ning) the separation from others, and the
non-acknowledgment of unity. And so it has come about that during all
this civilization-period the sense of sin has ruled and ranged to such
an extraordinary degree. Society has been built on a false base, not
true to fact or life--and has had a dim uneasy consciousness of its
falseness. Meanwhile at the heart of it all--and within all the frantic
external strife and warfare--there is all the time this real great life
brooding. The kingdom of Heaven, as we said before, is still within.

The word Democracy indicates something of the kind--the rule of the
Demos, that is of the common life. The coming of that will transform,
not only our Markets and our Law Courts and our sense of Property, and
other institutions, into something really great and glorious instead
of the dismal masses of rubbish which they at present are; but it will
transform our sense of Morality.

Our Morality at present consists in the idea of self-goodness--one of
the most pernicious and disgusting ideas which has ever infested the
human brain. If any one should follow and assimilate what I have just
said about the true nature of the Self he will realize that it will
never again be possible for him to congratulate himself on his own
goodness or morality or superiority; for the moment he does so he will
separate himself from the universal life, and proclaim the sin of his
own separation. I agree that this conclusion is for some people a most
sad and disheartening one--but it cannot be helped! A man may truly be
'good' and 'moral' in some real sense; but only on the condition that
he is not aware of it. He can only BE good when not thinking about the
matter; to be conscious of one's own goodness is already to have fallen!

We began by thinking of the self as just a little local self; then we
extended it to the family, the cause, the nation--ever to a larger and
vaster being. At last there comes a time when we recognize--or see that
we SHALL have to recognize--an inner Equality between ourselves and all
others; not of course an external equality--for that would be absurd and
impossible--but an inner and profound and universal Equality. And so we
come again to the mystic root-conception of Democracy.

And now it will be said: "But after all this talk you have not defined
the Self, or given us any intellectual outline of what you mean by the
word." No--and I do not intend to. If I could, by any sort of copybook
de