VII

Before, however, attempting to discover whether our theoretic
conclusions may he drawn into some sort of living accord with these
results of experience, let us probe a little more minutely into these
latter, and try to learn what reasons there may be for this very
general distrust of self-consciousness as a guide. Hitherto I have
exhibited that distrust as a fact. We always find it so; our neighbors
find it so, the ages have found it so. But why? I have not pointed out
precisely the reasons for the continual fact. Let me devote a page or
two to rational diagnosis.

To begin with, I suppose it will be conceded that we really cannot
guide ourselves through and through. There are certain large tracts of
life totally unamenable to consciousness.

Of our two most important acts, and those by which the remaining ones
are principally affected, birth and death, the one is necessarily
removed from conscious guidance, and the other is universally
condemned if so guided. We do not--as we have previously seen--happen
to be present at our birth, and so are quite cut off from controlling
that. Yet the conditions of birth very considerably shape everything
else in life. We cannot, then, be purely spiritual; it is impossible.
We must be natural beings at our beginning; and at the other end the
state of things is largely similar, for we are not allowed to fix the
time of our departure. The Stoics were. "If the house smokes," they
said, "leave it." When life is no longer worth while, depart. But
Christianity will not allow this. Death must be a natural affair, not