PREFACE.

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In less developed nations, political and moral restrictions are viewed as being externally fixed. The structure of society, like the world of natural objects, is regarded as something into which a person is inevitably born. The individual feels bound to comply with requirements whose justice or appropriateness he is not permitted to judge, even though they often severely test his endurance and even demand the sacrifice of his life. In a state of high civilization, on the contrary, though an equal level of self-sacrifice may be required, it is given in respect to laws and institutions that are felt to be just and desirable. This change of relationship may—without any extraordinary use of terms or extravagant theoretical imagination—be called the harmonization or reconciliation of Objective Intelligence External reality, laws, and social institutions. and Subjective Intelligence The individual's internal mind, conscience, and will.. The successive stages that humanity has passed through, moving from that primitive state of bondage to this condition of Rational Freedom, form the primary subject of the following lectures.

The mental and moral condition of individuals, and their social and religious environments (the internal and external manifestations of Reason), show a strict correspondence with each other at every level of progress. “Those who make them are like them” A reference to Psalm 115:8, suggesting that people create gods and governments that reflect their own character. is as true of religious and political ideas as it is of religious and political idols. Where a person sets no value on the part of his mental and moral life that makes him superior to the animals, animal life will be an object of worship, and bestial sensuality will be the spirit of his rituals. Where mere inaction is considered the ultimate goal original Latin: finis bonorum, the worshiper’s aim will be to be absorbed into nothingness. Where, on the contrary, active and vigorous virtue is recognized as constituting the real value of a human being—where sub-