in man is meant to be the servant of his soul. Man's true guiding
instincts are in his soul,--he can obey them or not, as he chooses;
but the beast's instincts are in his body, and he has no choice but
to obey. Man can, so to speak, get up and look down on himself. He
can be his own father and his own mother. From his true instinct he
can say to himself, "you must do this" or "You must not do that." He
can see and understand his tendency to disobedience, and _he can
force himself to obey._ Man can see the good and wholesome animal
instincts in himself that lead to lasting health and strength, and
he can make them all the good servants of his soul. He can see the
tendency to overindulgence, and how it leads to disease and to evil,
and he can refuse to permit that wrong tendency to rule him.

Every man has his own power of distinguishing between right and
wrong, and his own power of choosing which way he shall follow. He
is left free to choose God's way or to choose his own. Through past
and present perversions, of natural habit he has lost the delicate
power of distinguishing the normal from the abnormal, and needs to
be educated back to it. The benefit of this education is an
intelligent consciousness of the laws of life, which not only adds
to his own strength of mind and body, but increases immeasurably his
power of use to others. Many customs of to-day fix and perpetuate
abnormal habits to such an extent that, combined with our own
selfish inheritances and personal perversions, they dim the light of
our minds so that many of us are working all the time in a fog, more
or less dense, of ignorance and bondage. When a man chooses the
right and refuses the wrong, in so far as he sees it, he becomes
wise from within and from without, his power for distinguishing
gradually improves, the fog lifts, and he finds within himself a
sure and delicate instinct which was formerly atrophied for want of