v] Some Implications of the Incarnation 163 



satisfaction of the individual's impulses are recognised. 

 The child is still in the stage of development of the 

 social organism which is pre-social, pre-religious, except 

 in the most elementary sense. The complexities of 

 higher social and religious life are unknown, inoperative 

 as yet. Yet, on what are these claims of religion and 

 society based? Surely, directly at any rate, on the pro- 

 gress of man. The child has not got them because his 

 recapitulatory development has not reached this stage. 



If they are based on progress, then since the very 

 existence of the power of progress involves purpose, 

 whose theoretic interpretation must be in terms of 

 teleology, as we have seen 1 , their existence must be due 

 to an end or aim in the life-process. The very existence 

 of the censor, the very existence of the power of sub- 

 limation, is evidence of purpose ; and more, of a purpose 

 that is recognised and acted upon. The purpose, the 

 end, is spiritual life. To that conclusion we were driven 

 at the outset of our investigation 2 . 



Thus the Freudian mechanism is what we should 

 expect in organisms that are developing towards free- 

 dom on the foundation of the past, which in them is ever 

 present as an actual, modifiable existence; while the 

 Freudian censor is what we should expect as evidencing* 

 the unconscious self-judgment of an individual living 

 in a community whose ideals express, not the desires 

 and wishes of more primitive life, but the desires and 

 wishes pertaining to that stage of spiritual advancement 

 which the community has reached. There is no real 

 inconsistency between Bergson and Freud. The fact 



1 Evolution and the Need of Atonement, ch. i. 



* Ibid., cf. also Evolution and Spiritual Life, passim. 



* Evidencing only, for Freud's censor is something different 

 from the whole spirit of man; it is an unconscious mechanism 

 which aids the operation of this last, which itself exercises a 

 censorship of a wider character. 



II 2 



