ds
life into one, making its forces work not in opposition but in
concordance; this is what makes life consecutive, using the earlier
act to produce the later, tying together existence in an organic
fatality of _must be_: the fatality not of the outside and the
unconscious, but of the conscious, inner, upper man. Nay, it is what
makes up the _Ego_. For the _ego_, as we are beginning to understand,
is no mysterious separate entity, still less a succession of
disconnected, conflicting, blind impulses; the _ego_ is the congruous,
perceived, nay, thought-out system of habits, which feels all
incongruity towards itself as accidental and external. Hence, when we
ask which are the statements we believe in, we answer instinctively
(logic being but a form of congruity) those statements which accord
with themselves and with other statements; when we ask, which are the
persons we trust? we answer, those persons whose feelings and actions
are congruous with themselves and with the feelings and actions of
others. And, on the contrary, it is in the worthless, in the
degenerate creature, that we note moods which are destructive to one
another's object, ideas which are in flagrant contradiction; and it is
in the idiot, the maniac, the criminal, that we see thoughts
disconnected among themselves, perceptions disconnected with
surrounding objects, and instincts and habits incompatible with those
of other human beings. Nay, if we look closely, we shall recognise,
moreover, that those emotions of pleasure are the healthy, the safe
ones, which are harmonious not merely in themselves (as a musical note
is composed of even vibrations), but harmonious with all preceding and
succeeding pleasures in ourselves, and harmonious, congruous, with the
present and future pleasures in others.

V.

The instinct of congruity, of subordination of part to whole, the
desire for harmony which is fostered above all things by art, is one
of the most precious parts of our nature, if only, obeying its own
tendency to expand, we apply it to ever wider circles of being; not
merely to the accessories of living, but to life itself.

For this love of harmony and order leads us to seek what is most
necessary in our living: a selection of the congruous, an arrangement
of the mutually dependent in our thoughts and feelings.

Much of the work of the universe is done, no doubt, by what seems the
exercise of mere random energy, by the thinking of apparently
disconne