nature mean? My answer is, that when a man begins to have an
extended vision of his self, when he realises that he is much
more than at present he seems to be, he begins to get conscious
of his moral nature. Then he grows aware of that which he is yet
to be, and the state not yet experienced by him becomes more real
than that under his direct experience. Necessarily, his
perspective of life changes, and his will takes the place of his
wishes. For will is the supreme wish of the larger life, the
life whose greater portion is out of our present reach, most of
whose objects are not before our sight. Then comes the conflict
of our lesser man with our greater man, of our wishes with our
will, of the desire for things affecting our senses with the
purpose that is within our heart. Then we begin to distinguish
between what we immediately desire and what is good. For good is
that which is desirable for our greater self. Thus the sense of
goodness comes out of a truer view of our life, which is the
connected view of the wholeness of the field of life, and which
takes into account not only what is present before us but what is
not, and perhaps never humanly can be. Man, who is provident,
feels for that life of his which is not yet existent, feels much
more that than for the life that is with him; therefore he is
ready to sacrifice his present inclination for the unrealised
future. In this he becomes great, for he realises truth. Even
to be efficiently selfish one has to recognise this truth, and
has to curb his immediate impulses--in other words, has to be
moral. For our moral faculty is the faculty by which we know
that life is not made up of fragments, purposeless and
discontinuous. This moral sense of man not only gives him the
power to see that the self has a continuity in time, but it also
enables him to see that he is not true when he is only restricted