II. THE NATURE OF THE SELF

The true nature of the Self is a matter by no means easy to

compass. We have all probably at some time or other attempted

to fathom the deeps of personality, and been baffled. Some

people say they can quite distinctly remember a moment in

early childhood, about the age of THREE (though the exact period

is of course only approximate) when self-consciousness--the

awareness of being a little separate Self--first dawned in the

mind. It was generally at some moment of childish tension--

alone perhaps in a garden, or lost from the mother's protecting

hand--that this happened; and it was the beginning of a whole

range of new experience. Before some such period there is

in childhood strictly speaking no distinct self-consciousness.

As Tennyson says (In Memoriam xliv):

 The baby new to earth and sky,

     What time his tender palm is prest

     Against the circle of the breast,

 Hath never thought that "This is I."

It has consciousness truly, but no distinctive

self-consciousness. It is this absence or deficiency which

explains many things which at first sight seem obscure in the

psychology of children and of animals. The baby (it has often

been noticed) experiences little or no sense of FEAR. It does not

know enough to be afraid; it has never formed any image of

itself, as of a thing which might be injured. It may shrink from

actual pain or discomfort, but it does not LOOK FORWARD--which is

of the essence of fear--to pain in the future. Fear and

self-consciousness are closely interlinked. Similarly with

animals, we often wonder how a horse or a cow can endure to stand

out in a field all night, exposed to cold and rain, in the

lethargic patient way that they exhibit. It is not that they do

not FEEL the discomfort, but it is that they do not envisage

THEMSELVES as enduring this pain and suffering for all those

coming hours; and as we know with ourselves that nine-tenths of

our miseries really consist in looking forward to future

miseries, so we understand that the absence or at any rate slight

prevalence of self-consciousness in animals enables them to

endure forms of distress which would drive us mad.

In time then the babe arrives at self-consciousness; and,

as one might expect, the growing boy or girl often becomes

intensely aware of Self. His or her self-consciousness is crude,

no doubt, but it has very little misgiving. If the question

of the nature of the Self is propounded to the boy as a problem

he has no difficulty in solving it. He says "I know well enough

who I am: I am the boy with red hair what gave Jimmy Brown such a

jolly good licking last Monday week." He knows well enough--or

thinks he knows--who he is. And at a later age, though his

definition may change and he may describe himself chiefly as a

good cricketer or successful in certain examinations,

his method is practically the same. He fixes his mind on a

certain bundle of qualities and capacities which he is supposed

to possess, and calls that bundle Himself. And in a more

elaborate way we most of us, I imagine, do the same.

Presently, however, with more careful thought, we begin to see

difficulties in this view. I see that directly I think of myself

as a certain bundle of qualities--and for that matter it is

of no account whether the qualities are good or bad, or in what

sort of charming confusion they are mixed--I see at once that

I am merely looking at a bundle of qualities: and that the

real "I," the Self, is not that bundle, but is the being

INSPECTING the same--something beyond and behind, as it were. So

I now concentrate my thoughts upon that inner Something, in

order to find out what it really is. I imagine perhaps an inner

being, of 'astral' or ethereal nature, and possessing a new range

of much finer and more subtle qualities than the body--a being

inhabiting the body and perceiving through its senses, but

quite capable of surviving the tenement in which it dwells and

I think of that as the Self. But no sooner have I taken

this step than I perceive that I am committing the same mistake

as before. I am only contemplating a new image or picture,

and "I" still remain beyond and behind that which I contemplate.

No sooner do I turn my attention on the subjective

being than it becomes OBJECTIVE, and the real subject retires

into the background. And so on indefinitely. I am baffled;

and unable to say positively what the Self is.

Meanwhile there are people who look upon the foregoing

speculations about an interior Self as merely unpractical. Being

perhaps of a more materialistic type of mind they fix their

attention on the body. Frankly they try to define the Self

by the body and all that is connected therewith--that is by

the mental as well as corporeal qualities which exhibit

themselves in that connection; and they say, "At any rate the

Self--whatever it may be--is in some way limited by the body;

each person studies the interest of his body and of the feelings,

emotions and mentality directly associated with it, and you

cannot get beyond that; it isn't in human nature to do so.

The Self is limited by this corporeal phenomenon and doubtless

it perishes when the body perishes." But here again the

conclusion, though specious at first, soon appears to be quite

inadequate. For though it is possibly true that a man, if left

alone in a Robinson Crusoe life on a desert island, might

ultimately subside into a mere gratification of his corporeal

needs and of those mental needs which were directly concerned

with the body, yet we know that such a case would by no means be

representative. On the contrary we know that vast numbers of

people spend their lives in considering other people, and often

so far as to sacrifice their own bodily and mental comfort and

well-being. The mother spends her life thinking almost day

and night about her babe and the other children--spending

all her thoughts and efforts on them. You may call her selfish

if you will, but her selfishness clearly extends beyond her

personal body and mind, and extends to the personalities of her

children around her; her "body"--if you insist on your definition

--must be held to include the bodies of all her children.

And again, the husband who is toiling for the support of the

family, he is thinking and working and toiling and suffering

for a 'self' which includes his wife and children. Do you

mean that the whole family is his "body"? Or a man belongs

to some society, to a church or to a social league of some kind,

and his activities are largely ruled by the interests of this

larger group. Or he sacrifices his life--as many have been doing

of late--with extraordinary bravery and heroism for the sake

of the nation to which he belongs. Must we say then that

the whole nation is really a part of the man's body? Or again,

he gives his life and goes to the stake for his religion. Whether

his religion is right or wrong does not matter, the point is that

there is that in him which can carry him far beyond his local

self and the ordinary instincts of his physical organism, to

dedicate his life and powers to a something of far wider

circumference and scope.

Thus in the FIRST of these two examples of a search for the

nature of the Self we are led INWARDS from point to point, into

interior and ever subtler regions of our being, and still in the

end are baffled; while in the SECOND we are carried outwards

into an ever wider and wider circumference in our quest of

the Ego, and still feel that we have failed to reach its ultimate

nature. We are driven in fact by these two arguments to the

conclusion that that which we are seeking is indeed something

very vast--something far extending around, yet also buried

deep in the hidden recesses of our minds. How far, how deep,

we do not know. We can only say that as far as the indications

point the true self is profounder and more far-reaching than

anything we have yet fathomed.

In the ordinary commonplace life we shrink to ordinary

commonplace selves, but it is one of the blessings of great

experiences, even though they are tragic or painful, that they

throw us out into that enormously greater self to which we

belong. Sometimes, in moments of inspiration, of intense

enthusiasm, of revelation, such as a man feels in the midst of

a battle, in moments of love and dedication to another person,

and in moments of religious ecstasy, an immense world is

opened up to the astonished gaze of the inner man, who sees

disclosed a self stretched far beyond anything he had ever

imagined. We have all had experiences more or less of that

kind. I have known quite a few people, and most of you have

known some, who at some time, even if only once in their lives,

have experienced such an extraordinary lifting of the veil, an

opening out of the back of their minds as it were, and have

had such a vision of the world, that they have never afterwards

forgotten it. They have seen into the heart of creation, and

have perceived their union with the rest of mankind. They

have had glimpses of a strange immortality belonging to them,

a glimpse of their belonging to a far greater being than they

have ever imagined. Just once--and a man has never forgotten

it, and even if it has not recurred it has colored all

the rest of his life.

Now, this subject has been thought about--since the beginning

of the world, I was going to say--but it has been thought

about since the beginnings of history. Some three thousand

years ago certain groups of--I hardly like to call them

philosophers --but, let us say, people who were meditating and

thinking upon these problems, were in the habit of locating

themselves in the forests of Northern India; and schools arose

there. In the case of each school some teacher went into the

woods and collected groups of disciples around him, who lived

there in his company and listened to his words. Such schools were

formed in very considerable numbers, and the doctrines of

these teachers were gathered together, generally by their

disciples, in notes, which notes were brought together into

little pamphlets or tracts, forming the books which are called

the 'Upanishads' of the Indian sages. They contain some

extraordinary words of wisdom, some of which I want to bring

before you. The conclusions arrived at were not so much what we

should call philosophy in the modern sense. They were not so

much the result of the analysis of the mind and the following

out of concatenations of strict argument; but they were flashes

of intuition and experience, and all through the 'Upanishads'

you find these extraordinary flashes embedded in the midst

of a great deal of what we should call a rather rubbishy kind

of argument, and a good deal of merely conventional Brahmanical

talk of those days. But the people who wrote and spoke thus

had an intuition into the heart of things which I make bold to

say very few people in modern life have. These 'Upanisihads,'

however various their subject, practically agree on one point

--in the definition of the "self." They agree in saying: that

the self of each man is continuous with and in a sense identical

with the Self of the universe. Now that seems an extraordinary

conclusion, and one which almost staggers the modern mind

to conceive of. But that is the conclusion, that is the thread

which runs all through the 'Upanishads'--the identity of the

self of each individual with the self of every other individual

throughout mankind, and even with the selves of the animals

and other creatures.

Those who have read the Khandogya Upanishad remember

how in that treatise the father instructs his son Svetakeitu on

this very subject--pointing him out in succession the objects

of Nature and on each occasion exhorting him to realize his

identity with the very essence of the object--"Tat twam asi,

THAT thou art." He calls Svetaketu's attention to a tree. What

is the ESSENCE of the tree? When they have rejected the external

characteristics--the leaves, the branches, etc.--and agreed

that the SAP is the essence, then the father says, "TAT TWAM ASI

--THAT thou art." He gives his son a crystal of salt, and asks

him what is the essence of that. The son is puzzled. Clearly

neither the form nor the transparent quality are essential. The

father says, "Put the crystal in water." Then when it is melted

he says, "Where is the crystal?" The son replies, "I do not

know." "Dip your finger in the bowl," says the father, "and

taste." Then Svetaketu dips here and there, and everywhere

there is a salt flavor. They agree that THAT is the essence of

salt; and the father says again, "TAt twam asi." I am of course

neither defending nor criticizing the scientific attitude here

adopted. I am only pointing out that this psychological

identification of the observer with the object observed runs

through the Upanishads, and is I think worthy of the deepest

consideration.

In the 'Bhagavat Gita,' which is a later book, the author

speaks of "him whose soul is purified, whose self is the Self

of all creatures." A phrase like that challenges opposition.

It is so bold, so sweeping, and so immense, that we hesitate to

give our adhesion to what it implies. But what does it mean

--"whose soul is purified"? I believe that it means this, that

with most of us our souls are anything but clean or purified,

they are by no means transparent, so that all the time

we are continually deceiving ourselves and making clouds

between us and others. We are all the time grasping things

from other people, and, if not in words, are mentally boasting

ourselves against others, trying to think of our own superiority

to the rest of the people around us. Sometimes we try to run

our neighbors down a little, just to show that they are not

quite equal to our level. We try to snatch from others some

things which belong to them, or take credit to ourselves for

things to which we are not fairly entitled. But all the time we

are acting so it is perfectly obvious that we are weaving veils

between ourselves and others. You cannot have dealings with

another person in a purely truthful way, and be continually

trying to cheat that person out of money, or out of his good

name and reputation. If you are doing that, however much

in the background you may be doing it, you are not looking

the person fairly in the face--there is a cloud between you all

the time. So long as your soul is not purified from all these

really absurd and ridiculous little desires and superiorities and

self-satisfactions, which make up so much of our lives, just

so long as that happens you do not and you cannot see the

truth. But when it happens to a person, as it does happen

in times of great and deep and bitter experience; when it

happens that all these trumpery little objects of life are swept

away; then occasionally, with astonishment, the soul sees that.

It is also the soul of the others around. Even if it does not

become aware of an absolute identity, it perceives that there is

a deep relationship and communion between itself and others, and

it comes to understand how it may really be true that to him

whose soul is purified the self is literally the Self of all

creatures.

Ordinary men and those who go on more intellectual and less

intuitional lines will say that these ideas are really contrary

to human nature and to nature generally. Yet I think that those

people who say this in the name of Science are extremely

unscientific, because a very superficial glance at nature reveals

that the very same thing is taking place throughout nature.

Consider the madrepores, corallines, or sponges. You find, for

instance, that constantly the little self of the coralline or

sponge is functioning at the end of a stem and casting forth its

tentacles into the water to gain food and to breathe the air out

of the water. That little animalcule there, which is living in

that way, imagines no doubt that it is working all for itself,

and yet it is united down the stem at whose extremity it stands,

with the life of the whole madrepore or sponge to which it

belongs. There is the common life of the whole and the individual

life of each, and while the little creature at the end of the

stem is thinking (if it is conscious at all) that its whole

energies are absorbed in its own maintenance, it really is

feeding the common life through the stem to which it belongs, and

in its turn it is being fed by that common life.

You have only to look at an ordinary tree to see the same

thing going on. Each little leaf on a tree may very naturally

have sufficient consciousness to believe that it is an entirely

separate being maintaining itself in the sunlight and the air,

withering away and dying when the winter comes on--and there is

an end of it. It probably does not realize that all the time it

is being supported by the sap which flows from the trunk of the

tree, and that in its turn it is feeding the tree, too--that its

self is the self of the whole tree. If the leaf could really

understand itself, it would see that its self was deeply,

intimately connected, practically one with the life of the whole

tree. Therefore, I say that this Indian view is not unscientific.

On the contrary, I am sure that it is thoroughly scientific.

Let us take another passage, out of the 'Svetasvatara Upanishad,'

which, speaking of the self says: "He is the one God, hidden in

all creatures, all pervading, the self within all, watching

over all works, shadowing all creatures, the witness, the

perceiver, the only one free from qualities."

And now we can return to the point where we left the argument

at the beginning of this discourse. We said, you remember,

that the Self is certainly no mere bundle of qualities--that

the very nature of the mind forbids us thinking that. For

however fine and subtle any quality or group of qualities may

be, we are irresistibly compelled by the nature of the mind

itself to look for the Self, not in any quality or qualities, but

in the being that PERCEIVES those qualities. The passage I have

just quoted says that being is "The one God, hidden in all

creatures, all pervading, the self within all . . . the witness,

the perceiver, the only one free from qualities." And the more

you think about it the clearer I think you will see that this

passage is correct--that there can be only ONE witness, ONE

perceiver, and that is the one God hidden in all creatures,

"Sarva Sakshi," the Universal Witness.

Have you ever had that curious feeling, not uncommon,

especially in moments of vivid experience and emotion, that

there was at the back of your mind a witness, watching everything

that was going on, yet too deep for your ordinary thought

to grasp? Has it not occurred to you--in a moment say of

great danger when the mind was agitated to the last degree by

fears and anxieties--suddenly to become perfectly calm and

collected, to realize that NOTHING can harm you, that you are

identified with some great and universal being lifted far over

this mortal world and unaffected by its storms? Is it not

obvious that the real Self MUST be something of this nature,

a being perceiving all, but itself remaining unperceived? For

indeed if it were perceived it would fall under the head of some

definable quality, and so becoming the object of thought would

cease to be the subject, would cease to be the Self.

The witness is and must be "free from qualities." For

since it is capable of perceiving ALL qualities it must obviously

not be itself imprisoned or tied in any quality--it must either

be entirely without quality, or if it have the potentiality of

quality in it, it must have the potentiality of EVERY quality;

but in either case it cannot be in bondage to any

quality, and in either case it would appear that there can

be only ONE such ultimate Witness in the universe. For if

there were two or more such Witnesses, then we should be

compelled to suppose them distinguished from one another by

something, and that something could only be a difference of

qualities, which would be contrary to our conclusion that such

a Witness cannot be in bondage to any quality.

There is then I take it--as the text in question says--only

one Witness, one Self, throughout the universe. It is hidden

in all living things, men and animals and plants; it pervades

all creation. In every thing that has consciousness it is

the Self; it watches over all operations, it overshadows all

creatures, it moves in the depths of our hearts, the perceiver,

the only being that is cognizant of all and yet free from all.

Once you really appropriate this truth, and assimilate it in

the depths of your mind, a vast change (you can easily imagine)

will take place within you. The whole world will be transformed,

and every thought and act of which you are capable

will take on a different color and complexion. Indeed the

revolution will be so vast that it would be quite impossible for

me within the limits of this discourse to describe it. I will,

however, occupy the rest of my time in dealing with some points

and conclusions, and some mental changes which will flow

perfectly naturally from this axiomatic change taking place

at the very root of life.

"Free from qualities." We generally pride ourselves a

little on our qualities. Some of us think a great deal of our

good qualities, and some of us are rather ashamed of our bad

ones! I would say: "Do not trouble very much about all

that. What good qualities you have--well you may be quite

sure they do not really amount to much; and what bad

qualities, you may be sure they are not very important! Do

not make too much fuss about either. Do you see? The

thing is that you, you yourself, are not ANY of your qualities--

you are the being that perceives them. The thing to see to is

that they should not confuse you, bamboozle you, and hide you

from the knowledge of yourself--that they should not be erected

into a screen, to hide you from others, or the others from you.

If you cease from running after qualities, then after a little

time your soul will become purified, and you will KNOW that your

self is the Self of all creatures; and when you can feel that you

will know that the other things do not much matter.

Sometimes people are so awfully good that their very goodness

hides them from other people. They really cannot be

on a level with others, and they feel that the others are far

below them. Consequently their 'selves' are blinded or hidden

by their 'goodness.' It is a sad end to come to! And sometimes

it happens that very 'bad' people--just because they are so

bad--do not erect any screens or veils between themselves

and others. Indeed they are only too glad if others will

recognize them, or if they may be allowed to recognize others.

And so, after all, they come nearer the truth than the very good

people.

"The Self is free from qualities." That thing which is so

deep, which belongs to all, it either--as I have already said--

has ALL qualities, or it has none. You, to whom I am speaking

now, your qualities, good and bad, are all mine. I am perfectly

willing to accept them. They are all right enough and in

place--if one can only find the places for them. But I know

that in most cases they have got so confused and mixed up that

they cause great conflict and pain in the souls that harbor

them. If you attain to knowing yourself to be other than and

separate from the qualities, then you will pass below and beyond

them all. You will be able to accept ALL your qualities and

harmonize them, and your soul will be at peace. You will be free

from the domination of qualities then because you will know that

among all the multitudes of them there are none of any

importance!

If you should happen some day to reach that state of mind

in connection with which this revelation comes, then you will

find the experience a most extraordinary one. You will become

conscious that there is no barrier in your path; that the way

is open in all directions; that all men and women belong to

you, are part of you. You will feel that there is a great open

immense world around, which you had never suspected before,

which belongs to you, and the riches of which are all yours,

waiting for you. It may, of course, take centuries and thousands

of years to realize this thoroughly, but there it is. You are

just at the threshold, peeping in at the door. What did

Shakespeare say? "To thine own self be true, and it must follow

as the night the day, thou can'st not then be false to any

man." What a profound bit of philosophy in three lines!

I doubt if anywhere the basis of all human life has been

expressed more perfectly and tersely.

One of the Upanishads (the Maitrayana-Brahmana) says:

"The happiness belonging to a mind, which through deep

inwardness[1] (or understanding) has been washed clean and has

entered into the Self, is a thing beyond the power of words to

describe: it can only be perceived by an inner faculty." Observe

the conviction, the intensity with which this joy, this happiness

is described, which comes to those whose minds have been washed

clean (from all the silly trumpery sediment of self-thought) and

have become transparent, so that the great universal

Being residing there in the depths can be perceived.

What sorrow indeed, what, grief, can come to such an one who

has seen this vision? It is truly a thing beyond the power of

words to describe: it can only be PERCEIVED--and that by an

inner faculty. The external apparatus of thought is of no use.

Argument is of no use. But experience and direct perception

are possible; and probably all the experiences of life and of

mankind through the ages are gradually deepening our powers

of perception to that point where the vision will at last rise

upon the inward eye.

[1] The word in the Max Muller translation is "meditation." But

that is, I think, a somewhat misleading word. It suggests to most

people the turning inward of the THINKING faculty to grope and

delve in the interior of the mind. This is just what should NOT

be done. Meditation in the proper sense should mean the inward

deepening of FEELING and consciousness till the region of the

universal self is reached; but THOUGHT should not interfere

there. That should be turned on outward things to mould them into

expression of the inner consciousness.

Another text, from the Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad (which

I have already quoted in the paper on "Rest"), says: "If a

man worship the Self only as his true state, his work cannot

fail, for whatever he desires, that he obtains from the Self."

Is that not magnificent? If you truly realize your identity

and union with the great Self who inspires and informs the

world, then obviously whatever you desire the great Self win

desire, and the whole world will conspire to bring it to you.

"He maketh the winds his angels, and the flaming fires his

ministers." [I need not say that I am not asking you to try

and identify yourself with the great Self universal IN ORDER to

get riches, "opulence," and other things of that kind which

you desire; because in that quest you will probably not succeed.

The Great Self is not such a fool as to be taken in in that way.

It may be true--and it is true--that if ye seek FIRST the Kingdom

of Heaven all these things shall be added unto you; but

you must seek it first, not second.]

Here is a passage from Towards Democracy: "As space spreads

everywhere, and all things move and change within it, but it

moves not nor changes,

"So I am the space within the soul, of which the space without

is but the similitude and mental image;

"Comest thou to inhabit me, thou hast the entrance to all

life--death shall no longer divide thee from whom thou

lovest.

"I am the Sun that shines upon all creatures from within--

gazest thou upon me, thou shalt be filled with joy eternal."

Yes, this great sun is there, always shining, but most of the

time it is hidden from us by the clouds of which I have spoken,

and we fail to see it. We complain of being out in the cold;

and in the cold, for the time being, no doubt we are; but our

return to the warmth and the light has now become possible.

Thus at last the Ego, the mortal immortal self--disclosed at

first in darkness and fear and ignorance in the growing babe

--FINDS ITS TRUE IDENTITY. For a long period it is baffled in

trying to understand what it is. It goes through a vast

experience. It is tormented by the sense of separation and

alienation--alienation from other people, and persecution by all

the great powers and forces of the universe; and it is pursued by

a sense of its own doom. Its doom truly is irrevocable. The hour

of fulfilment approaches, the veil lifts, and the soul beholds at

last ITS OWN TRUE BEING.

We are accustomed to think of the external world around us

as a nasty tiresome old thing of which all we can say for certain

is that it works by a "law of cussedness"--so that, whichever

way we want to go, that way seems always barred, and

we only bump against blind walls without making any progress.

But that uncomfortable state of affairs arises from ourselves.

Once we have passed a certain barrier, which at present looks

so frowning and impossible, but which fades into nothing

immediately we have passed it--once we have found the open

secret of identity--then the way is indeed open in every

direction.

The world in which we live--the world into which we are

tumbled as children at the first onset of self-consciousness--

denies this great fact of unity. It is a world in which the

principle of separation rules. Instead of a common life and

union with each other, the contrary principle (especially in the

later civilizations) has been the one recognized--and to such

an extent that always there prevails the obsession of separation,

and the conviction that each person is an isolated unit. The

whole of our modern society has been founded on this delusive

idea, WHICH IS FALSE. You go into the markets, and every man's

hand is against the others--that is the ruling principle. You

go into the Law Courts where justice is, or should be,

administered, and you find that the principle which denies unity

is the one that prevails. The criminal (whose actions have really

been determined by the society around him) is cast out,

disacknowledged, and condemned to further isolation in a prison

cell. 'Property' again is the principle which rules and

determines our modern civilization--namely that which is proper

to, or can be appropriated by, each person, as AGAINST the

others.

In the moral world the doom of separation comes to us in the

shape of the sense of sin. For sin is separation. Sin is actually

(and that is its only real meaning) the separation from others,

and the non-acknowledgment of unity. And so it has come

about that during all this civilization-period the sense of sin

has ruled and ranged to such an extraordinary degree. Society

has been built on a false base, not true to fact or life--and

has had a dim uneasy consciousness of its falseness. Meanwhile

at the heart of it all--and within all the frantic external

strife and warfare--there is all the time this real great life

brooding. The kingdom of Heaven, as we said before, is still

within.

The word Democracy indicates something of the kind--the

rule of the Demos, that is of the common life. The coming of

that will transform, not only our Markets and our Law Courts

and our sense of Property, and other institutions, into something

really great and glorious instead of the dismal masses of

rubbish which they at present are; but it will transform our

sense of Morality.

Our Morality at present consists in the idea of self-goodness

--one of the most pernicious and disgusting ideas which has

ever infested the human brain. If any one should follow and

assimilate what I have just said about the true nature of the

Self he will realize that it will never again be possible for him

to congratulate himself on his own goodness or morality or

superiority; for the moment he does so he will separate himself

from the universal life, and proclaim the sin of his own

separation. I agree that this conclusion is for some people a

most sad and disheartening one--but it cannot be helped!

A man may truly be 'good' and 'moral' in some real sense;

but only on the condition that he is not aware of it. He can

only BE good when not thinking about the matter; to be conscious

of one's own goodness is already to have fallen!

We began by thinking of the self as just a little local self;

then we extended it to the family, the cause, the nation--ever

to a larger and vaster being. At last there comes a time when

we recognize--or see that we SHALL have to recognize--an inner

Equality between ourselves and all others; not of course an

external equality--for that would be absurd and impossible

--but an inner and profound and universal Equality. And so

we come again to the mystic root-conception of Democracy.

And now it will be said: "But after all this talk you have

not defined the Self, or given us any intellectual outline of

what you mean by the word." No--and I do not intend to. If

I could, by any sort of copybook definition, describe and show

the boundaries of myself, I should obviously lose all interest

in the subject. Nothing more dull could be imagined. I may

be able to define and describe fairly exhaustively this inkpot

on the table; but for you or for me to give the limits and

boundaries of ourselves is, I am glad to say, impossible. That

does not, however, mean that we cannot FEEL and be CONSCIOUS

of ourselves, and of our relations to other selves, and to the

great Whole. On the contrary I think it is clear that the more

vividly we feel our organic unity with the whole, the less shall

we be able to separate off the local self and enclose it within

any definition. I take it that we can and do become ever more

vividly conscious of our true Self, but that the mental statement

of it always does and probably always will lie beyond us. All

life and all our action and experience consist in the gradual

manifestation of that which is within us--of our inner being.

In that sense--and reading its handwriting on the outer world

--we come to know the soul's true nature more and more

intimately; we enter into the mind of that great artist who

beholds himself in his own creation.