devoted to thought proper, or to science, turn away from its true significance. We have to appeal to the imagination-class, and say: What you ignorantly worship is here; Nature is this."

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Is it not beautiful to see the whole department of imaginative life as one of two imperfect lines coming by a negation? There is no more any mystery in it; its mystery is that it is not enough. Truth, true knowledge and thought, is such-involves such seeing the unseenthat from it, by negation, poetry must emerge.

In this more perfect life of imagination in union with logic is exhibited the perfect human joy that is in sacrifice; the perfect having that is in giving. In what crushes down one person's spontaneity or imagination, that of another finds a more perfect freedom and satisfaction; but in no one is this latter primary and immediate; it is always a result of discipline and learning. "Thy statutes have become my song." Law crushes all men's spontaneity at first; hard fact crushes all men's imagination; but they may be made one at length, and the man may say: "These real and strict logical relations are become the very world of my imagination.”

Thought can achieve such wonders for us, can do and give us so much; can elevate our life to the region of the actual; surely the need for the attainment of its fruits is immense. But this can only come in one way. We must recognize thinking as a special art, and cultivate the power of appreciating it, of criticism.

V.

THE SELF AND CONSCIOUSNESS.

Individuals are states of humanity-Individuals are separate because physical-Man as a parasite-The self is negation—Eternal life is deliverance from the self-Descartes perverted modern thought by starting from the self-The untrustworthiness of consciousness— True consciousness is the opposite of self-consciousness-Unsatisfactory nature of the doctrine of immortality-The desire for immortality is not man's highest aspiration-What absorption into God means—Love is not self-sacrifice-We want martyrs-To give love is to create-Men are sacrificed for man-How happiness is attained-Only love can satisfy-Happiness is a putting aside of consciousness-Pleasure comes from want-Personality is not highest-God is not personal-The Trinity-God is Being-No mind without body—God as light—The fact is love and is shown by Christ.

Since this I state; just as

WHAT is that "I" that has consciousness? After all that question returns. Surely it is the same as: What is that thing that has weight? Take it away and leave the consciousness, and it is not missed. Now, may not this individuality or personality be states? is in time it must only be a form, only a "things" are states. Now, do I not get a clue to the relation of persons, i.e. of the physical humanity, to the actual? There is a succession of persons; they cease, and must therefore be states. Persons are states of humanity; they are forms or states from the actual, by a "not."

There cannot truly be a "not." We are forms, as I

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have said; but then just as a thing cannot truly be because it is only a form, so cannot a person. We are forms of course; the I, the person, is a “state” of humanity. In that very axiom that only forms can be in time, it follows that persons are forms, or states. States or forms of what? Why, of humanity. This personal is the form of humanity from the "not." In saying our body and mind are part of God's act which is Nature, I have said all this before; personality goes with the mind.

Must we not look at this self, or consciousness (clearly they are one), in connection with the unity of humanity ? There are now many selfs in humanity, because it is fallen. It is as material that men are many or separate. Even mentally one sees how they are one. Without his material nature clearly man is one. First destroy this separateness of men and make one humanity again; then the separateness of man and God is destroyed: this is redemption. Yet what beauty and joy there are from this separating humanity: here is the demand for love, self-sacrifice. See how the demand for self-sacrifice, in respect to men, is only of the material or sensational; love is the doing away with the separateness; it is making our material powers another person's; his will, his demands, act through me. Let this be only perfected and man is no more many. The separate individuals are from the "not" in relation to man, as man is from the "not" in relation to God.

Are we not parasites? See how the parasite has not the life of that living body on and in which it is; it is part and yet not part.

So we are part of the physical universe, and yet dis

tinct. We have an individual life which it does not share; yet all that is in us is from it; and all our power, all that by which we live, is its. Just so is the parasitic animal to its nidus, as we are to physical Nature.

Now, the parasite has individual life, in which its nidus. does not partake; yet is that nidus living, only its life is larger. From our point of view we might well see how its nidus should be to the parasite distinguished from itself as not living. The parasite might well seem a living or organic thing in an unliving "world."

Is not the universe thus collectively living; in relation to us being as the tissues of an animal are to the parasite in them?

This is the entire point of all I see the root, heart, and being of my views-that self is negation: all is included in it.

But then, how can "negation" be conscious, intelligent, and sensational? This is just what proves it to be negation, this shows it in time. There must be a not; for being conscious, etc., as implying time, means the "not; for that which is in time is not. So, except as being negation, there were not possibly self, or consciousness, or intelligence. Think how in a limb, e.g., so long as it is healthy there is no consciousness of it; when it is diseased then consciousness begins. The negation is not the consciousness, but the action of Being on the negation produces consciousness and all that is thus "personal." The "Being" is actual; all that is necessarily is actual.

Being redeemed is being delivered from ourself—not therefore necessarily from consciousness, or perception of it, but from the illusion of thinking it the fact, or our

true Being, i.e. from self-love or self-regard. We cannot believe but that we are all right in our views. But if we can give up ourselves, then we can see that perhaps we are subserving some much greater end than any benefit to ourselves; and may not feel so sure that we must know all these essential points. So we shall comprehend that God may permit us to be in error and darkness, to redeem the world. We think God loves our self; that self is of very little regard to the universe, of very little regard to God; of which the proof is, that we are only then right to the universe or one with God, when it is of very little regard to us. God hates it, and so should we, and never grow content with it. That is why God abhors self-righteousness; He hates self. He means to destroy it; that is His love. It is curious: our idea of heaven is saving ourself; God's idea is destroying it. He will deliver us from it and utterly exclude it and do it away, so that it shall plague us no more. Now, here is a contradiction: the self will be taken away from us. This is the eternal; therefore to To be thus delivered

the intellect it is a contradiction. from self is eternal life.

To be without a self, to get rid of the self, is simply to have all things to us exactly as they are. Things are so to God; that is, He is not a self: an infinite self is not self. As with space and time, infinity excludes them; space, time, and self are correlative; space as inertness or limit, time as form.

Omniscience is this-not being a self; even as omnipresence is not being in space, and eternity not being in time. The negation necessitates our affirming by negation. Self-sacrifice perfected is no more self-sacrifice. He is in us, self is cast out; there is no other deliverance from self.