whether that
light is a mirage.

No wonder, then, that men differ as to their special efforts to solve
such a problem. But it is now our task to seek for further sources of
insight.

IV

The foregoing discussion may seem to have led us far from the study of
our social experience as a source of religious insight. But in fact it
is a necessary preliminary to that study and leads us very near to it.

If one principal source of our need of salvation is the natural
narrowness of our view of the meaning {55} of our own purposes and
motives, and the consequent fickleness and the forgetful inconsistency
with which we usually live out our days, it seems right, in searching
for a way that may lead toward salvation, to get such help as we can
by looking to our normal social experience for whatever guidance it
can give. The social world is wide, even if it is still full of
conflict. It broadens our outlook at every turn. A man corrects his
own narrowness by trying to share his fellow's point of view. Our
social responsibilities tend to set limits to our fickleness. Social
discipline removes some of our inner conflicts, by teaching us not to
indulge caprices. Human companionship may calm, may steady our vision,
may bring us into intercourse with what is in general much better than
a man's subliminal self, namely, his public, his humane, his greater
social self, wherein he finds his soul and its interests writ large.
Perhaps, then, whatever the ultimate goal, the way out of the
distractions of the natural self, the way toward the divine insight
and power that we need, lies through our social experience.

No wonder, then, that in the religious discussions of to-day our
social experience is that source of insight upon which a great number
of our teachers, whether they are professional religious teachers or
not, most frequently insist. Our present time is an age of great
concern with social problems and reforms. No wonder, then, that we
have all learned to widen our vision, and to control our {56}
waywardness, by remembering that man is a being who can be neither
understood nor directed in case you try to view him in isolation. As
for salvation, many of our most influential leaders now teach us that
the problem of our day is the problem of saving, not the individual as
an individual, but the social order as a whole. The two tendencies
which seem to be most potent in the political realm are the gener