aid to establish
the existence of spirit. The standard is to be found within the
consciousness itself. A distinction has to be made between _nature and
spirit_. However much they resemble each other in the beginnings of
life, spirit has travelled far beyond nature or matter. It has developed
for itself an essence which may be designated as _substance_. The chief
characteristic of matter is that it occupies space; but spirit, though
connected with, and largely conditioned by, matter as it exists in
space, is now something quite other--something which has to be granted
an existence of its own, and which forms the beginning of a _new kind of
world_ and unfolds a _new kind of reality_.

The reality of spiritual life is not discovered in anything which is
external to life; it is to be found in life itself. The reality is
revealed and, indeed, created by an act of the spirit of man. Such an
act must be the act of one's [p.136] own deepest being. But although
such a new reality is not to be found in anything external to life, yet
the very revelation points, as we have already observed, to something
which is over-individual. Even the meaning of the reality itself, from
its _immanent_ side, is something quite other than the natural life and
its contents. It is something revealed, but not as yet possessed; it is
hard to be reached; and even within the man's own nature obstacles and
hindrances of various kinds are to be found. But the new reality
persists in the midst of the hindrances; the man discovers himself as
the possessor of a deeper kind of truth than was present and operative
in the ordinary life. A cleavage is therefore made between the "small
self" and the spiritual life. In the degree the former wins through the
calling forth of the deepest activities of the soul, in that degree does
the transcendent aspect of the new reality urge itself upon man. And
when the two aspects--immanent and transcendent--of the reality are
firmly grasped by the soul, the soul moves upward in the exploration and
possession of its new world.

The failure to enter into this region of religion is due to the fact
that men often attempt to construct religion on certain so-called
faculties of the soul. Some attempt to discover and establish religion
through the power and conclusions of the intellect. It is evident that
when the knowing aspect of consciousness [p.137] takes such a leading
part, and deliberately ignores the affective and active as