find in the greatest minds. The only hypothesis which explains the
facts is that in conscience we feel the motions of the universal
Reason which strives to convert the human organism into an organ of
itself, a belief which is expressed in religious language by saying
that it is God who worketh in us both to will and to do of His good
pleasure.

If it be further asked, Which is our personality, the shifting _moi_
(as Fénelon calls it), or the ideal self, the end or the developing
states? we must answer that it is both and neither, and that the root
of mystical religion is in the conviction that it is at once both and
neither.[52] The _moi_ strives to realise its end, but the end being
an infinite one, no process can reach it. Those who have "counted
themselves to have apprehended" have thereby left the mystical faith;
and those who from the notion of a _progressus ad infinitum_ come to
the pessimistic conclusion, are equally false to the mystical creed,
which teaches us that we are already potentially what God intends us
to become. The command, "Be ye perfect," is, like all Divine commands,
at the same time a promise.

It is stating the same paradox in another form to say that we can only
achieve inner _unity_ by transcending mere individuality. The
independent, impervious self shows its unreality by being inwardly
discordant. It is of no use to enlarge the circumference of our life,
if the fixed centre is always the _ego_. There are, if I may press the
metaphor, other circles with other centres, in which we are vitally
involved. And thus sympathy, or love, which is sympathy in its
highest power, is the great _atoner_, within as well as without. The
old Pythagorean maxim, that "a man must be _one_,[53]" is echoed by
all the mystics. He must be one as God is one, and the world is one;