And now we pass to the third and most intangible region of the spirit, the region that I will call the mystical region.  This is in a sense akin to the aesthetic region, because it partly consists in the appreciation of beauty in ethical things.  Here the danger of the vivid personality is to let his preferences be his guide, and to contemn certain types of character, certain qualities, certain modes of thought, certain points of view.  Here again one’s duty is plain.  It is the resolute avoidance of the critical attitude, the attempt to disentangle the golden thread, the nobility, the purity, the strength, the intensity, that may underlie characters and views that do not superficially appeal to oneself.  The philosopher need not seek the society of uncongenial persons:  such a practice is a useless expenditure of time and energy; but no one can avoid a certain contact with dissimilar natures, and the aim of the philosopher must be to try and do sympathetic justice to them, to seek earnestly for points of contact, rather than to attempt to emphasize differences.  For instance, if the philosopher is thrown into the society of a man who can talk nothing but motor jargon or golfing shop—­I select the instances of the conversation that is personally to me the dreariest—­he need not attempt to talk of golf or motors, and he is equally bound not to discourse of his own chosen intellectual interests; but he ought to endeavour to find a common region, in which he can meet the golfer or the motorist without mutual dreariness.

Perhaps it may be thought that I have drifted out of the mystical region, but it is not so, for the relations of human beings with each other appear to me to belong to this region.  The strange affinities and hostilities of temperament, the inexplicable and undeniable thing called charm, the attraction and repulsion of character—­all this is in the mystical region of the spirit, the region of intuition and instinct, which is a far stronger, more vital, and more general region than the intellectual or the artistic.  And further, there comes the deepest intuition of all, the relation of the human spirit to its Maker, its originating cause.  Whether this relation can be a direct one is a matter for each person to decide from his own experience; but perhaps the only two things of which a human being can be said to be absolutely conscious are his own identity, and the existence of a controlling Power outside of him.  And here lies the deepest danger of all, that a man should attempt to limit or define his conception of the Power that originated him, by his own preferences.  The deepest mystery of all lies in the conviction, which seems to be inextricably rooted in the human spirit, namely, the instinct to distinguish between the impulses which we believe emanate from God, and the impulses which we believe emanate from ourselves.  It is incontestable that the greater part of the human race have the instinct that in following beneficent, unselfish,