4i8 THE ASCENT OF MAN 



clay, passes through regions of ever varying char- 

 acter. Each breath drawn and utilized to make 

 one upward step brings him into relation with a 

 fractionally higher air, a fractionally different world. 

 The new energies he there receives are utilized, and 

 in virtue of them he rises to a third, and from a 

 third to a fourth. As in the animal kingdom the 

 senses open one by one — the eye progressing from 

 the mere discernment of light and darkness to the 

 blurred image of things near, and then to clearer 

 vision of the more remote ; the ear passing from 

 the tremulous sense of vibration to distinguish with 

 ever increasing delicacy the sounds of far-off things 

 — so in the higher world the moral and spiritual 

 senses rise and quicken till they compass qualities 

 unknown before and impossible to the limited facul- 

 ties of the earlier life. So Man, not by any innate 

 tendency to progress in himself, nor by the energies 

 inherent in the protoplasmic cell from which he first 

 set out, but by a continuous feeding and reinforc- 

 ing of the process from without, attains the higher 

 altitudes, and from the sense-world at the mountain 

 foot ascends with ennobled and ennobling faculties 

 until he greets the Sun. 



What is the Environment of the Social tree ? 

 It is all the things, and all the persons, and all 

 the influences, and all the forces with which, at 



