soul is in touch with another order of realities and knows itself to be an inheritor of Eternal Life.  Here unique things happen.  A power is at work, and new apprehensions are born.  And now for the first time the self discovers itself to be striking a balance between this inner and the outer life, and in its own small way—­but still, most fruitfully—­enriching action with the fruits of contemplation.  If it will give to the learning of this new art—­to the disciplining and refining of this affective thought—­even a fraction of the diligence which it gives to the learning of a new game, it will find itself repaid by a progressive purity of vision, a progressive sense of assurance, an ever-increasing delicacy of moral discrimination and demand.  Psychologists, as we have seen, divide men into introverts and extroverts; but as a matter of fact we must regard both these extreme types as defective.  A whole man should be supple in his reactions both to the inner and to the outer world.

The third strand in the life of the Spirit, for this normal self which we are considering; must be the disposition of complete Surrender.  More and more advancing in this inner life, it will feel the imperative attraction of Reality, of God; and it must respond to this attraction with all the courage and generosity of which it is capable.  I am trying to use the simplest and the most general language, and to avoid emotional imagery:  though it is here, in telling of this perpetually renewed act of self-giving and dedication, that spiritual writers most often have recourse to the language of the heart.  It is indeed in a spirit of intensest and humble adoration that generous souls yield themselves to the drawing of that mysterious Beauty and unchanging Love, with all that it entails.  But the form which the impulse to surrender takes will vary with the psychic make-up of the individual.  To some it will come as a sense of vocation, a making-over of the will to the purposes of the Kingdom; a type of consecration which may not be overtly religious, but may be concerned with the self-forgetting quest of social excellence, of beauty, or of truth.  By some it will be felt as an illumination of the mind, which now discerns once for all true values, and accepting these, must uphold and strive for them in the teeth of all opportunism.  By some—­and these are the most blessed—­as a breaking and re-making of the heart.  Whatever the form it takes, the extent in which the self experiences the peace, joy and power of living at the level of Spirit will depend on the completeness and singlemindedness of this, its supreme act of self-simplification.  Any reserves, anything in its make-up which sets up resistances—­and this means generally any form of egotism—­will mar the harmony of the process.  And on the other hand, such a real simplification of the self’s life as is here demanded—­uniting on one object, the intellect, will and feeling too often split among contradictory attractions—­is itself productive of inner harmony and increased power:  productive too of that noble endurance which counts no pain too much in the service of Reality.