I know that there was once a church where men
Caught glimpses of the gods believed in then:
I dream that there shall be such church again—
O dream, come true, come true.
—W. M. W. Call.
SYNOPSIS
The world has a purpose.... That purpose aims not at man as an end, but works through him to greater issues.—H. G. Wells.
Man has already furthered evolution very considerably, half unconsciously and for his own personal advantage, but he has not yet risen to the conviction that it is his religious duty to do so deliberately and systematically.—Francis Galton.
More than a century has elapsed since Pope’s line was written: “The proper study of mankind is man,” yet it is only of recent years that physiology has entered upon the proper method of that study. Discoveries made in the last century have thrown fresh light on individual human nature. The marvellous potency of thought has been demonstrated, and the momentous fact of diverse states of basic consciousness made apparent—the fact, namely, that the mind of individual man is not functionally limited to his physical consciousness.
Again, that every human being should have freedom to be happy was realized by many at an earlier epoch; but what the essential nature might be of a happiness that could satisfy the conflicting desires of humanity differentiated in all its units—seemed an insoluble problem. Psychology, however, indicates the solution of that problem, for it shows that individual happiness is intimately bound up with, and dependent upon, general happiness. The “subliminal or unconscious mind,” otherwise termed the super-physical consciousness that is common to all mankind knows no settled peace and comfort while the areas of physically conscious life are scenes of perpetual conflict. Man to be truly happy must be so collectively and not merely individually or sectionally.