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248 The Human Cycleand distortion and of the consequent departure or diminution ofthe Spirit. Any or all of these things may happen, and the resultwill be, as has so often happened in the past, that even thoughsome progress is made and an important change effected, it willnot be the decisive change which can alone re-create humanityin a diviner image.What then will be that state of society, what that readinessof the common mind of man which will be most favourable tothis change, so that even if it cannot at once effectuate itself, itmay at least make for its ways a more decisive preparation thanhas been hitherto possible? For that seems the most importantelement, since it is that, it is the unpreparedness, the unfitness ofthe society or of the common mind of man which is always thechief stumbling-block. It is the readiness of this common mindwhich is of the first importance; for even if the condition of societyand the principle and rule that govern society are opposedto the spiritual change, even if these belong almost wholly tothe vital, to the external, the economic, the mechanical order,as is certainly the way at present with human masses, yet if thecommon human mind has begun to admit the ideas proper tothe higher order that is in the end to be, and the heart of manhas begun to be stirred by aspirations born of these ideas, thenthere is a hope of some advance in the not distant future. Andhere the first essential sign must be the growth of the subjectiveidea of life, — the idea of the soul, the inner being, its powers,its possibilities, its growth, its expression and the creation of atrue, beautiful and helpful environment for it as the one thingof first and last importance. The signals must be there that areprecursors of a subjective age in humanity’s thought and socialendeavour.These ideas are likely first to declare their trend in philosophy,in psychological thinking, in the arts, poetry, painting,sculpture, music, in the main idea of ethics, in the applicationof subjective principles by thinkers to social questions, evenperhaps, though this is a perilous effort, to politics and economics,that hard refractory earthy matter which most resists allbut a gross utilitarian treatment. There will be new unexpected