To transcend it, he must advance by the
discrete degree. No simple "bettering" of the ordinary self, which
leaves it alive, as the focus--the French word "foyer" is the more
expressive--of his thoughts and actions; not even that identification
with higher interests in the world's plane just spoken of, is, or can
progressively become, in the least adequate to the realization of his
Divine ideal. This "bettering" of our present nature, it alone being
recognized as essential, albeit capable of "improvement," is a
commonplace, and to use a now familiar term a "Philistine," conception.
It is the substitution of the continuous for the discrete degree. It is
a compromise with our dear old familiar selves. "And Saul and the
people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of
the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not
utterly destroy them; but everything that was vile and refuse, that
they destroyed utterly." We know how little acceptable that compromise
was to the God of Israel; and no illustration can be more apt than this
narrative, which we may well, as we would fain, believe to be rather
typical than historical.
Pages:
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179