been, and you will have a
measure of the consequences that would have followed violation of the law
of types, the law of dimensions, in the matter of lines, surfaces and
solids." But, now, in regard to the exactly similar error respecting the
nature of man, the situation is reversed; for this blunder, unlike the
other one, is not merely hypothetical; we have seen that it was actually
committed and has been actually persisted in from time immemorial; not
merely for years or for decades or for centuries but for _centuries_ of
_centuries_ including our own day, it has lain athwart the course of human
progress; age after age it has hampered and baulked the natural activity
of the time-binding energies--the civilization-producing energies--of
humanity. How are we to estimate its consequences? Let the reader keep in
mind that the error is fundamental--a type-confusing blunder (like that
supposed regarding geometric entities); let him reflect, moreover, that it
affects, not merely one of our human concerns, but _all_ of them, since it
is an error regarding the _center_ of them all--regarding the very _nature_
of man himself; and he will know, as well as anything can be known, that
the consequences of the ages-old blunder have been and are very momentous
and very terrible. Their measure is indeed beyond our power; we cannot
describe them adequately, we cannot delineate their proportions, for we
cannot truly imagine them; and the reason is plain: it is that those
advancements of civilization, those augmentations of material and
spiritual wealth, all of the glorious achievements of which the tragic
blunder has deprived the world, are none of them here; they have not been
produced; and so we cannot say, as in the other case: "Look upon these
splendid treasures of bound-up time, imagine them taken away, and your
sense of the appalling loss will give you the measure required." It is
evident that the glories of which the misconceptions of human nature have
deprived manhood must long remain, perhaps forever, in the sad realm of
dreams regarding great and noble things that might have been.

I have said that the duty of examining the misconceptions imposes upon us
four obligations. Three of these we have performed: we have disengaged the
beliefs in question from the complicated tangle of opinions in which they
have come down to us from remote antiquity; we have recognized the
necessity and the duty of virtually stinging ourselves into an