than by a clear concept of its own real orientation, then with an ever clearer, ever more critical conviction, has elaborated a concept which is directly antithetical to the classical idea of a celestial truth removed from the turmoil of earthly things. It has accordingly and by many ways reached the conclusion that reality, lofty 16 though it be, and truth itself, which nourishes the mind and alone gives validity to human thought, are in life itself, in the development of the mind, in the growth of the human personality, and that this personality, though ideally beyond our grasp, is yet in the concrete always historical and actual, and realises itself in its immanent value. It therefore creates its truth and its world. Modern philosophy and modern consciousness no longer point to values which, transcending history, determine its movement and its direction by external finalities: they show to man that the lofty aim which is his law is within himself; that it is in his ever unsatisfied personality as it unceasingly strains upward towards its own ideal.

Science is no longer conceived to-day as the indifferent pure matter of the intellect. It is an interest which invests the entire person, extols it and with it moves onward in the eternal rhythm of an infinite development. Science is not for us the abstract contemplation of yore; it is self-consciousness that man acquires, and by means of which he actuates his own humanity. And therefore science is no longer an adornment or an equipment of the mind, considered as diverse to its content; it is culture, and the formation of this very mind. So that whenever science is as yet so abstract that it seems not to touch the person and fails to form it or transform it, it is an indication that it is not as yet true science.

So we conclude thus: he who distinguishes his person from his knowledge is ignorant of the nature of knowledge. The modern teacher knows of no science which is not an act of a personality. It knows no personality which admits of being sequestered from its ideas, from its ways of thinking and of feeling, from that greater life which is the nation. Concrete personality then is nationality, and therefore neither the school nor science possesses a learning which is not national.

And for this reason therefore our educational reforms which are inspired by the teachings of modern idealistic philosophy demand that the school be animated and vivified by the spiritual breath of the fatherland.

It is essential at the very outset to understand clearly what is meant by concrete personality, and why the particular or empirical personality, as we are usually accustomed to consider it, is nothing more than an abstraction.

Ordinarily, relying on the most obvious data of experience, we are led to believe that the sphere of our moral personality coincides exactly with the sphere of our physical person, and is therefore limited and contained by the surface of our material body. We consider this body in itself as an indivisible whole, with such reciprocal correspondence and interdependence of its parts as to become a veritable system. It seems to us also that this system moves in space as a whole when the body is displaced, continuing to remain united as long as it exists. We look upon it as though it were separated from all other bodies, whether of the same or of different kinds, in such a manner that it excludes others from the place it occupies, and is itself in turn excluded by them. One body then, one physical person, one moral personality—that moral personality which each one of us recognises and affirms by the consciousness of the ego.

And in fact when I walk I am not a different person from when I think. My ego remains the same whether my body moves through space or whether my mind inwardly meditates. Impenetrability, which is possessed by matter, seems to be also a property of human individualism.

From my ego every other ego is apparently excluded. What I am no one else can be, and I in turn cannot be confused with another person. Those of my fellow beings that are most intimately, most closely related to me seem yet as completely external to me, as thoroughly sundered from my spirit, as their bodies are from mine. My father, my brother are dead. They have vanished from this world in which I nevertheless continue to exist; just as a stone remains in its place and is in no way affected when another stone near by is removed; or as a mutilated pedestal may still remain to remind the onlooker of the statue that was torn away.

Hundreds of individuals assemble to listen to the words of an orator. But no necessary ties exist between the various persons; and when the speaking is over, each one goes his way confident that he has lost no part of himself and that he has maintained his individuality absolutely unaltered.

Our elders lived on this planet when we had not yet arrived. After we came, they gradually withdrew, one after the other. And just as they had been able to 20 exist without us, so shall we continue to live without them, and away from them develop our personality. For each one of us, according to this point of view, has his own being within himself, his own particular destiny. Every man makes of himself the centre of his world, of that universe which he has created with deeds and thoughts: a universe of ideas, of images, of concepts, of systems, which are all in his brain; a universe of values, of desirable goods and of abhorred evils, all of which are rooted in his own individual will, in his character, and originate from the peculiar manner in which he personally colours this world and conceives the universe.

What is another man’s sorrow to me? What part have I in his joys? And how can the science of Aristotle or of Galileo be anything to me, since I do not know them, since I cannot read their books, and am totally unfamiliar with their teachings? And the unknown wayfarer who passes by, wrapped in his thoughts, what does he care for my loftiest conceptions, for the songs that well forth from the depths of my soul? The hero’s exploit brings no glory to us; the heinous deed of the criminal makes us shudder indeed, but drives no pangs of remorse through our conscience. For every one of us has his own body and his own particular soul. Every one, in short, is himself independently of what others may be.

This conception, which we ordinarily form of our 21 personality, and on which we erect the system of our practical life in all our manifold relations with other individuals, is an abstract concept. For when we thus conceive our being, we see but a single side of it and that the least important: we fail to grasp that part which reveals all that is spiritual, and human, and truly and peculiarly ours. I shall not here investigate how the human personality has two aspects so totally different one from the other; and in what remote depths we must search for the common root of these two contrasting and apparently contradictory manifestations. Our task for the moment is to establish within ourselves through reflection the firm conviction that we are not lone individualities: that there is another and a better part of us, an element which is the very antithesis of the particular, that one, namely, which is the deep-seated source of our nature, by which we cease, each one of us, to be in irreducible opposition to the rest of humanity, and become instead what all the others are or what we want them to be.

In order to fix our attention on this more profound aspect of our inner life, I