would be actual, displayed in its full extent, and involving no
variety of future possibility. We should live altogether in the
present, and no changes would be imagined or sought. From this dull
routine we are saved by the admixture of consciousness. For a gain so
great we may well be ready to encounter those difficulties of
conscious guidance which my last chapter detailed. Let the process of
advance be inaccurate, slow, and severe, so only there be advance. For
progress no cost is too great. I am sometimes inclined to congratulate
those who are acute sufferers through self-consciousness, because to
them the door of the future is open. The instinctive, uncritical
person, who takes life about as it comes, and with ready acceptance
responds promptly to every suggestion that calls, may be as popular as
the sunshine, but he is as incapable of further advance. Except in
attractiveness, such a one is usually in later life about what he was
in youth; for progress is a product of forecasting intelligence. When
any new creation is to be introduced, only consciousness can prepare
its path.

Evidently, then, there are strong advantages in guidance through the
spirit. But natural guidance has advantages no less genuine. Human
life is a complex and demanding affair, requiring for its ever-
enlarging good whatever strength can be summoned from every side.
Probably we must abandon that magnificent conception of our ancestors,
that spirit is all in all and nature unimportant. But must we, in
deference to the temper of our time, eliminate conscious guidance
altogether? May not the disparagement of recent ages have arisen in
reaction against attempts to push conscious guidance into regions
where it is unsuitable? Conceivably the two agencies may be
supplementary. Possibly we may call on our fellow of the natural world
for aid in spiritual work. The complete ideal, at any rate, of good