to war,
taking the chances of death in the hurry of the
fight, is an easy thing; to stand still amid
the jangle of the world, to preserve stillness
within the turmoil of the body, to hold silence
amid the thousand cries of the senses and
desires, and then, stripped of all armor and
without hurry or excitement take the deadly
serpent of self and kill it, is no easy thing.
Yet that is what has to be done; and it can
only be done in the moment of equilibrium
when the enemy is disconcerted by the silence.

But there is needed for this supreme
moment a strength such as no hero of the
battlefield needs. A great soldier must be filled
with the profound convictions of the justness
of his cause and the rightness of his method.
The man who wars against himself and wins
the battle can do it only when he knows that
in that war he is doing the one thing which
is worth doing, and when he knows that in
doing it he is winning heaven and hell as his
servitors. Yes, he stands on both. He needs
no heaven where pleasure comes as a long-promised
reward; he fears no hell where pain
waits to punish him for his sins. For he has
conquered once for all that shifting serpent
in himself which turns from side to side in
its constant desire of contact, in its perpetual
search after pleasure and pain. Never again
(the victory once really won) can he tremble
or grow exultant at any thought of that which
the future holds. Those burning sensations
which seemed to him to be the only proofs
of his existence are his no longer. How, then,
can he know that he lives? He knows it only
by argument. And in time he does not care to
argue about it. For him there is then peace;
and he will find in that peace the power he
has coveted. Then he will know what is that
faith which can remove mountains.

II

Religion holds a man back from the path,
prevents his stepping forward, for various very
plain reasons. First it makes the vital mistake
of distinguishing between good and evil.
Nature knows no such distinction; and the
moral and social laws set us by our religions
are as temporary, as much a thing of our own
special mode and form of existence, as are the
moral and social laws of the ants or the bees.
We pass out of that state in which these things
appear to be final, and we forget them forever.
This is easily shown, because a man of broad
habits of thought and of intelligence must
modify his code of life when he dwells among
another people.