Mere chaos could not suggest even that it ought to
have a meaning ; and if we were part of a chaos we
should not be looking for one. We are not satisfied
with a merely material meaning, with an explanation
of all things in terms of the struggle for life, because
that is not a meaning to us at all. It is not the
meaning of our own spiritual perceptions, even of our



ix SPIRIT AND MATTER 335

value for truth. But this unhappy stage which we
reach when we see a material coherence in things and
no other — what is it but a phase in our evolution, that
is to say, in our struggle towards fulness of perception.
The doctrine of evolution can warn us of this — that
our perception of reality is always a matter of degree.
We are not sharply separated from the beasts merely
because we are reasoning animals ; our very reason is
still subject to animal habits. Nor can we escape
suddenly from the perception of a merely material world
to the perception of a reality that is not material at all.
For that is a phantom of the mind. The beginnings of
the perception of reality in the lowest animals are to be
found in sensations, by means of which they are aware
not even of objects but merely that they themselves
feel ; or rather they are not even aware of themselves
as feeling, but only of their feelings. Self-consciousness
comes gradually and only with fuller perception of
that which is not self. Man is aware of self, of his
own identity, more and more as he becomes aware of
not-self. But even we have only fragmentary glimpses
of reality and, in them, are but fragments of ourselves.
