It is this affirmative “I am” that is man’s reality.
Wherefore warrior, philosopher and priest turned their backs. This “I am” they could not see, could not suspect, even as it stood at their elbow regarding them with ordinary human eyes. For it had been settled long ago on abundant evidence that man is creature and depraved.
In the history of mankind there are recorded two great inversions. The first, set forth by the Nazarene to the effect that love is a greater power and more real than vengeance. The second, proclaimed the earth to be a sphere revolving in its course around the sun. These affirmations were made in the face of all evidence sacred to the contrary. Who could feel the earth revolving? Who could fail to see the sun rise and set? What but blood could satisfy, or an eye for an eye?
Hence man’s powers were not seen as himself, nor himself as his powers. Such recognition would involve a reversal and inversion both of sacred lore and common sense.
In reactive consequence of age-long self-repression and self-beguilement the world of mankind is now preparing its way for a Third Inversion. The world of heart and head is becoming dimly sentient that man in his power is Free spirit—Creator. The long dream of inverted self is nearing its end. Emerging from the heritage of mystical unconsciousness and fantasy, the world of mankind is stirring. Man’s deeds are about to become conscious deeds in the open. The beauty, the passion, the glory of the past shall merge into a new beauty, a new passion, a new glory as man approaches man, and recognizing him, rejoices in him and with him, as born in power.
Never in man’s time has there been such sound warrant for an attitude of Optimism as in our own, the very present day. Yet to him who in myopic fear looks but at the troubled surface, there appears equal warrant in the fantasy of Pessimism. What a price man shall have paid for freedom! For freedom from the thrall of his parlous imagination! For freedom from the strangle hold of his own phantasmal self!
He who has lived, alive, during the past fifty years has viewed an extraordinary drama. He who starting young, shall live through the coming fifty years will move within the action and scene shifting of a greater drama.
The gravitation of world thought and dream is shifting. Out of the serial collapses of age-long feudalism is arising a new view of man. For man’s powers in certitude, approach the infinite. They are bewildering—amazing in diversity. They unfold their intimate complexity to our view as an equally amazing solidarity, as we hold, steadfast, to the realistic concept of man as free spirit—as creator—even as the vast complexity in the outworking of the feudal thought simplifies into a basic concept of self-delusion and self-fear.
Our portrayal is not yet wholly clear. Let us go on. There lies another power in man. That power is moral: Its name is choice! Within this one word, Choice, lies the story of man’s world. It stands for the secret poise within him. It reveals as a flashlight all his imagings, his fantasys, his wilful thoughts, his deeds, from the greatest to the least, even in this gliding hour we call today. This one word, Choice, stands for the sole and single power; it is the name of the mystery that lies behind the veil of all human appearances. A word that dissolves the enigma of men’s deeds. A word, a light that not only illuminates all his obvious works, all the inner springs and motives of his civilizations, but a light whose rays reach within the sanctuary of the secret thought of each and all, thus revealing the man of the past and the man of today, starkly in personal status as a social factor of beneficence or woe. Need we know man’s thoughts? View his works, his deeds; they tell his choice.
Implicit in true freedom of spirit lies a proud and virile will. Such glorious power of free will to choose, envisages beneficent social responsibility as manifest and welcome. Here now stands in full light Man erect and conscious as a moral power. The will to choose aright lifts him to the peak of social vision whence he may forecast new and true situations.
The Free Spirit is the spirit of Joy. It delights to create in beauty. It is unafraid, it knows not fear. It declares the Earth to be its home, and the fragrance of Earth to be its inspiration. It is strong, it is mighty in beneficence. It views its powers with emotions of adventure. Humility it knows not. It dreams a civilization like unto itself. It would create such a world for mankind. It has the strength. It sees the strength of the fertile earth, the strength of the mountains, the valleys, the far spreading plains, the vast seas, the rivers and the rivulets, the great sky as a wondrous dome, the sun in its rising, its zenith, and its setting, and the night. It glories in these powers of earth and sky as in its own. It affirms itself integral with them all. It sees Life at work everywhere—Life, the mysterious, the companionable, the ineffable, the immensest and gentlest of powers, clothing the earth in a pattern of radiant sublimity, of tenderness, of fairy delicacy—ceaselessly at work. Thus the free spirit feels itself to be likewise clothed as with a flowing shoulder-garment, symbol of power akin to the fluent mystery and
