For more than two
hundred years the main stream of man's advance has moved towards knowing
himself and the world, seeing things as they are, spontaneity of
consciousness; the main impulse of a great part, and that the strongest
part, of our nation has been towards strictness of conscience. They have
made the secondary the principal at the wrong moment, and the principal
they have at the wrong moment treated as secondary. This contravention
of the natural order has produced, as such contravention always must
produce, a certain confusion and false movement, of which we are now
beginning to feel, in almost every direction, the inconvenience. In all
directions our habitual causes of action seem to be losing
efficaciousness, credit, and control, both with others and even with
ourselves. Everywhere we see the beginnings of confusion, and we want a
clue to some sound order and authority. This we can only get by going
back upon the actual instincts and forces which rule our life, seeing
them as they really are, connecting them with other instincts and
forces, and enlarging our whole view and rule of life.
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