36 THE WORLD-E^EKGY 



the same time, taken in the absolute sense of the term, 

 the demand that thought should 'go beyond itself ' is 

 wholly self -contradictory, and therefore destitute of mean- 

 ing. It is only when taken in a special, limited sense that 

 the expression is found to be consistent and to possess 

 real significance. Thus, the ' thought ' of the individual 

 human mind, considered in the sense of the actual state 

 of consciousness of a given person at any given moment, 

 may indeed, be developed or ' expanded ' into greater com- 

 plexity and consistency. But it can do this only because 

 it already contains implicitly in itself, as its own funda- 

 mental nature, objective universality and truth. 



"In so far, then, as the individual consciousness devel- 

 ops or ' expands" itself, it is only harmonizing or iden- 

 tifying its real self with its ideal or true self. That is, 

 in 'going beyond itself it is merely going beyond its 

 present immature, untrue self, and in so doing is coming 

 to its substantial, universal, true self. 



' ' But now, you who insist upon the truth that the 

 total quantity of energy forever remains unchanged, must 

 admit that the individual human mind has no power to 

 produce out of pure nothing any phase of reality what- 

 ever, least of all the richest of all phases of reality 

 realized reason itself. The human mind doubtless has the 

 power to discover and transform, but not the power to 

 create, in the sense of producing something which abso- 

 lutely had no existence before. So that every step by 

 which the individual mind 'goes beyond itself as an 

 imperfect embodiment or realization of reason, implies of 

 necessity, that both the phases of reason already reached, 

 and also all the phases possible to le reached, by such mind 

 must already possess perfected and permanent realization 



