We may arrive at the same conclusion by analysing that unconditioned sense of duty which we call conscience.  This moral sense cannot be a fixed code implanted in our consciousness, for then we could not explain either the variations of moral opinion, or the feeling of obligation (as distinguished from necessity) which impels us to obey it.  It cannot be the product of the existing moral code of society, for then we could not explain either the genesis of that public opinion or the persistent revolt against its limitations which we find in the greatest minds.  The only hypothesis which explains the facts is that in conscience we feel the motions of the universal Reason which strives to convert the human organism into an organ of itself, a belief which is expressed in religious language by saying that it is God who worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure.

If it be further asked, Which is our personality, the shifting moi (as Fenelon calls it), or the ideal self, the end or the developing states? we must answer that it is both and neither, and that the root of mystical religion is in the conviction that it is at once both and neither.[52] The moi strives to realise its end, but the end being an infinite one, no process can reach it.  Those who have “counted themselves to have apprehended” have thereby left the mystical faith; and those who from the notion of a progressus ad infinitum come to the pessimistic conclusion, are equally false to the mystical creed, which teaches us that we are already potentially what God intends us to become.  The command, “Be ye perfect,” is, like all Divine commands, at the same time a promise.

It is stating the same paradox in another form to say that we can only achieve inner unity by transcending mere individuality.  The independent, impervious self shows its unreality by being inwardly discordant.  It is of no use to enlarge the circumference of our life, if the fixed centre is always the ego.  There are, if I may press the metaphor, other circles with other centres, in which we are vitally involved.  And thus sympathy, or love, which is sympathy in its highest power, is the great atoner, within as well as without.  The old Pythagorean maxim, that “a man must be one,[53]” is echoed by all the mystics.  He must be one as God is one, and the world is one; for man is a microcosm, a living mirror of the universe.  Here, once more, we have a characteristic mystical doctrine, which is perhaps worked out most fully in the “Fons Vitae” of Avicebron (Ibn Gebirol), a work which had great influence in the Middle Ages.  The doctrine justifies the use of analogy in matters of religion, and is of great importance.  One might almost dare to say that all conclusions about the world above us which are not based on the analogy of our own mental experiences, are either false or meaningless.