a factor of merit, it has largely come into desuetude, if
not discredit. A believer who flagellates or "macerates" himself today
arouses more wonder and fear than emulation. Many Catholic writers who
admit that the times have changed in this respect do so resignedly; and
even add that perhaps it is as well not to waste feelings in regretting
the matter, for to return to the heroic corporeal discipline of ancient
days might be an extravagance.

Where to seek the easy and the pleasant seems instinctive --and
instinctive it appears to be in man; any deliberate tendency to pursue
the hard and painful as such and for their own sakes might well strike
one as purely abnormal. Nevertheless, in moderate degrees it is
natural and even usual to human nature to court the arduous. It is
only the extreme manifestations of the tendency that can be regarded as
a paradox.

The psychological reasons for this lie near the surface. When we drop
abstractions and take what we call our will in the act, we see that it
is a very complex function. It involves both stimulations and
inhibitions; it follows generalized habits; it is escorted by
reflective criticisms; and it leaves a good or a bad taste of itself
behind, according to the manner of the performance. The result is
that, quite apart from the immediate pleasure which any sensible
experience may give us, our own general moral attitude in procuring or
undergoing the experience brings with it a secondary satisfaction or
distaste. Some men and women, indeed, there are who can live on smiles
and the word "yes" forever. But for others (indeed for most), this is
too tepid and relaxed a moral climate. Passive happiness is slack and
insipid, and soon grows mawkish and intolerable. Some austerity and
wintry negativity, some roughness, danger, stringency, and effort, some
"no! no!" must be mixed in, to produce the sense of an existence with
character and texture and power. The range of individual differences
in this respect is enormous; but whatever the mixture of yeses and noes
may be, the person is infallibly aware when he has struck it in the
right proportion FOR HIM. This, he feels, is my proper vocation, this
is the OPTIMUM, the law, the life for me to live. Here I find the
degree of equilibrium, safety, calm, and leisure which I need, or here
I find the challenge, passion, fight, and hardship without which my
soul's energy expires.

Every individual soul, in short, like every