1 68 Some Implications of tke Incarnation [CH. 



telephone exchange. The blockage of a discharge path, 

 whether through physical or psychic trauma, does not 

 destroy the memory, or even in any way affect the 

 spirit 1 . The pathetic decay of the faculties of aged 

 people is a decay of the mediating powers of the brain, 

 not the wearing-out of the spirit itself. Already the 

 spirit is losing touch with its material surroundings. 

 The soul is pluming itself for flight to a far country 

 where the struggle and the progress will go forward 

 among other conditions. The brain has served its turn 

 and is being discarded. It is a machine worn out. 



The censor points towards higher things. It is the 

 means whereby we are enabled to forward consciously 

 (as well as unconsciously) the process that has gone on 

 through all the long history of unconscious evolution. 

 Organs take on fresh functions. Fins become legs, swim- 

 bladders become lungs, gill arches become tracheal and 

 laryngeal cartilages, rendering speech possible. But no 

 one suspects the fish of consciously aiding the change. 

 Now, however, man consciously and of his own free- 

 will acknowledges the claims of higher life. He sees 

 an end and strives for it. He recognises sexual pas- 

 sion as a basis of true love, sublimable into that. He 

 recognises the desire of possession as indefinitely legiti- 

 mate only when applied to spiritual things, and so his 

 acquisitiveness is directed towards the acquisition of 

 spiritual powers. He recognises ambition and pride 

 and knowledge as finding their true fulfilment only in 

 ambitious ideals of service, pride that will not stoop 

 to things mean and base, because of the high calling of 

 manhood, knowledge that sees beyond the appearance 

 into the reality. 



All this must apply also to Christ in still greater 

 measure, if He was truly man. No repression-complexes 



1 See Bergson's analysis of the facts of aphasia in Matter and 

 Memory. 



