The Individual - A. D. Gordon

           Human nature as a whole cannot be regenerated unless the individual has undergone the process himself. And this involves a basic change. There should no longer be distinctions as rulers, leaders, teachers, heroes, prophets, supermen, benefactors of humanity, on the one hand, and on the other, the mass that must be ruled, guided, benefited-the object of pity and charity. Every man must maintain his integrity, must conduct his life according to his own inner light. He must be capable of governing himself, of educating himself. Life rightly conceived, with power to act in accordance with that concept, will enable man to integrate himself into a loftier harmony. Most clear-thinking people now feel that no man with a soul can be happy in the possession of luxuries while there are those in want of the material necessities of life. Neither can a regenerated humanity rest content in its spiritual wealth when there are so many whose souls are poverty-stricken
           Man in his own narrow confines of life is like the worm burrowing within a bitter herb, ignorant of a better and greater world beyond his little restricted domain. A human being must broaden his horizons to include the larger life, the infinite world around him, the world with which he must maintain relations. And these connections should be not merely abstract, intellectual, or sentimental- a sort of platonic relationship, as it were. The ties must be vital, real, alive, for unless man deals earnestly with that world, he will remain ignorant thereof. Man must free his mind of the bonds of abstractions, of mechanical devices that enslave him. He must return to nature, to its vast expanse, to its infinite possibilities not as a shackled serf nor even as a master; his attitude must be that of a prodigal son returning to the home of his mother to help her in her tasks. Then will this labor, we may believe, raise him mightily in his own estimation. He will see himself as a superior expression of life and existence.