knowledge of truth and compels obedience to it, is actually freeing its
citizens by that process. It is only by a misuse of words or a failure
to grasp ideas that I can maintain that an ignorant savage is more free
than an educated man. It is true that I am, in a sense, "free" to think
that two and two make five, if I have not learned arithmetic; on the
other hand, when I learn that they make four I rise into that higher and
more real liberty which a knowledge of arithmetic bestows. I am more
effective, not less so; I am more free to exercise my powers and use the
forces of the world in which I live, and not less free, when I have
submitted my intellect to facts.

III. (i) Now the soul too has an environment. Men may differ as to its
nature and its conditions, but all who believe in the soul at all
believe also that it has an environment, and that this environment is as
much in the realm of Law as is the natural world itself. Prayer, for
example, elevates the soul, base thinking degrades it.

Now the laws of this environment were true even before Christ came.
David knew, at any rate, something of penitence and of the guilt of sin,
and Nathan knew something, at least, of the forgiveness of sins and of
their temporal punishment. Christ came, then, with this object amongst
others: that He might reveal the laws of Grace and convey to men's minds
some at least of the facts of the spiritual life amongst which they
lived. He came, moreover, partly to modify the workings of these laws,
to release some more fully, and to restrain others; in a word, to be the
Revealer of Truth and the Administrator of Grace.

He came then, to increase men's liberty by increasing their knowledge,
as, in another sphere, the scientist comes to us with the same purpose.
Here, for example, is the law that murder is a sin before God and brings