MEDIATOR OF PSYCHIC GROWTH

So also, in reading the story of some heroic action, we weep, but at the same time we are consdous of great inward elation. The physical pain which accompanied the initiation cérémonies among primitive peoples may hâve been suggested by a vague intuition that only so could the inner powers of courage and sjnnpathy, and the groupconsdousness itself as an active principle, be quickened in the individual. Pain "gets through" somehow, and rouses the deeper régions of consdousness into life and activity. It is seen hère, therefore, as the mediator of psychic growth.

It wotdd almost seem that one ought to regard the human being as composed of layers, many perhaps, one within the other — something like ihe " shells " described by the Theosophists. Then one can imagine that an agitation, reaching the outer sheath, might produce a reaction there which wotdd be felt as pleasure. But after a time the agitation increasing would begin to be too strong and, tending to disintegrate and damage the sheath, wotdd be felt as pain. With the continuation of the process, however, the agitation would penetrate through and reach the second sheath, where it would be felt as pleasure again. The first sheath would begin to wither, and the second sheath would begin to grow . . . So the process might go on from sheath to sheath even to the very centre of Life. The whole process is one of growth. Ât each stage there is pain, and the séparation and rejection of a husk, and at each stage there is pleasure, and the awakening of a new and more central life.

Just as the husk and kernel of a nut are, to begin with, undifierentiated from each other,

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but as the process of ripening goes on — a process which is always in the manner of a djring to an outward self — the kernel slowly dissociâtes and libérâtes itself from the husk, until the shell is broken and the kernel becomes the seed of a new plant; so

a time cornes when the ianer man recognizes bimself as distinct from his outer frame, and sees with composure bis body fade — conscious that within and deep in himself is the seed of a new life, or of many new lives.

How far this hypothesis of the successive layers will satisfy the psychologists need not be argued hère ; the testimony of the expérience of many is that, when ail else had f ailed, pain got through the crust of selfish materialistic habit, and touched, loosened, set free the diviner, more satisf3dng, life within. This is C arpenter' s justification for acclaiming pain as the Quickener, the Redeemer. He apostrophizes Sorrow as

the gift of gifts, revealer of etemal joy.^

He thinks of Humanity, not so much as lying Umitlessly out and around in the spaces of the world or in the vistas of history, but rather as the deeper Self of each, the all-embracing kingdom which is " within you" — (yet the former is in extension precisely what the latter is in intenâon)— and cries in ecstasy and triumph,

After aU,

Nearer tô thy heart, O Humanity,