place and the occasion, it is easy to
recognize that it is fundamentally one state in spirit and fruits.
Penetrate a little beneath the diversity of circumstances, and it
becomes evident that in Christians of different epochs it is always one
and the same modification by which they are affected: there is
veritably a single fundamental and identical spirit of piety and
charity, common to those who have received grace; an inner state which
before all things is one of love and humility, of infinite confidence
in God, and of severity for one's self, accompanied with tenderness for
others. The fruits peculiar to this condition of the soul have the
same savor in all, under distant suns and in different surroundings, in
Saint Teresa of Avila just as in any Moravian brother of Herrnhut."[143]

[143] Sainte-Beuve: Port-Royal, vol. i. pp. 95 and 106, abridged.

Sainte-Beuve has here only the more eminent instances of regeneration
in mind, and these are of course the instructive ones for us also to
consider. These devotees have often laid their course so differently
from other men that, judging them by worldly law, we might be tempted
to call them monstrous aberrations from the path of nature. I begin
therefore by asking a general psychological question as to what the
inner conditions are which may make one human character differ so
extremely from another.

I reply at once that where the character, as something distinguished
from the intellect, is concerned, the causes of human diversity lie
chiefly in our differing susceptibilities of emotional excitement, and
in the different impulses and inhibitions which these bring in their
train. Let me make this more clear.

Speaking generally, our moral and practical attitude, at any given
time, is always a resultant of two sets of forces within us, impulses
pushing us one way and obstructions and inhibitions holding us back.
"Yes! yes!" say the impulses; "No! no!" say the inhibitions. Few
people who have not expressly reflected on the matter realize how
constantly this factor of inhibition is upon us, how it contains and
moulds us by its restrictive pressure almost as if we were fluids pent
within the cavity of a jar. The influence is so incessant that it
becomes subconscious. All of you, for example, sit here with a certain
constraint at this moment, and entirely without express consciousness
of the fact, because of the influence of the occasion. If left alone
in the