74 CREATIVE INVOLUTION 



favour on independent judgment, nor on the scruples 

 of individual conscience ; it wants obedience, and not 

 criticism; self-restraint, not self-assertion. The 

 growth of the individual in that which is most pecul- 

 iar and distinctive in him was what made the politi- 

 cal unity of Greece impossible. In its spirit of in- 

 dividual self-abnegation lies the political strength 

 of modern Japan. Although a society has the 

 strongest interest in educating, training and organ- 

 ising the powers of its members, that interest is in 

 no wise concerned with the welfare of the individual 

 and may be quite opposed to it. 



So nearly complete did man's conquest of the 

 physical world seem prior to the beginning of the 

 war, that humanity had come to look to thoughts 

 and aspirations for the integration essential to its 

 higher evolution. Strange to say, it was Rudolph 

 Eucken, Germany's foremost philosopher, who was 

 the chief exponent of .such spiritual compounding. 

 A glance backward over the life-movement shows 

 how unfounded was this hope; it is clear that from 

 the biological point of view the idea exists, as 

 Aristotle had it, in the world of matter and not 

 apart from it. We have to recognise that a true 

 involution that is, one making for the manifesta- 

 tion of a higher consciousness requires a material 

 good, as well as a spiritual one, for the basis of co- 

 ordination. Otherwise it must needs project its 

 spiritual hierarchy into some realm beyond our mor- 



