34^ MAN AND GOD. 



necessary implication of the whole and the parts 

 would yet have to be really reciprocal. For in 

 order to secure the certainty of the Inference from 

 the part to the whole, the part must be incapable of 

 being anything but the part of that whole, and as 

 essential to the whole as the whole Is to it. The 

 parts could not escape from the whole, but neither 

 could the whole destroy the parts. If the whole Is 

 necessary, the parts would also have to be neces- 

 sary. There could be no such thing as coming into 

 or passing out of existence in the relation of the 

 parts to such a whole, no possibility of regarding 

 their relation under the category of cause and effect. 

 And even the most self-assertive individual might 

 well endure to be called a section of the Absolute, 

 if this relation guaranteed to him eternal and 

 changeless existence. 



In this reciprocity of mutual dependence doubt- 

 less lies the true solution of the difficulty, and the 

 true reconciliation of the conflicting claims of the 

 individual and the whole of which he is a part, a re- 

 conciliation equally remote from either extreme, from 

 an intractable self-assertion of the parts no less than 

 from an all-absorbinof encroachment of the whole. 

 And though it is an ideal which as yet finds no 

 exact counterpart amid the imperfections of the real 

 world, we have yet some reason to believe that the 

 world is approximating towards It. The individual 

 is becoming more valuable to the whole as certainly 

 as he Is becoming less able to dispense with it. As 

 the intrinsic worth of the individual rises, so does 

 his social value. The greater a man, the greater 

 the void his loss leaves, the more keenly is it felt 

 by the society in which he had been a factor. And 

 it is one of the crudest necessities of our imperfect 



