becoming more human by becoming more godlike 437it. Our experiences may serve as both epiphanies and prophecies, pre-
saging, in the fl uid medium of personal encounter, the social ideal that
we wish to see expressed in our practices and institutions.
In the short term of biographical and historical time, however, the
eff ort at mastery of the context is just as likely to contradict the attempt
at reconciliation. Each step toward more mastery may be expressed as a
triumph over a lesser humanity. Each moment of fuller reconciliation
may be lived as a haven from the cruelty of society and culture.
In the history of the high culture of the West, this clash was some-
times described as the confl ict between a pagan ideal of greatness and a
Christian ideal of love. It was one of the great merits of the romantic
movement, in both its original form and its later pop u lar sequel, to
have helped dissolve this confl ict. It did so, however, in ways that were
limiting and on the basis of beliefs that were misguided. Th e early
romantic hero or heroine searched for the worthy task by confronting
an ordeal that typically included the pursuit of the beloved, under-
taken in the face of the obstacles imposed by the established regime
of society.
Because romanticism was misled by its war against repetition and its
despair about our power to change the relation of spirit to structure, it
could not work to soft en the clash between greatness and love in ways
that do justice to who we are and to what we can become. Its half- truths
corrupted its vision and distorted its program.
It falls to the religion of the future to accomplish what romanticism
failed, in this respect, to achieve: to help teach us how we can make
ourselves both greater and sweeter. In this endeavor, it has a formidable
ally: democracy, understood as a set of institutions and as a system of
belief. For democracy, allied with the imagination, can help accomplish
what Christianity and romanticism have left undone. Both as an insti-
tutional order and as a public culture, democracy enables us to turn the
tables on structure, to give practical eff ect to faith in the constructive
genius of ordinary men and women, and to lay the groundwork for the
higher forms of cooperation.
Th e response to the formative incidents of mutilation and mummi-
fi cation discussed earlier in this chapter tells the story of our ascent,
through change in the conduct of life, chiefl y from the perspective of our
greatness rather than from the standpoint of our reconciliation. But just