h St. Thomas Aquinas may not have covered all
the facts when he called man a contemplative animal,[32] he came nearer
the mark than more modern anthropologists. Man has an ineradicable
impulse to transcendence, though sometimes--as we may admit--it is
expressed in strange ways: and no psychology which fails to take account
of it can be accepted by us as complete. He has a craving which nothing
in his material surroundings seems adequate either to awaken or to
satisfy; a deep conviction that some larger synthesis of experience is
possible to him. The sense that we are not yet full grown has always
haunted the race. "I am the Food of the full-grown. _Grow,_ and thou
shalt feed on Me!"[33] said the voice of supreme Reality to St.
Augustine. Here we seem to lay our finger on the distinguishing mark of
humanity: that in man the titanic craving for a fuller life and love
which is characteristic of all living things, has a teleological
objective. He alone guesses that he may or should be something other;
yet cannot guess what he may be. And from this vague sense of being _in
via,_ the restlessness and discord of his nature proceed. In him, the
onward thrust of the world of becoming achieves self-consciousness.

The best individuals and communities of each age have felt this craving
and conviction; and obeyed, in a greater or less degree, its persistent
onward push. "The seed of the new birth," says William Law, "is not a
notion, but a real strong essential hunger, an attracting, a magnetic
desire."[34] Over and over again, rituals have dramatized this, desire
and saints have surrendered to it. The history of religion and
philosophy is really the history of the profound human belief that we
have faculties capable of responding to orders of truth which, did we
apprehend them, would change the whole character of our universe;
showing us reality from another angle, lit by another light. And time
after time too--as we shall see, when we come to consider the testimony
of history--favourable variations have arisen within the race and proved
in their own persons that this claim is true. Often at the cost of great
pain, sacrifice, and inward conflict they have broken their attachments
to the narrow world of the senses: and this act of detachment has been
repaid by a new, more lucid vision, and a mighty inflow of power. The
principle of degrees assures us that such changed levels of
consciousness and angles of approach may well involve i