That thought which inspires the last chapters of Professor ’Alexander’s “Space, Time, and Deity,” that the universe as a whole has a tendency towards deity, does at least seem true of the fully awakened human consciousness.[31] Though St. Thomas Aquinas may not have covered all the facts when he called man a contemplative animal,[32] he came nearer the mark than more modern anthropologists.  Man has an ineradicable impulse to transcendence, though sometimes—­as we may admit—­it is expressed in strange ways:  and no psychology which fails to take account of it can be accepted by us as complete.  He has a craving which nothing in his material surroundings seems adequate either to awaken or to satisfy; a deep conviction that some larger synthesis of experience is possible to him.  The sense that we are not yet full grown has always haunted the race.  “I am the Food of the full-grown. Grow, and thou shalt feed on Me!"[33] said the voice of supreme Reality to St. Augustine.  Here we seem to lay our finger on the distinguishing mark of humanity:  that in man the titanic craving for a fuller life and love which is characteristic of all living things, has a teleological objective.  He alone guesses that he may or should be something other; yet cannot guess what he may be.  And from this vague sense of being in via, the restlessness and discord of his nature proceed.  In him, the onward thrust of the world of becoming achieves self-consciousness.

The best individuals and communities of each age have felt this craving and conviction; and obeyed, in a greater or less degree, its persistent onward push.  “The seed of the new birth,” says William Law, “is not a notion, but a real strong essential hunger, an attracting, a magnetic desire."[34] Over and over again, rituals have dramatized this, desire and saints have surrendered to it.  The history of religion and philosophy is really the history of the profound human belief that we have faculties capable of responding to orders of truth which, did we apprehend them, would change the whole character of our universe; showing us reality from another angle, lit by another light.  And time after time too—­as we shall see, when we come to consider the testimony of history—­favourable variations have arisen within the race and proved in their own persons that this claim is true.  Often at the cost of great pain, sacrifice, and inward conflict they have broken their attachments to the narrow world of the senses:  and this act of detachment has been repaid by a new, more lucid vision, and a mighty inflow of power.  The principle of degrees assures us that such changed levels of consciousness and angles of approach may well involve introduction into a universe of new relations, which we are not competent to criticize.[35] This is a truth which should make us humble in our efforts to understand the difficult and too often paradoxical utterances of religious genius.  It suggests the puzzlings of philosophers and theologians—­and, I may add, of psychologists too—­over experiences which they have not shared, are not of great authority for those whose object is to find the secret of the Spirit, and make it useful for life.  Here, the only witnesses we can receive are, on the one part, the first-hand witnesses of experience, and on the other part, our own profound instinct that these are telling us news of our native land.