what the theologians called Original Sin, that is, the preferring of “the works of the Creator to the Creator himself.” But there is a second force that must act in conjunction with this keen desire for personal liberation or highest personal self-affirmation. It is the sense of the _dependence of others_ upon what I can do for them. Notoriously it is the dependence of the child that evokes in the parent the noblest qualities of which he is capable, the self-denial, the incessant willingness to labor for the good of the offspring. It is the dependence of the student on the teacher, of the disciple on the master that elicits the latter’s best thought. It is the dependence of the multitude on the religious teacher that puts him on his mettle. But if the dependence of others upon oneself is to produce its appropriate results, that dependence will have to be interpreted in a spiritual sense. We shall have to think of others as dependent on us not only for the necessary empirical services we are bound to render them, but those empirical services themselves will have to be regarded as instruments by means of which we may render them the highest spiritual service. This leads to a more _rigorous scrutiny of the notion of service_ than has hitherto been customary. The question we must answer, and it is one that has never been adequately met, is: What is it in the other that we are to serve, what is the true object of our service? Man is worth while on his own account. Now no one can pretend that the welfare of the animal part of man is an object worth while on its own account. To satisfy the hunger or the thirst of another, or to promote his health is to serve his body. But the body is the servant of a master. And I am not bound to serve a servant. If I am to serve the servant at all it must be for the sake of the master. Who then is the master? The same argument applies also to the intellect. Human science is after all but a narrow littoral along the illimitable continent of nescience. No one who compares the intellectual achievements of mankind with the problems that remain unsolved will pretend that the accomplishments of the intellect are worth while on their own account. The mental no less than the physical part of us has a master. There is an object higher than the acquisition of knowledge to be attained in the course of the mind’s endeavors to acquire knowledge, namely the growth of the scientist towards unique personality, as will be shown in the chapter on the Vocations in the last Book. Analogous considerations apply to art and its achievements.