nt, the passionate desire--of the self, which
shall govern your activities and make possible your success. Few
would care to brave the horrors of a courtship conducted upon
strictly intellectual lines: and contemplation is an act of love, the
wooing, not the critical study, of Divine Reality. It is an eager
outpouring of ourselves towards a Somewhat Other for which we
feel a passion of desire; a seeking, touching, and tasting, not a
considering and analysing, of the beautiful and true wherever
found. It is, as it were, a responsive act of the organism to those
Supernal Powers without, which touch and stir it. Deep humility
as towards those Powers, a willing surrender to their control, is
the first condition of success. The mystics speak much of these
elusive contacts; felt more and more in the soul, as it becomes
increasingly sensitive to the subtle movements of its spiritual
environment.

"Sense, feeling, taste, complacency, and sight,
These are the true and real joys,
The living, flowing, inward, melting, bright
And heavenly pleasures; all the rest are toys;
All which are founded in Desire
As light in flame and heat in fire."

But this new method of correspondence with the universe is not
to be identified with "mere feeling" in its lowest and least orderly
forms. Contemplation does not mean abject surrender to every
"mystical" impression that comes in. It is no sentimental
aestheticism or emotional piety to which you are being invited:
nor shall the transcending of reason ever be achieved by way of
spiritual silliness. All the powers of the self, raised to their in
tensest form, shall be used in it; though used perhaps in a new
way. These, the three great faculties of love, thought, and will--
with which you have been accustomed to make great show on the
periphery of consciousness--you have, as it were, drawn inwards
during the course of your inward retreat: and by your education
in detachment have cured them of their tendency to fritter their
powers amongst a multiplicity of objects. Now, at the very heart
of personality, you are alone with them; you hold with you in that
"Interior Castle," and undistracted for the moment by the
demands of practical existence, the three great tools wherewith
the soul deals with life.

As regards the life you have hitherto looked upon as "normal,"
love--understood in its widest sense, as desire, emotional
inclination--has througho