fied, it reveals its imperfections, and
the soul knows that not there can it stay; but it must have faced and
tested everything. If the soul, out of timidity and conventionality,
says 'No' to its eager impulses, it halts upon its pilgrimage. Some of
the most grievous and shameful lives on earth have been fruitful enough
in reality. The reason why we mourn and despond over them is, again,
that we limit our hope to the single life. There is time for everything;
we must not be impatient. We must despair of nothing and of no one; the
true life consists not in what a man's reason approves or disapproves,
not in what he does or says, but in what he sees. It is useless to
explain things to souls; they must experience them to apprehend them.
The one treachery is to speak of mistakes as irreparable, and of sins as
unforgivable. The sin against the Spirit is to doubt the Spirit, and the
sin against life is not to use it generously and freely; we are happiest
if we love others well enough to give our life to them; but it is better
to use life for ourselves than not to use it at all."

VII

One day I said to Amroth, "Are there no rules of life here? It seems
almost too good to be true, not to be found fault with and censured and
advised and blamed."

"Oh," said Amroth, laughing, "there are plenty of _rules_, as you call
them; but one feels them, one is not told them; it is like breathing and
seeing."

"Yes," I replied, "yet it was like that, too, in the old days; the
misery was when one suddenly discovered that when one was acting in what
seemed the most natural way possible, it gave pain and concern to some
one whom one respected and even loved. One knew that one's action was
not wrong, and yet one desired to please and satisfy one's friends; and
so one fell back into conventional ways, not because one liked them but
because other people did, and it was not worth while making a fuss--it
was a sort of cowardice, I suppose?"

"Not quite," said Amroth; "you were more on the right lines than the
people who interfered with you, no doubt; but of course the truth is
that our principles ought to be used, like a stick, to support
ourselves, not like a rod to beat other people with. The most difficult
people to teach, as you will see hereafter, are the self-righteous
people, whose lives are really pure and good, but who allow their
preferences about amusements, occupations, ways of life, to become
matters of principle. The wor