Putting the question thus, I was led inevitably to a conclusion which
science itself had failed to draw from its idea of evolution. Whatever
the driving factor in evolution may be, it is clear that in the
kingdoms of nature leading up to man this factor has always worked on
the evolving organisms from outside. The moment we come to man himself,
however, and see how evolution has flowered in his power of conscious
thought, we have to reckon with a fundamental change.

Once a being has recognized itself as a product of evolution, it
immediately ceases to be that and nothing more. With its very first act
of self-knowledge it transcends its previous limits, and must in future
rely on its own conscious actions for the carrying on of its
development.

For me, accordingly, the concept of evolution, when thought through to
the end, began to suggest the possibility of further growth in man's
spiritual capacities. But I saw also that this growth could no longer
be merely passive, and the question which now beset me was: by what
action of his own can man break his way into this new phase of
evolution? I saw that this action must not consist merely in giving
outer effect to the natural powers of human thinking; that was
happening everywhere in the disordered world around me. The necessary
action must have inner effects; indeed, it had to be one whereby the
will was turned upon the thinking-powers themselves, entirely
transforming them, and so removing the discrepancy between the thinker
and the doer in modern man.

Thus far I could go through my own observation and reflexion, but no
further. To form a general idea of the deed on which everything else
depended was one thing; it was quite another to know how to perform the