ii THE STRENUOUS LIFE 279 



of thought its termination before him : all mutable 

 things therefore are to him as things that are not. 1 



Owing to the ever-moving cycle of change, the 

 ordinary soul must of necessity fall back, in the course 

 of the eternal process of its life, to the lowest stage, 

 however high in the scale it may have risen ; but this, 

 although an evil for it, does not prejudice the whole, 

 in which all things work together for good. Some few, 

 however, may escape this danger, through becoming 

 unked with the eternal Mind or Source. 2 They then 

 cease to be subject to mutation, Mind being immut- 

 able, and persist in eternal blessedness and love. For 

 such favoured ones of heaven, the greatest evils of this 

 life are converted into goods, correspondingly great. 

 It is suffering that compels the labour and the striving 

 which lead most frequently to the glory of immortal 

 splendour. Death in one age makes to live in all others? 



There are, however, two kinds offurori (or inspira- Kinds of 

 tion). a In some there is only blindness, stupidity, un- 

 reasoning impulse ; others consist in a certain divine 

 abstraction by which some men become better in fact 

 than ordinary men. These again are of two kinds, for 

 some becoming the habitation of gods or of divine 

 spirits, say or do miraculous things without themselves 

 or others understanding the reason ; these for the most 

 part are promoted to this state from one of rudeness 

 and ignorance : the divine sense and spirit enters into 

 them as into a house swept and garnished, they being 

 void of any spirit or sense of their own. Others being 

 more habituated to or skilled in contemplation, and 

 having innate in them a lucid and intellectual spirit, are 

 moved by an internal impulse and natural fervour, with 

 love of divinity, justice, truth, glory ; by the fire of 



1 Lag. 635. 2 649, 650. 626. 20 / 



