Suppose then that the self, urged by this new pressure, accepts the obligation and measures itself by the standard.  It then becomes apparent that this Fact which it sought for and has seen is not merely added to its old universe, as in mediaeval pictures Paradise with its circles over-arches the earth.  This Reality is all-penetrating and has transfigured each aspect of the self’s old world.  It now has a new and most exacting scale of values, which demand from it a new series of adjustments; ask it—­and with authority—­to change its life.

What next?  The next thing, probably, is that the self finds itself in rather a tight place.  It is wedged into a physical order that makes innumerable calls on it, and innumerable suggestions to it:  which has for years monopolized its field of consciousness and set up habits of response to its claims.  It has to make some kind of a break with this order, or at least with its many attachments thereto; and stretch to the wider span demanded by the new and larger world.  And further, it is in possession of a complex psychic life, containing many insubordinate elements, many awkward bequests from a primitive past.  That psychic life has just received the powerful and direct suggestion of the Spirit; and for the moment, it is subdued to that suggestion.  But soon it begins to experience the inevitable conflict between old habits, and new demands—­between a life lived in the particular and in the universal spirit—­and only through complete resolution of that conflict will it develop its full power.  So the self quickly realizes that the theologian’s war between Nature and Grace is a picturesque way of stating a real situation; and further that the demand of all religions for a change of heart—­that is, of the deep instinctive nature—­is the first condition of a spiritual life.  And hence, that its hands are fairly full.  It is true that an immense joy and hope come with it to this business of tackling imperfection, of adjusting itself to the newly found centre of life.  It knows that it is committed to the forward movement of a Power, which may be slow but which nothing can gainsay.  Nevertheless the first thing that power demands from it is courage; and the next an unremitting vigorous effort.  It will never again be able to sink back cosily into its racial past.  Consciousness of disharmony and incompleteness now brings the obligation to mend the disharmony and achieve a fresh synthesis.

This is felt with a special sharpness in the moral life, where the irreconcilable demands of natural self-interest and of Spirit assume their most intractable shape.  Old habits and paths of discharge which have almost become automatic must now, it seems, be abandoned.  New paths, in spite of resistances, must be made.  Thus it is that temptation, hard conflict, and bewildering perplexities usher in the life of the Spirit.  These are largely the results of our biological past continuing into our fluctuating half-made present; and they point towards a psychic stability, an inner unity we have not yet attained.