Q-t 
 
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 
 
 OR 
 
 SALVATION THROUGH GROWTH 
 
 BY 
 
 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 
 
 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 sinrpritw ori 
 
 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 ; but 1 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 
 
 m 
 
 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 
 
 ix 
 
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 w r as 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. 
 
 8 
 
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 
 
 y 
 
 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 
 
 37 
 
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 themselvesthe 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 
 
 56 
 
* 
 
 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 
 
 2 
 
 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 
 
 60 
 
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. 
 
 64 
 
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, w r e 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 
 
\.. 
 
 " 
 
 v 
 
 I 
 
 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 
 
Ul 
 
 - 
 
 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 
 
 72 
 
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. 
 
av 
 
 s 
 
 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. 
 
 S 
 
 : 
 
 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. 
 
a, < 
 
 s 
 
 int 
 oft 
 doi 
 
 
 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 
 
 92 
 
, 
 
 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 P er 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, 
 
 1 
 
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. 
 
WJ 
 
 i 
 
 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 
 w r hich 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 
 slow r 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 w r e 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 w r e 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 draw 7 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 ow r e 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. 
 
 
I 7 4 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 speculations 1 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 w r hat 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 
 
 B, 
 
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 
 
 I 
 
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 powerthe " 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 virtually 1 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 murder 1 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 
 
 / TT N HE 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 minds B do) 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 w r as 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-BEING 1 
 
 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 w r e 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 4 it 
 
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 
 
3 i4 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 splendour 1 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 incompetence 1 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. W T hat 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 w r hat 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. W r hen 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 w r ords 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. 
 
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