XVII. CONCLUSION

In conclusion there does not seem much to say, except to

accentuate certain points which may still appear doubtful

or capable of being understood.

The fact that the main argument of this volume is along

the lines of psychological evolution will no doubt commend

it to some, while on the other hand it will discredit

the book to others whose eyes, being fixed on purely MATERIAL

causes, can see no impetus in History except through these.

But it must be remembered that there is not the least reason

for SEPARATING the two factors. The fact that psychologically

man has evolved from simple consciousness to

self-consciousness, and is now in process of evolution

towards another and more extended kind of consciousness,

does not in the least bar the simultaneous appearance

and influence of material evolution. It is clear indeed

that the two must largely go together, acting and reacting

on each other. Whatever the physical conditions of the animal

brain may be which connect themselves with simple (unreflected

and unreflecting) consciousness, it is evident that

these conditions--in animals and primitive man--lasted

for an enormous period, before the distinct consciousness

of the individual and separate SELF arose. This second

order of consciousness seems to have germinated at

or about the same period as the discovery of the use

of Tools (tools of stone, copper, bronze, &c.), the adoption

of picture-writing and the use of reflective words (like "I"

and "Thou"); and it led on to the appreciation of gold and

of iron with their ornamental and practical values, the

accumulation of Property, the establishment of slavery

of various kinds, the subjection of Women, the encouragement

of luxury and self-indulgence, the growth of crowded

cities and the endless conflicts and wars so resulting. We

can see plainly that the incoming of the self-motive exercised

a direct stimulus on the pursuit of these material objects

and adaptations; and that the material adaptations in their

turn did largely accentuate the self-motive; but to insist

that the real explanation of the whole process is only to

be found along one channel--the material OR the psychical

--is clearly quite unnecessary. Those who understand

that all matter is conscious in some degree, and that all

consciousness has a material form of some kind, will be the

first to admit this.

The same remarks apply to the Third Stage. We can see

that in modern times the huge and unlimited powers of

production by machinery, united with a growing tendency

towards intelligent Birth-control, are preparing the way

for an age of Communism and communal Plenty which

will inevitably be associated (partly as cause and partly as

effect) with a new general phase of consciousness, involving

the mitigation of the struggle for existence, the growth

of intuitional and psychical perception, the spread of amity

and solidarity, the disappearance of War, and the realization

(in degree) of the Cosmic life.

Perhaps the greatest difficulty or stumbling-block to

the general acceptance of the belief in a third (or 'Golden-

Age') phase of human evolution is the obstinate and obdurate

pre-judgment that the passing of Humanity out of the Second

stage can only mean the entire ABANDONMENT OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS;

and this people say--and quite rightly --is both impossible and

undesirable. Throughout the preceding chapters I have striven,

wherever feasible, to counter this misunderstanding--but I have

little hope of success. The DETERMINATION of the world to

misunderstand or misinterpret anything a little new or unfamiliar

is a thing which perhaps only an author can duly appreciate.

But while it is clear that self-consciousness originally came

into being through a process of alienation and exile and fear

which marked it with the Cain-like brand of loneliness

and apartness, it is equally clear that to think of that

apartness as an absolute and permanent separation is an

illusion, since no being can really continue to live divorced

from the source of its life. For a period in evolution the

SELF took on this illusive form in consciousness, as of an

ignis fatuus--the form of a being sundered from all other

beings, atomic, lonely, without refuge, surrounded by dangers

and struggling, for itself alone and for its own salvation

in the midst of a hostile environment. Perhaps some

such terrible imagination was necessary at first, as it

were to start Humanity on its new path. But it had

its compensation, for the sufferings and tortures, mental and

bodily, the privations, persecutions, accusations, hatreds,

the wars and conflicts--so endured by millions of

individuals and whole races--have at length stamped upon

the human mind a sense of individual responsibility which

otherwise perhaps would never have emerged, and whose

mark can now be effaced; ultimately, too, these things

have searched our inner nature to its very depths and exposed

its bed-rock foundation. They have convinced us

that this idea of ultimate separation is an illusion, and

that in truth we are all indefeasible and indestructible

parts of one great Unity in which "we live and move and

have our being." That being so, it is clear that there remains

in the end a self-consciousness which need by no means be

abandoned, which indeed only comes to its true fruition and

understanding when it recognizes its affiliation with the

Whole, and glories in an individuality which is an

expression both of itself AND of the whole. The human

child at its mother's knee probably comes first to know it

HAS a 'self' on some fateful day when having wandered

afar it goes lost among alien houses and streets or in the

trackless fields. That appalling experience--the sense of

danger, of fear, of loneliness--is never forgotten; it stamps

some new sense of Being upon the childish mind, but that

sense, instead of being destroyed, becomes all the prouder

and more radiant in the hour of return to the mother's arms.

The return, the salvation, for which humanity looks, is

the return of the little individual self to harmony and union

with the great Self of the universe, but by no means its

extinction or abandonment--rather the finding of its own true

nature as never before.

There is another thing which may be said here: namely,

that the disentanglement, as above, of three main stages of

psychological evolution as great formative influences in the

history of mankind, does not by any means preclude

the establishment of lesser stages within the boundaries

of these. In all probability subdivisions of all the three

will come in time to be recognized and allowed for. To take

the Second stage only, it MAY appear that Self-consciousness

in its first development is characterized by an accentuation

of Timidity; in its second development by a more deliberate

pursuit of sensual Pleasure (lust, food, drink, &c.); in its

third by the pursuit of mental gratifications (vanities,

ambitions, enslavement of others); in its fourth by the pursuit

of Property, as a means of attaining these objects;

in its fifth by the access of enmities, jealousies, wars and so

forth, consequent on all these things; and so on. I have no

intention at present of following out this line of thought,

but only wish to suggest its feasibility and the degree to

which it may throw light on the social evolutions of the Past.[1]

[1] For an analysis of the nature of Self-consciousness see vol.

iii, p. 375 sq. of the three ponderous tomes by Wilhelm

Wundt--Grund-zuge der Physiologischen Psychologie--in which amid

an enormous mass of verbiage occasional gleams of useful

suggestion are to be found.

As a kind of rude general philosophy we may say that

there are only two main factors in life, namely, Love and

Ignorance. And of these we may also say that the two are

not in the same plane: one is positive and substantial,

the other is negative and merely illusory. It may be thought

at first that Fear and Hatred and Cruelty, and the like, are

very positive things, but in the end we see that they

are due merely to ABSENCE of perception, to dulness

of understanding. Or we may put the statement in a rather

less crude form, and say that there are only two factors

in life: (1) the sense of Unity with others (and with Nature)

--which covers Love, Faith, Courage, Truth, and so forth,

and (2) Non-perception of the same--which covers Enmity,

Fear, Hatred, Self-pity, Cruelty, Jealousy, Meanness and an

endless similar list. The present world which we see

around us, with its idiotic wars, its senseless jealousies of

nations and classes, its fears and greeds and vanities and

its futile endeavors--as of people struggling in a swamp--

to find one's own salvation by treading others underfoot,

is a negative phenomenon. Ignorance, non-perception, are

at the root of it. But it is the blessed virtue of Ignorance

and of non-perception that they inevitably-if only slowly

and painfully--dESTROY THEMSELVES. All experience serves

to dissipate them. The world, as it is, carries' the doom

of its own transformation in its bosom; and in proportion as

that which is negative disappears the positive element must

establish itself more and more.

So we come back to that with which we began,[1] to Fear

bred by Ignorance. From that source has sprung the long

catalogue of follies, cruelties and sufferings which mark

the records of the human race since the dawn of history;

and to the overcoming of this Fear we perforce must look

for our future deliverance, and for the discovery, even in

the midst of this world, of our true Home. The time is

coming when the positive constructive element must dominate.

It is inevitable that Man must ever build a state of

society around him after the pattern and image of his own

interior state. The whole futile and idiotic structure of

commerce and industry in which we are now imprisoned

springs from that falsehood of individualistic self-seeking

which marks the second stage of human evolution. That

stage is already tottering to its fall, destroyed by the very

flood of egotistic passions and interests, of vanities, greeds,

and cruelties, all warring with each other, which are the sure

outcome and culmination of its operation. With the restoration

of the sentiment of the Common Life, and the gradual

growth of a mental attitude corresponding, there will emerge

from the flood something like a solid earth--something on

which it will be possible to build with good hope for

the future. Schemes of reconstruction are well enough

in their way, but if there is no ground of REAL HUMAN

SOLIDARITY beneath, of what avail are they?

[1] See Introduction, Ch. I.

An industrial system which is no real industrial order, but

only (on the part of the employers) a devil's device for

securing private profit under the guise of public utility,

and (on the part of the employed) a dismal and poor-spirited

renunciation--for the sake of a bare living--of all real

interest in life and work: such a 'system' must infallibly

pass away. It cannot in the nature of things be permanent.

The first condition of social happiness and prosperity must

be the sense of the Common Life. This sense, which

instinctively underlay the whole Tribal order of the far past--

which first came to consciousness in the worship of a thousand

pagan divinities, and in the rituals of countless sacrifices,

initiations, redemptions, love-feasts and communions, which

inspired the dreams of the Golden Age, and flashed out for

a time in the Communism of the early Christians and in

their adorations of the risen Savior--must in the end be

the creative condition of a new order: it must provide

the material of which the Golden City waits to be built.

The long travail of the World-religion will not have been

in vain, which assures this consummation. What the signs

and conditions of any general advance into this new order

of life and consciousness will be, we know not. It may be

that as to individuals the revelation of a new vision

often comes quite suddenly, and GENERALLY perhaps after a

period of great suffering, so to society at large a similar

revelation will arrive--like "the lightning which cometh out

of the East and shineth even unto the West"--with unexpected

swiftness. On the other hand it would perhaps

be wise not to count too much on any such sudden transformation.

When we look abroad (and at home) in this

year of grace and hoped-for peace, 1919, and see the spirits

of rancour and revenge, the fears, the selfish blindness and

the ignorance, which still hold in their paralyzing grasp huge

classes and coteries in every country in the world, we

see that the second stage of human development is

by no means yet at its full term, and that, as in some vast

chrysalis, for the liberation of the creature within still more

and more terrible struggles MAY be necessary. We

can only pray that such may not be the case. Anyhow, if

we have followed the argument of this book we can hardly

doubt that the destruction (which is going on everywhere)

of the outer form of the present society marks the first

stage of man's final liberation; and that, sooner or later, and

in its own good time, that further 'divine event' will surely

be realized.

Nor need we fear that Humanity, when it has once entered

into the great Deliverance, will be again overpowered

by evil. From Knowledge back to Ignorance there

is no complete return. The nations that have come

to enlightenment need entertain no dread of those others

(however hostile they appear) who are still plunging darkly

in the troubled waters of self-greed. The dastardly Fears

which inspire all brutishness and cruelty of warfare--whether

of White against White or it may be of White against

Yellow or Black--may be dismissed for good and

all by that blest race which once shall have gained the shore

--since from the very nature of the case those who are on

dry land can fear nothing and need fear nothing from the

unfortunates who are yet tossing in the welter and turmoil

of the waves.

Dr. Frazer, in the conclusion of his great work The Golden

Bough,[1] bids farewell to his readers with the following

words: "The laws of Nature are merely hypotheses

devised to explain that ever-shifting phantasmagoria of

thought which we dignify with the high-sounding names of

the World and the Universe. In the last analysis magic,

religion and science are nothing but theories [of thought];

and as Science has supplanted its predecessors so it may

hereafter itself be superseded by some more perfect hypothesis,

perhaps by some perfectly different way of looking at

phenomena--of registering the shadows on the screen--of

which we in this generation can form no idea." I imagine

Dr. Frazer is right in thinking that "a way of looking

at phenomena" different from the way of Science, may some

day prevail. But I think this change will come, not so

much by the growth of Science itself or the extension

of its 'hypotheses,' as by a growth and expansion of the

human HEART and a change in its psychology and powers of

perception. Perhaps some of the preceding chapters

will help to show how much the outlook of humanity on

the world has been guided through the centuries by the

slow evolution of its inner consciousness. Gradually, out

of an infinite mass of folly and delusion, the human soul

has in this way disentangled itself, and will in the future

disentangle itself, to emerge at length in the light of true

FREEDOM. All the taboos, the insane terrors, the fatuous

forbiddals of this and that (with their consequent heart-

searchings and distress) may perhaps have been in their

way necessary, in order to rivet and define the meaning

and the understanding of that word. To-day these taboos

and terrors still linger, many of them, in the form of

conventions of morality, uneasy strivings of conscience, doubts

and desperations of religion; but ultimately Man will emerge

from all these things, FREE--familiar, that is, with them all,

making use of all, allowing generously for the values of

all, but hampered and bound by NONE. He will realize the

inner meaning of the creeds and rituals of the ancient religions,

and will hail with joy the fulfilment of their far

prophecy down the ages--finding after all the long-expected

Saviour of the world within his own breast, and Paradise

in the disclosure there of the everlasting peace of the soul.

[1] See "Balder," vol. ii, pp. 306, 307. ("Farewell to Nemi.")