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the general conduct of our lives. In Lecky's words, "To maintain in their due proportion in our nature the spirit of content and the desire to improve, to combine a realized appreciation of the blessings we enjoy with a healthy and well-regulated ambition, is nɔ easy thing, but it is the problem which all who aspire to a perfect life should set before themselves."1

The final solution of this fundamental paradox of self-surrender and self-assertion for a finite being would apparently be reached only when one had found a self-surrender, which included all lesser surrenders, and was, at the same time, the completest selfassertion a yielding which should be, also, the boldest "claim on life." Such a solution, Christ evidently believes that he finds in his recurring paradox of saving the life by losing it-denying the narrow, merely individual self, like the grain of wheat in the ground, to rise to the life of the larger self. Every surrender to a high friendship is, as Ritschl has pointed out, "not a weakening denial of self, but a strengthening affirmation of self," for love itself is life, the largest life. But in the supreme surrender to the will of God, 1 Op. cit., p. 28.

we welcome and share the supreme and allsufficing life; and here, as Professor Everett contended against Nietsche's position, one finds in truth his own highest and strongest self-assertion. "Religion," in Biedermann's language, "is the lifting of life out of dependence on its circumstances into the freedom which comes from absolute dependence."

But a paradox is not solved by stating it, or even by indicating the ideal combination. There must be a tracing out of the actual relations involved, a discerning of the multiplied conditions upon which the solution depends. Psychology can be a science only so far as it is actually able to discover these conditions. And the emphasis of psychology on the complexity and paradox of life means, therefore, at the same time, emphasis on conditions.

CHAPTER III

THE EMPHASIS of psycholoGY ON CONDITIONS

THE insistence of psychology on the complexity and paradox of life means emphasis on conditions; for if all life is so inter-related, and so puzzlingly complex, we can make progress in the knowledge and in the living of it, only in so far as we regard these actual relations and fulfil these matter-of-fact conditions. Something like this is attempted by Lecky in his very suggestive book, The Map of Life, already quoted. Perhaps the most striking thing in the book is its insistence upon what the author calls importance of compromise in practical life." This might, perhaps, better be called the intelligent, practical, and detailed recognition of the complexity of life; for no real compromise of principle is anywhere involved. But Lecky's main thought is certainly justified, and is an immediate inference from the conviction of the complexity of life, as is indicated by his own statement: "Life is a

"the

scene in which different kinds of interest not only blend but also modify and in some degree counterbalance one another, and it can only be carried on by constant compromises in which the lines of definition are seldom very clearly marked, and in which even the highest interest must not altogether absorb or override the others." And he discusses with great care and insight the necessity of such "compromise" in war, in the law, in politics, and in the Church.

Certainly the problem of the practical solution of the complexity of life through recognition of the precise relations and conditions involved cannot be escaped by any man who wishes to live a wise and righteous life. There must be both the knowledge and the fulfilment of precise conditions.

I. THE LESSONS OF NATURAL SCIENCE

This is the lesson of the marvelous growth of the natural sciences: unwearied study of minute details; patient search for the law underlying the phenomena investigated, and for the exact conditions involved; precise and persistent fulfilment of these condi1 Op. cit., pp. 90, 91.

tions. So science grows, and so its problems are solved. It discerns law, and hence possible achievement. That is, we accomplish nothing except through the forces of nature. We can use these only so far as we see their laws and fulfil the conditions required; and this fulfilment requires time. Law, conditions, time! So and so only has man's dominion over nature come about; so and so only can dominion over one's own nature be achieved, and life's problem solved.

Because the problem of life is complex, we must attack it as the scientist attacks his problem, with a definite conviction of law and with consequent hope. Drummond's greatest contribution to his generation lay in this insistence upon law in the moral and spiritual world. This conviction withdraws the moral and spiritual from the realm of the magical and brings in hope of real achievement. So believing, we may set the laws of the world and of the mind working for us, and have patience with ourselves and with others. There are laws in the spiritual world; we can find them out; we can know their implied conditions; these conditions we can fulfil; and we can so count confidently upon results. Otherwise,

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