onsidered as well. In the very case you spoke
of, the little conscript, torn from his home to fight a tyrant's
battles, hectored and ill-treated, and then shot down upon some crowded
battle-field, that is precisely the discipline which at that point of
time his soul needs, and the blessedness of which he afterwards
perceives; sometimes discipline is swift and urgent, sometimes it is
slow and lingering: but all experience is exactly apportioned to the
quality of which each soul is in need. The only reason why there seems
to be an element of chance in it, is that the whole thing is so
inconceivably vast and prolonged; and our happiness and our progress
alike depend upon our realising at every moment that the smallest joy
and the most trifling pleasure, as well as the tiniest ailment or the
most subtle sorrow, are just the pieces of experience which we are meant
at that moment to use and make our own. No one, not even God, can force
us to understand this; we have to perceive it for ourselves, and to live
in the knowledge of it."

"Yes," I said, "it is true, all that. My heart tells me so; but it is
very wonderful and mysterious, all the same. But, Amroth, I have seen
and heard enough. My spirit desires with all its might to be at its own
work, hastening on the mighty end. Now, I can hold no more of wonders.
Let me return."

"Yes," said Amroth, "you are right! These wonders are so familiar to me
that I forget, perhaps, the shock with which they come to minds unused
to them. Yet there are other things which you must assuredly see, when
the time comes; but I must not let you bite off a larger piece than you
can swallow."

He took me by the hand; the breeze passed through my hair; and in an
instant we were back at the fortress-gate, and I entered the beloved
shelter, with a grateful sense that I was returning home.

XXV

I returned, as I said, with a sense of serene pleasure and security to
my work; but that serenity did not last long. What I had seen with
Amroth, on that day of wandering, filled me with a strange restlessness,
and a yearning for I knew not what. I plunged into my studies with
determination rather than ardour, and I set myself to study what is the
most difficult problem of all--the exact limits of individual
responsibility. I had many conversations on the point with one of my
teachers, a young man of very wide experience, who combined in an
unusual way a close scientific knowledge of the subject