arnestly invites? Ah! why not? Here we are
face to face with other facts. There are hindrances, many and serious,
in the pathway of the soul, and they must be met and forced before that
land can be entered. This is the time for us to consider them.

HINDRANCES

And many, many are the souls
Life's movement fascinates, controls;
It draws them on, they cannot save
Their feet from its alluring wave;
They cannot leave it, they must go
With its unconquerable flow;

* * * * *

They faint, they stagger to and fro,
And wandering from the stream they go;
In pain, in terror, in distress,
They see all round a wilderness.

--_Epilogue to Lessing's "Laocoon"._ Matthew Arnold

IV

_HINDRANCES_

When the soul has heard the far call of its destiny and realizes that it
may respond to that call, and that it has, in conscience, a guide which
will not fail even in the deepest darkness, it turns in the direction
from which the appeal comes and begins to move toward its goal. Almost
simultaneously it realizes that it has to meet and to overcome numerous
and serious obstacles. To the hindrances in the way of the spirit our
thought is to be turned in this chapter.

The moral failure of many men and women of superb intellectual and
physical equipment is one of the sad and serious marvels of human
history. What a pathetic and significant roll might be made of those
who have been great intellectually and pitiful failures morally! It has
often been affirmed that Hannibal might have conquered Rome, and been
the master of the world except for the fatal winter at Capua. Antony,
possibly, would have been victor at Actium if it had not been for
something in himself that made him susceptible to the fascination of the
fair but treacherous Egyptian queen. Achilles was a symbolical as well
as an historical character. There was one place--with him in the
heel--where he was vulnerable, and through that he fell. Socrates was
like a tornado when inflamed by anger. Napoleon laid Europe waste and
desolated more distant lands, but he was an enormous egotist and morally
a blot on civilization.

The life-history of many of the poets is inexpressibly sad. Chatterton,
Shelley, Byron, Poe--their very names call up facts which those who
admire their genius would gladly conceal. Many artists are in the same
category. It explains nothing to ascribe their moral po