In this world the soul may sometimes wander as if in pastures, sometimes is poised breathless and intent.

Sometimes it is fed by beauty, sometimes by most difficult truth, and experiences the extremes of riches and destitution, darkness and light.

"It is not," says Plotinus, "by crushing the Divine into a unity but by displaying its exuberance, as the Supreme Himself has displayed it, that we show knowledge of the might of God."[139] Thus, by that instinctive and warmly devoted direction of its behaviour which is love, and that willed attention to and communion with the spiritual world which is prayer, all the powers of the self are united and turned towards the seeking and finding of the Eternal.

It is by complete obedience to this exacting love, doing difficult and unselfish things, giving up easy and comfortable things--in fact by living, living hard on the highest levels--that men more and more deeply feel, experience, and enter into their spiritual life.

This is a fact which must seem rather awkward to those who put forward pathological explanations of it.