th what was inferior in its
nature, yet they have never been completely destroyed in this evil
process. They have still a marvellous power of disentangling themselves
from human perversions, and of revealing themselves once more in their
pristine power and glory. "But the spiritual life declares its ability
also positively within the human province through a persistent effort to
move outside the 'given' situation, through a tracing out and a holding
forth of ideals, through a longing after a more complete happiness and a
more complete truth. Why is not man satisfied with the relativity which
so obstinately clings to his existence? Why has he a longing for the
Absolute in opposition to such relativity, and through this plunges
himself into the deepest sorrows and distractions? This has happened not
only in special situations of individuals, but in the whole process of
culture; indeed, the upward march of culture would have been impossible
without a striving of man from a level above his 'given' position and
even above himself. Was not subjective satisfaction more easily reached
by him in the semi-animal stages of his existence than in culture and
civilisation with all their toils and tangles, and does the progress of
culture and civilisation with all their mechanical appliances make him
in the merely human sense happier? What else could compel him to step
into this perilous track but the necessity of his own nature [p.147]
revealing to him the presence of a new order of things?"[51]

The whole of this movement is from within without. Even the physical
world has to enter into consciousness before it can be known and
interpreted; even the over-individual norms have to be accepted and
interpreted by the spiritual potency before the reality which they
possess in themselves can become our own personal reality. We receive
from without on the plane of Nature and on the planes of mentality and
spirituality. The consciousness does not evolve its content on any level
of its progress from itself alone. Material from without has to enter
into it. But the whole of this material will become one's own possession
in the degree it is attended to after it has entered consciousness;
something has to happen to the material _within_ consciousness; it has
to awaken a potency, and has to distil its own content within that
potency. But as this potency is not of the same nature entirely as what
presents itself as possessing value, it is clear tha