The work for which the Avatar descends has like his birth a double sense and a double form. It has an outward side of the divine force acting upon the exter- nal world in order to maintain there and to reshape the divine law by which the Godward effort of humanity is kept from decisive retrogression and instead decisively carried forward in spite of the rule of actioy and reaction, the rhythm of advance and relapse by Which Nature proceeds. It has an inward side of the divine force of the Godward consciousness ‘acting upon the soul of the individual and the the soul of the race, so that it may receive new forms of revelation of the Divine in man and may be sustained, renewed and enriched in its power of upward self-unfolding. The Avatar does not descend merely for a great outward action, as the pragmatic sense in humanity is too often tempted to suppose. Action and event have no value in themselves, but only take their value from the force which they represent and the idea which they symbolise and which the force is there to serve. .
The crisis in which the Avatar appears, though apparent to the' outward eye only as a crisis of events and great material changes, is always in its source and real meaning a crisis in the consciousness of humanity when it has to undergo some grand modification and effect somie new development. For this action of change a divine force is needed ; but the force varies always according to the power of consciousness which it embo-
