RACE THOUGHT AND NEW THOUGHT The steady following up of the successive stages of the Creative Process has led us to the recognition of an Individuality in the All-creating Spirit itself, but an Individuality which is by its very nature Universal, and so cannot be departed from without violating the essential principles on which the further expansion of our own individuality depends.

At the same time it is strictly _individual_, for it is the Spirit of Individuality, and is thus to be distinguished from that merely _generic_ race-personality which makes us human beings at all.

Race-personality is of course the necessary _basis_ for the development of this Individuality; but if we do not see that it is only the preliminary to further evolution, any other conception of our personality as members of the race will prevent our advance toward our proper position in the Creative Order, which is that of introducing the Personal Factor by the exercise of our individual power of initiative and selection.
It is on this account that Race-thought, simply as such, is opposed to the attempt of the individual to pass into a higher order of life.

It limits him by strong currents of negative suggestion based on the fallacy that the perpetuation of the race requires the death of the individual;[5] and it is only when the individual sees that this is not true, and that his race- nature constitutes the ground out of which his new Individuality is to be formed, that he becomes able to oppose the negative power of race-thought.
He does this by destroying it with its own weapon, that is, by finding in the race-nature itself the very material to be used by the Spirit for building-up the New Man.

This is a discovery on the spiritual plane equivalent to the discovery on the physical plane that we can make iron float by the same law by which it sinks.