fishness 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