correctly at a time when special meanings have come to be attached to
such words as repression and suppression. What the psychologists have
discovered is that unconscious, or incomplete, or unaccepted repression
of bodily instincts leads to a dangerous condition. He who has not
really surrendered desire, but simply tried to drive it underground,
may indeed reap troubles enough and to spare.

But it needs no psychological training to know that deliberate,
sincere, and courageous renunciation of this or that bodily desire for
the sake of some compelling ideal may lead to the very finest kind of
life. Only in this process the body is not ignored. It is taken into
account. Nor are its forces neglected. Through the process technically
described as sublimation, a way is to be found whereby life force
restrained in one direction finds other and most valuable ways of
expression.

* * * * *

I write this book as one who has learnt to thank God for all the
elements in our normal humanity, and I send it out with the prayer in
my heart that through it some may be helped to a truer understanding
of themselves which will ease their way to success and joy and to that
fullness of human life which is the divine intention for us.





CHAPTER I