I promised to keep as clear of metaphysics as the case permits. I have not even argued, though I am convinced, that the best clue we have to the general character of the universe consists in this, that persons exist, and are, as a matter of fact, in the process of achieving freedom, and of achieving it cooperatively. The experience of becoming free, even though it be incomplete, even though it never can be completed, surely casts a beam of light into the problem of being. An original, self-sustaining light. For the becoming of freedom is an experience, a datum, primary and underived. We do not learn it by inference from some otherwise-known system of things; we do not need to ask whether a place can be made for it in a view of nature that is derived from the pre-human world. It is here; it makes its own place, and our view of nature must be sufficiently large and objective to include it. This does not deny either the general self-consistency of nature that we call law, nor yet any specific connection of events that can be shown to be probable. Any experience whatever, the experience of becoming free not excepted, occurs under conditions that can theoretically be formulated in a general proposition. But the event need not repeat or continue the conditions under which it arises. Out of a songless egg, someone has said, emerges the song of a lark. The realization that one is freely a member of such a realm of spirits as I have described is not only like worship, it is indistinguishable from worship. For it is just the opposite of spiritual isolation. This outward movement from self, though it be initiated within us, is not, in any complete and exclusive sense, initiated by us. It is wrought through us as much as by us! It chooses us as much as we choose it. Over and over again the experience repeats itself of being certain, just where we are most original, that then and there we are organs of something greater than our particular selves. It is as if each particular self were enveloped and suffused and already partly actuated by some self-like principle that is abroad in the universe. INDEX Academic freedom, 188 ff. Accidents, preventable, 159. Acquisitive instinct, 39. Adolescence, see “Youth”. Advertising, 13, 38, 52. Affection, 231. “American Tragedy, An”, Dreiser’s, 29. Amusements, 52, 130, 139. Analytical method in psychology, 40, 81, 93. Anger, 179 ff. “Areopagitica”, Milton’s, 185. Argumentativeness, 243. “Arrowsmith”, Sinclair Lewis’s, 31. Art and artists, 78, 106, 109 f., 118, 125. Assemblage, freedom of, 191. Authority, 26, 176, 195. Averages as standards of judgment, 173. Ayres, C. E. 194 (note.) Balance sheet as index of values, 126. Balderston, J. L., 146 (note). “Bear, The”, Robert Frost’s, 244. Beauty, 109, 160, 231. Behaviorism, 41, 52, 93. Bible, 22. Biography, recent, 110 ff. Biology, Ch. IV, 39. Bondage of our powers, Part III, Part IV.