cal world and our
own physical existence. Yet, on the other hand, the consciousness of a
kernel of our being, non-sensuous and spiritual in its nature, has for
ever broken our satisfaction with the physical world and our own
physical existence. There are only two alternatives on which we can act.
Either we are to conceive of our spiritual personality as something
secondary and subsidiary to the natural world, or we are to insist on
its independence, and acknowledge it as the beginning of _a new mode of
existence._ If the former alternative is chosen, the personality can
never pass to a state of self-subsistence, [p.37] but will conceive of
reality as something which is mainly physical. The consequence is that
the personality will suffer seriously in its evolution, for such an
evolution is brought about through the recognition and willing
acknowledgment of the breaking forth of _a new kind of reality_ within
the spiritual nucleus of life. If the latter alternative is chosen, this
nucleus of life is now seen as something quite other than a quality
entirely dependent upon the physical or than a mere flowering of the
physical; it is seen as a reality higher in its nature than the physical
or even than the ordinary life of the individual. Such a situation is
forced on man when once he reflects upon the inward meaning of the
content of his consciousness. It is true that such questions may be
thrust into the background, and consequently inhibited from presenting
us with their full value and significance. And it is this which happens
only too often in daily life. The constant need of attention to external
things, the absorption of the mind in conventionality and custom as
these present themselves in the form of a ready-made inheritance--all
these occupy so much of the attention as to prevent man from knowing and
experiencing what _his own life_ is or what it is capable of becoming.
Man has penetrated into the secrets of Nature as well as into the past
of human society through close and constant attention to external
things. [p.38] He has been able to gather fragments together, piece them
into each other, and through this frame laws concerning them. It is thus
that the external world and society have come to mean more to a human
being than to an animal. The animal is probably almost entirely the
creature of its instincts and of the percepts which present themselves
to it from moment to moment, and which largely disappear. But man