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it does not care to dwell, but into which it may make excursions at will as its lord and governor.

It has thus lost nothing and has gained much. It has found a better country in which there are facilities for fertilizing or carrying new life into the old. Now when it goes forth it is not as the Prodigal, but as the Prince. It finds the husk, but the kernel is within.

As I have said before, the true life has been operative all the while, but there has been no consciousness of that life—and here let me make a distinction between consciousness and life. I will only say that consciousness is the knowledge of life. While there can be no consciousness without life there can be life without consciousness, or, in other words, there may be life without a knowledge of itself. Most of you can remember the time when as a child you had no knowledge of yourself. I can distinctly remember the hour when a knowledge of self came to me. It dawned somewhat cruelly, for an angry playmate criticized me most unpleasantly.

She told me that I had a large mouth, and although I did not know the merit or demerit of such a possession, something in her tone conveyed a strong suspicion of demerit.

For the first time I looked at myself in the glass critically. The survey gave me no actual knowledge, but I was a wretched child.