SOURCE: Edward Carpenter: An Exposition and an Appreciation, Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1915, pp. 17-92.

In the following excerpt, Lewis looks at Carpenter's views on the self, democracy, and nature.

The Nature of the Self

"It is by love only that we can fully enter into that harmony with others which alone constitutes our own reality and the reality of the universe. We conceive the universe as a spiritual whole, made up of individuals, who have no existence except as manifestations of the whole; as the whole, on the other hand, has no existence except as manifested in them."—MCTAGGART.

Argument

The witness of introspection is that that which begins as Feeling tends to pass outwards through Thought to Action. Desire precedes structure, and the complex organization of our present human bodies represents mental and conative processes in the age-long race-life. The creative race-Ego is in each individual, working on...