His powers expand,
his activity increases; he goes to school, and meets other boys like
himself; new objects of strife are discovered, new elements of strife
developed; new desires are born, fresh impulses urge. The old heaven,
the face and will of his mother, recede farther and farther; a world of
men, which he foolishly thinks a nobler as it is a larger world, draws
him, claims him. More or less he yields. The example and influence of
such as seem to him more than his mother like himself, grow strong upon
him. His conscience speaks louder. And here, even at this early point in
his history, what I might call his fourth birth _may_ begin to take
place: I mean the birth in him of the Will--the real Will--not the
pseudo-will, which is the mere Desire, swayed of impulse, selfishness,
or one of many a miserable motive. When the man, listening to his
conscience, wills and does the right, irrespective of inclination as of
consequence, then is the man free, the universe open before him. He is
born from above. To him conscience needs never speak aloud, needs never
speak twice; to him her voice never grows less powerful, for he never
neglects what she commands.
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