No one can get
outside the physical universe and the sweep of its laws.

There is also a right and a wrong way to use thought, emotion, will. The
mind which has hospitality only for holy thoughts will become clearer,
and its vision more distinct; but the mind which harbors impure
thoughts, gradually, but surely, confuses evil with good, obscures its
vision, and becomes a fountain of moral miasm. If we choose to recall
and to retain feelings that are animal, and are the relics of animalism,
the natural tendency toward bestiality will gather momentum; but if
emotion is turned toward higher objects, and we are thrilled from above
rather than lulled from below, the sensibilities become sources of
enduring joy. The moral order is like the physical order in its
universality and in the remorselessness of the consequences which follow
choices.

How does the soul become adjusted to the moral order? This question is
difficult to answer. At the first there is sight enough to see that one
course is right and another wrong, but the vision is indistinct.
Gradually the ability to make accurate discriminations increases, and,
with time and other growth, the faculty of vision is enlarged and
clarified.

The first step in the Ascent of the Soul is the development of ability
to discriminate between right and wrong. The powers of the soul are
enlarged and vivified with the bodily growth, but whether there is any
necessary connection between the growth of the one and that of the
other, we know not. This alone is sure--clearer vision, with
ever-increasing distinctness, reveals the certainty that moral laws are
universal and unchangeable. The process of adjustment to the moral
order is partly voluntary and partly involuntary. It is hastened by the
hidden forces of vitality, and it may be hindered by its own choices. As
a human being who refuses to eat will starve, so a soul which turns away
from truth will starve. The law in one case is as inexorable as in the
other. This consciousness of the moral order is sometimes dim even in
mature years because neglect always deadens appreciation. Paul said that
the law is a schoolmaster leading to Christ. By that he intended to
teach that we must realize that we are under moral law before we can
know that its violation will result in a state of ruin needing
salvation. First that which is natural, then that which is spiritual.
The phrase "natural law in the spiritual world" means that the
consequence