INTERPRETATION OF EXPERIENCE

touch gentler, the soff usion quieter— as Browning says in " Abt Vogler " :

God has a lew of os wfaoni He wlitofieti in the

With others, it is as a sudden challenge, Uke the Light which broke upon Saiil of Tarsus, the effect of which is a profound and pennanent psychological change, a true conversion; the Ufe receives a dramatic deflection and proceeds henceforth in a new direction, or finds a new centre of gravity under the influence of which familiar facts sufïer rearrangement and a new interprétation. There is a new world, a new heaven, and a new earth, because there is a changed centre, a new heart.^

Perhaps it is true of most of those to whom such expérience cornes that they simply continue a Personal career under its influence and inspiration, and are contait to express their vision and thdr ecstatic feeling in what fonns of speech, poetry, music, painting, they can find. They work in its light; they act under its power. Carpenter distinguishes himself among them by concentrating on the expérience itself ; he is less concemed to describe it or give it artistic expression than he is to emphasize it as a universal possibility and promise, interpreting it in terms less of Personal redempti<m than of world-hope, asserting tbat his own expérience is the harbinger

1 Cl Maaeôeld'8 poem " The Everlastinç Mercy/'

10 INTERPÈETATION OF EXPERIENCE

of an axriving kingdoia destined to bestow upon Humanity as a whole the priceless gifts of which it gave him the private possession. He does not merely write poetry under the influence of this illumination, he preaches the expérience itself as a world-gospel ; his prof ound personal inspiration becomes the central pivotai argument of his prophecy.

It is worth while to pause hère and consider the justification of this, though th^ matter will be more fully dealt with in the foUowing chapter. The question is this : By what right does a man say, " My personal expérience is the promise of a world-experience ; what I am, Humanity shall be " ?

It is not necessary to argue hère the hypothesis of the Unity of Nature which is the fundamental scientific truth — ^the hypothesis which bést explains the f acts — of the modem world 7 nor the inévitable coroUary that Humanity is an organism, a body with many members. It is important, however, to emphasize the fact, not commonly perceived, that of any organic whole it is true that, while the Parts are within the Whole, the Whole is also within each and ail of the Parts. The notes in a musical phrase are not as beads upon a string, or as dewdrops on a gossamer ; the phrase is a unitary whole ; it arose first in the mind of the composer as a thôught-movement or a puise of feeling ; it was not built up note by note ; the phrase, as written, grew not by archi-