l intuition, and the
like--take no part in it, because it is the obedience of an
automaton, not of a living soul. What I wish to oppose to it is
_vital obedience_, obedience to the master laws of Man's being,
obedience to the laws which assert themselves as central and supreme,
obedience more particularly to those larger and obscurer laws which
obedience itself helps us to discover, obedience in fine to that
hierarchy of laws--(the superior law always claiming the fuller
measure and the higher kind of obedience)--which, if we are to use
the Divine Name, we must needs identify with the will of God.
Obedience, in this sense of the word, is a sustained and soul-deep
effort in which all the higher faculties of Man's being take part,
an effort which is in some sort a voyage of discovery, the doing of
the more obvious duty being always rewarded by the deepening of the
doer's insight and the widening of his outlook, and by the consequent
unveiling to him of the way in which he is to walk and the goal at
which he is to aim. That the path of soul-growth is the path of vital
obedience can scarcely be doubted. The effort to grow is always
successful just so far as it implies knowledge of the laws of the
nature that is unfolding itself, and readiness to obey those laws;
and so far as it is successful, it carries with it the outgrowth of
the very faculties by which knowledge--the higher knowledge which
makes further growth possible--is to be gained. Here, as
elsewhere, there is an unceasing interaction between perception and
expression, between knowledge of law and obedience to law, what is
given as obedience being received back as enlightenment, and what is
received as enlightenment being given back as larger, fuller, and
more significant obedience.

And, be it carefully observed, it is obedience to the laws of human
nature, not obedience to the idiosyncrasies of the individual nature,
which the process of soul-growth at once implies and makes possible.
Growth is, in its essence, a movement towards that perfect type which
is the real self of each individual in turn, and the approach to
which involves the gradual surrender of individuality, and the
gradual escape from the ordinary self. A man is to cling to and
affirm his individuality, not in order that he may rest in it and
make much of it, but in order that he may outgrow it and pass far
beyond it in that one way--the best way for him--which it, and it
alone, is able to mark ou