not extend further than possible memory. This doctrine of Locke's had some
comic applications. The Bishop of Worcester was alarmed. If actions which
a hardened sinner had forgotten were no longer his, a short memory would
be a great blessing in the Day of Judgment. On the other hand, a theology
more plastic than Stillingfleet's would one day find in this same doctrine
a new means of edification. For if I may disown all actions I have
forgotten, may not things not done or witnessed by me in the body be now
appropriated and incorporated in my consciousness, if only I conceive them
vividly? The door is then open to all the noble ambiguities of idealism.
As my consciousness expands, or thinks it expands, into dramatic sympathy
with universal experience, that experience becomes my own. I may say I
have been the agent in all past achievements. Emerson could know that he
was Shakespeare and Caesar and Christ. Futurity is mine also, in every
possible direction at once; and I am one with the spirit of the universe
and with God.

Locke reassured the Bishop of Worcester, and was humbly confident that
Divine Justice would find a way of vindicating Itself in spite of human
wit. He might have added that if the sin of Adam could not only be imputed
to us juridically but could actually taint our consciousness--as it
certainly does if by Adam we understand our whole material heritage--so
surely the sins done or the habits acquired by the body beyond the scope
of consciousness may taint or clarify this consciousness now. Indeed, the
idea we form of ourselves and of our respective experiences is a figment
of vanity, a product of dramatic imagination, without cognitive import
save as a reading of the hidden forces, physical or divine, which have
formed us and actually govern us.


VI