vi DEVELOPMENT AND HARMONY 371 



revealed by the empirical synthesis. Accordingly, (2) 

 Mind, as we know it empirically, whether in the individual 

 or in the group, is the product, and so far as it is truly 

 mind, is deservedly reckoned a true constitutive part of the 

 permanent mind. Its existence depends on mechanical 

 conditions, on a cerebro-neural structure for one thing and 

 on complex physical and social relations between indi- 

 viduals for another, the shaping of which is precisely the 

 work at which a mechanically-conditioned purpose is for 

 ever busy. Thus Humanity, in the sense which the best 

 Positive writers have given to that word, Humanity as the 

 spirit of harmony and expanding life, shaping the best 

 actions of the best men and women, is the highest incarna- 

 tion known to us of the divine. If, indeed, we come to 

 the conclusion that God is, and are asked what He is, we 

 may reply that God is that of which the highest known 

 embodiment is the distinctive spirit of Humanity. And 

 of this account of the relation of the empirical to the central 

 mind there is in the empirical account itself more than a 

 hint. For at each stage we have shown that the conditions 

 of a higher stage are already present. It is not the mere 

 empirical mind itself that works out its own progress. It 

 is the empirical mind operating upon other conditions of 

 progress that are already laid down. The human mind is 

 a germ for whose maturity provision is already made. 

 Furthermore, at the highest known phase of development 

 we say that the mind comes to realise itself, that is, to 

 realise what are the fundamentals of its structure as it has 

 been all along. In this new consciousness it discovers a 

 unity underlying the differences and divergences of life and 

 a plan containing the possibilities of a future self-realisa- 

 tion. It does not invent this unity and this plan. It dis- 

 covers them. It finds that they are already there, and have 

 been among the conditions operating to determine its 

 growth from the earliest stages. Its own purposeful 

 activity is merely the continued operation of these condi- 

 tions completed by the unifying link of the consciousness 

 of their significance. Hence, if the mind does not directly 

 through the religious consciousness become aware of its 

 relation to a greater Spirit, it does have to recognise the 



