84 THE METAPHYSICAL BASIS 



plainly only one half of the truth. For each is end to the 

 other also. The fuller of insight is the affection, the more 

 is its object valued for its own sole sake. The husband 

 respects the independence of the wife, the wife that of the 

 husband. Each finds the rule of conduct in the other, 

 who reigns with applauded sway, sovereign no less than 

 subject. 



It is precisely in the coexistence of the two sides, both 

 of them built up by rational love, that family life attains 

 perfection, and shows itself the most beautiful ethical being 

 ,on earth, and fittest emblem of the "Kingdom of God." 

 There individual rights are accorded to the full, and are 

 found not to clash, but to combine in a fuller life for each 

 of the members. The several voices are unrestrained, 

 full-throated, free ; and yet these independent units enter 

 harmoniously into a single, new fact in which the beauty of 

 each is transfigured and enhanced. 1 



This example of the way in which self-consciousness 

 both possesses its object and builds it up against itself in 

 the family suggests a principle which we can carry with 

 us, as a lit lamp into the more intricate depths of the larger 

 social world. That world, with its many interests and 

 institutions, differs from the family in many respects. 

 Nevertheless, just as in the last resort there is only one 

 way of knowing, so there is only one way of building up 

 or maintaining the social fabric. It is not that of subduing 

 others to the self, or the self to others. It is the way of 



1 " And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man, 



That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star." 



Browning has detected the alchemy in musical harmony. It exists 

 not less in every product of art, of knowledge, and of the moral 

 life. 



