THE THIRD UNITY

" Love," as Carpenter reminds us, " whether taken in its most idéal or its most sensuous signification, Is a form of the Cosmic Consciousness ; " a man who, in moments of ecstasy and enthusiasm, or along quieter ways, loses himself in the f amily, or the clan, realizes to that extent a true deUverance from the consciousness of separateness and a true self-emancipation, although he may never be conscious of original créative power, and may not be to any relevant degree a '* lover of nature." His Une of descent is arrested, for the time being at any rate, at the first unity. On the other hand, there are those who first expérience the quickening of the Universal within them in touch with Nature ; they drop suddenly as it were from the apex of the cône to the base, and attain the widest unity at once, entering subsequently into the others (if at ail) by a rétroactive process, an aftermath of the great expérience.

But for the purposes of this study we will take

the scheme suggested by the figure of a cône, and

' associate with the first tmity the idea of Equality,

with the second that of Freedom, and with the

third the subject of this présent chapter.

In Carpenter' s own case the psychological order appears to hâve been the reverse of the logical order as we hâve described it. He seems to hâve entered the thh-d unity as a beginning. He has told us how Towards Democracy took shape in intimate association with the woods, fields, and streams ; it was uttered from the heart of Nature ;