clamor still more loudly, and should even set to work to clear
away the nuisance with our own hands, in our solicitude for his
health. But if the bodies of mother and child lay dead, they would no
longer be conscious of the pestilential air.

It is characteristic of "life" to purge the environment and the soul
of substances injurious to health. Christ was called "the Lamb that
taketh away the sins of the world," not the Master who preaches, but
He who purifies. And this is the morality that springs from
sensibility: the _action_ of purifying the world, of removing the
obstacles that beset life, of liberating the spirit from the darkness
of death.

The merits of which every man feels he owes an account to his
conscience are not such things as having enjoyed music or made a
discovery; he must be able to say what he has done to save and
maintain life.

These purifying merits, like progress, have no limits.

"Leave all ties and follow _Me_," said Christ to those who asked Him
what they should do.

For man can reinforce his own strength by other powers which will urge
him on upwards towards the infinite; before him who sleeps is the
invisible ladder of Jacob, trodden by angels who call him heavenwards,
that is, towards the supernatural life. Yes, to be _more_ than man.
This is a _dream_ to him who lacks faith; but it is the realizable
goal, the aim of life, to him who has faith.

To Friedrich Nietzsche, the superman was an idea without practical
consequence, strange and erroneous even when tested by the very
theories of evolution which inspired him. His conception offered no
help in overcoming the ills of humanity; rather was it as a chain
binding man to earth, there to seek means to create of himself the man
superior to himself; and thus leading him astray into egotism, cruelty
and folly.

But innumerable saints have felt and acted in accordance with their
profession of faith: "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."

If, as our poet says, man is "the chrysalis destined to become the
angelic butterfly," there is no doubt as to the road he must take:
spiritually, he must either _ascend_ or _die_.

Hence it is not the whole of life to obey the laws of hygiene,
physical and psychical; but it is only life which can draw from its
environment the means of its own purification and salvation; that
life, however, which is supernatural, asks of love and divine light
the strength necessary for its transformation.

O