In time the soul finds itself not only one among myriads of souls, but it realizes that its relations to some are more intimate than to others.  It needs not to seek the causes of this fact, since it cannot escape from the reality.  Thus it finds itself in families, in tribes, in nations, in social groups where the bonds are strong and enduring.

Some souls, more capacious than others, have a richer and more varied experience, and thus inevitably become teachers.  The process goes on, and, with both teachers and scholars, the horizon expands and the strength increases with each new day.  The soul has found that it is not a solitary being dazed and saddened by the consciousness of its powers, but that it is in a society in which all are similarly endowed, and that all are pressing toward the same goal.  It has discovered that its growth is hastened, or hindered, by its environment; and that the spiritual environment is ever the nearest and most potent.

Each new step in this pilgrim’s progress reveals something more wonderful than the opening of a continent.  It is an entrance into a larger and more complex world.  A strange fact now emerges.  Every enlargement of being, either of faculty or capacity, is attended by pain either physical or mental.  “Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,” seems to be a universal law rather than an isolated text.  All life is strenuous because it is always attended by growth.  The soul moves not only onward but upward, and climbing is always a difficult process.

Before a second step is taken the soul begins to experience suffering and sorrow; and as its growth advances it never afterward, so far as human sight has penetrated, escapes from them.  Why are they allowed? and what purpose do they serve?

The soul exists in a body, and the body is the seat of sensations.  Those sensations, whether pleasing or painful, belong to the physical organs, but they affect the spirit, and escape from them is impossible.  Pain has a perceptible effect on the soul, even though the latter has no other relation to the body than that of tenant to a house.  It suffers because of the intimate relations which it sustains to the organs through which it works.

The individual soul is related to other souls.  Therefore it has plans and purposes concerning them, and it has affinities which are inseparable from existence in society.  Those purposes and affinities may be gratified or thwarted.  The soul sometimes finds a response from the one whom it seeks and sometimes it does not.  Pain belongs to the body, and sorrow is an experience of the soul.

The body is in constant limitations, subject to diseases and accidents, and the soul is affected by all that the body feels.  Because of these intimate relationships the soul is limited by ignorance, and defeated in its purposes.  It becomes attached to other souls, and those attachments are either rudely shattered or roughly repulsed, and, consequently, the life of the soul is as full of sorrow as is a summer day of clouds.