lution of human destiny, are not sought outside in some sort
of cosmic relationship, but within, either in the experience of the
superman, the genius or the hero, or, as later, in the collective
experience and consciousness of the group. Thus this, too, throws man
back upon himself, makes a new exaltation of personality in sharpest
contrast to the scholastic doctrine of the futility and depravity of
human nature. It produces the assertion of the sacred character of the
individual human being. The conviction of the immeasurable worth of
man is, of course, a characteristic teaching of Jesus; what it is
important for the preacher to remember in humanism is the source, not
the fact, of its estimate. With Jesus man's is a derived greatness
found in him as the child of the Eternal; in humanism, it is, so to
speak, self-originated, born of present worth, not of sublime origin
or shining destiny.

So man in the humanistic movement moves into the center of his own
world, becomes himself the measuring rod about whom all other values
are grouped. In the place of inspiration, or prophetic understanding,
which carries the implications of a transcendent source of truth and
goodness, we have a sharply limited, subjective wisdom and insight.
The "thus saith the Lord" of the Hebrew prophet means nothing here.
The humanist is, of course, confronted with the eternal question of
origins, of the thing-in-itself, the question whose insistence makes
the continuing worth of the absolutist speculations. He begs the
question by answering it with an assertion, not an explanation. He
meets it by an exaltation of human genius. Genius explains all sublime
achievements and genius is, so to speak, its own _fons et origo_. Thus
Diderot says: "Genius is the higher activity of the soul." "Genius,"
remarks Rousseau in a letter, "makes knowledge unnecessary." And
Kant defines genius as "the talent to discover that which cannot be
taught or learned."[8] This appears to be more of an evasion than
a definition! But the intent here is to refer all that seems to
transcend mundane categories, man's highest, his widest, his sublimest
intuitions and achievements, back to himself; he is his own source of
light and power.

[Footnote 8: _Anthropologie_, para. 87 c.]

Such an anthropocentric view of life and destiny in exalting man,
of course, thereby liberated him, not merely from ecclesiastical
domination, but also from those illusive fears and questionings, thos