be conditioned by it. It would be the ground of all being. This position is here accepted. In accepting it, however, we must be on our guard against the mistaken inference that universal mind is necessarily colorless, indifferent, characterless. In ascending through the conception of the finite to that of the Infinite, it has been a common error to do so by way of negation; to repeat the formula "The Infinite is not" this, that or the other, till we arrive at an abstraction of which nothing whatever can be said or thought. This reductio ad absurdum results from making the Infinite synonymous with the unconditioned. The term that really expresses our meaning is not unconditioned but self-conditioned, wholly conditioned from within. It is not possible for us to form any even approximately adequate conception of what such a mode of existence really is, but some faint forth-shadowing of it we have in our own experience. We are not altogether shaped by external conditions; to some extent we shape them, and the more will-power or "character" we have, the more selfsufficing we are, and the more we create our own conditions.

This word "character" demands serious attention. We shall find on reflection that it is the chief expression of human individuality. Superficial acquaintanceship is perforce obliged to distinguish one man from another by differences in physiognomy and general appearance, tricks of manner, voice, gesture, etc.; but a very little more familiarity, stopping far short of intimacy, is needed in order to shift our sense of recognition away from traits of person to traits of mind and disposition, and real intimacy, whether it engender love or hatred, makes us increasingly feel that it is the traits of disposition, the character, which above all distinguish to us this particular man from his fellows. Physical peculiarities

and intellectal attainments seem by comparison accidents; it is the character which is for us the man. And it is needless to observe that no two characters are identical. A man may be of the same age, social standing, culture, intellectual attainment, physical strength as another; he may have had the same education, social environment, opportunities; he may belong to the same family; he may follow the same profession; and yet the character of each is clear-cut and distinguishable, and the work of each bears in consequence its own peculiar impress which differentiates it from that of the other.

This stamp of character upon work is a familiar but a very remarkable fact. Other things being equal, the more of it there is, the better we recognize the work to be; and the hall-mark of a work of genius is not excellence merely, but the supremely unique, or as we say "original," impress which distnguishes it. It is an individual product.

Now this as we have seen is a characteristic of the Cosmos; it, too, is an individual product, unique, original. If Science can do no more than state the fact in her own language and manner, as she does by insisting on the uniformity of Nature and the irrevocableness of natural law, it is open to Philosophy to go a step further, and to draw the simple but supremely significant inference, that what bears the impress of individuality is indeed of individual origin, that the Ground and Source of the Universe is not only Infinitely Personal, but Infinitely Individual. Here then we perceive the true place of individuality in the Cosmic Scale of Values. It reaches to the foundation of things. It enters into the ground of being. Its universal presence and its extraordianry enhancement when united with self-conscious Mind receive thus their interpretation; and our enquiry into its significance as regards

man receives this first answer: that if the Infinite Life from which all finite life is derived be Personal and Individual, infinitely Personal and infinitely Individual, then man, the most personal and the most individual of known beings, is marked out as in close and special touch with the Ground and Source of all existence. We have to examine the bearing of this fact on our immediate subject, Individual Immortality.

And first perhaps it will be wise to dwell a little more at length on that which gives to finite individuality all its worth and meaning, viz., the Infinite Individuality. In fixing our thoughts on the latter we must dissociate from it all idea of limitation. Even in the case of our fellow men we feel that their individuality is an assertive thing.

It has force and power, it declares to us what they are; it makes us know them. The loss of individuality, either in ourselves or in others, means the loss of all which makes recognition possible. And though in us and in them alike it involves limitation, that is only because of our finitude. It is not as individuals but as finite individuals that we are limited, even as it is not as knowers or as lovers but as finite knowers and lovers that our knowledge and love have bonds. Infinite Individuality is not limited, but is possessed of all the resources of Infinitude whereby to assert and make itself known. It is, if we may venture to try and express what is by the nature of the case beyond expression, that whereby Infinite Personality is revealed, even as finite individuality is that by which finite personality is revealed. The two, so far as we know, are inseparable. Our own experience teaches us that they are inseparable in ourselves. Reflection upon the universe of being, as Science shows it to us, teaches us that they are inseparable in the Source and Ground of

that universe, known to us in the language of religion as God.

What we have to claim for Individuality then is, that it enters into the meaning of the Universe, that it is in fact part of that meaning, and as such eternal, indestructible, even as God, for and to Whom it exists, is eternal and indestructible. For when we speak of the meaning of the Universe, we intend not what man from his limited point of view can see of its meaning, but its true and real significance, apprehended with clear and all-including vision. No finite understanding is capable of such a grasp. Infinite meaning is for the Infinite alone. Yet when in a finite being self-consciousness attains such development as in man, there arises a capability of appreciating some part of the Infinite meaning, the part which concerns and is involved in that special type of being-human being. This capability increases with the growth of intellect and spiritual insight, the former slowly delineating and interpreting the body, and the latter, with the aid of the former, the soul of human knowledge and experience. Thus hesitatingly, but with continually increasing approximation to truth, men learn to "think the thoughts of God after Him," entering as they do so a little way into that Holy of Holies, the Divine Individuality, which is expressed in the external Universe they laboriously study, and still more in themselves who study it. For to be able to think the thoughts of God after Him, slowly and blunderingly though it be, implies to some extent a community of nature between the Divine and the human, just as the power of even partially transcending the temporal implies being so far in touch with the eternal. That man can spell out something of the meaning of the Cosmos shows that he not only bears the impress of, but is partaker in, the Divine Individuality, as modern thought

more readily recognizes that he is in the Divine Personality. It is clear what worth and significance this bestows upon his own individuality, what responsibility it lays upon him to respect, develop and maintain it, both in himself and in others.

We have already seen that as life rises in the organic scale, individuality is not only more marked, but becomes increasingly spontaneous. In man this spontaneity is united to a highly developed self-consciousness; and he recognizes himself through the many and great vicissitudes of life as always the same individual. The whole meaning of his life to himself is bound up with this recognition; and when he raises his thoughts and aspirations to the Author of his being, the whole meaning also of that most intimate and solemn relationship hangs upon his realization that closely as his life is interwoven with the life of his fellows

.. this Atom cannot in the Whole Forget itself, it aches a separate soul,

or, as Browning expresses it,

God is, thou art, the rest is hurled To nothingness for thee.

This supreme meaning of individuality to man, that he himself and not another alone occupies or can occupy the one special relationship of his "lone soul" to God, is very deeply rooted in his consciousness, though he is often far indeed from willingly harboring it. Where for any reason the "love which casteth out fear" is not present or is obscured, man's impulse is to merge towards God his own individuality in that of the crowd, or else to put someone or something between him and the Being whom he would shun. Under favorable circumstances it is possible for him to succeed in stifling the tooinsistent voice of his individuality, but it cannot be slain. The merest accident will re-awaken it. A touch, a memory,

is sufficient: the adventitious surroundings in which he has thought to hide himself drop away, and once more he feels that though

Man lumps his kind i' the mass, God singles thence,

Unit by unit.

It is because each man's individuality has a meaning not only to himself but to God that he cannot escape from it, that even when he would ignore or merge it, it asserts itself again, piercing him through and through as with a sword of the Spirit.

It is worth while to pause upon this statement that each man's individuality bears to God its own special meaning. At first sight the tremendous issues involved in it do not clearly appear. Since, as we have already said, the whole Cosmos is individual, and is the complete expression of and fulfilment to the Infinite God of His meaning in bringing it into being, each part of course enters into that meaningMan with the rest. Why, therefore, should any peculiar significance be attached to the individuality of man?

The considerations already brought forward are an answer to this question. Man alone is a personal, and by consequence, an ethical individual, able as such to enter into conscious relationship with the Author of his being. The sub-organic universe, the lower organic world, express indeed God's meaning to him, but it is unknowingly. Man, with his insatiable intellect, his unconquerable activity, his "divine discontent" with present attainment and constant reaching forth after something more excellent, is on a different plane of being. If we may venture so to word it, his individuality cannot mean so much to himself without meaning much also to God. Man can respond to the Divine intention: he can to some extent consciously and voluntarily express the Divine meaning. Without this

co-operation on his part it is indeed not fully realized. To use a familiar word, each man is responsible for the working out of his own ethical individuality.

Its possibilities are not of his making: for good or for evil these originally are beyond his control. But the actualizing of the possibilities lies largely within it, and any fair survey of history, or of our own and (so far as we can enter into it) of others' experience, confirms this statement. At the same time, as has repeatedly been pointed out, the visible course of things, life as we know it, does not give full scope for the working out of individuality, ethical or intellectual. No man, now and here, completely or even with approximate completeness, attains the measure of his capabilities. He is restrained, limited, as it seems to us hampered on all sides. And even in those rare and fortunate instances where no other restriction exists, there is that of the shortness of life. If nothing else, then more time is needed for the fulfilment of individuality.

From our present point of view it will be understood that man need not fear the lack of time. Individuality, though manifested in, is not a consequence of the Temporal Order, but belongs to the Eternal; and a being who is, to the extent that man is, consciously individual, capable of an ethical relationship to God and to his fellows, could not lapse from that consciousness without some part of the Eternal Meaning lapsing with him. The loss of his conscious individuality would be a loss to the Divine completeness of Experience, for in virtue of it he holds towards God a unique ethical place, his own place, which he only can fill.

Whatever, therefore, death may involve, it cannot involve such a loss as this. From the philosophic standpoint, indeed, death is of peculiarly

small significance, a mere accident of the temporal order, with which alone it has any concern. It cannot frustrate or interrupt the eternal meaning; and in man that meaning is bound up with his consciousness of himself and of God, with his individual personality, in fact.

The question regarding individual immortality is thus affirmatively answered. It is involved in and subsidiary to the larger question of the worth of individuality itself, when manifested in human form, and, as we have seen, that worth is beyond human calculation, because much as each man's individuality means to himself it means yet more to God. It is derived from Him, it is sustained in Him, it is the reflex of His own Infinitude and partakes of His Eternity. Each finite personal being is to God a unique ethical individual, the one in all creation who can hold just his relationship to the Father of his spirit. If he fails, there is no other who can be to God just what he is. So much of the ethical meaning of the Universe has failed with him. Regarded in this light, it seems absurd to look on death as even a possible term to individual ethical life. It is not ethical failure. There is a shadow which looms far more darkly, the significance of which it would be idle to pretend to under-rate, and from which to our limited vision death gains a fictitious importance,the shadow of moral evil. Here indeed there seems to lie the dread possibility of a unique Divine Ideal being frustrated, of complete and irretrievable ethical failure.

It is not possible, in a few short sentences, even to touch on so vast and difficult a problem as this. Mention is made of it simply to show that it is not left out of sight, and to express the hope that at some future time an attempt may be made to discern its true proportions and indicate the place it

holds in the universe of being and especially of human being.

With one further observation, the present essay must be brought to a close. Granting all that has been said of the worth of each human individual as a unique ethical being, and as a corollary his persistence after death, how are we to account for his having had a beginning? That which begins, must, it would seem, also end. It belongs to the temporal order, not to the eternal, in which there is neither beginning nor end.

The answer to this difficulty must be found in a twofold recognition:

(1) That in so far as it is subjected to actual earthly conditions, the life of man is temporal and belongs to the temporal order. Birth and death are facts of that order. Physically, man has a beginning and an end; but we have seen already that even under actual limitations he can and does to some extent transcend both the temporal and spatial, i.e., physical limits, and on his capability of so doing depends his hu

The Contemporary Review.

man-as distinguished from his animal -individuality.

(2) And if the supreme worth of that human individuality be allowed, if it bears a unique and consequently eternal ethical significance to God, we must also grant that it neither began with birth nor ends at death. That man should not, while restricted to earthly conditions, be conscious of the eternity of his being, is not difficult to understand. It is obscured to him by the temporal limitations characteristic of those conditions, and which, it may well be, are to some extent projected beyond death. If, however, the considerations advanced in this essay be valid, temporal limitations must ultimately cease for every human individual, and when they do so, his eternal experience will stand out to him in a clear and perfect whole, the manner of perceiving which is feebly and faintly foreshadowed in his actual power of regarding the past, present and future of his earthly experience as one life. Emma Marie Caillard.

Of all things which are not actually necessary to daily life, pictures are perhaps those most frequently purchased without special knowledge and adequate selection. The whole business is conducted in a hugger-mugger fashion, without consistent principle or given plan. The object of this paper is to suggest that such principle is not only desirable but necessary, and that such plan can be formulated in simple English and without undue complexity.

The first necessity is to clear our minds of cant and our actions of pre

tence. In other words, we must decide only to have the pictures that we like, whether our tastes accord with those of the majority or not. Otherwise the fine-art dealer and the well-informed friend have us at once in their grip. They will insist on our having suchand-such an example of this or that popular painter; and the picture, when bought, will consequently mean nothing to us but a conviction, somewhat insecurely founded, that we have bought what we ought to have bought, ere we "coom'd awaay."