reat task of solving the problem of
humanity, but it strengthened him with its past achievement, and
inspired him with the conviction of its boundless progress. It is not
that the significance of the individual or the meaning of his endeavour
is lost. Under this new view, man has still to fight for his own hand,
and it is still recognized that spirit is always burdened with its own
fate and cannot share its responsibility. Morality does not give way to
religion or pass into it, and there is a sense in which the individual
is always alone in the sphere of duty.

But from this new point of view the individual is re-explained for us,
and we begin to understand that he is the focus of a light which is
universal, "one more incarnation of the mind of God." His moral task is
no longer to seek his own in the old sense, but to elevate humanity; for
it is only by taking this circuit that he can come to his own. Such a
task as this is a sufficiently great one to occupy all time; but it is
to humanity in him that the task belongs, and it will therefore be
achieved. This is no new one-sidedness. It does not mean, to those who
comprehend it, the supplanting of the individual thought by the
collective thought, or the substitution of humanity for man. The
universal is _in_ the particular, the fact _is_ the law. There is no
collision between the whole and the part, for the whole lives in the
part. As each individual plant has its own life and beauty and worth,
although the universe has conspired to bring it into being; so also, and
in a far higher degree, man has his own duty and his own dignity,
although he is but the embodiment of forces, natural and spiritual,
which have come from the endless past. Like a letter in a word, or a
word in a sentence, he gets his meaning from his context; _but the
sentence is meaningless without him_. "Rays from all round converge in
him," and he has no power except that which has been lent to him; but
all the same, nay, all the more, he must

"Think as if man never thought before!
Act as if all creation hung attent
On the acting of such faculty as his."[A]

[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]

His responsibility, his individuality, is not less, but greater, in that
he can, in his thought and moral action, command the forces that the
race has stored for him. The great man speaks the thought of his people,
and his invocations as their priest are just the expression of their
dumb yearni