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VID somewhere said, "It is the mind that

makes the man, and our vigor is in our immortal soul." It is rather the will that makes the man, and the will is the personality expressing that vigor which is an attribute of the soul. Cicero referred to the cultivation of the mind as the food for the soul of man; the soul grows in power and usefulness as the mind is disciplined, educated and developed for service under the domination of the soul's personality or individuality-the human will. Developed, well-trained and usable mental faculties are to the soul what the limbs and physical senses are to the brain; the greater the culture of man and the more complete and thorough his mental development, the greater power his soul becomes in the world. The human brain is but the instrument that expresses the soul as it works in the world in harmony with the great Cosmic plan. "There is one mind common to all individual men. an inlet to the same and to all of the same."

Every man is

The most cultivated men are the most moral; the immorality of the geniuses of history may be proverbial, but we are here referring to cultivated, enlightened minds, with all-round development, and not to men of abnormal, but nevertheless, restricted mental powers. Cultivation of the mind and mental discipline result in self-control; excesses cause the

self-destruction of the intellectual forces and "weaken the springs of the mind." Plutarch tells us that there were two sentences inscribed upon the Delphic Oracle highly accommodated to the usage of man's life, "Know thyself," and "Nothing too much," and he adds, "upon them, all other precepts depend." The wisdom of knowing oneself is not subject to controversy. It is self-evident, yet its truth is generally accepted in an academical and not in a practical manner, in the abstract and not the concrete, and as applicable to mankind but not to the individual-the ego, whose tongue glibly slides over the words as the head wags approvingly.

Mental self-analysis, as usually conducted by the individual, is a farce, a burlesque on scientific inquiry, a reflection upon human intelligence. It operates as a strong argument in favor of the depravity of the ego and its absolute dislike for truth and unadorned mind nakedness. Know thy present real self, by comparison with the ideal of thy yet better and truer self as seen from the divine point of view. To know oneself, man must needs follow the admonition of St. Augustine and "Go up into the tribunal of thy conscience and set thyself before thyself." The soul becomes the judge, the will symbolizes the law, and the human mind, the prisoner at the bar.

Protagoras and the subjectivistic Sophists believed that if one would know the truth, he must derive it from a better source than his deceptive senses -"We must appeal to reflection and reason." They erred, however, in assuming that there are no universal truth and reason, and in the belief that there

are as many measures of the true and the false as there are individuals. When Protagoras said that man is the measure of all things, he referred to a changeable individual and did not consider that unchanging spiritual element which is common to all. He falsely asserted that goodness, justice and truth depend upon individual taste; with this theory, individualistic whims are apt to be the sole and final judge. The criticism or skepticism of Protagoras destroyed the mental foundation of Polytheism and prepared the way for the spiritual reasoning philosophy or religion of Socrates, Plato, the Cynics and the Stoics; but Protagoras himself failed to see that human reason is essentially the same in all individuals. Weber truly said that "Men hindered him from seeing man.'

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Socrates commences where Protagoras stops. He feels that he knows nothing but believes that there is something in the universe that can be known and that absolutely; this something is man as is indicated by the words inscribed on the Temple of Delphi,-Know Thyself. "We can never know exactly what is the nature of the world, its origin and its end, but we can know what we ourselves ought to be, what are the meanings and aims of life, the highest good for the soul; and this knowledge alone is real and useful because it is the only possible knowledge. Outside of ethics there can be no serious philosophy."

Socrates attempted to separate the general from the particular; he advanced from the individual to the universal, and again discovered beneath the infinite variety of men, the one unchangeable man.

Beneath the confused mass of opinions, held by a demoralized age, he finds the true and immutable opinion, the conscience of the human race, the law of minds. He brought mental order to a period of intellectual anarchy. He believed "that moral ideas are fundamental to humanity, that every human mind is big with truth, that education creates nothing that is not already there, but merely awakens and develops the latent germs of knowledge." As Weber says, the intimate relation which exists between knowledge and will constitutes the fundamental principle, and in a measure, the very soul of his philosophy. The essential thought is that the more a man thinks and knows, the better will he act; that our moral value is directly proportioned to our light, that virtue is teachable, that no one is voluntarily bad and that evil is the fruit of ignorance. He maintained that we can all attain to a knowledge of the highest good through the spirit within us, whose promptings function as an infallible inner

sense.

Socrates gave men an absolute, immutable and universal standard by which to judge and measure themselves, one that must ever be unaffected by individual caprice. He vigorously protested against the popular, expressed view of the times, which affirmed that good and evil are relative and that the rule for judging an act is not the "changing" law of conscience, but its success. Socrates stood for intellectual freedom and he urged men to reason, use and develop by exercise their divinely ordered brains; analyze, weigh and measure themselves and

sit in judgment upon their thoughts, words, acts and motives.

The Shinto Shrines of Japan are conspicuously devoid of objects and instruments of worship, but a plain mirror, hung in the sanctuary, forms the essential part of its furnishings. When a person stands in front of the Shrine to worship, his own image is reflected on its shining surface and the act of worship is tantamount to the old Delphic injunction,-"Know Thyself." Self-knowledge does not imply, either in the Japanese or the early Greek teachings, knowledge of the physical part of man, his anatomy or psycho-physics; knowledge is to be of a moral kind, the introspection of our moral nature, that which affects the real inner man. The Japanese tell us that their temple mirror typifies the human heart, which, when perfectly placid and clear, reflects the very image of the Deity.

After conforming with the tenet, "Know Thyself," it would be fitting if the next command were, "Use Thyself," for no knowledge is worthy of the name if it is not potent enough to inspire action. Marcus Aurelius, writing his meditations in diary form and not intending that they should reach another's eyes, said, "Remember how long thou hast been putting off these things, and how often thou hast received an opportunity from the gods and yet dost not use it. Thou must now at last perceive of what universe thou art part, and of what administration of the universe thy existence is an efflux, and that a limit of time is fixed for thee, which, if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind, it will go and it will never return." This

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