nor will he lend
    His heart to aught which doth on time depend. 
    ’Tis sense, unbridled will, and not true love,
    Which kills the soul:  Love betters what is best,
    Even here below, but more in heaven above.

    —­Sonnet from Michael Angelo. Wordsworth

III

THE FIRST STEPS

The first movements of the awakened soul are difficult to trace.  Observation, painstaking and long-continued, alone can furnish the desired information.  In the attempt to recall our own experiences there is always a possibility of inaccuracy.  Bias counts for more in self-examination than in an examination of others.  There is also danger of confusing religious preconceptions with what actually transpires.  What we have been led to imagine should be experienced we are very likely to insist has taken place.  The truth concerning the Ascent of the Soul will be found in the conclusions of many observers in widely different conditions.

The soul awakens to a consciousness of its responsibilities and to a knowledge that it is in a moral order from which escape is forever impossible.  This is our point of departure in this chapter.

The new-born child has to become adjusted to its physical environment, to learn to use its powers, to breathe, to eat, to allow the various senses to do their work.  In like manner the newly awakened soul has to become adjusted to the moral order.  The moral order is the rule of right in the sphere of thought, emotion, and choice.  It is the government of the soul as the physical order is the government of the body.  It may be best explained by analogy.  There is a physical order ruled by physical laws.  If those laws are obeyed, strength, health, sanity result; but if they are disobeyed, the consequences, which are inevitable and self-perpetuating, are weakness, disease, insanity.  If one violates gravitation he is dashed in pieces; if he trifles with microbes their infinitesimal grasp will be like a shackle of steel.  No one can get outside the physical universe and the sweep of its laws.

There is also a right and a wrong way to use thought, emotion, will.  The mind which has hospitality only for holy thoughts will become clearer, and its vision more distinct; but the mind which harbors impure thoughts, gradually, but surely, confuses evil with good, obscures its vision, and becomes a fountain of moral miasm.  If we choose to recall and to retain feelings that are animal, and are the relics of animalism, the natural tendency toward bestiality will gather momentum; but if emotion is turned toward higher objects, and we are thrilled from above rather than lulled from below, the sensibilities become sources of enduring joy.  The moral order is like the physical order in its universality and in the remorselessness of the consequences which follow choices.

How does the soul become adjusted to the moral order?  This question is difficult to answer.  At the first there is sight enough to see that one course is right and another wrong, but the vision is indistinct.  Gradually the ability to make accurate discriminations increases, and, with time and other growth, the faculty of vision is enlarged and clarified.