But now people are beginning to get
this detachment without any distinctively religious feeling or any
distinctive aesthetic or intellectual impulse, as if it were a plain
matter of fact. Plain matter of fact, that we are only incidentally
ourselves. That really each one of us is also the whole species, is
really indeed all life."
"A part of it."
"An integral part-as sight is part of a man... with no absolute
separation from all the rest--no more than a separation of the
imagination. The whole so far as his distinctive quality goes. I do not
know how this takes shape in your mind, Sir Richmond, but to me this
idea of actually being life itself upon the world, a special phase of it
dependent upon and connected with all other phases, and of being one
of a small but growing number of people who apprehend that, and want to
live in the spirit of that, is quite central. It is my fundamental idea.
We,--this small but growing minority--constitute that part of life which
knows and wills and tries to rule its destiny. This new realization, the
new psychology arising out of it is a fact of supreme importance in the
history of life. It is like the appearance of self-consciousness in some
creature that has not hitherto had self-consciousness. And so far as we
are concerned, we are the true kingship of the world.
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