Maria de
Jesus, abbess of the convent of the Conception at Agreda, a mystical
writer of the seventeenth century, frequently consulted by Philip
IV.,--and again in the Bolognese Dictionary of 1824, with a similar
meaning, illustrated from the writings of Salvini (1653-1729). For
these references I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Norman Maccoll.]

To act in accordance with abstract principles is a difficult matter,
and a great deal of practice will be required before you can be even
occasionally successful; it of tens happens that the principles do not
fit in with your particular case. But every man has certain innate
_concrete principles_--a part, as it were, of the very blood that
flows in his veins, the sum or result, in fact, of all his thoughts,
feelings and volitions. Usually he has no knowledge of them in any
abstract form; it is only when he looks back upon the course his life
has taken, that he becomes aware of having been always led on by
them--as though they formed an invisible clue which he had followed
unawares.

SECTION 49. That Time works great changes, and that all things are
in their nature fleeting--these are truths that should never be
forgotten. Hence, in whatever case you may be, it is well to picture
to yourself the opposite: in prosperity, to be mindful of misfortune;
in friendship, of enmity; in good weather, of days when the sky is
overcast; in love, of hatred; in moments of trust, to imagine the
betrayal that will make you regret your confidence; and so, too, when
you are in evil plight, to have a lively sense of happier times--what
a lasting source of true worldly wisdom were there! We should then
always reflect, and not be so very easily deceived; because, in
general, we should anticipate the very changes that the years will
bring.

Perhaps in no form of knowledge is personal experience so
indispensable as in learning to see that all things are unstable and
transitory in this world. There is nothing that, in its own place and
for the time it lasts, is not a product of necessity, and therefore
capable of being fully justified; and it is this fact that makes
circumstances of every year, every month, even of every day, seem as
though they might maintain their right to last to all eternity. But we
know that this can never be the case, and that in a world where all is
fleeting, change alone endures. He is a prudent man who is not only
undeceived by apparent stability, but is able to forecast