so far as they accept the conscious purposes put by us in their
keeping. And in man himself goodness is held to exist only in
proportion as his conduct expresses fullness of self-consciousness,
fullness of direction, and fullness of conscious conjunction with
other persons. I do not see how we can escape this conclusion. The
careful argumentation through which the previous chapters have brought
us obliges us to count conduct valuable in proportion as it bears the
impress of self-conscious mind.



III

Yet it must be owned that during the last few centuries doubts have
arisen about the justice of this Christian ideal. The simple
conception of a world of spirit and a world of nature arrayed against
each other, the one of them exactly what the other is not, the world
of spirit the superior, the world of nature to be frowned on, used
possibly, but always in subordination to spiritual purposes,--this
view, dominant as it was in the Middle Ages, and still largely
influential, has been steadily falling into disrepute. There is even a
tendency in present estimates to reverse the ancient valuation and
allow superiority to nature. Such a transformation is strikingly
evident in those sensitive recorders of human ideals, the Fine Arts.
Let us see what at different times they have judged best worthy of
record.

Early painting dealt with man alone, or rather with persons; for
personality in its transcendent forms--saints, angels, God himself--
was usually preferred above little man. Except the spiritual, nothing