But now, in accordance with the ruling idea which has occupied us in this book, let us arrange these four demands in different order.  Let us put number three first:  “ever seeking and finding the Eternal.”  Conceive, at least, that we do this really, and in a practical way.  Then we discover that, placed as we certainly are in a world of succession, most of the seeking and finding has got to be done there; that the times of pure abstraction in which we touch the non-successive and supersensual must be few.  Hence it follows that the first and second demands are at once fully met; for, if we are indeed faithfully seeking and finding the Eternal whilst living—­as all sane men and women must do—­in closest contact with the Particular and Fleeting, our acceptances and our renunciations will be governed by this higher term of experience.  And further, the transcendent Otherness, perpetually envisaged by us as alone giving the world of sense its beauty, reality and value, will be incarnated and expressed by us in this sense-life, and thus ever more completely tasted and known.  It will be drawn by us, as best we can, and often at the cost of bitter struggle, into the limitations of humanity; entincturing our attitude and our actions.  And in the degree in which we thus appropriate it, it will be given out by us again to other men.

All this, of course, says again that which men have been constantly told by those who sought to redeem them from their confusions, and show them the way to fullness of life.  “Seek first the Kingdom of God,” said Jesus, “and all the rest shall be added to you.”  “Love,” said St. Augustine, “and do what you like”; “Let nothing,” says Thomas a Kempis, “be great or high or acceptable to thee but purely God";[130] and Kabir, “Open your eyes of love, and see Him who pervades this world! consider it well, and know that this is your own country."[131] “Our whole teaching,” says Boehme, “is nothing else than how man should kindle in himself God’s light-world."[132] I do not say that such a presentation of it makes the personal spiritual life any easier:  nothing does that.  But it does make its central implicit rather clearer, shows us at once its difficulty and its simplicity; since it depends on the consistent subordination of every impulse and every action to one regnant aim and interest—­in other words, the unification of the whole self round one centre, the highest conceivable by man.  Each of man’s behaviour-cycles is always directed towards some end, of which he may or may not be vividly conscious.  But in that perfect unification of the self which is characteristic of the life of Spirit, all his behaviour is brought into one stream of purpose, and directed towards one transcendent end.  And this simplification alone means for him a release from conflicting wishes, and so a tremendous increase of power.

If then we admit this formula, “ever seeking and finding the Eternal”—­which is of course another rendering of Ruysbroeck’s “aiming at God”—­as the prime character of a spiritual life, the secret of human transcendence; what are the agents by which it is done?