Exfoliation 



and most vital experience — that we have to look 

 for the key and explanation of the changes 

 that we see going on around us in external 

 Nature, as we call it ; and our understanding of 

 the latter, and of History, must ever depend from 

 point to point on the exfoliation of new facts in 

 the individual consciousness. Round the ulti- 

 mate disclosure of the essential Man all creation 

 (hitherto groaning and travailing towards that 

 perfect birth) ranges itself, as it were, like some 

 vast flower, in concentric cycles ; rank beyond 

 rank ; first all social life and history, then the 

 animal kingdom, then the vegetable and mineral 

 worlds. And if the outer circles have been the 

 first in fact to show themselves, it is by this last 

 disclosure that light is ultimately thrown on the 

 whole plan ; and, as in the myth of the Eden- 

 garden, with the appearance of the perfected human 

 form that the work of creation definitely completes 

 itself. 



205 



