1 88 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



prophet and the Christian Apostle, from a metaphysical 

 conception, like the Buddhist, or with a more directly social 

 interest, like the Confucian. Their mission is to interpret 

 the essential nature of spiritual life, and in carrying it out 

 they may justly be said to cut down to a deeper order of 

 reality underlying the world of common sense, just as the 

 reality of science or metaphysics underlies the world of 

 common perception. From henceforward on the ethico- 

 religious as on the cognitive side there are two orders 

 the order that is natural and the order that is spiritual, the 

 order in which the plain man lives and the order which the 

 higher teaching reveals. 1 In essentials what they report 

 to us of this order may be put in a very broad way as 

 follows. It is the source of that element in common- 

 sense ethics that makes for harmony and co-operation. 

 The stuff of which it is formed the tissue of the spiritual 

 world is Love, and from this tissue is woven an ideal of 

 personal character and, in dependence thereon, of social 

 relationships. Of this ideal the suppression of self, and 

 of all that makes for self-assertion, is the warp, as universal 

 benevolence is the woof. Where God is the centre of the 

 whole design, God Himself, at first, as with the Hebrews, 

 the source of righteousness and authority, becomes, as in 

 Christianity, the concrete expression of Love itself, and 

 the relation of the self to God sums up and includes the 

 relation to all other conscious beings. All the character- 

 istics of group-morality, its virtues of pride and group- 

 patriotism, its antagonisms, its denial of equal justice fall 

 away. The spiritual order allows no such discord. Its 

 peace and goodwill are for all, and it thus lays the basis of a 

 co-operation and a harmony of all mankind. Lastly, the 

 motive which it propounds is no longer some extraneous 

 consequence, but, whether it be the love of God, the per- 

 fection of self, or the power of self-surrender, always some 

 inherent characteristic of the spiritual order. 



1 At bottom this holds true even of a purely ethical teaching like that 

 of Confucius, since the life that it postulates makes a demand on human 

 nature, which, though less exacting than that of Buddhism or Christian- 

 ity, will only be met through a special discipline, and in its fullness only 

 by a gifted character. 



