struggles, its inveterate egotism, its inconsistent impulses and loves.  Man’s young will and reason need some reinforcement, some helping power, if they are to conquer and control his archaic impulsive life.  And this salvation, this extrication from the wrongful and atavistic claims of primitive impulse in its many strange forms, is a prime business of religion; sometimes achieved in the sudden convulsion we call conversion, and sometimes by the slower process of education.  The wrong way to do it is seen in the methods of the Puritan and the extreme ascetic, where all animal impulse is regarded as “sin” and repressed:  a proceeding which involves the risk of grave physical and mental disorder, and produces even at the best a bloodless pietism.  The right way to do it was described once for all by Jacob Boehme, when he said that it was the business of a spiritual man to “harness his fiery energies to the service of the light—­” that is to say, change the direction of our passionate cravings for satisfaction, harmonize and devote them to spiritual ends.  This is true regeneration:  this is the salvation offered to man, the healing of his psychic conflict by the unification of his instinctive and his ideal life.  The voice which St. Mechthild heard, saying “Come and be reconciled,” expresses the deepest need of civilized but unspiritualized humanity.

This need for the conversion or remaking of the instinctive life, rather than the achievement of mere beliefs, has always been appreciated by real spiritual teachers; who are usually some generations in advance of the psychologists.  Here they agree in finding the “root of evil,” the heart of the “old man” and best promise of the “new.”  Here is the raw material both of vice and of virtue—­namely, a mass of desires and cravings which are in themselves neither moral nor immoral, but natural and self-regarding.  “In will, imagination and desire,” says William Law, “consists the life or fiery driving of every intelligent creature."[70] The Divine voice which said to Jacopone da Todi “Set love in order, thou that lovest Me!” declared the one law of mental growth.[71] To use for a moment the language of mystical theology, conversion, or repentance, the first step towards the spiritual life, consists in a change in the direction of these cravings and desires; purgation or purification, in which the work begun in conversion is made complete, in their steadfast setting in order or re-education, and that refinement and fixation of the most desirable among them which we call the formation of habit, and which is the essence of character building.  It is from this hard, conscious and deliberate work of adapting our psychic energy to new and higher correspondences, this costly moral effort and true self-conquest, that the spiritual life in man draws its earnestness, reality and worth.