to the path impossible, because the first step is
one of difficulty and needs a strong man, full
of psychic and physical vigor, to attempt it.

It is a truth, that, as Edgar Allan Poe said,
the eyes are the windows for the soul, the windows
of that haunted palace in which it dwells.
This is the very nearest interpretation into ordinary
language of the meaning of the text. If
grief, dismay, disappointment or pleasure, can
shake the soul so that it loses its fixed hold on
the calm spirit which inspires it, and the moisture
of life breaks forth, drowning knowledge
in sensation, then all is blurred, the windows
are darkened, the light is useless. This is as
literal a fact as that if a man, at the edge of a
precipice, loses his nerve through some sudden
emotion he will certainly fall. The poise of the
body, the balance, must be preserved, not only
in dangerous places, but even on the level
ground, and with all the assistance Nature
gives us by the law of gravitation. So it is with
the soul, it is the link between the outer body
and the starry spirit beyond; the divine spark
dwells in the still place where no convulsion of
Nature can shake the air; this is so always. But
the soul may lose its hold on that, its knowledge
of it, even though these two are part
of one whole; and it is by emotion, by
sensation, that this hold is loosed. To suffer