THE CHILD AND HEREDITY 157 



illusions. Either he is not the result of the action of a 

 merely "natural" environment upon an inherited disposi- 

 tion, and the process of merely natural evolution does not 

 account for him in his real inward being at all, or else his 

 spontaneity and freedom and the moral life which springs 

 therefrom are mere appearances. Slowly and reluctantly, 

 but inevitably, it seems to me, the philosophers of the 

 present time, and especially those who are idealistic in 

 temper and who therefore will not easily let go the spiritual 

 nature of man, are driven to choose between the naturalistic 

 or materialistic interpretation of man on the one hand, and 

 the spiritual interpretation of him on the other. The 

 method of compromise, that is, of regarding man as partly 

 natural and partly spiritual, as from one point of view a 

 noumenon, and from another a phenomenon, as a mere 

 subject in some respects and a mere object in others, is 

 breaking down. It is_ gradually realised that both the 

 natural and the^spiritual methodjof explaining man claim 

 him as a whole. Either his inmost self must fall within 

 the natural scheme, or else that natural scheme itself must 

 have spiritual significance. Spirit by its very nature is 

 jealous and can brook no rival. It must be all, if it is at 

 all. The deepest of all differences must fall within its 

 unity with itself. Man must lapse back into nature, or 

 he must raise nature to his own level as spiritual. 



But both alternatives are difficult, and the choice between 

 them is hard. It is hard to see in what way natural facts 

 can be spiritualised without evaporating them into mere 

 forms of the human consciousness ; and it is not less hard 

 for those who endeavour to look at the facts of human 

 life as a whole to acquiesce in the reduction of morality 

 and religion into natural things, disguised as spirit. On 



