And I have sometimes
thought," I continued, "that on the spiritual side an explanation of the
inequalities of human conditions, both past and present, may be
contained in the idea that for all alike, lowly and lofty, wretched and
fortunate, simple and learned, life remains in all its conditions an
opportunity to know God and exercise the soul in virtue, and is an
education of the soul in all its essential knowledge and faculties, at
least within Christian times, broadly speaking, and in more than one
pagan civilization. Material success, fame, wealth, and power--birth
even, with all it involves of opportunity and fate--are insignificant,
if the soul's life is thus secured. I do not mean that such a thought
clears the mystery of the different lots of mankind; but it suggests
another view of the apparent injustice of the world in its most rigid
forms. This, however, is a wandering thought. The great reversal of the
law of nature in the soul lies in the fact that whereas she proceeds by
the selfish will of the strongest trampling out the weak, spiritual law
requires the best to sacrifice itself for the least.
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