Thus, although the experimental investigatory coral-reef accretion method of modern science is very valuable within its range, it must not be forgotten that the human mind does not progress more than temporarily by this method--that its progression is a matter of growth from within, and involves a continual _breaking away of the bases_ of all thought-structures; so that, while this latter--_i.e._, the progression of the systemic consciousness of man--is necessary and continuous, the rise and fall of his thought-systems is accidental, so to speak, and discontinuous. It is then finally in Man--in our own deepest and most vital experience--that we have to look for the key and explanation of the changes that we see going on around us in external Nature, as we call it; and our understanding of the latter, and of History, must ever depend from point to point on the exfoliation of new facts in the individual consciousness. Round the ultimate disclosure of the essential Man all creation (hitherto groaning and travailing towards that perfect birth) ranges itself, as it were, like some vast flower, in concentric cycles; rank beyond rank; first all social life and history, then the animal kingdom, then the vegetable and mineral worlds. And if the outer circles have been the first in fact to show themselves, it is by this last disclosure that light is ultimately thrown on the whole plan; and, as in the myth of the Eden-garden, with the appearance of the perfected human form that the work of creation definitely completes itself. FOOTNOTE: [39] This does not, of course, preclude the action of external conditions, or imply that organisation is determined by desire _alone_. In fact organisation may be regarded as the expression of desire acting under conditions--as in the cases of the monkey and giraffe above. CUSTOM "Whatever is off the hinges of custom is believed to be also off the hinges of reason; though how unreasonably, for the most part, God knows."--MONTAIGNE. Every human being grows up inside a sheath of custom, which enfolds it as the swathing clothes enfold the infant. The sacred customs of its early home, how fixed and immutable they appear to the child! It surely thinks that all the world in all times has proceeded on the same lines which bound its tiny life. It regards a breach of these rules (some of them at least) as a wild step in the dark, leading to unknown dangers.