are performed with full self-expression, yet without strut or
intrusion of consciousness. Whatever comes from them is happily
blended and organized into the entirety of life. Such should be our
aim. We should seek to be born again, and not to remain where we were
originally born.



V

In what has now been said there is a good deal of comfort for those
who suffer the pains of self-consciousness, previously described. They
need not seek a lower degree of self-consciousness, but only to
distribute more wisely what they now possess. In fullness of
consciousness they may well rejoice, recognizing its possession as a
power. But they should take a larger unit for its exercise. In meeting
a friend, for example, we are prone to think of ourselves, how we are
speaking or poising our body. But suppose we transfer our
consciousness to the subject of our talk, and allow ourselves a hearty
interest in that. Leaving the details of speech and posture to
mechanized past habits, we may turn all the force of our conscious
attention on the fresh issues of the discussion. With these we may
identify ourselves, and so experience the enlargement which new
materials bring. When we were studying the intricacies of self-
sacrifice, we found that the generous man is not so much the self-
denier or even the self-forgetter, but rather he who is mindful of his
larger self. He turns consciousness from his abstract and isolated
self and fixes it upon his related and conjunct self. But that is a
process which may go on everywhere. Our rule should be to withdraw
attention from isolated minutiae, for which a glance is sufficient.