life of
spiritual egoism in its fulness presupposes exceptional powers
and exceptional experiences, and is therefore given to few
men. But many men have felt the sinister fascination of
spiritual pride. The temptation is one to which men of
strong character and great intellectual power are peculiarly
exposed. When self-development has been carried, through
the practice of self-control, to the high level of complete
self-mastery, one stands at the parting of two infinite ways.
If the balance between self-control and sympathy has been

278 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

lost — and to lose it at all is to run the risk of losing it com-
pletely— the man who is high in development is a devil in
the making. If the balance has been maintained, he is an
angel in the making, a saint (in the larger sense of the
word), an initiate into the high purposes of God, For on
the level which he has reached there is only one way in which
the maintenance of the balance can be provided for : Sym-
pathy must expand into all-embracing love.

Let us now follow, in the sphere of conduct, the career
of one who seeks happiness through soul-growth. He has
set out, as will gradually be revealed to him, on the greatest
of all adventures. Happiness, as he understands the word,
is the sense of well-being. Well-being, as he understands
the word, is another name for healthy and harmonious
growth. The way of growth is the realization of infinite
potentiality. The end of growth is oneness with the infinite
and the divine. The way of growth is therefore the way of
out -growth, of endless self-surrender, of endless emancipa-
tion from self. Realizing this — if not consciously, then in
some secret recess of his soul — he will also realize that in
the sphere of conduct, as of belief, his arch-enemy, what-
ever may be the stage of his development, is his own actual
self. For his actual self shrinks from the prospect of never-
ending development, of having to realize an unattainable
ideal, of having to reach on and on into the infinite ; and it
therefore longs for finality, for rest in its own achievements
and attainments,

for a repose which ever is the same.

But this longing, which will repeat itself again and again,
must be met and combated as often as it invades his soul.
For if he yields to its pressure he will find that arrested
growth is incipient death.

He will need guidance in this great adventure ; and
guidance will be freely given to him. Of guidance from
without he will have enough and to spare, — law (written
and unwritten), tradition, custom, public opinion, the pres-
sure of social and ethical ideals, parental or quasi-parental
advice, priestly direction, and so forth. But if he is to

GROWTH THROUGH CONDUCT 279

make a right use of guidance from without, he must have
guidance from within. And guidance from within will also
be at his service. The ideal which he is seeking to realize is
in himself, in his buried, subconscious life ; and if he will
but turn towards its light, though at first it will scarcely be
discernible, it will not fail to illuminate his path. But the
inward ideal — the infinite, the universal element in his
being — is the same for all men ; and he will therefore need
guidance into the path by which he, such as he is, is to be
led into the broad highway which all will have to tread.
That guidance too is at his service. His own individuality
mediates between his actual and his ideal self ; and if he will
be true to it, it will give him the guidance that he needs, for
it is itself the path that he is seeking. But he will be true
to it, not because he owes allegiance to his individual self,
but because he owes allegiance to his ideal or universal self.
For by the individuality of a man we mean the channel of
communication between his buried and his conscious life ;
we mean the pathway from the actual self to the high-road
that leads to the ideal ; we mean the way of escape from
" self " which Nature, he being what he is, has marked out
for him. If our adventurer will be true to his individuality,
if he will resist the lure of finality, the desire of his un-
developed self for authoritative direction and detailed in-
struction from without, his path, as he follows it, will lead
him at last into the life beyond individuality ; just as the
river which follows its own channel to the sea ends at last
by merging its individuality in a life which is infinitely
wider and deeper than its own.

As a theory of life, the life of the senses will not long
detain him. The sensualist mistakes pleasure for happiness
—a fundamental mistake for which he is doomed to pay
dear. Pleasure is generated by the gratification of a par-
ticular desire, by the well-being — apparent, or at best
temporary — of a particular nerve-centre or group of nerve-
centres. Happiness is generated by the well-being of the
whole man. But the whole man is the real self ; and the
real self has yet to be realized, and will not be realized until
life in and to the infinite has begun. The difference between
sensual pleasure and true happiness, is, therefore, the differ-

28o THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

ence between what is temporary and even momentary, and
what is eternal ; between what is finite — verging in some
cases towards the infinitesimal — and what is infinite. What-
ever may be the actual attraction of a life of " pleasure "
for our adventurer, its ideal attraction is virtually negli-
gible. But its actual attraction for him may be strong, and
in any case — whatever form it may take and whatever
force it may exert — he will have to hold it in check. How
is this to be done ? Not by mortifying the flesh, but by
dominating it. Self -mortification would upset the balance
of his nature and disturb the harmony of its growth. The
flesh is the vehicle of the spirit, and therefore its servant
and instrument, not its hereditary enemy. He will allow
the flesh to have its way so long as its desires do not conflict
with the interests of his higher self. When they do, he wall
resist its impulses, he will place an armed guard in charge
of it. In other words, he will steer a middle course between
self-indulgence and self-mortification by practising self-
control.

With his spiritual nerves and sinews braced by this dis-
cipline, he will face the more subtle and complex tempta-
tions of social life. Here the desire for finality makes for
egoism, for petty egoism when the character is relatively
weak, for aggressive, adventurous egoism when the char-
acter is strong. The seeker for happiness will find deliver-
ance from egoism in responding to the call of the infinite.
No one who has given his heart to the infinite, will mistake
the semblance of reality — whatever may be the weight of
opinion that vouches for its genuineness — for reality itself.
And with the sense of reality will come the sense of pro-
portion, the power of appraising at their proper value con-
flicting ideals and competing courses of action. In the life
of petty egoism what a man is reputed to be is his chief
concern. In the life of aggressive egoism achievements and
possessions — the means to the acquisition of power — are his
chief concern. When they are brought to the touchstone
of the inward ideal, the touchstone of intrinsic reality, the
hollo wness of these outward ideals is at once exposed. It is
not what a man is reputed to be that matters, but what he
is in himself. The reputed self is neither actual nor real.

GROWTH THROUGH CONDUCT 281

What a man has made of himself is at least an actuality,
and therefore matters much. What he might make of him-
self, what he has it in him to become, matters more, for in
the last resort it is the central reality of his existence. So,
too, achievements and possessions, however great they may
be, are always finite and measurable, and are therefore
convicted of unreality when exposed to the searchlight of
the infinite ; and power over others is but the shadow of
the reality of power, — power over the limitless reserves of
vitality which are locked up in oneself. With his heart set
on the infinite, the voyager will pass in safety through the
ill-charted seas of social life, with their ever-changing
shoals and currents ; and as the false ideals of social life
lose their power over him, his sympathetic instincts will
spontaneously increase their activity — for the basic element
in sympathy is the sense of oneness with the one all-
embracing life — and will balance and, if necessary, hold in
check the increasing force of will which reflects the dis-
cipline of his self-control.

It is well that he should give those instincts free play.
His perils are not yet over. The very steadfastness of his
purpose, as he reaches on into the infinite, by causing a
disproportionate development of his will-power, may yet
prove his undoing. The consciousness of having dared
much, and endured much, and achieved much, and the
consequent sense of power, may tempt him to concentrate
his interest in himself, and may to that extent isolate him
from his fellow-men. Were this to come to pass, were the
balance between self-control and sympathy to be lost, he
would be exposed to the deadliest of all dangers. For why
has he followed the path of self-development ? Why has
he resisted the lure of finality ? Why has he braved. the
perils of the mysterious and the unknown ? Is it for the
sake of self or for the sake of emancipation from self ? This
is the question of questions. The answer that he gives to it
will decide his destiny. If he is over insistent on self-
development, on making his own self one with the infinite,
it is possible that he may succumb to the last allurement of
his finite self in the very act of flattering himself that he has
finally triumphed over it. It is possible that, having

282 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

escaped a thousand perils, he may suffer shipwreck in sight
of his goal.

But if he has indeed given his heart to the infinite, all will
be well with him ; for in and through his ever-growing love
of the Divine Lover — the soul of his soul, and the soul of all
soul-life — his sympathy with his fellow-men, which has
probably been partial and fitful, will expand into all-
embracing sympathy, and his all-embracing sympathy will
be transfigured into all-embracing love.

When that goal has been reached, when self-development
has lost itself, and found itself, in self -surrender, when the
fulness of self-mastery has wedded itself to the fulness of
love, life in the infinite will at last have begun. Till then
there can be no haven for the seeker after happiness, no
rest for his growing soul. Then there will be rest indeed,
but rest in the infinite, the rest of eternal unrest. What
that rest, the " peace which passeth all understanding,"
may mean, he will not know till he has entered into it.1

Before I close this chapter let me say a word to those who
are wavering, in the sphere of conduct, between desire for
the greatest of all adventures and desire for finality, — for
mental and spiritual repose. The latter desire will never be
fulfilled. A man may possibly find rest in a belief, in a
theory, in a formula. He may never find rest in self. If we
are to live we must work ; and if we are to work we must
serve ; for work which is not service is the activity of a

1 There is one aspect of the moral struggle which I have ignored in this
chapter, not because I undervalue it or have forgotten it, but because it
is, as it happens, the central theme of this book. The desire for finality
in the sphere of conduct, the desire to find rest in the undeveloped, un-
expanded self, leads, as we have seen, to every kind of self-seeking and
self-indulgence, and therefore to every kind of wrong-doing. But what is
most deadly in the desire is that it perverts a man's very effort to do
right, that it takes advantage of his very conscientiousness to lead him
astray. For the man who wishes to do right and yet shrinks, in his timidity
and self-distrust, from the exercise of spiritual initiative, will go to external
authority for instruction and guidance, and, where these are forthcoming,
will ask for them in ever fuller measure, till he will end by selling himself
into slavery and accepting his bonds as the purchase money of his soul.
That this attempt to be " saved " by mechanical obedience, by response
to pressure from without, makes for spiritual death, that it demoralizes
the sinner and even tends to devitalize the saint, is an obvious inference
from the assumption which dominates the Avhole course of my thoughts —
the assumption that life is the reward of growth, and that growth is re-
sponse to pressure from within.

GROWTH THROUGH CONDUCT 283

lunatic or an idiot, not of a rational man. But whom or
what are we to serve ? Our choice lies, in the last resort,
between serving self and serving the Universe. And the
higher we climb, the more fateful will be our choice and the
deadlier the consequences of mischoice. We have to choose
between two exacting taskmasters. The more we give, the
more will each of them demand. But if they are exacting
in their demands, they are generous, according to their
respective capacities,, in their rewards. For each of them
will give itself, and nothing less than itself, to its devotee.
The Universe will give itself to him who lives for it. In
other words, it will place all the infinitude of life at his dis-
posal. Therefore the more faithfully he serves his Divine
Master, the wider will be the scope and the more vivid the
play of his life. And " self " will give itself, with equal
liberality, to the man who is self-centred and self-indul-
gent. But, in response to each act of self -concentration or
self-indulgence, self will shrink a little, like the magic skin
in Balzac's famous allegory. And to this process of shrink-
ing there is no limit. " When a man begins to live for self
he narrows his horizon steadily, till at last the fierce inward
driving leaves him but the space of a pin's head to dwell
in."1 Our choice, then, is not between toil and rest. Toilers
we are and must ever be. Our choice is between the toil
that liberates and the toil that enslaves. If we will not take
the trouble to expand life, we shall have to labour assidu-
ously to contract it.

1 Light on the Path, by M. C.

CHAPTER VI

EARLY GROWTH

THE early stages of growth are by far the most im-
portant. " Well begun is half done." A good — or a
bad — start in life is half the battle of life, — half-way towards
victory or half-way towards defeat. It is more than half
the battle. It is nearly the whole of it. What men or
women are when they have " finished their education "
that they will continue to be, in all essential features, to the
end of their days. There are many exceptions to this rule ;
but in spite of the exceptions the rule holds good. The
moral to it has been drawn for us by a master hand. In a
passage in the Laws which deserves to be far better known
than it is, Plato, when considering the various offices of
State, gives priority, hors concours, to the Directorship of
Education on the ground that " whatever the creature, be it
plant or animal, wild or tame, if its earliest growth makes a
good start, that is by far the most important stage towards
the happy consummation of the excellence of which its
nature is capable." For more than twenty centuries these
wise words — prophetic in their wisdom — have fallen on deaf
ears. The time has come for us to weigh them, if not to
lay them to heart. In the world of plant life early growth,
except so far as it is directed by man for purposes of his
own, is under the control of two factors, " nature " (heredity)
and environment. It is the same in the lower grades of
animal life. But in the higher grades a new factor comes
into play, or rather a new influence is introduced into
environment — the influence of " nurture," in the form of
parental care and control. Nature, working through in-
herited instinct, is still the predominant influence in foster-
ing growth. But the higher the grade of life, the more does

284

EARLY GROWTH 285

nurture count for. And in the case of man nurture counts
for so much as to place him in a class by himself.

For this there are many reasons. I will content my-
self with naming five. The first is that of all young
creatures the human infant is by far the most helpless and
dependent. The second is that the period of helplessness
and dependence lasts longer in its case than in that of any
other living thing. The third is that the child, as a con-
scious being, can receive and obey orders,1 so that those
who have charge of him can direct the activities, physical,
mental, and moral, by which he develops himself, and can
therefore control the actual process of his growth. The
fourth is that the child, as a conscious being, and therefore
as a potentially free agent, can through his own action,
whether that action be spontaneous or authoritatively
directed, either accelerate or retard his own growth, and that
the retarding of growth can be carried so far as to arrest or
even reverse the process. The fifth is that, on all the planes
of his being above the physical, the child has unlimited
reserves of potentiality waiting to be developed.

Hence the enormous importance of education. During
what is pre-eminently the period of growth, the period in
which the future man is, as a rule, either made or marred,
the period in which character and mentality, being tender,
sappy, and pliable, are ready to receive decisive bents, —
during all the years of infancy, childhood, and adolescence,
the educator (the parent, the nurse, the teacher, the guard-
ian) is a providence to the growing child, a good or a bad
providence, as the case may be. His opportunities are
boundless, but they are opportunities for evil as well as for
good. Consider what they are. He has control of the child's
environment, in general. In particular, he has control of
the child's supply of food, — food of all kinds, food for the
body, food for the mind, for the heart, for the soul. He can
give or withhold stimulus, — the magnetic, personal influence
which is so favourable to soul-growth. The child, being
ignorant and comparatively helpless, seems to be waiting
for direction and instruction, and he can give these in un-

1 The horse, the dog, and the elephant can do the same, but not to
anything like the same extent.

286 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

stinted measure. Through his command of the child's
activities he can control the very process of his growth, for
what the child does, in obedience to orders, must needs
react on what he is ; and he can even enter in some sort as
a transforming influence into the laboratory of the child's
inner life. And as the child's reserves of potentiality are
limitless, the range of his transforming influence is corre-
spondingly wide.

With such opportunities awaiting him, the educator, if
he is wise and sympathetic, may well become the guardian
angel of the child's expanding life. But he is much more
likely to become its evil genius. The temptations to misuse
his opportunities will be almost irresistible. It is a mistake
to suppose that direction and instruction are intrinsically
good influences in the child's life. It would be nearer the
truth to say that they are intrinsically bad influences.
Direction may easily take the place of self-direction ; and
instruction may easily stifle the desire for and sterilize the
pursuit of knowledge. The teacher who directs for the
sake of directing or instructs for the sake of instructing, is
doing for the child what the latter ought to be doing for
himself ; he is therefore repressing the spontaneous activity
which is of the essence of growth, and he is atrophying
faculty by relieving the child from the necessity of using it.
And the chances are that the direction which he gives so
freely will be to a large extent mis-direction. For what
does he know of the real nature of his pupil ? When we
say that the child's reserves of potentiality are infinite, we
imply that his inner nature is mysterious, unfathomable,
unknown. Yet if the educator is to order the child's goings
wisely and profitably, he must have sounded those depths
and penetrated those mysteries, arid must have acquired an
illuminating, if not a searching, knowledge of the nature
with which he has "to deal. But what likelihood is there of
his acquiring such knowledge so long as he prevents the
child's nature from revealing itself, so long as he takes for
granted that the child is to become (or rather to be made) a
mere replica of himself ? The education that is all direction
and instruction perpetuates the ignorance on which it is
based. In other words, it is a vicious circle, from which the

EARLY GROWTH 287

educator, until he changes his aims and his methods, will
not be able to escape.

Let us ask ourselves what education might do, and then
see what it usually does. The wise teacher will base his
system of education on whole-hearted trust in the child's
unrealized possibilities, and on partial distrust x>f himself.
He will assume at the outset that the child has an instinc-
tive desire — not the less genuine because it is largely sub-
conscious— for self -development, for knowledge, for social
order. He will give him as favourable an environment as
possible. He will give him (as far as lies in his power)
abundant and varied food. He will give him stimulus — if he
can. He will give him guidance, sparingly, and judiciously,
— the guidance that attracts, not the guidance that compels.
He will give him instruction, when he thinks it will profit
him. And he will give him disciplinary direction, when he
feels that he cannot do otherwise. But he will do his best
to encourage self -discipline and self-instruction ; for he
will know that the former is the real moulder of character,
and the latter, the real fountain-head of knowledge. For
the rest, he will keep discreetly in the background, leaving
the work of education in the main to the spontaneous
energies of the child's unfolding nature, and waiting patiently
for that nature to reveal itself — to reveal itself, first as
expanding life for the child, then as guiding light for the
child and for himself.

But if he will do these things, he will be one in a thousand.
The atmosphere that the teacher breathes is charged with
hostile influences, which he finds it hard to resist, even if he
wishes to do so. The whole existing constitution of things
is against him. The feudal system is dead. Feudalism is
slowly dying. But the influence of a dominant idea out-
lives by many generations the systems and institutions in
which it embodied itself ; and it is therefore no matter for
wonder that our general outlook on life is still predominat-
ingly feudal, and that the social organization of what we
call the civilized world is still feudal in spirit. The basic
idea of feudalism was — and is — distrust of human nature,
and the consequent assumption that men must, for their
own sakes, be socialized and moralized by external authority,

288 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

that well-being must be imposed upon them from without,
instead of being evolved by them from within. The last
stronghold of feudalism, the last refuge of irresponsible
authority, is the school. The reasons for this are obvious.
The child is helpless and dependent and is, therefore, on the
one hand in need of care and control, and on the other hand
unable to defy the authority of the teacher, however arbi-
trary and despotic it may be. The teacher is himself the
victim of feudal pressure ; and it is but natural that he
should seek to pass it on. The lust for dominion, from
which no one is wholly exempt, and which throve with
special vigour in the soil of feudalism, still lingers in his
heart. It is infinitely easier to coerce the child than to
inspire him, to discipline him than to help him to discipline
himself, to instruct him than to stimulate his desire for know-
ledge, to order his goings for him than to give him freedom
for self -development. In the world which surrounds the
teacher, and for which he is expected to prepare the child,
outward ideals are still in the ascendant, success is still
measured by outward standards, outward ends of action
are still set before men from their earliest to their latest
years. So long as this is so, the production of material and
therefore measurable results by coercive and quasi-
mechanical methods will be the aim of all but a small
minority of teachers.

The features of the orthodox type of education are familiar
to most of us. The basis of it is distrust of the child, balanced
by inordinate self-confidence on the part of the teacher.
The child is congenitally naughty and stupid, as well as
ignorant. As he is naughty, he must be forcibly drilled and
disciplined into the semblance of good conduct. As he is
ignorant and stupid, as his mental stomach is empty and
his mental digestion weak, he must be forcibly dieted on
peptonized rations of information. Distrust of the child
both presupposes and perpetuates ignorance of his nature.
No attempt is made to explore its unknown depths, to help
him to realize an inward ideal, to seek light and guidance
from within. Outward ideals (if one may call them so) are
set before him, outward standards of value, outward ends

EARLY GROWTH 2*9

of action. No attempt is made to discover his latent
capacities ; and if these do not obtrude themselves on the
notice of the teacher, if they do not openly demand the
means of expression, it is assumed that they do not exist.
No attempt is made to consult his desires, his tastes, his
inclinations. His business is to produce certain outward
results at the bidding and under the direction of his teacher.
As ends of action, these results do not (in all probability)
appeal to him ; and he must therefore be alternately bullied
and bribed into producing them. His baser fears must be
appealed to by the threat of punishment. His baser desires,
by the promise of material rewards. The results which he
is expected to produce are visible, measurable, ponder-
able. His progress in producing them can therefore be
accurately tested and appraised. The process of testing is
known as examination ; and the verdict of the examiner is
the final end of action for both the teacher and the child.
In working for the examination the child enters — and is
intended to enter — into competition with his class-mates,
whom he henceforth regards as his rivals and possible
enemies. This appeal to his competitive instinct, supple-
menting the threat of punishment and the offer of reward,
takes the place of the appeal to his disinterested desire for
knowledge — to his instinctive desire to overcome diffi-
culties, to solve problems, to gain power, to develop faculty
—to his more deeply seated, because more vital and essen-
tial, desire for beauty, for truth, for ideal good — to his
sense of duty — to his love of his teacher and his school.

In such an atmosphere the sense of reality — of intrinsic
reality — is deadened, if not wholly lost. The feeling that
" I am what I am " gives way, in the subconscious mind of
the child, to the feeling that " I am what I am reputed to
be " ; the feeling that things are what they are, to the
feeling that they are what they are said to be. " Will it
pay ? " takes the place of "Is it what I am seeking ? Is it
true ? " " Will it satisfy the teacher (or the examiner) ? "
takes the place of " Does it satisfy my desire for knowledge?"
" What is my place in class ? " takes the place of " What
progress have I really made ? " The child is living in a world
of make-believe, and he bears himself accordingly. The

290 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

teacher is equally out of touch with reality. Indeed, it is
because the teacher, through his distrust and consequent
ignorance of the child's nature, has lost touch with reality,
that the child, his victim, is in the same plight. The teacher
assumes, as a matter of course, that he knows how the
various subjects ought to be taught. How does he teach
them ? If I cannot say for certain how he teaches them
to-day, I can say, with some approach to certainty, how he
taught them in a not very remote yesterday — a yesterday
which, if I am not wholly misinformed, still largely dominates
to-day. Was the subject Reading P The child began by
learning the names of the letters in the alphabet, and was
then launched on a course of a-b, ab. Was it Writing P The
child filled whole copybooks with strokes and pot-hooks and
hangers before he was allowed to form a single letter. Was
it Arithmetic P He began with rules and tables and abstract
numbers. Was it Geography P He began with definitions,
and went on to lists of capes and bays, of countries and
towns. Was it Languages P He began with declensions,
conjugations and vocabularies ? Was it Drawing P He
began by drawing straight lines, followed by arbitrary
arrangements of straight lines, and went on to simple curves,
followed by arbitrary arrangements of curves. Was it
Woodwork P He spent weeks in planing and weeks in
chiselling before he was allowed to do any constructive
work. Was it Religion P He committed to memory the
Church Catechisms, an assortment of texts and hymns, and
the names and dates of the Kings of Israel and Judah. I
doubt if there was a single subject in which the teacher did
not invert the natural order of things, the order which he
would have followed if he had studied the child's nature so
far as to acquire an elementary knowledge of its laws and
tendencies.1 That those ways of teaching were repugnant

1 As masterpieces of bureaucratic imbecility, the syllabuses issued by
the Education Department for use in Elementary Schools in the late
seventies and early eighties of the past century, deserve to be carefully
studied. It will be found that in each subject there was one cast-iron
scheme which was binding on all the schools in England and Wales ; and
that in almost every case provision was made for the subject to be taught
upside down. The teachers had no voice in the matter. They had to
work by the syllabus, whether they approved of it or not, — to work for a
yearly examination, on the results of which depended their success in
their profession and the financial prosperity of their schools. That Govern-

EARLY GROWTH 291

to the child, that he hated his lessons, that he got through
his tasks reluctantly and perfunctorily, in no way disquieted
the teacher, or shook his confidence in himself. So complete
was his severance from reality, that the child's instinctive
protest against the methods of educational orthodoxy was
regarded as a proof, not of the unsoundness of those methods,
but of the inherent naughtiness and rebelliousness of the
child.

It will be said that things are better to-day than they
were in that dismal yesterday. Perhaps they are ; but so
far as first principles are concerned, there has been no appre-
ciable change. Let us return, then, from the past tense to
the present. What is happening to the child who is passing
through the educational mill ? Many things are happening
to him. The first — and the last — is that his individuality is
being systematically starved and stifled. His teachers do not
think of him as an individual. They think of him as a unit
in a class, one of twenty or thirty (or more) children who
are all doing the same work at the same time and are all
supposed to be in the same stage of mental development.
Independent action on his part is strictly forbidden. In-?
dependent thought is discouraged, and even — in the most
vital of all matters — authoritatively proscribed. Little or
no scope is allowed him for the exercise of initiative, of
judgment, of self-reliance. No attempt is made to discover
his tastes or his aptitudes, and the idea of providing for the
satisfaction of them is foreign to the whole scheme of his
education. The last thing that his teachers contemplate is
that he should be himself, that he should become what he
has it in him to be. The consequent loss to his inner life is
incalculable. For his individuality is his appointed way of
escape from " self " ; and the suppression of individuality
means a general narrowing of life and a general stunting of
growth. It is true that if all goes well with him, he will, in

ment officials, sitting in their rooms at Whitehall — men of academic
distinction, no doubt, but who had no experience of teaching and had not
even a bowing acquaintance with psychology — should have thought them-
selves competent to determine in detail how all the subjects were to be
taught in all the " standards " of all the schools in the country, shows how
dense was the fog of unreality and illusion in which education was wrapped
in those days. Since then the fog has lightened somewhat and has perhaps
begun to lift, but it still overhangs the land.

292 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

the fulness of time, pass beyond individuality ; but he will
do so by outgrowing it under its own guidance, not by sup-
pressing it. To suppress individuality, to force the growing
child into a given mould, to compel him to conform to a
given pattern, is to imprison him, so far as he is living his
own life — (for conformity to a pattern is a mechanical, not
a vital process) — in his own petty, ordinary, unexpanded
self.

The suppression of his individuality has many aspects.
The deadening of his intuition is one of them. The more you
do for a child in the way of directing his conduct, instructing
his mind, and regulating his beliefs and opinions, the less
need is there for him to exercise that great, many-sided per-
ceptive faculty by which each of us, in the absence of
specific guidance, steers his way through the perplexities
and complexities of life — the faculty for evolving senses and
sub-senses in response to the stimulating pressure of an
ever-changing environment — a faculty, the generic name of
which is intuition, but which has many sub-names, such as
discernment, discretion, sense of propriety, taste, tact,
conscience, the power of divination, insight, genius. This
protean faculty is the organ of the buried life ; and the
autocratic education, which, in its zeal for machinery, leaves
little or no room for it to be exercised, obstructs, if it does
not actually close, the channel between the buried and the
conscious life, and to that extent cuts the child off from his
true base of operations, from the vast reserves of poten-
tiality which are stored up in his inmost self.

His reasoning powers are equally and similarly blighted.
From his earliest days his instinctive desire to understand
the how and why of things is ruthlessly repressed. When
he enters the schoolroom and begins to receive formal in-
struction, he is not allowed to see a meaning in anything
that he is required to do. Blind faith is demanded from
him, and the strain on his faith is made as severe as possible.
Curiosity as to the use and purpose of what he is doing is
an indiscretion which must not be repeated. Whatever
may be the subject taught, he has to begin, as we have seen,
with what is dry, formal, and abstract — names, dates,
tables, lists, rules, declensions, conjugations, mechanical

EARLY GROWTH 293

exercises, and the like — with what to him is meaningless,
and repulsive because it is meaningless. Conclusions are
presented to him for committal to memory, which he might,
with a little encouragement and guidance, have worked out
for himself ; facts, which he might have been led to antici-
pate ; rules, which he might have been helped to discover.
The result is that his work becomes drudgery — (for mono-
tonous work which is done under compulsion and in which
one cannot see a meaning, is drudgery in the fullest sense
of the word) — and his intelligence remains undeveloped
through not being allowed to come into play.

His will is weakened by the over-strict discipline which
allows but little room for it to be exercised. When mechanical
obedience is systematically exacted, action tends to become
automatic and machinery tends to take the place of life.
Predetermination on the part of the teacher, when carried
to excess, is incompatible with the outgrowth of self-deter-
mination on the part of the child. When freedom to choose
is limited to the choice between obedience and disobedience,
and when the chief motive to obedience is the fear of pains
and penalties, opportunity for the exercise of will-power,
for the practice of self-control, for the acquisition of mastery
over self, can scarcely be said to exist. It used to be be-
lieved— and the belief is by no means extinct — that the will
of the child was congenitally " perverse," and that the duty
of the teacher was to " break "it. But the remedy for per-
versity (if the child happens to be afflicted with that very
rare malady) is to train the will judiciously and sympathetic-
ally, not to break it. A broken will is seldom met with at
the present day ; but weak, vacillating wills are at least as
numerous as they ever were. And if he whose will is broken
has lost command of the helm of his own life, he whose will
has been weakened by over-discipline and over-direction
holds that helm with an uncertain purpose and an unsteady
hand.

He is being forcibly desocialized. His teachers, who, in
their ignorance of his real needs and legitimate desires,
have made his school life as dull and repulsive as possible,
finding that they cannot otherwise interest him in his work
or rouse him to exertion, have made a base appeal to his

294 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

competitive instinct, and have even gone so far as to compel
him — by their system of marks, prizes, and (so-called)
orders of merit — to enter into rivalry with his class-mates,
thereby encouraging vanity, jealousy, selfishness, and
individualism, and discouraging sympathy, the spirit of
comradeship, and the spirit of co-operation. They would
probably defend themselves, if their action was criticized,
by an appeal to " common sense." But the common sense
of the matter, if they only knew it, is that they do not
understand children and will not take the trouble to study
them. Experience has proved that the child is by nature a
social being, with a marked capacity for evolving social
order, and that if he is given fair play his competitive
instinct will be readily swamped by a rising tide of good
fellowship and good will. In Montessori classes, for example,
where children of quite tender years are provided with
suitable occupation and given freedom for self-develop-
ment, and where the attitude of the teacher is one of trust
and encouragement, — in spite of the complete absence of
what I may call police-supervision, anti-social action, such
as quarrelling or petty larceny, is almost entirely unknown.
In the happy atmosphere which they are allowed to breathe
the children speedily learn for themselves the great lesson
of give and take, live and let live ; and a social life, based on
sympathy, goodwill, mutual concession, and willingness to
co-operate, spontaneously comes into being. Where such
a life exists, the children regard one another as comrades,
not as rivals, and if any attempt were made to introduce
the spirit of competition into the school they would strongly
resent it. If it is a mistake to make a child work against
the grain of his mental nature, it is worse than a mistake —
it is a sin against the Holy Spirit — to try to correct that
mistake by compelling him to work against the grain of his
moral nature. Of all the wrongs that education does to the
child, perhaps the worst is that of making him an indi-
vidualist and an egoist against his will.

His vitality is being forcibly lowered. Nothing is so de-
pressing as to have to work against the grain in an atmo-
sphere of repression, suspicion, and mistrust. Nothing is so
vitalizing as to be allowed to work with the grain in an

EARLY GROWTH 295

atmosphere of freedom, with the sense of being believed in
and trusted to do one's best. What sunshine is to the
growing plant, trust is to the growing child — the trust that
is the outcome of sympathy and understanding, the trust
that looks for the best and therefore appeals to what is best
in child or man, the trust that sets the spirit free. The
education which is dominated by distrust, which assumes at
the outset that the child is a potential rebel and criminal,
by lowering spiritual vitality, exposes the soul to the in-
roads of various forms of moral evil — there being in this
respect a complete analogy between plant life and human
life — and so goes far towards justifying the underestimate
of human nature on which it is based. The most demoralizing
of all influences, the most provocative of moral infection, is
that of lowered vitality. The most moralizing of all in-
fluences, the most protective against moral infection, is
that of healthy and harmonious growth.

There is no inward ideal to inspire and guide him. Or
rather, there is an inward ideal, but he is not allowed to
look to it for inspiration and guidance. He has to look for
inspiration and guidance to the existing order of things as
embodied in his parents and teachers. The actual, the
traditional, the conventional, supported and (if need be)
enforced by authority, comes between him and the ideal of
his inmost heart. " Make me your model," says the parent
or the teacher, " and do what I tell you, and all will be
well." If progress, whether collective or individual, is the
outcome of the effort to realize an unattainable ideal, what
hope is there of progress (towards " true manhood ") for
the individual who, as a child, is compelled to model him-
self on an obviously imperfect pattern ? And what hope is
there of progress, other than material, for the race so long
as each generation in turn insists on stamping itself, with
all its defects and limitations, on its successor ?

Such is the type of education which has long been ac-
counted orthodox in this and other Western countries. It
seems to have been framed for the express purpose of
strangling growth and sterilizing life. Is that the intention
of those who administer it ? Probably not. Yet if it were,

296 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

they would be true to the logic of the idea which dominates
it. That idea is, as we have seen, distrust of human nature.
The two great streams of feudal tendency meet in the
nursery and the schoolroom, — secular feudalism, with the
distrust of human nature which has been generated by the
contempt of those in authority for the poor, the helpless,
and the ignorant, and spiritual feudalism, with the dis-
trust of human nature which has resulted from the as-
cendancy, in its philosophy, of the doctrine of original sin.

I am told that men no longer believe in original sin. If
this were so, the arch of Christian theology would have lost
its keystone. For if there has been no Fall, there is no need
for a Redeemer. And in that case, what becomes of the
Christian scheme of salvation, in which the figure of the
Redeemer is surely central and supreme ? But the doctrine
of original sin has by no means passed away. To say that it
has is an Anglican libel on Christendom. The Anglican
" intellectual " seems to think that what he has ceased to
believe is not worth believing, and that doctrines which he
has disowned may therefore be accounted dead. He is
welcome to his own interpretation of Christian teaching,
but he must not imagine that all Christians are as free and
easy in their beliefs as he is. If he would study a Roman
Catholic Manual of Theology or attend a course of Calvin-
istic sermons, he would find that the doctrine of original sin
was still very much alive.

But let us assume, for argument's sake, that the doctrine,
though neither dead nor dying, has begun to fall into dis-
repute. What then ? Has it not dominated the popular
theology and the popular philosophy of the West for more
than a thousand years ? And if it died to-morrow, might
not its influence be expected to survive for a thousand
more ? The feudal system passed away some centuries
ago ; but the sinister influence of a system which associated
political power and responsibility with the tenure of land
and which therefore led the ruling classes to despise and
oppress the landless and unenfranchised masses, still per-
meates our social and political institutions and affects our
whole outlook on life. And if there is any sphere of human
activity in which the doctrine of original sin, were it pro-

EARLY GROWTH 297

scribed elsewhere, might be expected to find a safe asylum,
the sphere is that of education ; for it is through the medium
of education that the present stamps itself on, and therefore
perpetuates itself in, the future ; and until education has
been completely transformed, it will continue to be, what it
has long been, the most conservative, not to say reactionary,
of all the influences that mould our social life.

Whatever, then, may be happening to the doctrine of
original sin as a theory, we should expect to find that it was
still a potent practical force. And that it certainly is.
Allying itself with feudal contempt for the mass of mankind,
it has ever generated and still continues to generate an
immense underestimate of human character and capacity,
which has found expression in our educational systems, and
which is confirmed, from one generation to another, by our
educational experiences. I think I have somewhere told
the story of two Calif ornian ladies who, having spent some
weeks in Montessori classes, where the children were allowed
to be their natural selves, when asked what general im-
pressions they had carried away from them, replied that
what had impressed them most was the discovery, which
came as a shock to their preconceived notions, that children
are by nature intelligent and good. By assuming, under
the influence of the doctrine of original sin, that children
are by nature stupid and naughty, and by handling them
accordingly, education of the orthodox type has precluded
itself from discovering that they are really intelligent and
good. Hence its tendency to perpetuate and intensify the
underestimate of human character and capacity which has
done so much to paralyze the higher activities of the West.
Possunt quia posse videntur. Self-confidence gives power.
If it does so, if it braces the will and nerves the arm, self-
distrust may be expected to do the opposite — to relax the
will and unnerve the arm. That little or no progress, other
than material and cultural (in the German sense of the word),
has been made in Christendom since the days of the Roman
Empire, is largely due to the fact that man has distrusted
his own nature, has thought to be " saved " by supernatural
means, and has kept his workaday life — the life of the
natural man — down to the low level of his self-distrust.

298 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

That there is an irreconcilable feud between the doctrine
of original sin and the doctrine of salvation through growth,
goes without saying. If man is shapen in iniquity, if his
nature is congenitally depraved, what can growth along the
lines of his nature do for him but ensure his perdition ? A
poisonous seed will develop into a poisonous plant, and the
more luxuriantly it grows the greater will be its capacity
for evil. When growth means progress in corruption, it is
the duty of those who control growth to arrest so deadly a
process. Under the shadow of distrust of human nature
what wras bound to happen has happened. Education was
bound to become supernaturalized, externalized, mechani-
calized. Salvation through mechanical obedience was bound
to take the place of salvation through vital obedience,
through self -development, through growth. That these
things have happened, that education is what we know it
to be, shows that the doctrine of man's congenital depravity
has a practical logic of its own which is still at work.

What, then, shall we who believe in human nature do to
give effect to our faith ? If salvation, if the well-being that
leads to happiness, is to be achieved by growth, education
must be transformed beyond recognition. Instead of allow-
ing it to strangle growth by suppressing freedom, we must
henceforth consider how best it can give freedom for growth.
Such a change will not be accomplished in a day, or a year,
or even in a generation. For we are involved in a vicious
circle, a false ideal of life having generated a false ideal of
education, which, when embodied in a system, tends to
react upon and stereotype the false ideal of life ; and the
process of reforming education through a radical change in
our ideal of life, and of reforming our way of living through
a radical change in our ideal of education, will inevitably be
painful and slow. But whatever may be our difficulty as to
ways and means, our aim must always be revolutionary.
We must aim at nothing less than the complete de-feudalizing
of education — the complete emancipation of the child from
hurtful pressure, the pressure that strangles growth.

Where and how are we to break into our vicious circle ?
We must, I think, begin by recognizing that the ultimate
source of authority is not the will of the teacher, not the will

EARLY GROWTH 299

of the State, not even the will of human society, but the will
to live of the unfolding spirit of the child. Let this funda-
mental truth be grasped, and reforms which embody it will
follow of their own accord and in their own good time.
Instead of basing our whole educational system on profound
distrust of the child's nature, we shall gradually learn to
base it on faith in the inherent sanity of the great forces
which are at work in his expanding life, in the limit lessness
of his unrealized reserves of capacity, and in the general
orientation of his nature towards good. We shall then
relax the rigour of a discipline which takes for granted that
the child is a potential rebel and criminal, and which there-
fore does its best to crush his spirit and mechanicalize his
life. And we shall relax the rigidity and formality of a
system of instruction which takes for granted that the child
is as stupid and helpless as he is ignorant, and which, by
forcibly cramming him with pellets of information, does its
best to starve his desire to win knowledge for himself. And
in general we shall relax the dogmatic and dictatorial atti-
tude which reflects our secret conviction that the mind of
the child is at best a blank page waiting to be written on,
and that his character is at best unkneaded clay.1

If we will make the experiment of giving freedom to the
child, and persevere in it in spite of inevitable mistakes and
failures, results will follow in due season which will sur-
prise us. Relieved from the deadly pressure which was
paralyzing his natural activities and therefore either arrest-
ing or destroying his expansive tendencies, free at last to
obey the laws of his own being rather than the arbitrary
commands of his teacher, the child will begin to make
healthy and harmonious growth ; and his consequent sense
of well-being will be realized by him as that fine flower of
happiness which we call joy. In the atmosphere of joy his
deeper nature will begin to reveal itself, — his sympathy with
other persons and other forms of life, his power of respond-

1 We have already begun to do these things, but we do not know why
we do them, and we are therefore doing them gropingly, falteringly, and
spasmodically, and in the face of obstacles which a clearer perception of
why we are doing them would help to remove. Our attempts to reform
our educational methods will not be effective until we have begun to
revolutionize our educational aims.

300 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

ing to the attractive force of beauty, his desire for know-
ledge, transforming itself, as it is gratified, into disinterested
devotion to truth. And with the consequent heightening
of his vitality there will come to him — for our " circle " is
now the reverse of " vicious " — a fuller measure and a purer
quality of joy.

There I must leave him. He has entered " the Path,"
and the way is open to his unattainable goal. And though
the Path, besides being infinitely long and arduous, is all
too easy to lose, he will not lose it if he will accept the guid-
ance that has been and will be given to him. The light of
joy is the light of his own inward ideal ; and if he will trust
himself to it he will not go far astray.

PART V
THE FRUITS OF GROWTH

CHAPTER I

PHYSICAL WELL-BEING1

MENTAL growth, aesthetic growth, moral growth,
spiritual growth, — each of these is an adventure
into the infinite. Physical growth is not. The limits of
physical growth are, in each individual case, strictly pre-
determined. I mean by this that each of us has it in him,
at birth, to attain to a certain measure of physical per-
fection. That measure of physical perfection is not only a
limit which he will never overpass, but also a goal which he
will never reach ; for in order to reach it he will need what
he cannot hope to have — a perfectly favourable environ-
ment throughout the whole of the ascending curve of his
life, and a perfectly favourable reaction of his soul on his
body. But the fact that physical perfection is a goal which
will never be reached does not make it the less individual
and finite, finite because limits are set to it which may not
be overpassed, individual because those limits vary from
man to man. In other words, physical perfection, though
an unattainable goal, is not, like spiritual perfection, an un-
realizable ideal. For the true ideal is always universal and
infinite — universal, because it is infinite, the same for all
men because its infinitude dwarfs to nothing all the actual
differences between man and man.

It follows, with regard to physical well-being, that the

1 Each of these aspects of man's well-being might well claim a whole
volume — not to say many volumes — for itself. I have done no more than
try to prove, in each case, that well-being is the reward, direct or indirect,
of soul-growth.

301

302 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

question to be considered is not how far will a man's growth
carry him into the infinite, but how near will it take him to
his own predestinedfgoal ? This is equivalent to asking
what hindrances will^there be to his physical development
and how are those hindrances to be overcome ?

The hindrances to physical development fall under six
principal heads :

1. Inherited disability.

2. Pre-natal injury.

3. Unfavourable environment.

4. Self-inflicted injury.

5. Neglect of physical culture.

6. Excessive regard for one's own health.

i. Inherited disability, and 2. Pre-natal injury.

These stand apart from the rest in that they take us back
into the region of pre-natal destiny. Strictly speaking, then,
they fall outside the scope of my inquiry ; but so large a
part is assigned to them, especially to the first, in popular
estimation, that I cannot well afford to ignore them. It is
now generally admitted that inherited physical disability
counts for much less than was at one time believed. Even
in the lowest grades of social life the new-born baby, in the
absence of pre-natal injury, is as a rule fairly strong and
healthy and of normal weight.1 Much of what used to be
attributed to unfortunate heredity is now seen to be due to
unfavourable environment, especially in the early years of
childhood. It is, however, probable that, with improved
social conditions and with cleaner and healthier living on
the part of the parents of the rising generation, there would
be a gradual rise in the average level of inherited physique.
At any rate it is a significant fact that the disease which
scourges sexual immorality, and for which moral progress
would therefore be the surest remedy, is the disease which,
more than any other, transits its baneful influence from
parent to child.

Pre-natal injury, if not purely accidental, is the result
either of unfavourable social conditions or of avoidable
parental neglect. If, for example, the mother is seriously

1 See Health and the State, by Dr. W. A. Brend.

PHYSICAL WELL-BEING

under-fed, especially during the period of gestation, the
physique of the baby will probably suffer ; and a drunken
mother may well inflict serious, if not irreparable, injury on
her unborn child.

On the whole, then, it may be said that though the pre-
natal history of the normal child, even in the poorest home,
is by no means unfavourable, any considerable rise in the
general level of moral and social well-being would probably
reflect itself in an appreciable improvement in the physique
of the new-born infant.

3. Unfavourable environment.

Environmental hindrances to physical well-being may be
classified as follows :

i. Underfeeding and improper feeding,
ii. Insanitary surroundings, such as overcrowded dwell-
ings, defective drainage, defective water supply, in-
sufficient light, and impure air.

iii. Insanitary occupations.

iv. Unfavourable conditions, such as lack of opportunity
for recreative games and exercises, drab and
monotonous surroundings (including monotonous
occupation) with their temptations to drink and
other forms of spurious excitement, — and the like,
v. Parental neglect, whether due to poverty, to ignor-
ance, or to demoralization.

vi. Repressive education. The education which is given
to the masses, besides being unduly sedentary and
often carried on under insanitary conditions, is (as
we have seen) vitiated by the current confusion
between drill and discipline and between dogmatic
direction and instruction, and it therefore tends,
through the cramping pressure which it exerts, to
arrest growth and lower vitality on all the planes
of the child's being.

These hindrances to physical well-being are nearly all
under communal control ; and until our communal life is
based on co-operation rather than competition, on self-
sacrifice rather than self-seeking, they will not be removed

304 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

or even appreciably lessened. But moral growth on the
part of the individual will lead to the gradual substitution
of spiritual for material ends and inward for outward stan-
dards, and through this to a general raising of social ideals
and of the whole tone of social life ; and this will have a
favourable reaction on our environment and therefore on
our physical development. Such a far-reaching measure of
social reform as I have in mind will be slow in coming ; but
it is permissible to dream that it will come.

4. Self-inflicted injuries.

Of the various hindrances to physical well-being these
are the most serious and (with the possible exception of
environmental hindrances) the most common. We may
classify them under four chief heads :
i. Overeating,
ii. The drink habit,
iii. The drug habit,
iv. Sexual incontinence.

Of all these forms of self-indulgence it may truly be said :

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to scourge us.

Each of them is responsible for many diseases, and in
general for much physical suffering and deterioration.
What is common to all of them is that they are forms of
self-indulgence ; in other words that they are due partly to
pleasure being mistaken for happiness, partly to want of
self-control. The temptations to self-indulgence which
beset us are attributable, in part at least, to unfavourable
social conditions ; but the inability to resist such temptations
is a moral weakness, and is not to be remedied except by
moral growth, which, if carried far enough, will both raise
man's standard of happiness and strengthen his vacillating
will.

5. Neglect of physical culture.

Physical culture has played a prominent part in the life
of certain peoples, notably the Ancient Greeks ; and it still
plays a prominent part in the life of certain " Savage \"
tribes. It is an aspect of self-development to which the

PHYSICAL WELL-BEING 305

conditions of life in highly civilized, and, above all, in
highly industrialized countries, are distinctly adverse ; and
it should therefore be the aim of the legislator, the social
reformer, and the educationist to make due provision for it.
The means of physical culture are athletic games, open-air
sports, and systematic physical training. The lack of oppor-
tunities for athletic games and open-air sports is largely due
to defective social arrangements ; and the neglect of
physical training is the result of many causes, educational,
social, and moral.

6. Excessive concern for one's own bodily health.

This is a fruitful source of worry and anxiety and there-
fore of physical derangement. In extreme cases it may even
amount to monomania. The antidote to it is serenity of
soul ; and serenity of soul — the sense of being in harmony
with the general purposes and tendencies of the Universe —
is not to be attained except through " growth in grace."

We see, then, that all the avoidable hindrances to physical
well-being are, in respect of their origin, either social or
moral ; and as social reform is, on the whole and in the long
run, the outcome of moral progress, of the transformation
of our ideals and the raising of our standards, we may say
without exaggeration that physical well-being is ultimately
dependent on moral well-being, that health of body is a
by-product of health of soul.

But it is not only by removing hindrances to physical
well-being that health of soul promotes health of body.
The vitalizing influence of spiritual joy makes itself felt on
all the levels of man's life. And as that influence can triumph
over physical disabilities when these exist, so, when physical
disabilities are absent, it can make the consequent sense of
well-being an element in its own vital energy. For if health
of soul makes for health of body, health of body can, in its
turn and in its own way, react upon and minister to health
of soul. But its own way is in the main a negative way.
When physical health is perfect a man can forget his body ;
and the sense of physical well-being can therefore lose itself
in that sense of general well-being which is realized by him
who experiences it as happiness.

306 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

When I speak of " salvation through growth," I am think-
ing of the growth which is an adventure into the infinite,
the growth of the soul. The growth of the body, which is
at best a movement towards a finite goal, is not an essential
aspect of the growth of the soul. It is possible, as many a
watcher by a sick-bed will tell you, for the flame of soul-
life to burn most brightly when the flame of corporeal life
is burning low, or even flickering towards extinction.
Nevertheless, when we take a broad view of things, we see
that the growth of the soul, if healthy and harmonious,
makes the best possible provision (through its control of the
influences, moral and social, that affect our physical well-
being) for the growth and therefore for the well-being of the
body. Live to the spirit, which is the supreme synthesis,
and therefore the inward harmony, of all the parts, all the
powers, all the aspects of man's being, — live to the spirit
for the sake of the spirit, and you will find that, without
intending to do so, you are taking thought, in the most
effectual way possible — taking thought both as an individual
and as a member of a community — for the welfare of the
flesh.

But what of physical beauty, the beauty of human form
and face ? Is this an essential element in physical well-
being ? . I have no ready-made answer to this question.
The standard of physical beauty varies from people to people
and from age to age. But through all its variations there
seem to be two more or less constant elements in human
beauty — constant in the sense that no age and no people is
insensible to them — the evanescent charm of physical
health and the more durable charm of facial expression.
And, as it happens, both these elements — the latter directly,
the former indirectly — come under the control of the
" inner man." Therefore I cannot but think that if life
were less selfish and less sordid than it is, if men were less
absorbed in material interests and pursuits, if they had more
time and more leisure to " possess their souls," if they could
open and keep open their hearts to the vivifying influences
of earth and sky, of art and song, of great thoughts and
great causes, there might be a general rise in the level of
human beauty, due to the gradual diffusion of the reflected

PHYSICAL WELL-BEING 307

glow of a spiritual light, and it might become possible for
" beauty born," not " of murmuring sound " only but of
many beautiful things and even of the totality of beautiful
things, to " pass into the face." For what differentiates
physical beauty from the other aspects of physical well-
being is that there is a spiritual element in it, which may be a
mere possibility, but which admits of indefinite expansion
if favourable influences are brought to bear on it. The
growth of the soul, as we have seen, makes for physical
well-being by removing hindrances to the due development
of the body. But its action on physical beauty is of a
different character. In response to its subtle stimulus
physical beauty ceases to be merely physical : the spiritual
element in it begins to reveal itself, and at last becomes
symbolical of the soul's well-being and transfigures the
whole outer man.

CHAPTER II

MENTAL WELL-BEING

THE growth of the body is a movement towards
a finite and predestined, though unattainable goal.
The growth of the soul is a veritable adventure into the
infinite. So is each of its vital aspects. For the uncon-
scious aim of the growing soul is to grow into oneness with
Supreme Reality, to realize the Ideal of all ideals ; and
Supreme Reality reveals itself in many ways, and in each
of these revelations announces itself as the ideal end of
desire and effort.

Thus it appeals to the soul, through the medium of its
imaginative reason, as the final end of its mental activity, of
its disinterested desire to perceive, to understand, to know,
— and in doing so reveals itself, in the last resort, as Ideal
Truth.

Again, it appeals to the soul, through its sensuotts
imagination, as the object of sense-born, but self-refining
and self -transcending desire, — and in doing so reveals itself,
in the last resort, as Ideal Beauty.

Once more, it appeals to the soul through its conscience,
through its desire to order its own goings aright, to make the
right choice among conflicting motives to conduct, — and in
doing so reveals itself, in the last resort, as the supreme end
of human action, as Ideal Good.

Lastly, it appeals to the soul through no intervening
medium, as soul to soul, as the Universal to the individual
soul, — and in doing so reveals itself, in the last resort, as
Love.

Here are four aspects of the self-revelation of the Divine
through the self-realization of the soul. Let us first think
of the growth of the soul as mental, as a movement towards

308

MENTAL WELL-BEING 309

Ideal Truth. The fruits of growth, in this sphere of the
soul's activity, may be summed up under the general head
of mental well-being ; and mental well-being may be defined
as nearness to ideal truth. What does this mean ? In our
attempt to determine its meaning, we are faced at the
outset by a practical paradox. The surest proof of nearness
to ideal truth is consciousness of being far from that un-
attainable goal. In other words, mental well-being has its
counterpart, not in a state of certitude, but in an endless
quest. The desire for ideal truth, if wre duly stress the word
ideal, is not a desire for possession. For it is of the essence
of an ideal always to elude the grasp of the pursuer and so
to lure him on into the mysterious and the unknown. If
we could attain to possession of ideal truth we should have
lost our prize in the act of winning it. The dogmatist, the
lover of finality, the man who " counts himself to have
apprehended " in great matters, has actually turned his
back on the goal which he believes himself to have reached.
We must therefore convince ourselves at the outset that
desire for possession of the truth of things is incompatible
with desire for ideal truth ; and that if we are to find
happiness in the satisfaction of the latter desire we must
make renunciation of the former our starting-point in our
great adventure. But if desire for ideal truth does not
mean desire for possession of the truth of things, what does
it mean ? This question, as it seems to me, answers itself.
Desire for ideal truth means desire to be possessed by the
truth of things, to be possessed by it in its own good season
—to be enfolded by it, interpenetrated by it, inspired by it
—and meanwhile, as a preparation for that act of initiation,
to make oneself worthy to entertain so divine a guest.

How is this to be done ? In the first place — and in the
last place — by resisting the lure of finality, by refusing to
rest in any theory of the Universe or any formulated scheme
of life ; in other words, by renouncing self in the sphere of
high thinking, by emptying the mind of its cherished con-
victions, so that it may be filled, in the fulness of time, by
the spirit of truth. But will this act or effort of renuncia-
tion bring happiness ? It will certainly not bring comfort.
On this point we must make our minds quite clear. But 4it

3io THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

will bring happiness. For, in the first place, to attain to
fluidity of belief and to keep belief fluid, demands a great
and sustained mental effort ; and such an effort, involving
as it does the constant exercise of all our higher mental
powers, will necessarily make for mental growth and there-
fore for mental well-being. I have elsewhere said that if
the pursuit of truth is to be effective, reason and intuition
must co-operate and the balance between the two must be
maintained. Divorced from the other, each of these sove-
reign faculties makes for dogmatism, for the acceptance of
what is relatively and provisionally as absolutely and finally
true. The man who, on the mental plane, identifies himself
with his reason, will allow his own arguments to impose on
his mind unduly, and, in the absence of the undermining
protests of intuition, will invest his own logically reasoned
conclusions with the weight and authority of scientific
truth. In like manner the man who, on the mental plane,
identifies himself with his intuition, will allow the sub-
conscious working of his mind to control his whole specula-
tive outlook, and, in the absence of the searching criticism
of reason, will invest his own intuitive convictions with the
weight and authority of inspired truth. These are extreme
cases, but they are typical of two great tendencies of
popular thought. The true centre of thought is perhaps
equidistant from both extremes. The mere intellectual is
as far from the truth of things as the mere visionary. In
each case a subtle form of self-love has paralyzed the
harmonious working of the mental powers, and has caused
the mind of the teacher to succumb to the lure of finality
and find repose in the possession of a formula or a catch-
word, instead of in the prosecution of an endless quest.

If the lure of finality is to be successfully resisted, if
conviction, instead of crystallizing into dogmatism, is to
remain fluid and mobile and evolutionary, if the mind is to
keep open its communications with the infinite, the balance
between reason and intuition must, at whatever cost, be
duly maintained. The conclusions of reason must be re-
viewed and criticized by the intuitive judgment, by the
mind unconsciously applying its own unformulated prin-
ciples. And the decisions of intuition must be reviewed and

MENTAL WELL-BEING 311

criticized by the rational judgment, by the mind con-
sciously, or subconsciously, applying its own formulated or
semi-formulated rules. But the maintenance of the balance
must be dynamic, so to speak, not static ; oscillatory, not
quiescent. The attempt to maintain it will involve the
assiduous exercise of all our mental powers ; and the reward
of this will be all-round mental progress. But progress, as
we know from experience — whether in the life of the in-
dividual or of the race — is never equable or regular. At
one time there is excess in this direction ; at another time,
in that. Indeed the effort to correct such inequalities, to
restore the balance as often as it is lost, is one of the chief
causes of progress. And, however much we may try to
maintain the balance between reason and intuition, it is
certain that we shall never attain to complete equilibrium.
At one time reason will be in excess, at another time intui-
tion. But if the maintenance of the balance is our chief
concern, the excess will be duly felt as such, and will there-
fore, in the natural course of things, begin to correct itself.
When reason is in excess, the consequent sense of disharmony
will stimulate the intuitional side of the mind to renewed
activity ; and when intuition is in excess, the consequent
sense of disharmony will stimulate the rational side of the
mind to renewed activity. And so the attempt to maintain
the balance, which will again and again be restored and
again and again lost, will necessarily react upon our mental
development, sustaining it from season to season and dis-
tributing it, as it were, over the whole surface of the ex-
panding mind.

In other words, the attempt to deliver the mind from the
fundamental fallacy of dogmatism (the dogmatic diathesis
being the outcome and the evidence of one-sided mental
development) by maintaining the balance between reason
and intuition, will, if faithfully gone about, result in healthy
and harmonious mental growth. And in such growth we
shall find the true solution — or rather we shall provide for
the true solution — of the master problem of existence. In
our present state of mental development we are not equal
to the task of solving that problem ; and it is well that we
should recognize this fact. We may, if we please — we may,

312 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

because we must — amuse ourselves by trying to guess the
riddle which is behind all riddles ; and the attempt to do
so, if we will but reject every guess as wide of the mark and
keep on guessing, will not be wasted, for it will react, as we
have just seen, on our general mental development. But
for the right answer to the riddle we must wait, and be
content to wait, till our minds are equal to the task of
guessing it, till we have grown to the requisite mental
stature. The supreme problems of thought will be solved,
not so much by any conscious attempt to solve them (as
one solves problems in mathematics or chemistry) as by the
actual growth of the mind, in response to which the problems
will perhaps re-state themselves and point the way to their
own solution. Or rather, by the actual growth of the soul.
When the mind becomes equal to the task of solving those
great problems, it will find that it has outgrown itself and
merged its life and its growth in the general life and the
general growth of the soul. For it is by the waking of
consciousness in the hidden depths of our buried life that the
growth of the soul has been and is being effected. The
dawn of consciousness has already wrought miracles. But
it is possible that these are as nothing compared with the
miracles which it has yet to work. It is possible that there
are whole aspects of Nature's being, whole realms of exist-
ence, which are waiting for us to discover them through the
evocation of appropriate senses, — waiting, in other words,
for consciousness to awake in the corresponding strata of
our souls. To accelerate the dawn of consciousness, to
work unceasingly for the deepening and diffusion of its light,
is a task into which we must throw all our powers, including
those which we speak of collectively as mental. Including
those, but going far beyond them. The waking of conscious-
ness is a process of which mental progress is one aspect, and
one only. The precept " Grow and you will know " does
not stand alone. There are other precepts which are at
least equally significant, and equally imperative in their
claims. We shall come to some of these when we are con-
sidering other aspects of soul-growth. Meanwhile, as we
are now considering the mental aspect, let us receive the
precept " Grow and you will know " and lay it to heart.

MENTAL WELL-BEING 313

Grow and you will know, and while you are growing possess
your soul in patience, and wait for the fuller revelation of
the dawning light of truth.

Wait in patience : and patience will become serenity,
and serenity will become hope and faith and joy. With
healthy and harmonious growth will come the sense of well-
being which we call happiness. This is one reason why the
attempt to keep belief fluid and prevent it from crystal-
lizing into dogma must needs bring happiness to those who
make it and sustain it. But there is another reason. Or
rather, the one reason — for there is only one — may be
looked at from another point of view. The path through
faith and hope is not the only path from serenity to joy.
There is another path — through tolerance, through charity,
through sympathy, through love. It is in following this
path that agnosticism, in the true sense of the word, finds
its fullest reward. He who knows that he does not and
cannot know will look with an impartial eye on all attempts
and all pretensions to know. Though he will subscribe to
no creed, he will sympathize, in varying degrees, with all
creeds ; and as he has no system of his own to uphold and
propagate, it will not be possible for any rival system to
disturb his peace of mind. He will say Amen in his heart
to Emily Bronte's daring challenge to " orthodoxy " :

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts : unutterably vain ;

Worthless as withered weeds,
Or vilest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by thine infinity. . . .

But in his attitude towards the " thousand creeds " he
will pass beyond the limit of mere defiance. Realizing, as
he does, that " we are all seekers still," he will regard the
dogmatist as a fellow-seeker who, having mistaken a par-
ticular aspect of truth for truth itself, has broken off
abruptly in the middle of his search, and the dogmatism of
whose dogmas is their chief defect. A large, all-embracing
tolerance, which will bear with everything in the sphere of
belief except aggressive intolerance, will gradually take
possession of his mind and heart ; and the charity which is

3i4 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

the active principle in tolerance will be ready to expand, in
due season, first into sympathy and then into love.

That fluidity of belief, by giving free play to the sym-
pathetic instincts, makes for happiness — for inward peace in
the soul of the agnostic believer and for peace and good-will
in the world at large — is suggested, to say the least, by the
plain fact that dogmatism, crystallization of belief, is one
of the most fruitful of all sources of unhappiness, — of bitter-
ness in the soul of the " orthodox " believer, and of strife
and misery in the world at large. On this point the teach-
ing of history is conclusive. The odium theologicum is pro-
verbial. The most cruel of all wars are those which have
been waged in the name of religion. And the story of
religious persecution is the blackest chapter in the history
of mankind. And the misery which dogmatism has caused
— the evil passions which it has awakened, the suffering,
the desolation which it has let loose — does but reflect the
unhappiness which darkens the heart of the dogmatist.
What is the explanation of this paradox ? Why should he
who professes to have found inward peace in the teaching
of " authority " be fiercely intolerant of those who do not
share his beliefs ? Because, though he may not know it,
he has not found inward peace. I do not wish to suggest
that dogmatism is necessarily intolerant. There are many
professing dogmatists who are indifferentists at heart.
There are others — we may still reckon them by millions—
who, having drunk in their faith with their mother's milk,
take it for granted as they take air or light for granted, and
are scarcely aware that there is any faith but their own.
But whenever the spirit of curiosity, of inquiry, of free
criticism awakes from its intermittent slumber, when
things which have long been taken for granted begin to be
called in question, dogmatism, like every other tendency of
human thought, must needs become self-conscious. And
the self-conscious dogmatist proves to be a sceptic at heart.
For now he realizes, if he never did so before, that there are
other faiths than his own. " The thousand creeds that
sway men's hearts," or, rather, the nine hundred and ninety-
nine which are not his, do waken doubt in some dark, remote
recess of his sub-conscious mind. His very zeal for " the

MENTAL WELL-BEING 315

faith " — his readiness to take up arms against its opponents,
to persecute heresy, to outlaw dissent, his rancorous vehe-
mence in controversy, his reckless use of such opprobrious
epithets as atheist and infidel — is symptomatic, not of " in-
defectible certitude " but of mental uneasiness, of secret
self -distrust. He who " protests too much," if he is not
consciously trying to deceive others, is unconsciously trying
to deceive himself.

Those who really know, and who know that they really
know, are of all men the most tolerant. Ignorance may
move them to pity ; but doubt, dissent, denial, far from
moving them to anger, do not so much as ruffle their peace
of mind. What chemist would think of being angry because
an established chemical formula was called in question ?
What physicist would wish to confute the lunatic who tried
to prove that the earth was flat ? It is in the borderland of
Science, it is where doubt and uncertainty still linger, that
we have anger, rancour, vehemence in assertion, heat in
argument, hatred of dissent. The tragedy of dogmatism is
that the dogmatist, in his dread of the mysterious and the
unknown, has sold his birth-right — freedom — to "authority "
for mental repose, and that the purchase money has not
been paid, and can never be paid, in full.

If the attempt to close the mind, on the higher levels of
thought, is so fruitful a source of unhappiness and unrest,
may we not conjecture that the open mind, which is the
proof and the reward of mental growth, will bring happiness
and inward peace ? The aspects of the soul are many, but
the soul itself is one ; and growth of mind, on the higher
levels of thought, is also — in some sort and some measure —
growth of imagination, growth of conscience, growth of the
higher emotions, growth of the whole inner man. The
reason why fluidity of belief must sooner or later bring
happiness to the believer is that to keep an open mind
about great matters, not from indifference but from devo-
tion to ideal truth, is to keep an open heart, and that an
open heart is at peace with itself and with all the world.
The all-embracing tolerance which is the counterpart of
faith in ideal truth, will develop of inner necessity into all-
embracing sympathy ; and all-embracing sympathy will

316 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

develop of inner necessity into all-embracing love. As the
open mind is waiting to be possessed by truth, so the open
heart is waiting to be possessed by love.

Need I add that the well-being which rewards mental
activity on the highest levels of thought, will make its
presence felt on all the lower levels, down to the lowest level
of all, — down to that quasi-physical side of mentality which
we call brain-power or brain-efficiency ? All our mental
powers have to co-operate in the quest of ideal truth ; and
the man who makes that quest the main purpose of his life,
who, in prosecuting it, is alternately adventurous and
critical, imaginative and logical, will allow none of his
mental powers to become atrophied through disuse, but
will keep them all active and alert ; and, in the absence of
injury through disease or accident, the efficiency of his
brain will have to keep pace with the growing efficiency of
his mind. And he will find that on every level of thought
the chief hindrance to the pursuit of truth is the self-love
which resists the emancipative processes of growth. What-
ever matter may be under discussion, it is self-love, the
obstinate clinging to one's own theories, one's own assump-
tions, one's own points of view, one's own habits of thought,
which militates against the disinterested pursuit of truth,
warping the powers, misdirecting the energies, and vitiating
the arguments of the disputants, substituting jealous rivalry
for fraternal co-operation, and subordinating the desire to
arrive at the true solution of a problem to the desire to
score points in a duel of words. The history of every
science tells us that scientific progress has again and again
been retarded — for years, for generations, even for centuries
—by petty self-love, self-love manifesting itself either as
jealousy of superior talent, or as a selfish conservatism
which regards criticism of what is orthodox and established
as an attack on its own vested interests, and resents every
attempt at reform as a personal affront.

On every level of thought the one precept holds good :
Grow and you will know. Subdue self-love, and you will at
once foster your own mental growth and accelerate the
advent, first of positive, then of ideal truth. Grow, through
mental self -discipline and moral self-mastery, and in the

MENTAL WELL-BEING 317

fulness of time — or of eternity — you will solve all problems,
either by working them out to their respective solutions or
by allowing them to solve themselves in your inner life. On
the lower levels you will possess knowledge and be happy in
possessing it. On the higher levels you will become worthy
to be possessed by ideal truth ; and while you are waiting,
in the serenity of faith, for that divine consummation, you
will perhaps be too happy to realize your own happiness.

CHAPTER III

.ESTHETIC WELL-BEING

AS it is the consummation of mental well-being to be
JL\ possessed by ideal truth, so it is the consummation
of aesthetic well-being to be possessed by ideal beauty.
When supreme reality reveals itself to the soul through the
medium of the bodily senses, when it presents itself as the
object of sensuous or semi-sensuous desire, we get beauty.
The pursuit of truth is at first active and aggressive, a
desire to possess, and enjoy and make use of possession ;
but, as the pursuit develops, as it enlarges its scope, as its
object draws the pursuer on beyond the limits of any dream
of possession, the desire to possess gradually transforms
itself into the desire to be possessed. In the pursuit of
beauty this order is to some extent reversed. The response
to the appeal of beauty is at first passive and receptive, an
opening of the heart to the influx of a semi-sensuous delight,
a desire to be flooded with pleasurable sensation, a desire to
enjoy for the mere sake of enjoyment. But the luxury of
passive enjoyment will not permanently content the heart.
Under the stress of its own intensity the desire to enjoy will
become active and aggressive. For, as a man's perception
of beauty grows deeper and clearer, he will find that if he is
to continue to deepen and clarify it, he must try to express
it ; he will find, in other words, that if he is to continue to
enjoy, he must make progress in enjoying, and that if he is
to make progress in enjoying, he must try to create.

The relation between perception and expression is a
theme on which I have already written ; and as I find that
since I wrote I have not changed my point of view, I will
ask leave to quote my own words (with a few trifling altera-
tions) :

318

ESTHETIC WELL-BEING 319

" Perception and expression are not two faculties, but
one. Each is the very counterpart and correlate, each is the
very life and soul, of the other. When perception is real,
living, informed with personal feeling, it must needs find
for itself the outlet of expression. When expression is real,
living, informed with personal feeling, perception — one's
own perception of things — must needs be behind it. More
than that, the perceptive faculties grow through the inter-
pretation which expression gives them, and make but little
growth in any other way. And the expressive faculties
grow by interpreting perception, and make but little growth
in any other way.1 The artist, for example, who tries to
draw what he sees (and feels) is training his power of obser-
vation, not less than his power of expression. As he passes
and repasses between the object of his perception and his
representation of it, there is a continuous gain both to his
vision and to his technique. The more faithfully he tries
to render his impression of the object, the more does that
impression gain in truth and strength ; and in proportion
as the impression becomes truer and stronger, so does the
rendering of it become more masterly and more correct.
So, again, if a man tries to set forth in writing his views
about some difficult problem — social, political, metaphysical,
or whatever it may be — the very effort that he makes to
express himself clearly and coherently will tend to bring
order into the chaos and light into the darkness of his mind,
to widen his outlook on his subject, to deepen his insight
into it, to bring new aspects of it within the reach of his
conscious thought. And here, as in the case of the artist
who tries to draw what he sees, the reaction of expression
on perception will be met and matched by the reaction of
perception on expression. Even in so abstract and im-
personal a subject as mathematics the reaction of expression
on perception will be strong and salutary. The student
who wishes to master a difficult piece of bookwork should
try to write it out in his own words ; in the effort to set it
out concisely and lucidly he will gradually perfect his appre-
hension of it. Were he to solve a difficult problem, he would

1 When I say this I am of course straining to the utmost the respective
meanings of the words perception and expression.

320 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

probably regard his grasp of the solution as insecure and
incomplete until he had succeeded in making it intelligible
to the mind of another. When perception is deeply tinged
with emotion, as when one sees what is beautiful, or admires
what is noble, the attempt to express it in language, action,
or art, seems to be dictated by some inner necessity of one's
nature. The meaning of this is that the perception itself
imperatively demands expression in order that, in and
through the struggle of the artistic consciousness to do full
justice to it, it may gradually realize its hidden potentialities,
discover its inner meaning and find its true self."1

If the general principle that perception and expression
act and react on each other, each helping forward the evolu-
tion of the other, applies to every side or aspect of man's
life, it applies more particularly to the aesthetic side, to the
cult and quest of beauty. In the spontaneous attempt to
deepen and clarify the perception of beauty by finding suit-
able expression for it, the cult of beauty becomes a quest
and an adventure, and Art — creative art — begins. Begins
— and ends (though of course it has no ending) ; for it is in
the attempt to attain to vision by revealing it, that Art
finds its final as well as its initial meaning.

There are many media of artistic expression ; and there-
fore, though Art is one, there are many arts. Each of these
has its own subdivisions and its own sub-arts. But these
are matters which I need not discuss.

If the secret of mental well-being may be set forth in the
precept : Grow and you will know, the secret of aesthetic
well-being may be set forth in the precept : Grow and you
will see. That the growth of the soul is the pathway to ideal
beauty seems to follow from the fact that all the hindrances
to aesthetic well-being, to the perception and expression of
beauty, fall under the head of arrested soul-growth. Grow
and you will see (and hear) ; and the more clairvoyant (and
clairaudient) you become, the more your vision (and your
hearing) grows in clearness and penetrative power, the more
urgent will be its demand for expression. Why, then, is the
demand so seldom made, and why is the response to it so
often ineffective ? Chiefly, I think, because of the para-

1 What Is All Which Might Be, pp. 84-86.

/ESTHETIC WELL-BEING 321

lyzing influence of education. It will be said that- artistic
genius is rare. No doubt it is. But artistic capacity is by
no means rare. On the contrary, as we are just beginning
to discover, it is part of the inheritance of every normal
child. It has taken us a long time to make this discovery.
That young children delight in drawing and colouring, in
modelling, in dancing to music, that they have a keen sense
of colour, of form, of rhythm, are obvious facts. What have
we made of these facts ? They might have suggested to us
that the artistic instinct, which must needs have artistic
capacity as its counterpart, does at least exist as a possi-
bility in every human being, that it is one of the " clouds of
glory " through which the life of each of us dawns on earth.
But, while duly recognizing the artistic leanings of young
children, we have been content to believe that, except in
rare cases, artistic capacity does not and cannot survive
childhood, our reason for this belief being that the child's
interest in art and his desire to express himself in art cease,
as a rule, at an early age. We have not asked ourselves
why this fate should befall them. We have taken for
granted that somehow or other they go out like the flame
of a candle in a draught. Had we paused to reflect we
might have reminded ourselves that, apart from accident, a
natural instinct, like the flame of a candle, does not die out
except for lack of appropriate food.

We are now, as I have said, beginning to discover that,
if it is duly fed and fostered, the artistic capacity of the
normal child will persist and develop and bear fruit in due
season. The indications that this is so are as yet few ; but
they are significant. We owe them to the faith and enter-
prise of certain gifted teachers. In the school in " Utopia "
which I have described elsewhere, the children, under sym-
pathetic guidance and in response to the stimulus of freedom,
took to brush drawing, to folk songs, and to morris dances
as ducklings take to the water, and produced results which
surprised all who visited the school. What made their
achievements the more remarkable was that " Utopia " is
a rural village in a county inhabited by what is supposed to
be a slow-witted and unmusical people. I have already
told the story of the teacher of drawing who, having changed

322 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

his aims and methods in the direction of giving his pupils
freedom for self-expression, found that 95 per cent of them
could reach a level which had previously been reached by
only 5 per cent. A great pioneer, whose work is being
carried on by a band of trained teachers, has made a similar
discovery in the sphere of music. He and his followers
have proved to demonstration that musical capacity is far
more widely diffused than we had imagined and has far
greater possibilities. They have even proved that musical
composition is a natural mode of self -expression, which
children will use freely if they are allowed and encouraged
to do so. And what is true of music is true, as certain
pioneers are beginning to discover, of poets. The Head-
master of a Grammar School for Boys, the Head Mistress
of a Higher Standard Elementary School for Girls, and an
Assistant in a Municipal Secondary School for Girls have
convinced themselves that children " have within them,
mostly latent, a vein of poetry, simple and rhythmical, and
need only right stimulus to use and delight in their powers " ;
and the work of their pupils (if I may judge from specimens
which I have seen) should carry the same conviction to all
unprejudiced inquirers.

Similar discoveries are constantly being made. The con-
clusion to which they point is that, however rare artistic
genius may be — and it is possibly less rare than we are apt
to imagine — artistic capacity is part of our normal equip-
ment. And if artistic capacity could be given fair play, if
the earlier stirrings of aesthetic sensibility could be allowed
to express themselves, on the one hand opportunities would
be given to artistic genius to reveal and assert itself, and on
the other hand the general level of artistic achievement—
the plateau from which the great peaks soar skyward —
would be appreciably raised.

But why does artistic capacity so seldom come to matur-
ity ? Why is it so systematically repressed in early life ?
Because psychology and education act and react on one
another, for good or for evil ; and because at present, owing
to each of them being in its infancy, their reciprocal action
is harmful to both, education being based on ignorance of
human nature and tending to perpetuate that ignorance by

/ESTHETIC WELL-BEING 323

preventing human nature from revealing itself. The result
of this is, as regards the culture of artistic capacity, that
education, having utilitarian ends in view and being ready
to assume, on the authority of a shallow popular psychology,
that the artistic instinct is an altogether exceptional gift,
denies to that instinct opportunities for development and so
blights it before it has begun to unfold.

But though repressive education is the most serious of
all hindrances to aesthetic well-being, it is not the only
hindrance. If it represses, and therefore atrophies, artistic
capacity in childhood and adolescence, the environment of
the adult tends to deaden what is the counterpart of artistic
capacity, — aesthetic sensibility. The materialism and exter-
nalism of modern life, which are at once the evidences and
the causes of arrested soul-growth, are ever tending, especi-
ally in a highly industrialized country like ours, to surround
us with ugly sights and ugly sounds. Every factory is an
eyesore, a vast amorphous block of brick or masonry,
pierced with innumerable windows, with a giant chimney
belching forth black clouds of almost solid smoke. And
our mines and metal-works, with their unsightly dumps and
slag-heaps, and their intervening spaces wasted and scarred
and blasted by our ruthless industry, are even more repul-
sive. What can be more depressing than the dingy, mono-
tonous, sordid suburbs of our busy towns ? What more
distressing than the noises of its factories, its metal-works,
and its streets ? In such regions, the dwellers in which are
numbered by millions and will presently be numbered by
tens of millions, Man, as a builder, instead of trying to
adorn the surface of the earth, seems to be doing his best to
deface it. If men are sensitive, as they surely are, to their
everyday surroundings, how can aesthetic sensibility be
expected to thrive amid such sights and such sounds as
these ?

But it is not only by surrounding us with what is mean
and ugly that modern commercialism and industrialism
wage war against the cult of the beautiful. It is also by pre-
occupying our minds with selfish ambitions and sordid cares.
When travel in mountainous regions was difficult and dan-
gerous the grandeur of mountain scenery was lost on the

324 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

traveller. A wonder-world was waiting to be discovered,
but it was not for him to explore it.

The sleep that is among the lonely hills

was a terror to him, not an inspiration. His mind was so
preoccupied with the risks and discomforts of his journey
that he had no eye and no thought for the more spiritual
aspects of his surroundings. In like manner, and for a like
reason, when the rich are devoting their time and their
energy to making themselves richer, when the poor are
working long hours in mill or mine or foundry either for the
bare means of subsistence or for a modest rise in the scale
of comfort, the doors of the soul are perforce closed to the
appeal of what is beautiful. Men are living their lives on
another and a lower plane. Their minds are absorbed by
other desires and other interests. If they have leisure to
enjoy themselves, they need the distraction of coarser and
more palpable pleasures. Can we wonder that when
beauty, whether of nature or art, whispers its message,
there is no receiver in the soul to vibrate in response to it ?
Can we wonder that in many, perhaps in most hearts, the
aesthetic sense, and with it the artistic instinct, is dormant,
if not dead ?

And if, as sometimes happens, the artistic instinct is
strong enough to resist the numbing pressure of education,
and to hold its own against the rivalry of " business," with
its thousand cares and interests, and of the pleasures in
which busy men find distraction and relaxation, will the
path to aesthetic well-being lie open to the artistic soul ?
Perhaps it will ; but new dangers will beset it. Self-love,
the deadly enemy of self -growth, wearing a new form as
often as occasion may require, will haunt it from day to day.
Again and again a wayside inn will tempt the traveller to
make it his home and give up his adventure into the infinite.
The thirst for popularity, for notoriety, for " success " and
the prizes that reward success, professional jealousy and
spite, readiness to repeat the shibboleths of the various
schools, and to allow the corresponding theories to limit
outlook and distort vision, — these influences and such as
these will stand in the way of devotion to art for the sake
of art, and will make it difficult for the artist to prepare his

.ESTHETIC WELL-BEING 325

soul for its high destiny, — for being possessed, in the fulness
of time, by the ideal of which he dreams. Above all, he will
be tempted to rest in his own achievements, to be satisfied
with the progress that he has made, to work by his own
formulas, to repeat himself in this and other ways, — if he is
popular, to accept the " voice of the people " as the " voice
of God," — if he is unpopular, to console himself with the
reflection that " it is always lonely on the heights." Should
he succumb to this temptation, the balance between per-
ception and expression would become static, and his adven-
ture into the infinite would come to an abrupt and igno-
minious end. For the function of art is to interpret the
feeling which beauty kindles in the heart that is open to its
influence, to interpret this feeling by trying to express it,
and — through the oft -repeated failure of that attempt — to
reveal to the feeling its own depths and its own subtleties,
and so to awaken the profounder and more spiritual emotion,
of which it is, as it were, the first intimation, the first stirring
into life. The artist who is satisfied with his work has lost
touch with his own infinitude, and has therefore forfeited
the licence under which he works.

For all these maladies there is one remedy, against all
these temptations there is one shield — soul-growth. As
vigorous growth, by producing strength and elasticity of fibre,
enables a plant to beat off the pests that are ready to assail
it, so, if free play can be given to the expansive forces and
tendencies that are latent in the artistic soul, the surest of all
antidotes will be found for the protean poison of self-love.

Grow and you will see. Grow and you will hear. What
will you not see ? What will you not hear ? Who can im-
pose limits on the clairvoyant and clairaudient soul ? One
of the vital characteristics of the great artist is his impar-
tiality,—his catholicity of taste, his freedom from professional
jealousy, his disinterested delight in beauty, his readiness
to admire artistry (by whatever hand it may have been pro-
duced), his sympathetic interest in his fellow-men and all
their ways and works (even in those which as a moralist or
a social reformer he might condemn), his power of seeing
beauty in the " altogetherness " of things which in detail
are sordid and ugly. And this impartiality, like the toler-

326 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

ance of the agnostic believer, far from being merely negative
and passive, admits of endless expansion and development.
Indeed, if it is allowed to have its own way, it will be carried
at last by its own natural momentum into what is really
the highest form of activity, into that all-embracing re-
ceptivity which is, in the true sense of the word, creative.
For to see things in their totality, and therefore in their
ordered beauty (whether the vision embody itself in out-
ward form or not), is an essentially artistic achievement.
And the artist whose synthetic and abstractive genius
enables him to build up trivial and commonplace and even
unlovely details into beautiful wholes — in other words,
whose perception is itself creative — is qualifying himself
for the highest of all artistic achievements (in which recep-
tivity and creativeness become one) for the achievement of
beholding, unblinded, the splendour1 of the living Whole,
of discerning the ordered beauty and vibrating to the inner-
most rhythm of the Universe. " He who has been instructed
thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see the
beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes
towards the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous
beauty (and this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former
toils) . . . beauty only, absolute, simple, and everlasting,
which without diminution and without increase, or any
change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing
beauties of all other things. He who under the influence
of true love rising upward from them begins to see that
beauty, is not far from the end."2

Is this the Beatific Vision ? If it is not, it is very near to
it. The Beatific Vision is, I imagine, the revelation of the
" unbeholden essence " of all things to the spiritual senses
in their totality, to the soul acting as its own medium and
its own organ of perception. But if that revelation is re-
served for those who have climbed to the higher planes of
being, it is possible for us to have foretastes of it, through
the aesthetic senses, while we are still in the flesh. To some
of us the foretaste comes through the medium of music.

1 The outward splendour. The inward splendour shines for itself alone.
" You will enter the light but you will never touch the flame."
8 Plato, Symposium. Diotima is speaking to Socrates.

ESTHETIC WELL-BEING 327

To others through the medium of poetry. To others, again,
it is a direct message from what we call the outward world.
Nor need one be an artist, in any technical sense of the word,
in order to experience it. All that one needs is a certain
measure of aesthetic sensibility and a soul which can with-
draw for a season from the business and the tumult of the
world. 1 "To speak for myself [who am no artist] — the early
summer morning always bears me a message, of the genuine-
ness and authoritativeness of which I cannot, while the
impression lasts, entertain the faintest doubt. New cosmic
forces seem to reveal themselves, forces whose serenity and
majesty belong to some other world than ours ; the all-
pervading stillness and freshness and purity seem to herald
the advent of some transcendent power ; while the sense
of being alone with ' Nature ' cancels for the moment all
those distracting influences which ordinarily restrict our
outlook and cloud our skies. The resultant feeling is one
which, for obvious reasons, I cannot even attempt to express
in words. But, as the cold flush of dawn steals along the
hilltops, and as the mists rise up from the river meadows, I
feel — nay, I know, with an assurance which transcends all
conviction — that the greatest of all problems has been
solved for me, not by being worked out to a solution, but
by being ' utterly abolished and destroyed/ "2 In such an
experience the soul attains, if only for a moment, to aesthetic
well-being, to nearness to ideal beauty. The moment is
fugitive, but it takes the soul out of time into eternity,
and it is therefore a possession for ever.

1 The expression which is the counterpart of perception and which
fosters aesthetic sensibility does not necessarily take the form of artistic
creation. A man may commune with himself as well as with others ; and
in trying to express what he has seen or heard, he may be prevented by
the very intensity and subtlety of his feeling from doing justice to it in
any outward form. A great poet has told us that there are many poets
"sown by Nature " who have " the vision and the faculty divine," yet want
" the accomplishment of verse " ; and what is true of poetry is true of
art in general. But this does not alter the fact that for nine men out of
ten aesthetic sensibility finds (or should find) its counterpart in artistic
expression, and that each of these tendencies develops itself through its
reaction to the stimulus of the other.

2 I wrote these words many years ago in a book which went out of
print and has not been reprinted. My excuse for repeating them is that
the book is dead and forgotten, and that I do not think I could find fitter
words for the experience which I was trying to describe, an experience
which is still mine in the sense that it has woven itself into my inmost life.

CHAPTER IV

MORAL WELL-BEING

IDEAL truth is a particular aspect of the Absolute Ideal,
the Divine Life. So is ideal beauty. To be possessed
by ideal truth, to be possessed by ideal beauty, — each of
these is a sublimely high destiny. But there is a higher,—
to be possessed by the Divine Life itself. The path to that
goal is the path of Conduct, in the fullest, widest, and
deepest sense of the word. And this path is, as it happens,
open to all men. But are not all paths to the Ideal open to
all men ? In theory they are ; and in a perfectly ordered
communal life they would be. But actually, things being
what they are, education being what it is, the conditions of
our social and economic life being what they are, the paths
to ideal truth and ideal beauty are open to very few. And
if they are ever to be thrown open to all men, the path of
conduct must be followed till it leads, through the trans-
formation of character, to the spiritualization of our aims
and the corresponding trans valuation of our values, and
therefore to far-reaching social and economic reforms.
Things being what they are, opportunities for mental and
aesthetic development are denied to most of us. But we all
have dealings, daily and hourly, with our fellow-men ; and
in those dealings we have opportunities for conquering self
or being conquered by self, for expanding life or contracting
it, for finding our souls or losing them.

This is one reason why conduct is, as has been said,
" three-fourths of life." But there is another. In the quest
of ideal truth, as in the quest of ideal beauty, a man is try-
ing to find something which is, in a sense, outside of and
beyond himself. In the quest of ideal good, in following
the path which leads to oneness with the Divine Life, he is

328

MORAL WELL-BEING 329

trying to find his own true self, to become what he is meant
to be. In order to attain to mental well-being he must
follow the precept, " Grow, and you will know," In order
to attain to aesthetic well-being he must follow the precept
" Grow, and you will see" In order to attain to moral well-
being he must follow the precept " Grow, and you will
'become" He can, in a sense, distinguish between himself
and the object, even the ideal object, of his knowledge. He
can, in a sense, distinguish between himself and the object,
even the ideal object, of his vision. But in no sense can he
distinguish between himself and what he is destined to
become.

As by mental well-being we mean nearness to ideal truth,
as by aesthetic well-being we mean nearness to ideal beauty,
so by moral well-being we mean nearness to ideal good.
The end of moral action, in this case or in that, is what the
actor deems to be good ; and the supreme end of moral
action is therefore ideal good. Now the end which moral
action, as such, does in point of fact serve, is that of estab-
lishing the higher self of the actor at the expense of the
lower, the wider self at the expense of the narrower ; and
the ideal end of this process of raising the plane and widen-
ing the scope of life is the universalizing of the individual
life, the merging of the individual soul — through its ex-
pansion, not through its annulment — in the infinite soul, in
the soul of the Universe. In other words, ideal good — the
final end of moral action — may be defined as oneness with
Supreme Reality, with the Divine Life. And the path to
this goal is the path of self-losing and self-finding, the path
of dying to the lower self and living to the higher self.

The language which I am using is unavoidably dualist ic.
But I do not wish to suggest that there are only two selves,
the lower and the higher, and that to die to one of these is
to live to the other. Any self, however high or wide it may
be, which claims finality, which invites us to rest in it, to
identify ourselves with it, to regard its interests as the
supreme end of aspiration and effort, is a lower self. The
self of the patriot is a lower self, if he allows the frontiers of
his country to determine the limits of his moral obligation
and adopts an anti-human attitude towards the rest of his

330 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

fellow-men. The self of the religious devotee is a lower
self, if his zeal for his own religion makes him intolerant of
all others. And the self of the philanthropist is a lower self,
if he cannot find a more than human ideal for Humanity,
if he cannot look beyond the Kingdom of Man to the King-
dom of God. Each of these enthusiasts is degrading what
ought to be a higher self, by resting in it, by investing it
with finality. The swiftness with which light moves baffles
imagination. Yet if light were to claim to have attained to
absolute swiftness, it would, in making that claim, convict
itself of being relatively slow. In like manner, the higher
self — the highest conceivable self — would be self -degraded,
if it claimed to be the highest of all. The obligation which
our infinitude lays upon us is a heavy one. If we would
lighten it, we must advance to meet it. If we try to evade
it, it will crush us into the dust from which we came.

He who would find the higher self must die to the lower
self, — die to it, not once only, but again and again. But
he must die to it by living to it, and living through it, and
living beyond it, not by saying No to it at the outset. It is
not until the lower self claims to be final and tries to detain
him and make him forget his goal, that it reveals itself as
lower, and that he must therefore say No to it. In other
words, though self-denial will have to be practised again
and again, the path to ideal good is in the main a path, not
of self-denial but of self -development or self-realization,
The ideal self is the true self ; and it is therefore ours in
promise and potency, ours as a possibility, ours as a seed to
bring to maturity, from our very earliest days.

But there are pitfalls, as we all know, in the word self, as
in every word which has a wide range of meaning. And
there are corresponding pitfalls in every word in which self
is a prefix. In particular, the word self-realization readily
lends itself to misinterpretation. So readily, indeed, that
until we have convinced ourselves that the self is a process,
not a result, that the true self is an ideal, not a possession,
the gospel of self-realization is a dangerous gospel to preach
and to hear. The author of A Student in Arms tells us that
at Oxford, in his undergraduate days, there was a craze for
" self-realization." Let us see what the word suggested to

MORAL WELL-BEING 331

the undergraduate mind. " In those days," says our author,
" the great feature of those of us who tried to be ' in the
forefront of modern thought ' was their riotous egotism,
their anarchical insistence on the claims of the individual at
the expense even of law, order, society, and convention.
' Self-realization ' was considered to be the primary duty
of every man and woman. The wife who left her husband
and children and home, because of her passion for another
man, was a heroine, braving the hypocritical judgment of
society to assert the claims of the individual soul. The
woman who refused to abandon all for love's sake was not
only a coward but a criminal, guilty of the deadly sin of
sacrificing her soul, committing it to prison where it would
languish and never bloom to its full perfection. The man
who was bound to uncongenial drudgery by the chains of
an early marriage or aged parents dependent on him, was
the victim of a tragedy which drew tears from our eyes.
The woman who neglected her home because she needed a
' wider sphere ' in which to develop her personality, was a
champion of women's rights, a pioneer of enlightenment.
And on the other hand the people who went on making the
best of uncongenial drudgery or in any way subjected their
individualities to what old-fashioned people called the
sense of duty, were in our eyes contemptible poltroons. It
was the same in politics and religion. To be loyal to a
party or a Church was to stand self-confessed a fool and a
hypocrite. Self-realization, that was, in our eyes, the whole
duty of man." Self-realization is the whole duty of man.
So far the Oxford undergraduate of that day was in the
right. But in his interpretation of the idea of self-realization
he paid a poor compliment to his self. He identified his
real self with his individuality, with that which differentiated
his from all other selves ; and he therefore meant by self-
realization the cult of individuality for its own sake, the
assertion and establishment of the individual, as against
the communal (not to speak of the universal) self, — in the
last resort, the apotheosis of selfishness in morals and
anarchism in social life. But self-realization really means
the use of individuality in order to pass beyond individuality,
in order to transcend self.

33* THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

Let us come to an understanding with ourselves on this
vital point. A man's individuality — I cannot say this too
often or too emphatically — is his own appointed way of
escape from " self." If he will not use it for that purpose,
it will become a prison to him — a prison within a prison-
instead of an outlet into the open. There are other ways of
escaping, or seeming to escape, from self. There is the way
of blindly submitting to direction and instruction, and, in
general, of yielding to pressure from without. This way,
which has many side-ways, does but substitute one bondage
for another. In delivering a man from anti-social individu-
alism, it enslaves him to conventionality and custom ; it
mechanicalizes and devitalizes his life. And too often it
leaves him in the prison of self in which it found him, having
made escape from it impossible by introducing into it an
asphyxiating atmosphere of make-believe, of hypocrisy and
cant. The path of individuality, on the other hand, will
lead us into the open air, — but only on one condition. We
must follow it, not for its own sake, but for the sake of the
open air to which it leads. If we follow it for its own sake,
because it is easy or pleasant or interesting or otherwise
attractive, if we make it an end in itself, then, when it
begins to ascend and become arduous, we shall probably
turn out of it into what will seem to be a continuation of it
but will really be an alluring bypath ; and that bypath,
winding back and down hill, will lead us at last into the
lowest dungeon of the prison from which we believed our-
selves to have escaped.

So far indeed is individualism, the cult of individuality
for its own sake, from being the true counterpart of self-
realization, that the only way to realize self (in the full
meaning of the word) is to refuse to rest in any self, however
high or wide it may be, or however strong may be its claim
to our devotion. In morals, as in every other sphere of the
soul's activity, the lure of finality is our deadly enemy.
The temptations with which it assails us may be looked at
from two points of view. On the one hand, it tempts us to
rest in a lower self, a self which is lower (however high it
may happen to be), because it claims to be final ; and it
renews this temptation again and again. On the other

MORAL WELL-BEING 333

hand, it tempts us to work for outward and finite ends, and
for those only, instead of for the one end which is inward
and infinite. These outward ends fall under the two general
heads of pleasiire and success. The range of pleasure is
from what is most coarse and most sensual to what is most
subtle and most refined. The range of success is from what
is most sordid to what is most exalted, and from pettiness
to grandeur of scale. But, however refined may be our
pleasure, however exalted may be the level, however grand
the scale of our success, if we invest either of these ends of
action with finality, it will imprison us in our lower self ;
and then the only hope of escape for us will be that, when
pursuit has become attainment and attainment possession,
the prizes which lured us on with the promise of enduring
happiness will turn to the dust of decay in our hands.

Things won are done : joy's soul lies, in the doing.

If we would keep on " doing " we must aim at the unattain-
able, we must find our highest pleasure in the growing pains
of our higher self, and our best success in our failure to
realize our infinite possibilities. Then " joy's soul " may
perhaps be ours.

On the plane of conduct, as on all other planes, the growth
of the soul is effected by the maintenance of what I have
called a dynamic or progressive balance between the ex-
pansive and the contractive tendencies of our nature,
between the diastole and the systole of the spiritual heart.
On the mental plane, intuition, with its haunting vision of
the infinite, is the expansive tendency ; reason is the judicial,
the critical, and therefore the contractive tendency. On
the aesthetic plane, perception is expansive ; expression —
which is ever seeking to impose on perception the limitation
of form — is contractive. On the moral plane, the expansive
tendencies may be summed up under the general head of
sympathy ; the contractive, under the general head of self-
control. In each of these cases the function of the limit-
ing or contractive faculty (if I may use that word " without
prejudice ") is to strengthen and deepen the expansive
faculty's capacity for expansion. This it does, partly by
helping it to hold and consolidate whatever ground it may

334 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

have won, partly — and chiefly — by throwing it back upon
itself (through its criticism, direct or indirect), by compelling
it to reconsider its aims and ways, and, as the result of such
reconsideration, to bring fresh reserves of potentiality into
action. And the balance between the two tendencies or
forces or faculties (or whatever else we may please to call
them) is, I repeat, a progressive balance — a balance which
is again and again lost and again and again restored.

How the maintenance of a progressive balance between
sympathy and self-control makes for moral growth is a
theme on which I have already written and to which I need
not now return.1 The outcome of moral growth is the
continuous expansion of the soul or self ; and when this
process has been carried so far that feeling has become
fellow-feeling, and fellow-feeling has become all-embracing,
the soul has attained to moral well-being and the end of the
first stage in the path of conduct is in sight. He who has
found his true self has made the joys and the sorrows, the
successes and the failures, the glory and the shame of all
his fellow-men his own. He feels what they feel because his
life, by the force of its own natural expansion, by the actual
widening of its spiritual horizon, has become one with theirs.
Nor is it only with his fellow-man that he has this sense of
oneness. He feels that all life is akin to him ; and in the
overflow of his sympathies he even passes beyond the
limits — if there are any limits — of life.

In the all-embracing sympathy of the man who lives to
his higher self we have the equivalent, on the moral plane,
of the all-embracing tolerance of the thinker and the all-
embracing impartiality and receptivity of the artist. But
the tolerance of the thinker and the impartiality of the
artist lose themselves at last in all-embracing sympathy,
and are great (from one point of view) because they have it
in them to do so. Therefore, as ends of human develop-
ment, mental well-being and aesthetic well-being are in a
sense subordinate to moral well-being. Yet even moral
well-being, all-embracing sympathy, is not an end in itself.
Or, rather, if it is to become an end in itself, it must pursue
its adventure into the infinite. It must renew itself again

1 See Part IV, Chapter V.

MORAL WELL-BEING 335

and again by finding practical expression for itself on an
ever-widening scale. And it must move towards its ideal
consummation by losing itself in all-embracing love. In
other words, if moral well-being is to become an end in itself,
it must on the one hand realize itself in social well-being,
and on the other hand transform itself into spiritual well-
being.

A brief summary of the contents of this chapter and its
two predecessors may not be out of place. It is by the
maintenance of a progressive balance between reason and
intuition, that intuition becomes all-penetrative and there-
fore all-tolerant,1 and that the intuition of truth develops
into the vision of ideal truth. It is by the maintenance of a
progressive balance between the expression and the per-
ception of beauty, that perception becomes impartially
receptive, or, in a word, creative, and that the perception of
beauty develops into the vision of ideal beauty. In like
manner, it is by the maintenance of a progressive balance
between self-control and sympathy, that sympathy becomes
all-embracing, and yet strengthens rather than weakens
itself by its limitless diffusion, and that the soul finds, in
oneness with all its kindred, the ideal good of which it
dreams. As tolerance and impartiality are particular forms
of sympathy, ideal truth and ideal beauty, as ends of human
activity, are, to that extent, subordinate to ideal good.
But, for the rest of their dominions, they own fealty to a
yet diviner overlord. And even ideal good, oneness through
sympathy with all kindred things, though an end in itself,
is not the re'Xo? TeXeioarrov, the complete and final end,
of existence. If it is to attain to that consummation, if it is
to attain to oneness with Supreme Reality, with the Divine
Life, sympathy must transform itself into love.

1 C/. " Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner."

CHAPTER V

SOCIAL WELL-BEING

IF social reform is to have a permanent foundation it
must be based on moral progress. Otherwise our social
structures, however skilfully they may have been devised,
will prove to have been built on shifting sand. Moral pro-
gress is marked by the suppression of self through the
expansion of self and the consequent outgrowth of sym-
pathy. Sympathy, the sense of oneness with others which
results from the gradual widening of one's spiritual horizon,
is the ideal basis of social life. The actual basis is, as a rule,
self-interest. From time immemorial men have banded
themselves together for purposes of mutual help and pro-
tection and — as regards their neighbours — for purposes of
aggression and defence. But here, as elsewhere, it is through
the triumph of the ideal over the actual that progress has
been and will be made.

In a well-ordered tribe the devotion of the individual to
the community was complete. The social ideal of " each
for all and all for each " was fully realized, and a high level
of morality was reached.1 But, to speak generally, the

1 As tribalism is dying I speak of it in the past tense ; but it is by no
means dead : and when the conditions are favourable its characteiistic
virtues still survive. Mr. Homer Lane, the eminent psychologist and
social reformer, has told me that in an Indian (North American) village in
which he lived for some months, he found a higher level of morality than
he had met with elsewhere. A magistrate in Pondoland has spoken to me
in almost equally laudatory tones of the morals of his prottgts. The
Santals, an aboriginal people in the uplands of Bengal, seem to have all
the primitive virtues. Many of them are now working as coolies in Mesopo-
tamia. An Indian Subahdar who was in charge of one of their groups
said to Mr. Edmund Candler, the War Correspondent : " There is no
fighting, quarrelling, thieving, lying among them, Sahib. If you leave
anything on the groui.l they won't pick it up. No trouble with women-
folk. No gambling. No tricks of deceit." A British officer in the company
who knew them in their own country told Mr. Candler the same tale :
" They are the straight est people I have ever struck. We raised them in

336

SOCIAL WELL-BEING 337

frontiers of the tribe determined the limits of morality.
Beyond those frontiers, apart from such rudimentary con-
ceptions of inter-tribal morality as self-interest might have
dictated to the warring tribes, there was little or no sense of
moral obligation. A man might be just, upright, and
kindly in his dealings with his fellow-tribesmen and might
be capable of prodigies of heroism and self-sacrifice on
behalf of the common weal, and yet be a monster of cruelty
and treachery in his dealings with the enemies, actual or
possible, of his tribe. The explanation of this practical
paradox is simple. The moral outlook of the tribesman was
bounded by the needs and demands of the community to
which he belonged. If cruelty and treachery to " foreigners ' '
served, or might seem to serve, the interests of his own
community, they were virtues in his eyes, not vices.

With the gradual supersession of tribal, first by civic,
then by national life, society became more and more com-
plex, and the basis of morality was completely transformed.
The progressive expansion of the supreme political unit,
and the corresponding expansion of the individual's range
of activity called into being a multitude of sub-communities ;
and conflicting claims on a man's loyalty and devotion
began to make themselves felt. One result of this was that
the complete absorption of the individual into the collective
life of the community, which was characteristic of tribal
times, gradually passed away. When a man numbered his
fellow-citizens by millions instead of hundreds, and when he
belonged to a dozen communities instead of to one, his sense
of communal obligation necessarily lost in intensiveness

the district, paid them a month's wages in advance, and told them to find
their way to the nearest railway station, a journey of two or three days.
They all turned up but one. They are very honest, law-abiding folk. They
leave their money lying about in their tents, and it is quite safe. They have
no police in their villages, the headman settles all their troubles. There's
no humbug about them (as workers) . . . and they are extraordinarily
patient and willing." Why are these primitive peoples so virtuous ?
Because, I imagine, the simple and stable conditions in which they live
give full play to the natural goodness of human nature. The fact that we,
with our vaunted civilization, fall so far short of them in virtue, suggests
to my mind that much of human viciousness is due to the difficulty which
men find in adapting themselves to a highly complex and ever changing
environment. If you gave the North American Indians, the Pondos, and
the Santals a new environment which was more complex and less stable
than their own, it is probable that the strain on their character would bo
too great for them, and that their morals would go to pieces.

338 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

what it gained in extension. On the one hand, the indi-
vidual began to look beyond the limits of the nation, with
its millions of citizens, in the direction of Humanity, with
its hundreds of millions ; and the idea of a pan-human
community, and of an even wider community which tran-
scended the limits of experience — the Kingdom of God-
began to shape itself in his mind. On the other hand, in
the general confusion which the growing complexity of
social life brought with it, he began to be thrown back on
his own individual aims and interests ; and, instead of
being cared for by a quasi-socialistic government, he began
to find it needful, in part at least, to shift for himself. In
other words, idealism and universalism in one direction,
and individualism in another, began to compete with and
overshadow the communal devotion which had hitherto
dominated his life.

The difficulty of adapting himself to an environment
which became more and more complex and more and more
unstable, the difficulty of steering his course through a sea
which abounded in cross currents that were ever changing
their direction, and in shallows and sand-banks that were
ever changing their position, gave rise, in man's life, to a
succession of problems moral, social, and political, which
have hitherto defied solution. For thousands of years we
have been experimenting with various types of governments
and various forms of social organization, each of which has
had its own moral ideals and standards ; and not a single
experiment has been permanently successful. The experi-
ment which concerns us most, the feudal experiment — of
irresponsible government by a privileged and propertied
minority — has proved a failure ; and in the awful war
which is now devastating the civilized world, we are wit-
nessing the dying convulsions of the feudal order of things,
an order which has long determined, and still largely deter-
mines, our political, our social, and even (in no small measure)
our moral outlook on life.

What will be the next stage in our social development ?
"The world," says the President of the United States,
" must be made safe for democracy " ; and the feeling that
government must henceforth be based on the will of the

SOCIAL WELL-BEING 339

people is in the air. In the horrors of the present war we
are reaping the natural fruits of irresponsible government ;
and whatever changes may be in store for us, a permanent
reversion to an order of things which the logic of events is
discrediting with such terrible emphasis, is in the highest
degree improbable. The masses are beginning to awake
from the drugged slumber of the feudal ages, to look around
them, to think, to speak, to organize themselves for col-
lective action. For this incipient change there are many
reasons. The spirit of man, by the force of its own natural
expansion, is straining to breaking-point the fetters in which
" authority " had so long bound it. For growth, if it is to
be real, must come from within and cannot be super-
imposed from without. If man is to fulfil his destiny he
must have freedom to develop himself ; and experience is
teaching him that without political freedom spiritual freedom
will be incomplete. He must learn to govern himself, to
control his lower nature, if his higher nature is to be free to
evolve itself ; and he must learn to govern himself politically
and socially, as well as morally, if his moral self-government
is to reach the level of self-mastery. It is not so much a
privilege which the masses are agitating for as the right to
take up a responsibility which they can no longer evade.

This is an aspect of the problem of government which
such critics of democracy as the gifted author of Le culte de
r incompetence1 are apt to ignore. The democratic senti-
ment is, in its essence, an instinctive protest against the
deadening effect of a repressive regime. Other and baser
feelings mingle themselves with this, and both colour it
and are coloured by it. But because this instinctive pro-
test— itself the outcome of man's secret desire for and effort
towards self-realization — is at the heart of the sentiment,
the cause of democracy, though its past be one of grotesque
and pathetic failure, is certain of ultimate victory. In all
the excesses and follies of democracy, in all its envies and
jealousies and rancours, in all its meanness and pettiness,
in all its baseness and sordidness, in all its ignobility and
vulgarity, there is one thing which Demos, whose very de-
irium has a sanity of its own, is subconsciously struggling to

1 M. Emile Faguet.

340 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

say : " If you will insist on closing in upon me with commands
and prohibitions and directions ; if you will insist on telling
me what I am to think, to believe, to aim at, to desire, to
do ; if you will insist on regulating my life in all its details ;
if you will insist on doing for me things which I ought to
learn to do for myself, — you will make it impossible for me
to develop my own powers and faculties, you will arrest my
growth and suffocate my life. Stand aside, then, and let
me have access to the air, and the sunshine, and give me
freedom to breathe, to live, and to grow."

Here is one reason why the tide is setting towards democ-
racy. It is a reason which has always been and will always
be operative. But it is now being reinforced by another
reason which is, in a special sense, characteristic of the
present age . Applied science , though it puts terrible weapons
in the hands of a tyrant, is in the long run the deadly enemy
of tyranny. For it enables tyranny to become so oppressive
that men must either make an end of it or allow it to strangle
their souls. The discoveries and inventions of the past and
present centuries are producing social changes which tend
to make government more and more highly organized and
therefore more and more inquisitorial. The improvements
in the means of transport, which have already gone far,
and, now that the air has been mastered, will go much
further, have made for the more effective centralization of
authority, which can now stretch out its arms to the
furthest limits of the world, and can also concern
itself with details which formerly escaped its supervision.
And though this progressive centralization is necessarily
balanced by progressive decentralization, new nerve-centres
evolving themselves as the main nerve-centre gains in extent
and complexity, the decentralization of authority, by bring-
ing it nearer to the daily life of each of its subjects, makes it
more rather than less inquisitorial. And if it is inevitable
that authority should become more and more inquisitorial,
it is also desirable. For, thanks to the achievements of
applied science, especially in the fields of engineering, of
sanitation, and of the prevention and treatment of disease,
authority, whether central or local, can now do far more
for the well-being of the citizen than was possible in pre-

SOCIAL WELL-BEING 341

scientific and pre-" industrial " days. But the more
authority does for the citizen, the greater is the amount of
direction, whether positive or prohibitive, with which it
will restrict his action, and the more it will tend to encroach
on his freedom. The compulsory notification of infectious
diseases, the compulsory segregation of infected persons,
the compulsory education of children and (as is now pro-
posed) of adolescents, and compulsory military service, are
cases in point ; and there are many other indications that
even the Englishman's home is no longer an impregnable
castle, and that official interference with family life is likely
to increase as time goes on. And it is vain for the individu-
alist to kick against these pricks. In a highly organized
community where each is implicated with all and all with
each, the influence of the individual, for good or for evil,
on the well-being of his neighbour is more subtle and per-
vasive and operates on a larger scale than in a community
which has a simpler and looser social organization ; and
the control of the individual by the State or the sub-state
must therefore go far beyond the collection of taxes and
the punishment of crime. That being so, it is imperative
that if the State is not to encroach unduly on the spiritual
freedom of its citizens, the ultimate source of authority
should be the will of the people rather than of an autocrat
or a ruling caste. When men were lightly governed, the
existence of a central despotism was compatible with a large
measure of spiritual freedom for the individual — freedom to
be himself and to live his own life. But when, as now,
government is necessarily, and rightly, inquisitorial, if it is
also irresponsible, the pressure of the State on the individual
may well develop, as it has done in Prussianized Germany,
into a soul-destroying tyranny to which History has no
parallel.

For this reason, if for no other, the advent of democracy
may be foretold and welcomed. But though democracy has
been coming for many generations, it has so far failed to
arrive. I mean by this that, though we have the form of
democracy in many countries, we are still far from the spirit
of it. And in the absence of the spirit, the machinery of
democratic government is all too easily captured by un-

342 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

scrupulous adventurers of various kinds, — piratical capitalists,
self-seeking demagogues, professional wire-pullers, and the
like. But why are we still far from the true spirit of demo-
cracy ? Because we are still in the grip of feudalism. We
are trying to graft democratic institutions on the stem of
the feudal tradition ; and our democratic aims and efforts
are consequently blighted and perverted by the poisonous
sap of our social life, the very sap which is supposed to feed
and sustain them. A tradition which has been firmly
established for centuries, and which is deeply rooted as well
as widely spread, outlives by many generations its own
apparent decease. The feudal lord, to whom the rest of the
community looked up for authoritative direction and guid-
ance, yielding to the temptations to which his commanding
position exposed him, set an example of selfishness, rapacity,
and arrogance, which was only too loyally followed, the
result being that not individuals only, but also whole classes
and whole nations, became infected with the virus of his
characteristic vices.

Hence the tears that we are shedding now. The feudal
lord is still, though we may not know it, our model. The
individualism and materialism with which he inoculated us
pervert every attempt that is made to purify government
and reform society, vitiating public life with selfish am-
bitions and therefore with intrigue, chicanery, and cor-
ruption, infecting manners with a snobbishness which
alternates between cringing servility and vulgar self-
assertion, and causing a general scramble for power and
possessions, in which the individual either fights for his
own hand or combines with others for purposes of aggres-
sion or defence, in which class is arrayed against class, and
nation (as in the present war) against nation. What hope
is there for democracy so long as the feudal spirit — the
desire for property as the basis of power and position and
privilege, and therefore of freedom to enjoy " the good
things of life " — is in the ascendant, and infects all the
social strata down to and including the unpropertied
masses, into whose hands authority, by a force akin to that
of gravitation, is gradually passing ?

There is one hope and one only for democracy — " a new

SOCIAL WELL-BEING 343

creature." We must be born again. Our ethical ideals
must be reconstructed. The pursuit of ends which are out-
ward and material, and therefore finite, must be sub-
ordinated to the pursuit of the end — the one end — which is
inward and spiritual and therefore infinite. Self -develop-
ment, as the centralpurpose of life, must take the place of
self-aggrandizement. Self -surrender (as the first condition
of self-development) must take the place of self-seeking and
self-assertion. Devotion to the common weal will then be
rebuilt on another and a more lasting foundation. As
against the tyranny of the tribal consciousness, individualism
has come to stay. But it will have to be transformed beyond
recognition by being subordinated to a higher and remoter
end. The complete absorption of the individual into the
community, involving as it does the narrowing of his
spiritual horizon and the circumscription of his expanding
life by the tyranny of the State, is no longer either possible
or desirable. A new kind of communal devotion, based on
the suppression of selfishness by idealism, of the lower by
the higher self, will come into being. A man will serve
whatever cause or causes may seem to be worth serving
because he has already devoted himself to the greatest of
all causes. And he will live and die for his country because
he is also a citizen of another country — the Kingdom of
God.

Then the socialistic dream of " each for all, and all for
each " will begin to be realized ; and the economic problems
which have so long pressed for and defied solution will begin
to solve themselves. Till then the dream will remain a
dream. And when it begins to be realized, we shall find
that it is — what it was not and could not be in tribal days
— a self-transcending ideal, an ideal which spontaneously
and progressively widens the sphere of its own authority
and influence. Until it has been transfigured by devotion
to an infinite ideal, devotion to a community, a tradition,
or a cause has an element of selfishness at the heart of it
which will sooner or later warp the character of the devotee.
The tribesman, as we have seen, might be a model of virtue,
according to the standard set him by the tribal tradition,
and yet be ruthless and treacherous in his dealings with the

344 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

other tribes. And the French nobleman of pre-Re volution
days might be unswervingly true to his own aristocratic
traditions, might be the soul of loyalty and honour, a
devoted husband, a loving father, a faithful friend, and yet
be so inhuman in his attitude towards the bulk of his
fellow-countrymen that he could find no better name for
them than canaille, a name which was charged with con-
tempt and antipathy and aloofness. When we return to
the lost ideal of " each for all and all for each," we shall find
that if it is to be a possession for ever the word all will have
to widen its meaning till it carries us at last beyond the
furthest horizon of human thought. And we shall find
that if that ideal is to regulate the relation between the
individual and the community, it will also have to regulate
the relation between the lesser and the larger community,
till at last loyalty becomes religion, and all communities,
from the least to the largest, claim devotion from their
members because they themselves are members of a yet
larger community and live for it and in it and through it,
giving it unstinted service and receiving from it the quicken-
ing current of life.

This is indeed an infinitely distant goal. But, for that
very reason, its claim upon us is irresistibly strong. And,
infinitely distant though it be, it is towards its " high, white
star " that the social reformer, if he would do anything of
lasting value, must set his face. If he cannot dream of a
pan-human community, of a brotherhood of the nations,
the reforms that he may carry out within the limits of his
own community will have in them, from their very incep-
tion, the germs of decay. The saying that

It takes the ideal to blow a hair's-breadth off
The dust of the actual

is a daring paradox, but it is also a profound and inspiring
truth.

If men will grow in grace they will solve the problem of
living happily together. And if they will learn to live
happily together they will remove the most serious of all
hindrances to growth in grace. The action (for good or for
evil) of morals on politics is necessarily and accurately

SOCIAL WELL-BEING 345

balanced by the reaction (for good or for evil) of politics on
morals. It is through his unceasing effort to adapt himself
to an environment which his own reactivity is ever modify-
ing, that a man grows — in mind and spirit — grows healthily
or unhealthily, vigorously or feebly, harmoniously or in-
harmoniously, well or ill. And his politico-social action is
one of the chief means at his disposal for moulding and
controlling, for giving form and character to his environ-
ment. History has fully proved that a social tradition
which is clearly defined and has the weight of ages behind
it may easily determine a man's whole moral outlook on
life. The tribal and the feudal traditions are cases in point.
We have seen that the goal of moral growth, at any rate
from one point of view, is the outgrowth of all-embracing
sympathy. In tribal times the community, by claiming for
itself the whole of man's devotion and service, made the
outgrowth of all-embracing sympathy impossible and
therefore arrested moral growth. In feudal times, when a
small minority could pride themselves on the possession of
power and privilege and property and look down from that
artificial pedestal on the mass of their fellow-citizens,
despising them for the very disabilities which their own
privileged position had imposed on them, thinking of them
as the dust beneath their feet, speaking of them as a mob, a
rabble, a canaille, — when the greed and selfishness of the
ruling classes descended, by force of example, from stratum
to stratum of society, — when fellow-feeling was almost
wholly subordinate to caste-feeling, while the looseness of
the social order was all the while encouraging an individual-
istic scramble for possessions, as the source of all that
seemed to make life worth living, — what place was there —
what place is there (for feudal influences still dominate our
lives) — for the all-embracing sympathy which alone can
humanize and moralize mankind ? But I need not take
pains to prove that politics react on morals as surely and
as strongly as morals act (and react) on politics. The
ultimate reason why " the world must be made safe for
democracy " is that as irresponsible authority, by fostering
materialism and egoism in high places, demoralizes first
the rulers and then the ruled, so, by withholding freedom

346 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

for self -development, it demoralizes first -the ruled and then
the rulers. It is not only in order to remedy injustice, to
appease legitimate discontent, to diffuse comfort and
material well-being, that we must work for political and
social reform. It is also, and above all, in order to raise
the moral standard, in order to foster the growth of the
soul.

I am speculating somewhat largely. But there are two
practical corollaries to my conclusions. The first is that if
democracy, in the true sense of the word, is to come, Demos
must submit to discipline, — not the discipline of mechanical
drill, but the discipline of organized comradeship. He
must obey the leaders whom he himself has chosen and
obey the laws which he himself has made. If he will not
do this, if he will allow individualism and egoism — ill weeds
that grew apace in the soil and air of feudalism — to seduce
him from loyalty to the community and to those who
administer its affairs, democracy will degenerate into mob-
rule, and mob-rule into anarchy, and the consequent demand
for a " saviour of society " will re-establish irresponsible
authority in high places, and throw back, perhaps for cen-
turies, the cause of freedom and growth and life.

The second corollary is that if democracy is to come, we
must be ready, each and all, to shoulder the burden which
its coming will lay upon us. No man is entitled to stand
aside from public life.1 To do so is a refinement of selfish-
ness. In countries which are nominally democratic, it is
customary for men of honour and refinement and culture
to renounce politics on account of the jobbery, the corrup-
tion, the trickery, the intrigue, the sordid aims, the nefarious
practices which seem to be of its essence, and with which,

1 Not even the youngest child. If society is to be reformed, the refor-
mation of it must be begun in the nursery and the schoolroom. The social
instinct which is latent in every child must be allowed and encouraged to
unfold itself. In the feudalized type of education which still prevails in
this and other countries the child is compulsorily desocialized (see Part IV,
Chapter VI), and the child is father to the man. This is a matter on which
I have already written, perhaps too often and perhaps (though I doubt if
that is possible) too strongly. My excuse is that the social aspect of educa-
tion is of supreme importance and that hitherto it has been almost entirely
ignored. What is needed for the transformation of society is the transfor-
mation of the individual, — in other words, "a new creature"; and if the
new creature does not come to the birth, or begin to come to the birth, in
childhood, the chances are that he will never be born.

SOCIAL WELL-BEING 347

as they say, they do not wish to soil themselves. In taking
up this quasi-monastic attitude they are doing their best to
perpetuate and intensify the very evils which they see and
deplore. They are allowing political power, with all its
social and ethical implications, to fall into the hands of
men who will make the worst possible use of it. They are
encouraging the unscrupulous financier, the needy adven-
turer, the ambitious schemer, the professional demagogue,
to exploit their fellow-citizens for base and selfish purposes
of their own.1 And their desire to keep themselves clean
from the soilure of " the world " is, though they may not
know it, as futile as it is immoral. It is immoral, because
the sense of separateness, which is the very negation of
sympathy, is the strongest of all hindrances to moral pro-
gress, to the expansion, through sympathy, of the growing
soul. It is futile, because we are inextricably bound one
with another, each with each and each with all, and are
therefore doomed to be infected, sooner or later, with the
very evil which our own fastidious aloofness, by selfishly
shrinking from it, has helped to create. ' The sin and the
shame of the world are your sin and shame, for you are a
part of it ; your karma is inextricably interwoven with the
great karma : and before you can attain knowledge you
must have passed through all places, foul and clean alike.
Therefore remember that the soiled garment you shrink
from touching may have been yours yesterday, may be
yours to-morrow. And if you turn with horror from it,
when it is flung upon your shoulders, it will cling the more
closely to you. The self-righteous man makes for himself a
bed of mire."2

The philosophy of self-righteousness and social aloofness
is vitiated by a fundamental misconception of human
nature, the very misconception which it is the purpose of
social and political reform to correct. The real basis of

x In the United States, where Pecca fortiter is an honoured maxim, it
seems to be customary for unscrupulous capitalists and their legal and
political henchmen to capture the machinery of democratic government —
or at any rate local government — and use it for base and selfish purposes of
their own, plundering and murdering their fellow-men without compunc-
tion, under cover of the letter of the law. See the works of Winston
Churchill, Upton Sinclair, and other American novelists of the social
reform school, passiw, * Light on the Path, by M. C.

348 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

democracy is the latent infinitude of man. Actually un-
equal in a thousand different ways, we are potentially equal
because the unrealized possibilities, even of the least of us,
are limitless. Freedom to realize those possibilities must
therefore be the foundation of our political life. When that
foundation has been securely laid, it will be possible for the
sense of equality, and therefore of fraternity, to become the
ruling principle of our social life. For freedom is the first
condition of moral progress ; and the higher we raise our
moral standard, the keener will be our sense of our short-
comings, or, in other words, of our unrealized possibilities,
and the stronger will be our sense of oneness — through the
infinitude which is common to all of us — with our fellow-
man. When faith in human nature is strong enough to
generate faith in the efficacy of freedom ; when the vision
of the infinite in man is strong enough to generate the sense
of all pervading equality ; when sympathy, the product and
the proof of moral growth, is strong enough and large enough
to generate the sense of all-embracing comradeship, — then
we shall have the democratic spirit ; and without the demo-
cratic spirit no democratic institution can serve its purpose
or endure. But faith in human nature, the sense of our own
infinitude, and the expansion of sympathy are all bye-
products of the growth of the soul. Therefore, if we would
reform society we must first reform our own lives. And if
we would purify politics we must first purify our own hearts.
The Kingdom of Heaven is a community as well as an in-
ward state. But if we would realize it as a community we
must also realize it as an inward state.

CHAPTER VI

SPIRITUAL WELL-BEING

WE mean by mental well-being nearness to ideal truth.
We mean by aesthetic well-being nearness to ideal
beauty. We mean by moral well-being nearness to ideal
good. WThat do we mean by spiritual well-being ? I will
answer this question, tentatively and provisionally, by say-
ing that spiritual well-being is nearness to Ideal Reality.
But what do we mean by ideal reality ? Words necessarily
fail us when we try to express the largest and deepest of all
truths. Let me say, then, " with stammering lips," that I
(for one) mean by ideal reality what is absolutely and
intrinsically real ; I mean self -existent, self-dependent,
self-centred, self-contained reality : I mean the ideal of all
ideals, the ideal synthesis of ideal truth, ideal beauty, ideal
good ; I mean the totality of things envisaged in their
organic unity ; I mean the living Whole, the All of Being,
the Soul of the Universe ; I mean, in a word, God. Near-
ness to God is spiritual well-being. Oneness with God is
the last term in spiritual well-being, and therefore the last
term in the ascending " series " of human happiness.

What then do we mean by God ? We have identified
ideal reality with God. Are we now to identify God with
ideal reality ? Must we be content to move to and fro
between these two terms, defining each as the other ? Is
there no way of escape from this impasse ? Let us see if we
can find one.

On the mental plane God reveals himself as ideal truth.
On the aesthetic plane, as ideal beauty. On the moral plane,
as ideal good. On the mental plane the divine appeal is
made to that blend of intuition and reason, of the heart and
the head, which has been called " imaginative reason." On

349

350 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

the aesthetic plane, to that blend of the heart and the senses
which we call the sensuous imagination. On the moral
plane, to that blend of the heart and the will which we call
conscience. In each of these cases a particular aspect of
the divine nature reveals itself to a particular side of human
nature, to a particular organ of cognition, to a particular
vehicle of consciousness. A luminous veil hangs between
the two natures, a veil which belongs, as it were, to both.
On the spiritual plane this veil of separation begins to fade
away. What is uttermost and innermost begins to reveal
itself, not as ideal truth, not as ideal beauty, not as ideal
good, but in its own essential nature, — for this is what we
mean by ideal reality. And it makes its appeal, not to any
one organ of cognition, not to any one side of man's being,
but to the soul of man in its totality, to the soul acting as
its own organ of cognition, acting through its whole " apper-
ceptive mass." In other words, God, as such, reveals himself
to man, as such. The " Oversoul " reveals itself to the soul.
Can we get behind this conception ? Perhaps we can.
But let Us first ask ourselves what are the distinctive signs
of spiritual well-being. There is one sign which cannot be
mistaken, — inward peace. By inward peace, I mean the
peace which is the counterpart, not of repose in finality but
of repose in the infinite. Repose in finality is a sleep, from
which one must sooner or later awake if it is not to deepen
into the sleep of death. Repose in the infinite is the very
fulness of life. The man who has found inward peace has
attained to equilibrium, not to stagnation. The scale of
his activities is so great that the noise and turmoil of what
is usually counted as life no longer disturb him. Now
and henceforth he

looks on tempests and is never shaken.

" No array of terms can say how entirely at peace I am
about God and about death." So speaks the poet of cosmic
optimism. If we cannot echo his words and add a fervent
Amen to them, we are still far from the Kingdom of God.

But how few of us are at peace about God and about
death ! Ideally, trust in God is of the very essence of
religious faith. Actually, religious faith is seldom strong

SPIRITUAL WELL-BEING 351

enough to rise to the level of reposeful trust. The man who
is consciously religious is, as a rule, tortured with distrust
of the Deity whom he worships. He thinks of him as a God
of wrath, as an exacting creditor, as a vindictive tyrant, as
one who demands much and is extreme to mark what is
done amiss. He thinks of himself as a debtor who cannot
meet his obligations, as an offender who has incurred the
extremest of all penalties, as a brand to be snatched, if
possible, from the burning. He tries to find out on what
terms God will cancel the debt which he, the debtor, cannot
pay, will remit the penalty which he, the offender, has
incurred. With this end in view, he studies his sacred
Scriptures ; he consults professional advisers of various
kinds, — doctors of the law, priests, casuistical experts, and
the like. He wonders if he has succeeded in propitiating
God and averting his vengeful anger. He hopes for the
best, but continues to fear the worst.

Or, if he does trust God, his faith in him is racial, national,
sectarian, not cosmic, not even human. He trusts him as
the God of Israel, as the God of Christendom, as the God of
Islam, not as the God of the Universe. He trusts him
because the religious community to which he belongs enjoys
the special favour of God. He trusts him because he himself
is a Catholic, a Presbyterian, a Plymouth Brother. He
cannot bring himself to trust him because God is the Father
of all men and because he himself is a man.

The truth is that the selfishness of the undeveloped man,
his longing for finality, his desire for possession, follow him
into the sphere of religious belief and practice. The God
whom he worships is his God — the God of his church, of his
sect, of his nation, of his tribe. He is the friend of his
friends, the enemy of his enemies. Through the institution
or community to which he belongs he has proprietary rights
in God, he enjoys a monopoly of his favour. In the Religious
Wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the God
of the Catholics was on one battle front, the God of the
Protestants on the other. To-day the Mussulman slaughters
the Armenian, the Jew, the Greek, ad major em Dei gloriam ;
and the German Emperor is confident of victory because
" the Lord of Creation above is an unconditional and

THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

avowed ally on whom [the German people] can absolutely
rely."

It is because the God whom he worships is his God that
the "orthodox" believer is so seldom at peace about him.
We are never wholly at peace about the things that we
possess. Our title to them may be insecure. They may be
taken away from us. They may deteriorate with time. They
may disappoint our expectations. We may cease to care
for them. They may fail us in various ways. The man who
prides himself on his orthodoxy, who flatters himself that
his God is the true God, has all the time a haunting sense of
insecurity. The fact that other persons worship other Gods
seems to invalidate in some degree the claim of his own
God to absolute supremacy ; and the very fanaticism and
intolerance with which he tries to make good that claim
bear witness to the doubt and distrust which, unknown to
him, are corroding his heart.

If selfishness is the beginning and end of immorality, if
it contracts the mind and the heart and arrests the growth of
the soul, what limit will there be to its influence for evil
when the form that it takes is the desire to appropriate
God ? The answer to this question rests with the history
of religion in all countries, and especially in those which
acknowledge the over lordship of the " jealous God " whom
Israel revealed to mankind. That it should have been
possible, that it should still be possible, for men to commit
the foulest crimes against their fellow-men, and yet to be-
lieve, in all sincerity, that by doing so they were serving
and pleasing God, proves to demonstration that the desire
to appropriate God, by sanctifying selfishness, tends to
raise it to the highest imaginable power, to so high a power,
indeed, that at last the worship of God becomes the worship
of the Devil. And if we mean by the worship of the Devil
the apotheosis of selfishness, then I am by no means sure
that it is not a further stage in Devil-worship to believe, as
many virtuous and respectable persons have done, and still
do, that only a remnant of the human race will be " saved,"
and that it is the whole duty of each of us to strive by
every means in his power to gain admission into that
exclusive circle.

SPIRITUAL WELL-BEING 353

In the jealous desire to appropriate the favour of the
jealous God, the cult of finality, which is man's besetting
weakness, reaches the last term of its malignant activity.
Shrinking from the too great adventure of expanding into the
infinite, through the realization of his own limitless possi-
bilities, man tries, by establishing proprietary rights in
God, to contract the infinite within the limits of his own
unexpanded self. Of all the demoralizing influences which
man is fated to introduce into his own life, this audacious
attempt to delimit the infinite is the most demoralizing ;
and because its range is as wide as that of life, and because
it admits of endless transformation, it goes far towards
guiding and controlling the rest.

The antidote to the desire for possession is the desire to
be possessed. No man can be at peace about God who is
taking part in the scramble for possession of him. And
only those who are at peace about God have attained to
spiritual well-being. He who would find God must wait to
be possessed by him. If he will not do this, his quest will
be in vain. And while he is waiting for that supreme con-
summation, he must try to make himself worthy to welcome
the divinest of all guests. How is this to be done ? By
practising self -surrender, by learning to lose self. But the
self-surrender must be of a different kind from what is
usually practised. The disinterested seeker for ideal truth
learns to master self in a particular field of its activity ; he
learns to suppress a particular inclination — the desire for
fixity and finality in the sphere of ultimate belief. But
though, in suppressing that desire, he completely masters
self, he does not master the whole of self. His effort will
probably react, in greater or less degree, on his whole
character ; but it will not lead to the last term of self-
surrender. Fluidity of belief can co-exist with aesthetic
insensibility and even with moral selfishness. But if a man
would be possessed by God, his surrender of self must be
complete in both senses of the word. The whole of self must
be wholly surrendered.

Now we have a special name for such total self-surrender.
We call it love. The essence of love is entire loss of the
entire self. Herein it differs from sympathy. The man who

2 A

354 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

has attained to all-embracing sympathy lives in the lives of
others. But he also lives in his own life, being able in some
sort to enter into the life of his neighbour through the very
vividness of his own. The man who loves his fellow-men
(in the fullest sense of the word love) has lost his own life,
but has found it again in the lives of others. In the passion
of personal love — of man for woman, of woman for man —
the loss of self, while the passion lasts, is complete. The
very purpose of the passion, from one point of view, is to
reveal love (with all its infinite possibilities) to man, to tell
him how far self -loss can go and what it really means.

Learn by a mortal yearning to ascend,
Seeking a higher object. Love was given,
Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for that end,
For this the passion to excess was driven,
That self might be annulled : her bondage prove
The fetters of a dream, opposed to love.

But the passion, as a passion, as an ecstasy, as utter loss of
self, is necessarily short-lived. And there is no direct path
from it to all-embracing love. As a revelation and an
inspiration, it has done and will do its work. But the path
to all-embracing love lies through all-embracing sympathy.
In other words, spiritual well-being is the crown and
consummation of moral well-being. It is easy to make light
of morality ; but though we may and must transfigure it,
we cannot otherwise transcend it. Nietzsche, the prophet
of anarchism, dreamed of passing " beyond good and evil."
He might as well have dreamed of passing beyond life and
death. We mean by moral good what makes for union ;
and we mean by moral evil wrhat makes for disunion. This
is the fundamental difference between the two ; and it is a
difference which holds good even on the highest imaginable
level of existence. The ideal consummation of moral good
is love ; and love is the supreme principle of unity, of integra-
tion, in Nature. The ideal consummation of moral evil is
hate ; and hate is the supreme principle of disunion, of dis-
integration, in Nature. Love is stronger than hate, good is
stronger than evil, because union is strength and disunion
is weakness. An army of devils, even if each of them had a
master mind and a master will, would always be vanquished

SPIRITUAL WELL-BEING 355

by an army of angels, because the former, disintegrated by the
centrifugal force of hate, would become a disorganized host
of self-seeking individualists, whereas the latter would be
automatically disciplined and organized by love. It is love
which makes the totality of things a cosmos, a universe, a
living whole. But it is from moral good that we must
advance to the spiritual good which is its consummation ;
it is from sympathy that we must advance to love, and it is
from love of man that we must advance to love of God.
" If a man loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how
can he love God whom he hath not seen ? " This is not to
say that love of man is commensurate with love of God.
The two loves are in a sense incommensurable. But when
a man has learned to love his fellow-men, he will find that
his love is spontaneously transcending its own limits and
widening out into cosmic love, into love of God. And then
he will learn that love of God, love of the infinite which is in
man — and not in man only — was all the while at the heart
of the sympathy with others which widened in due season
into all-embracing sympathy, and was then transfigured,
first into love of man, and last into love of God. Then he
will be ready to receive the Divine Lover : and he will
know that his love of God is something more than the
response of his soul to the love of God for him ; that in
some mysterious sense it ^s that divine love ; that, in the
last resort, God is both the Lover and the Beloved ; in fine,
that God is Love,

no more, since more can never be
Than just love.

When he has learned this lesson, he will have attained to the
fullest measure of spiritual well-being, for he will have
found his true self in oneness with God.

CHAPTER VII

BEYOND WELL-BEING

T OVE is the consummation of spiritual well-being.

JL/ When I say this I come near to saying all that need
be said. For spiritual well-being — the well-being of the
spirit of man, of the soul in its unity and totality — is the
consummation, not of moral well-being only but of well-
being in general and of each of its many aspects. It follows
that every movement towards well-being, so far at least as
it is an adventure into the infinite, finds its fulfilment in
love. Even the thirst for knowledge, the satisfaction of
which is mental well-being, may slake itself at the foun-
tain of love. For the supreme object of knowledge is
Supreme Reality ; and we mean by Supreme Reality the
unity of the Universe, the synthesis of all things in God.
To attain to knowledge of God is therefore to attain to the
summit of mental well-being. But how is this to be done ?
To think worthily about God is beyond our power. To
know about God, as the physicist knows about air or water,
is so infinitely impossible that to aspire to such knowledge
is to profane the Divine. If we are to know God we must
become one with him. There is no other pathway to our
goal. Knowledge, in the ordinary sense of the word, implies
a distinction between subject and object, which is pro-
visional, not final, and which breaks down completely when
we lean upon it with the full weight of our thought. The
ideal of knowledge is oneness with the thing known. I
know the soul of a friend, not by dissecting it with a scalpel
or studying it under a microscope, but in and through the
sympathy which draws our souls together and makes mine
in some sort one with his. In like manner I know the
Cosmos or totality of things, not by means of scientific
investigation or philosophical re fleet ion, but by becoming one
with what is real in it, by touching the spiritual pole of its

356

BEYOND WELL-BEING 357

being, in other words, by losing myself in love of God. When
I so lose myself, my mind is possessed with ideal truth.

And not with ideal truth only. What is ideal truth for
the mind is ideal beauty for the heart. The gratification of
aesthetic sensibility constitutes aesthetic well-being. But if
aesthetic sensibility is to be fully gratified — in the sense of
realizing that it can never be gratified — it must learn to
transcend itself, it must become an ardour, a passion, a
pursuit. Wrhen the appeal of Supreme Reality to the sen-
suous imagination draws forth the response of disinterested
delight ; when vision becomes revelation ; when the
aesthete becomes the artist, and the artist becomes creative,
in and through his desire to tell others what he has seen and
felt, — then aesthetic well-being loses itself in spiritual well-
being because it has already lost itself in love.

The development of moral into spiritual well-being has
already been traced. The secret of that inevitable develop-
ment is that love is the apotheosis of sympathy, and therefore
the fulfilling of the moral law. In transforming itself into
spiritual well-being through the medium of love, moral well-
being prepares the way for the advent of the social Kingdom
of Heaven by providing for social life the only foundation
which is both firm and sure. The truth of this statement is,
I think, self-evident. If love could become the master law
of man's being, all social problems would spontaneously
solve themselves.

Along whatever road, then, we may travel in quest of
well-being, we find that the goal, the ideal goal, of that road
is love. In attaining to that goal do we pass beyond well-
being ? I cannot help asking this question ; but I know
not how to begin to answer it.

Beyond well-being. What do these wrords mean ? Is
there a beyond ? If there is no beyond, well-being is not
well-being, for it cannot transcend itself. If there is a
beyond, it is a higher development of well-being, and there-
fore it is no beyond.

Spiritual well-being is the summit and perfection of all well-
being. The consummation of spiritual well-being is therefore
the summit and perfection of happiness. The man who has
found his true self in oneness with God has grown to the

358 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

fulness of his ideal stature. He has carried the process of
growing to the last term of its ascending series, and has
therefore won the prize of supreme happiness, the prize
which he set out to win. So one feels impelled to conclude.
But may one rest in this conclusion ? Is not the last term
in the process of soul-growth infinity ? Has not the adven-
ture into the infinite ended in the adventurer losing himself
— and finding himself — in the infinite ? And if so, has not
well-being been carried so far that it has at last transcended
itself ? When a man has lost himself in love of God, will
not the ideas of well-being and happiness have retired of
their own accord into the background ?

More than forty years ago, when Moody and Sankey, the
American evangelists, came to this country, a friend of mine
who had come under their influence was in great trouble
about his soul. He feared lest he should be " lost " and
wondered how he was to be " saved." When he had con-
fided his trouble to me, I tried to console him by saying :
" What does it matter whether you or I are lost so long as
it is well with God ? " There our dialogue ended. My
protest fell on deaf ears. I cannot tell how I came to utter
it. I had no theory of things in those days which coun-
tenanced, or came anyway near to countenancing, the
complete self-effacement that I advocated. I had never
heard of Brother Lawrence, the Carmelite Monk of the
seventeenth century, who liberated his soul from the
haunting fear of being damned, by saying to himself :
" Whatever becomes of me, whether I be lost or saved, I will
always continue to act purely for the love of God." I can
only suppose that my words surged up of their own accord
from some occult depth of my subconscious self. But I
think there was a deep truth at the heart of them. In
Clough's familiar lines :

It fortifies my soul to know
That though I perish, truth is so ;
That howsoe'er I stray and range,
Thou art the same and dost not change.
I steadier step when I recall
That, if I slip, thou dost not fall.

The same truth is expressed in other words. In the saying
of the Chinese sage, " Never will I enter into final peace

BEYOND WELL-BEING 359

alone, but always and everywhere will I suffer and strive
until all enter with me," it is expressed in another notation.
My words were, I imagine, an instinctive protest against
the religious individualism with which Israel's attempt to
monopolize the God of the Universe has filled the Western
world. If the scramble for material possessions demoralizes
all who take part in it, what word will describe the deaden-
ing influence of the scramble for " salvation " which goes
on in the name of religion ? The least that one can say of
it is that it despiritualizes the spirit of man. Until a man
can say with his whole heart : "I am content to be a tran-
sient flicker of God's eternal flame. I am content to be
nothing so long as God is everything " ; until a man can say
to God, " Thy will be done, even though it be to my own
undoing," the surrender of the individual to the universal
soul is not complete.

A man will readily sacrifice his physical life in order to
save the lives of others. Men who have earned the bliss of
Nirvana will renounce it (so Buddhist sages tell us) in order
that they may return to earth and help their fellow-men.
Is there any reason why a man should not be willing to be
" lost," if by making this last sacrifice he could help others
to be " saved " ? It is easier to ask this question than to
answer it. Such an extremity of self -surrender as I have in
mind is at once imaginable and unimaginable. A man might
conceivably devote himself to " perdition " for the benefit
of other souls. But his effort to achieve perdition (if I may
use such a phrase) would of necessity defeat itself. For
his sublime self-sacrifice would be the last term in the
process of self-losing ; and the more completely a man
loses himself, the more completely will he be possessed by
God. And to be possessed by God is to be saved, in a sense
which goes far beyond all that we have ever meant or could
ever mean by salvation. Therefore the more a man tries to
kill out the desire for happiness, the happier he will be.
When Brother Lawrence gave up thinking about his own
salvation and made up his mind always " to act purely for
the love of God," he thenceforth " passed his life in
perfect liberty and continual joy." Life, as we live it, is a
succession of practical paradoxes. The last and the greatest

360 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS

of these is that the ideas of well-being and happiness are
ever urging us to pass beyond their own limits, and yet,
when we try to do so, insist on following us wherever we go.
This paradox opposes a barrier to my thoughts which they
can neither face nor turn. They must therefore be content
to accept defeat.

I will now set forth in a few sentences the main argument
of this book. I have been trying to discover the secret of
happiness. I have assumed that happiness is definable as
the sense of well-being. My meditations have convinced me
that the way to well-being is the way of soul-growth ; that
the way of soul-growth is the way of self -surrender (since,
in the course of growth, self has again and again to be out-
grown and left behind) ; that complete loss of _sel£_ (the
counterpart of the complete finding of self) is therefore the
perfection of well-being ; and that the sense of such well-
being is perfect happiness. This, as it seems to me, is the
conclusion of the whole matter. But is it the final con-
clusion ? Is the pursuit of happiness compatible with com-
plete loss of self ? Is not the idea of happiness the last
vestige of that love of self which must be effaced before the
loss of self can become complete ? Such questions flash
from time to time upon one's mental vision. The answer
to them, if indeed they will tarry for an answer, is, as we
have just seen, a baffling paradox. If it is true that the
desire for happiness must be renounced for the loss of self
to be complete, it is equally true that in complete loss of
self man finds his highest happiness. This means that for the
present, at any rate, we cannot transcend even in imagina-
tion the ever-receding limits of the world of thought and
action which comes under the control of the idea of happi-
ness. But will it always be so ? Is the idea to be accepted
as final ? Perhaps not. Perhaps the day will come when
man will have climbed high enough to see beyond even its
immense horizon. And perhaps, when that day comes, a
graver and grander conception of destiny will begin to
ascend, like a new constellation, from the dark underworld
of his buried life.

PP.INTKP IN GREAT BRITAIN BY WILLIAM BRRNDON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTfl

14 DAY USE

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