Human nature is organised and equipped for progression throughout the ages. Each faculty and quality of its being is replete with an irresistible tendency to unfold in the direction of an endless career. It happens therefore that whilst one attribute of man's nature is slumbering, or between sleeping and waking, another may be making real advancement in its legitimate sphere. Contradictions and painful paradoxes in character are largely referable to these inequalities of development. The proprietor of the temple is at once a king of earth and an angel of heaven; but he himself and his palace were built by constructive forces which antedate his consciousness of being, over which forces he could exercise none of the privileges of self-government. Hence spring the monstrosities as well as angels of humanity. One inherits a noble physical constitution, associated with, an equally noble brain, but another a sickly brain and sicklier body, making intellectual and physical development impossible in this life. A brutal brain is the mother of brutal thoughts and practices. A low, coarse, nervous system is the cause of coarse and low physical sensations. The small brain is a hovel instead of a palace, and therefore a hovel instead of a regal life will be poured therefrom into society.
The animal instincts and characteristics of the lower world are visible at the basis of human nature. The truly
human arrives only when the animal is quiet and tame, while the inner angel comes only after instincts and intellect have been transfigured. Human nature has in its organisation two spheres—physical and spiritual. There is consequently a consciousness of the senses and of the world outside the senses, but—in the interior life —a consciousness of God and of the infinitude of eternal spiritualities within God. Instincts and intellect belong to consciousness of the senses, while the affections—and that flower of intuition which is wisdom—belong to the consciousness of God.1 This superior consciousness is what metaphysicians call religion. It takes hold of principles, because in these alone can the mind achieve absolute development. A principle contains within itself all facts and events which are allied to it in the nature of things. By becoming conscious of a principle, the essence of all that has been, is or may be possible to the operation of that principle comes within the grasp of the spirit.
Man never realises God until he becomes conscious of principles. Justice, love, beauty, truth, power have no
existence in the intellect, except as eyes may look at bright objects "through a glass darkly." But to the higher spiritual consciousness these principles are visible and are worshipped as attributes of God. St. Augustine said that "God is nearer, more closely related to us, and therefore more easily known by us, than sensible, corporeal things." In other language, man's consciousness of principles is his consciousness of perfection and infinity. An intelligence without consciousness of these principles is without God in the world; but that person whose interior nature is vitally aware of principles is a veritable angel presence. He who feels not only the warmth of love but also its beauty and eternity is in the self-consciousness of God—or, alternatively, so and so only is God revealed to human nature. This is therefore, and finally, the essence of all life's experience—the capacity of man for spiritual consciousness of eternal principles. It is not only a revelation of man himself to man but of God also to man, with superadded gleams of the infinite progressions and inexhaustible possibilities which are in God.