m towards the
perfection of which his nature admits, must needs make him
continuously _better_. In other words, growth, provided that it is
healthy, harmonious, and many-sided, provided that it is growth of
the whole being, is in itself and of inner necessity the most
moralising of all processes. Nay, it is the only moralising process,
for in no other way can what is naturally good be transformed into
what is ideally best.

This argument, apart from its being open to the possible objection
that it plays on the meaning of the word "good," is perhaps too
conclusive to be really convincing. I will therefore try to make my
way to its conclusion by another line of thought.

The desire to grow, to advance towards maturity, to realise his true
self--the self that is his in embryo from the very beginning--is
strong in every living thing, and is therefore strong in every child
of man. But the desire, which necessarily takes its share in the
general process of growth, must needs pass through many stages on its
way to its own highest form. In infancy, it is a desire for physical
life, for the preservation and expansion of the physical self; and in
this stage it is, as I have already pointed out, uncompromisingly
selfish. The new-born baby is the incarnation of selfishness; and it
is quite right that he should be so. It is his way of trying to
realise himself. As the child grows older, the desire to grow becomes
a desire for self-aggrandisement,--a desire to shine in various ways,
to surpass others, to be admired, to be praised; and though in this
stage it may give rise to much vanity and selfishness, still, so long
as it has vigorous growth behind it and is in its essence a desire
for further growth, it is in the main a healthy tendency, and to call
it sinful or vicious would be a misuse of words.

But when, in the course of time, the average, ordinary, surface
self--the self with which we are all only too familiar--has been
fully evolved and firmly established, the day may come when, owing to
various adverse conditions, the growth of the soul will be arrested,
and the ordinary self will come to be regarded as the true self, as
the self which the man may henceforth accept and rest in, as the
self in virtue of which he is what he is. Should the desire for
self-aggrandisement survive that day, the door would be thrown open
to selfishness of a malignant type and to general demoralisation. And
this is what would assuredly come to