ly vaster than ours, could possibly
present directly.

Thus, confined to our own form and span of consciousness as we are, we
spend our lives in acquiring or devising ways to accomplish indirectly
what we are forbidden directly to attain, namely, the discovery of
truth and of meaning such as only a consciousness of another form than
ours can realise. Now, as I maintained in our third and fourth
lectures, _the whole validity and value of this indirect procedure of
ours depends upon the principle that such a wider view of things, such
a larger unity of consciousness, such a direct grasp of the meanings
at which we indirectly but ceaselessly aim is a reality in the
universe._ As I there maintained, _the whole reality of the universe
itself must he defined, in terms of the reality of such an inclusive
and direct grasp of the whole sense of things._ I can here only repeat
my opinion that this thesis is one which nobody can deny without
self-contradiction.

Now the difference between the narrow form of consciousness that we
human beings possess and the wider and widest forms of consciousness
whose reality every common-sense effort to give sense to life, and
every scientific effort to discover the total verdict of experience
presupposes--the difference, I say, between these two forms of
consciousness is _literally_ expressed by calling the one form (the
form that we all possess) _human,_ and by calling the other form (the
form of a wider consciousness which views {267} experience as it is)
_superhuman._ The wider conscious view of things that we share only
indirectly, through the devices just pointed out, is certainly not
human; for no mortal man ever directly possesses it. It is real; for,
as we saw in our study of the reason, if you deny this assertion in
one shape, you reaffirm it in another. For you can define the truth
and falsity of your own opinions only by presupposing a wader view
that sees as a whole what you see in fragments. That unity of
consciousness which we presuppose in all our indirect efforts to get
into touch with its direct view of truth is above our level. It
includes what we actually get before us in our form of consciousness.
It also includes all that we are trying to grasp indirectly. Now what
is not human, and is above our level, and includes all of our insight,
but transcends and corrects our indirect efforts by its direct grasp
of facts as they are, can best be called superhuman. _The thesis that