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and in adjustment with that tendency, how far does it choose that ideal, instead of its own will? There may be ways of temporary escape, methods of glossing over that which is ugly. But in the end the soul must come face to face with itself and ask the test question.
 
As all laws and forces centre about the divine Being at large, so we may say that the universe  for the individual centres about the soul. Our conclusion that life is primarily conscious points to that centre, for all that we know of the world in the last analysis is reducible to the ideas and  activities immediately related to and known by the soul. It is a large world that surrounds the  soul--the universe of nature, man and God; it  is a relatively small world where man, the observer, watches the world-play in relation to his mental states. Formerly he believed himself to be an objective being of flesh and blood; now he finds that behind the most intimately subjective mental states he, the real individual, lives. In so far as he plays a part in the great world around him, here is the decisive centre where all choices are made, where all action begins. Sometimes it seems that the turning of a feather would suffice to settle between alternatives.
 
Formerly, we complained of the universe because of the pains we suffered; we cast the blame  on people, things, on God, any one, anything but