The _Whole_ consequently grows, and gradually man becomes conscious of his personality as over against the environing world and even his own body. This consciousness of [p.36] _inwardness_ is of slow growth, because the natural tendency of life is to give a primary place to the world from which we have emerged--the world of physical existence, and also because much of that physical world reigns powerfully within our nature. But when reflection turns into itself, it becomes aware that the inwardness constitutes the kernel of a reality higher in its nature than anything either in the physical world or in the physical life which the man has to lead. Two modes of reality now present themselves to the life, neither of which allows itself to be conceived of as an illusion. On the one hand, we find the physical world and our own physical nature. We discover that we cannot jump out of these without destroying all we possess; we have to come to some kind of understanding with the physical world and our own physical existence. Yet, on the other hand, the consciousness of a kernel of our being, non-sensuous and spiritual in its nature, has for ever broken our satisfaction with the physical world and our own physical existence. There are only two alternatives on which we can act. Either we are to conceive of our spiritual personality as something secondary and subsidiary to the natural world, or we are to insist on its independence, and acknowledge it as the beginning of _a new mode of existence._ If the former alternative is chosen, the personality can never pass to a state of self-subsistence, [p.37] but will conceive of reality as something which is mainly physical. The consequence is that the personality will suffer seriously in its evolution, for such an evolution is brought about through the recognition and willing acknowledgment of the breaking forth of _a new kind of reality_ within the spiritual nucleus of life. If the latter alternative is chosen, this nucleus of life is now seen as something quite other than a quality entirely dependent upon the physical or than a mere flowering of the physical; it is seen as a reality higher in its nature than the physical or even than the ordinary life of the individual. Such a situation is forced on man when once he reflects upon the inward meaning of the content of his consciousness. It is true that such questions may be thrust into the background, and consequently inhibited from presenting us with their full value and significance. And it is this which happens only too often in daily life. The constant need of attention to external things, the absorption of the mind in conventionality and custom as these present themselves in the form of a ready-made inheritance--all these occupy so much of the attention as to prevent man from knowing and experiencing what _his own life_ is or what it is capable of becoming. Man has penetrated into the secrets of Nature as well as into the past