intance impossible. The flowers beneath
the ice on the Alps are small; the flowers of the tropics have the
proportions of trees. Thus environment modifies growth. The body cannot
put fetters on the will, but it may hold in captivity the powers which
acquire knowledge, withhold from the emotions persons worthy of
affection, and make the range of objects of choice poor and pitiful. The
soul has often been compared to a bird in a cage,--fitted for broad
horizons but confined within narrow spaces. This hindrance is a very
real one. The man who grows swiftly must be in the open world with
beings to love and to serve ever within his reach. Hence the life beyond
death is often called the unhindered life because of its freedom from
the body. The old story of "Rasselas" is symbolical. In the Happy Valley
a man might be as good, but he could not be as great and wise, as in the
larger world. The soul will meet fewer temptations there, but those it
does encounter will be more insistent and harder to escape. He who would
respond to a call to service must needs have about him those whom he
may serve. Large views are for those who are able to rise to the
heights. He who lives in a cave may be true to his little light, and
surely is responsible for no more, but he will see far less than the one
whose home is on the mountaintop. Thus even bodily limitations, to which
are attached no moral qualities, are hindrances to the growth of the
being, whose destiny is not only purification but expansion:--its
movement is not only toward goodness but also toward greatness; not only
toward virtue but also toward power.

The animal entail is one of the greatest mysteries of our mortal life.
The soul in its moments of illumination feels that it is related to some
person like itself, but far higher, and aspires to it. Sir Joshua
Reynolds' figure of "Faith" in the famous window in the chapel of New
College, Oxford, suggests the attitude of the newly awakened soul. In
freshness and beauty it is turning toward the light. But in human
experience something occurs which Sir Joshua has not tried to depict. A
clammy hand reaches up from the deeps out of which rise suffocating
clouds, and that pure spirit finds itself enveloped in darkness and
fastened to the earth. The humiliation is complete. What has occurred?
Only what has happened again and again; and what will continue to happen
for no one knows how long. The animal has gotten the better of the
spirit. T