positive only,
not the negative, can be proved."

"Where would be the satisfaction if he could only prove the one thing
and not the other."

"The truth alone can be proved, my lord; how should a lie be proved?
The man that wanted to prove he had no freedom of will, would find no
satisfaction from his test--and the less the more honest he was; but
the man anxious about the dignity of the nature given him, would find
every needful satisfaction in the progress of his obedience."

"How can there be free will where the first thing demanded for its
existence or knowledge of itself is obedience?"

"There is no free will save in resisting what one would like, and doing
what the Truth would have him do. It is true the man's liking and the
truth may coincide, but therein he will not learn his freedom, though
in such coincidence he will always thereafter find it, and in such
coincidence alone, for freedom is harmony with the originating law of
one's existence."

"That's dreary doctrine."

"My lord, I have spent no little time and thought on the subject, and
the result is some sort of practical clearness to myself; but, were it
possible, I should not care to make it clear to another save by
persuading him to arrive at the same conviction by the same path--that,
namely, of doing the thing required of him."

"Required of him by what?"

"By any one, any thing, any thought, with which can go the word
required by--anything that carries right in its demand. If a man does
not do the thing which the very notion of a free will requires, what in
earth, heaven, or hell, would be the use of his knowing all about the
will? But it is impossible he should know anything."

"You are a bold preacher!" said the earl. "--Suppose now a man was
unconscious of any ability to do the thing required of him?"

"I should say there was the more need he should do the thing."

"That is nonsense."

"If it be nonsense, the nonsense lies in the supposition that a man can
be conscious of not possessing a power; he can only be not conscious of
possessing it, and that is a very different thing. How is a power to be
known but by being a power, and how is it to be a power but in its own
exercise of itself? There is more in man than he can at any given
moment be conscious of; there is life, the power of the eternal behind
his consciousness, which only in action can he make his own; of which,
therefore, only in action, that is obedience, can he become consc