The “courage of one’s convictions,” can be neither conceited nor blatant egotism, but a readiness to assume full responsibility of motives, acts, and results.
This recognition of Personal Responsibility is what we call Conscience. It is the Judgment-seat of the Individual Intelligence in the Kingdom of its own Soul, or realm of consciousness. The moment this throne totters, or is obscured, devolution begins, and degeneration, insanity, and Inferno lie that way.
It does not change one principle involved, or weaken either Modulus or Theorem when we reflect that most equations are ended by death, long before being brought to successful solution. For the time they are certainly interrupted.
Neither do the babel of tongues, the theories, theologies, or philosophies change either Modulus or Theorem, because they are grounded in demonstrated facts, recognized, either vaguely or clearly, in the conscious experience of every intelligent thinking man and woman.
Constructive Psychology, based upon Science, for the building of character by persistent effort, increasing continually all personal resources, means the normal higher evolution of man.
So-called religions and the life after death have been purposely left unconsidered.
If we really have a Science of the Soul—the Individual Intelligence—based upon psychological facts, demonstrated in the daily experience of every healthy individual, it touches religion at its most vital point, viz.: ethics or morals. If these ethical principles are true and demonstrable, they must constitute the foundation of religion as of ethics. If morals are strengthened and made clear, and Personal Responsibility as Conscience, is recognized and accepted, the Vicarious Atonement will have to go, and Theologians will have to change their mystical and miraculous interpretations from Vicarious Atonement to personal at-one-ment with Christos.
The “miraculous conception,” and “virgin birth,” held equally in regard to Christna centuries before, and also the literal resurrection of the physical body will have to be otherwise explained.
The purposive view as one full term of the psychological equation, will find uniform law and order in place of the credulous legends of ignorant and superstitious monks, while the Divine Man will be taken down from the cross and restored to the heart of humanity, as the Modulus of Nature, realized as a normal evolution, under natural and spiritual law.
Salvation from sin, ignorance, superstition, and fear, will be recognized as the result of “Leading the Life,” and Vicarious only through a divine example; or, if you please, legitimate Suggestion; with personal effort, rational volition, and personal responsibility working in harmony toward the desired result.