Now ethics is a science of _right_ energizing. And since as a matter of fact we do inevitably energize in such a manner as to affect others, the fundamental question in ethics is: how are we to regulate the incidences of our natures that fall upon other lives so that they shall be right? Since we cannot help acting upon them and influencing them, how can we act rightly toward them and rightly influence them? And the rule supplied by the ethical principle is: Act upon their empirical selves in such a manner as to draw from their empirical natures the hidden personality, or at least the consciousness of it. And the repercussion of the rule is: in the attempt to do so you will convert your own empirical self into a spiritual personality, or at least evoke in yourself the idea of yourself as a spiritual personality. Incontestably, in the attempt to change others we are compelled to try to change ourselves. The transformation undergone by a parent in the attempt to educate his child is an obvious instance. No parent is a true parent at the outset. As his perception deepens of the real needs of the child, which is so entirely dependent on his self-control, on his wisdom as well as his love, he will realize more and more his own deficiencies, and seek to remedy them. The same is true of the professor in relation to his students, of a leader and his followers, of a religious teacher and those who look to him for advice and help. In all such relations when rightly understood there is simultaneous growth on both sides. In the ethical sphere there is a law of levitation, the contrary of the law of gravitation that obtains in the realm of matter. We actually tend to rise from a lower to a higher level in proportion as we bend downward to lift those still lower than ourselves. CHAPTER IX HOW TO LEARN TO SEE THE SPIRITUAL _NUMEN_ IN OTHERS We now have to consider how to acquire the faculty of seeing the light that in our fellowmen is often so deeply hidden. We can love only that which is lovable. If we could see holiness, beauty concealed within our fellow-beings, we should be drawn towards them by the most powerful attraction, willingly living in their life, and permitting them to live in ours. We should then love all men, for we should see in all what is unspeakably lovable. But the empirical man stands between us and the spiritual man, and the empirical woman between us and the spiritual woman; and very often the former are most repulsive, even when their ugly traits do not affect us personally, even when as spectators merely we observe how they behave.