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232 process by which creation has led step by step to that degree of self-consciousness realised in the human race.

Do not these objectors forget not merely how considerable a part of human nature already moves and has its being on the lines of a diffused and rather decentralised subconsciousness, but also how largely the genius of the human race has committed to such conditions of separation from all possible enjoyment by the Ego, some of the rarest gifts and highest efforts at self-realisation that the world has ever seen? It is a condition attaching to all the more permanent forms of expression in the arts, to everything that man designs and makes for the delight of the generations that come after. It is a condition willingly accepted by all who rejoice in their power to throw the influence of their personalities beyond the material uses of their own present existence. And in that willingness to lose out of themselves for future generations—to turn aside from mere physical enjoyment—the life-forces within them, in that willingness artist, poet, and thinker, have come far nearer to the finding of life than those who live indulgently for ends finished by their own absorption thereof.

Now it is the supporters of the individualistic school of thought who have generally urged that grave moral dangers would befall the human race were a belief in personal immortality to perish; and it is at least