an independent extension of the original precept; and yet all these phenomena are in fact found in human experience. True, we are affected very greatly by external forces; but that they may achieve what they do a movement from within must meet them, take them up, and carry them further. The enormous amount of pretence which flourishes amongst us with regard to matters of morality, and which so easily obscures our vision for the chief matter, would be unintelligible if the spiritual did not manifest some kind of independence in the moral judgment. Unless there is such a development towards independence, the moral judgment must also, as far as its content is concerned, be determined by the condition of the social environment: it could never follow a course of its own; never give rise to anything new; never enter into inner conflict with the environment. Yet, as a matter of fact, we find these tendencies in abundance. The individual is able, in the light of his own moral conviction, to approve and value something which all around him reject; and conversely, to condemn and reject something which all around him esteem and respect; and this he is able to do under the compulsion of inner necessity, and not simply out of a love of vain paradox. This opposition of individuals to the condition of things in the social environment has been the main source of all inner progress in matters of morality. For it is in matters of morality, in particular, that that which hitherto had given no offence has become intolerable to individuals; and that new and imperative demands such as had never been made before have emerged with constraining power. Or did the idea of humanity, the abolition of slavery, and the commandment to love one's enemies, for example, arise in some other way? If in respect of such matters as these that which on its first appearance was paradoxical quickly came to be regarded as self-evident, what else was operative in bringing about this result than an inner necessity, from which, when once we become conscious of it, we can never again escape? Suitable conditions in the social environment were, of course, also necessary for the fulfilment and the extension of those moral requirements; but they could never have originated from the environment, or have derived from it their unconditional nature, their certainty of victory, and their indifference to all external consequences: qualities without which they could not have effected what they have.