CORE AND CRUST

ego, which is simply an " associative bond " > unifying our manifold mental and emotional expériences in the phénoménal world. We tend to regard this " me " as fixed and final ; also to confuse it with the objective world in which it is refiected. Onr first knowledge of ourselves is " in a mirror, darkly/' and we take the image for the reality. Wandering and labonring amid the illusions of self-consciousness, we hâve not yet leamed our true identity ; yet expérience is the right pathway ; we need more of it and deeper ; we need a new orientation towards it ; we are like a child

regarding its own reflection — ^say in the tiniest of tiny pools. So small is the little mirror that it only reflects the smallest portion of the child — a lock of hair, a portion of its dress. The child does not in the least recog^iize what the reflection is. But it has a water-can and pours water into the pool, and the pool grows. Now the child can see its own entire hand in the water. It is fascinated, and tires not to pose its Angers in every way for reflection. But again the pool goes on growing, and more of its body becomes visible, till at last, lo I the child can see itself complète.

So to us. £ach new thought, each new expérience that is added to the Me, is like a drop of water that ia added to the pool, till it becomes large enough — the Me becomes sufELciently universal — to reflect the universality of the I.«

The addition of another thought will lead us from this chapter to the next. It is not enough

1 A. C. p. 86. « Jbid., p. 89.

THE SOUL A DEMOCRACT «5

to see that in each pa:90iiafity tbcre b core and crust, and that wliile the " cnist " îs nostable and impermanent the '' core " b ooe with the Universal —

Man ihat art God yet pcndMit as gn» * ;

we must see also the implication of the central truth. If the inmost self partakes of the nature of the Universal, it mnst embiace ail within it. The true individual is not a pin-point of couscious personality opposed to a myriad other similar points ; the true individoal b the Whole, and this is potential in each of us. The inner self is a social self. As conscionsness deepens. we leave behind us the sensé of individuality set contra mundum, we corne to the sensé of a community of selves in whicfa each of us b at ooe and the same time a member and the Community as a whole " in a pecnliar way." The Universal Self, which b the true self of every créature, b

an Eternal City of selves, ever imited and ever arminf at the knowledge of their union wiûk each otfaer.*

The deepest sdf of a man b kss an individual than it is a kingdom. The Soûl b not a unît, it b a Democracy.

CHAPTER III DEMOCRACY

" Fed with the blood and tears of living things, Nourished and strengthened by Creation's woes, The god unbom, that shall be King of kings, Sown in the darkness, throngh the darkness grows."

Robert Buchanan

ARGUMENT

Democracy, which C arpenter de fines as the " rule of the Mass-man in the unit-man/' is used in a mystical sensé. Staticatty, it is the love-kingdom realized in the heart, but it urges dynamicaUy to the création of social structure. In the présent social body, Democracy exists in potentiaUty, ''a body within the body,** after the fashion of the imago within the larval covering. Its graduai deliverance therefrom is the uUimate significance of ail changes in social structure, the " telos ** of ail world-movements ; it détermines thèse from within ; it is a spiritual plasm which créâtes its own body, under the protection of epcisting organization which in time must be either assimilated or discarded. Beginning first as Feeling in the individual heart, its progress to realization in social organization (especiaUy on a world-scale) is slow; but ever and again it may be expected to leap forward into

DEMOCRACY S7

manifestaiion in a " great indiviiual** one «Ao wiU corne to be acknowleiged as a Master and m Saviour.

HIS is one of the critical words in Car* penter's teaching. His usage of it is peculiar, and must be thoroughly grasped at the outset, ànce it is the key to a large portion of his wrîtings.

By '' Democracy " Carpenter does not mean some definite form of political organisation and govemment; in announdng the word, be is standing in a r^on which lies behind organisation and is prior to it. In the phrase *' Towards Democracy " some form of organisation is obviously implied, but the emphasis throughout is upon the Idea which ever tends to take form, upon the Spirit which always créâtes its own body. " Democracy " is concdved aftcr the fasÛon of one of the Platonic Ideas; and the word is used chiefly in a mystical, idealistic, religious sensé. It is the mood of the worldsoûl which, in the etemal process of self-utterance and self-realization, créâtes, fulfils, and destroys organized forms and remains identical and equal with the forms it créâtes. It is the '' Son of Man " which, ascending to its perfect blossom, exfoliâtes like a Tree of Life into human races (branches) and human individuals (leaves).

Regarding it in its more static aspect, Carpent^ says

88 CENTRIPETAL AND CENTRIFUGAL

the Great Self snms itself up to form a vast afiOliation of selves — a Celestial City of equals and loyers.^

As we hâve seen in the previous chapter, this " Great Self " is the most inward and true self of each individual ; the îndividual becomes conscious of his identity with it by a process of inward withdrawal from the surface-planés of normal self-consciousness ;

hère in this perennial» immeasurable consciousness sleeping vdthin us we corne again to our Celestial City, our Home from which as individuals we proceed» but irom. which we are never really separated ; *

and when we touch this inner depth, leaming in expérience our true identity, we realize for the first time in our Ufe the meaning of Joy and Rest and Deliverance.

Let it not be imagined, however, that the Way of Life ends with this consciousness of individual blessedness ; the centripetal movement is necessarily followed by, indeed coexists with, a centrifugal. What has been said, in classical passages, of Jésus and of Gautama, is trué of ail those who really attain to union with the Universal Self — they " count it not a thing to be grasped at, to be equal with God," but find the " way of downgoing," as Nietzsche calls it, and humble themselves, taking upon themselves the form of a servant. This is less of choice than of necessity ;

* A, C, p. 91. » Jbid., p. 206.

DEMOCRACT AS DTNAMIC 89

for to be identified with the Great Self is to become one with the Creative Life which is ever proceeding forth from itself to find a more perfect form of utterance and realization. To become one with the Universal, in whatsoever d^gree, is, in that d^ree, to become part of the créative effort and redemptive passion which unceasingly opérâtes in the world. The world-burden is always borne upon the shoulders of the mystic, the idealist, the saint, the lover.

It is this dynamic aspect of the Great Self, of '' Democracy/' which Carpenter chiefly emphasizes. It is something which is tremendously urgent in the heart of the individual and of Society. It is the ever-ascending life. It is something which forms, grows, expands within, and ever and anon bnrsts forth and breaks through, bringing disorganization and destruction to existing iorms that it may create the higher form. It is a perpétuai Will to new incarnation, new création.

Carpenter speaks of it as a " body within the body."

The figure behind this phrase is that of the imago, or perfect insect, being preformed within the larva. Undemeath the larval covering, ail the while the normal Ufe of the larva is proceeding, the frame and fashion of the perfect insect dimly appear; sometimes its harder parts almost protrude from beneath the skin, so that the body of the imago seems to lie slumbering

40 LARVA AND IMAGO

there, enfolded in a thin, half-transpaxent bîrthshroud. In due time this protective sac bursts and falls away, and the insect is liberated^ unfolds ils wings, and rises into the life for which it has been prepared.

There can be but little doubt — if we may pause for a moment on this figure, for it is important — that the human order issued from the sub*human in some such fashion as this. The sub-human order was the larva, the human order the imago preformed within it. The human order arose out of the sub-human by a process inconceivably slow and inappreciably graduai. While the '* animal kingdom " went on its usual way, lived out its normal life of altemating hunger and sleep, of wild, free loves and prolific seasonable births and deaths, the new kingdom was forming within it, a " body within the body.'* Nothing but the patience of an infinité God could hâve watched with joy the first faint beginnings of human things, — the dawn of Reason, flicker after flicker with long intervais, Uke the coming of the grey light on a dull winter moming, only inmieasurably protracted ; the first puises of what was to become Conscience, so faint, so germinal, so spasmodic, so easily quenched, so easily let slip, f alling back again into the mystery out of which they came, with such painful, arduous slowness making their way, being rejected so many tîmes, but always retuming çtrangely reinforced ; the breakinç liçht o| seU«

THE BODT WITHIN THE BODT 41

consdousness emerging out of a groap-ccmsdaasness, a herd-consciousness ; cme individual oppos» ing itseU to ail the rest» dther by some accident of drcumstance, or by some dimly-conceived. ill-dîrected, slackly-held porpose ; the seemingly interminable stretches of half-light, the ages-long twilight of the coming race ; not to be hurried, tarrying long, for the ascending life must hâve a fitting organism wherethrough to express itself, and the requisite physical and physiological changes could only be accomplished by infinitésimal steps.

The suggestion is of an imago fonning itself within, and ultimately issuing from, the larval covering ; and one of the central affirmations in Carpenter's gospel is that something of this Idnd is happening within the structure of modem sodety. He surveys the présent sodal order, and does not by any means blind himself to the wrong and evil things that are manifest therdn. It is like a ghastly panorama, he says, passing before the eye of tiie spirit ; it is fuU of disease, weariness, and suff ering ; the cancer of greed and selfishness has its roots entwined in the vitals ; it is subject to sudden acddaits which plunder the world of vahiable lives, devastate homes, and fling whole communities into mouming and sadness; death and destruction roam to and fro over its length and breadth. He does not deny thèse things, or try to explain them away ; but afiEums that they are, after all^ larval, surface