To put on armor and go forth to war, taking the chances of death in the hurry of the fight, is an easy thing; to stand still amid the jangle of the world, to preserve stillness within the turmoil of the body, to hold silence amid the thousand cries of the senses and desires, and then, stripped of all armor and without hurry or excitement take the deadly serpent of self and kill it, is no easy thing.  Yet that is what has to be done; and it can only be done in the moment of equilibrium when the enemy is disconcerted by the silence.

But there is needed for this supreme moment a strength such as no hero of the battlefield needs.  A great soldier must be filled with the profound convictions of the justness of his cause and the rightness of his method.  The man who wars against himself and wins the battle can do it only when he knows that in that war he is doing the one thing which is worth doing, and when he knows that in doing it he is winning heaven and hell as his servitors.  Yes, he stands on both.  He needs no heaven where pleasure comes as a long-promised reward; he fears no hell where pain waits to punish him for his sins.  For he has conquered once for all that shifting serpent in himself which turns from side to side in its constant desire of contact, in its perpetual search after pleasure and pain.  Never again (the victory once really won) can he tremble or grow exultant at any thought of that which the future holds.  Those burning sensations which seemed to him to be the only proofs of his existence are his no longer.  How, then, can he know that he lives?  He knows it only by argument.  And in time he does not care to argue about it.  For him there is then peace; and he will find in that peace the power he has coveted.  Then he will know what is that faith which can remove mountains.

II

Religion holds a man back from the path, prevents his stepping forward, for various very plain reasons.  First it makes the vital mistake of distinguishing between good and evil.  Nature knows no such distinction; and the moral and social laws set us by our religions are as temporary, as much a thing of our own special mode and form of existence, as are the moral and social laws of the ants or the bees.  We pass out of that state in which these things appear to be final, and we forget them forever.  This is easily shown, because a man of broad habits of thought and of intelligence must modify his code of life when he dwells among another people.  These people among whom he is an alien have their own deep-rooted religions and hereditary convictions, against which he cannot offend.  Unless his is an abjectly narrow and unthinking mind, he sees that their form of law and order is as good as his own.  What then can he do but reconcile his conduct gradually to their rules?  And then if he dwells among them many years the sharp edge of difference is worn away, and he forgets at last where their faith ends and his commences.  Yet is it for his own people to say he has done wrong, if he has injured no man and remained just?