l alone must control: the
soul being that forever unknowable reality which causes us to rise
into being. There is continual conflict between the soul, which is for
ever sending forth incalculable impulses, and the psyche, which is
conservative, and wishes to persist in its old motions, and the mind,
which wishes to have "freedom," that is spasmodic, idea-driven
control. Mind, and conservative psyche, and the incalculable soul,
these three are a trinity of powers in every human being. But there is
something even beyond these. It is the individual in his pure
singleness, in his totality of consciousness, in his oneness of being:
the Holy Ghost which is with us after our Pentecost, and which we may
not deny. When I say to myself: "I am wrong," knowing with sudden
insight that I _am_ wrong, then this is the whole self speaking, the
Holy Ghost. It is no piece of mental inference. It is not just the
soul sending forth a flash. It is my whole being speaking in one
voice, soul and mind and psyche transfigured into oneness. This voice
of my being I may _never_ deny. When at last, in all my storms, my
whole self speaks, then there is a pause. The soul collects itself
into pure silence and isolation--perhaps after much pain. The mind
suspends its knowledge, and waits. The psyche becomes strangely still.
And then, after the pause, there is fresh beginning, a new life
adjustment. Conscience is the being's consciousness, when the
individual is conscious _in toto_, when he knows in full. It is
something which includes and which far surpasses mental consciousness.
Every man must live as far as he can by his own soul's conscience.
But not according to any ideal. To submit the conscience to a creed,
or an idea, or a tradition, or even an impulse, is our ruin.

To make the mind the absolute ruler is as good as making a Cook's
tourist-interpreter a king and a god, because he can speak several
languages, and make an Arab understand that an Englishman wants fish
for supper. And to make an ideal a ruling principle is about as stupid
as if a bunch of travelers should never cease giving each other and
their dragoman sixpence, because the dragoman's main idea of virtue is
the virtue of sixpence-giving. In the same way, we _know_ we cannot
live purely by impulse. Neither can we live solely by tradition. We
must live by all three, ideal, impulse, and tradition, each in its
hour. But the real guide is the pure conscience, the voice of the self
in