in
Nature and the Open which expands the mind and causes brigand cares
and worries to drop off--whereas in confined places foolish and futile
thoughts of all kinds swarm like microbes and cloud and conceal the
soul. Experto Crede. It is only necessary to try this experiment in
order to prove its truth.

Another thing which corresponds in some degree to living physically in
the open air, is the living mentally and emotionally in the atmosphere
of love. A large charity of mind, which refuses absolutely to shut
itself in little secluded places of prejudice, bigotry and contempt for
others, and which attains to a great and universal sympathy, helps, most
obviously, to open the way to that region of calm and freedom of which
we have spoken, while conversely all petty enmity, meanness and spite,
conspire to imprison the soul and make its deliverance more difficult.

It is not necessary to labor these points. As we said, the way to attain
is to sincerely TRY to attain, to consistently PRACTICE attainment.
Whoever does this will find that the way will open out by degrees, as
of one emerging from a vast and gloomy forest, till out of darkness the
path becomes clear. For whomsoever really TRIES there is no failure; for
every effort in that region is success, and every onward push, however
small, and however little result it may show, is really a move forward,
and one step nearer the light.

II. THE NATURE OF THE SELF

The true nature of the Self is a matter by no means easy to compass. We
have all probably at some time or other attempted to fathom the deeps of
personality, and been baffled. Some people say they can quite distinctly
remember a moment in early childhood, about the age of THREE (though the
exact period is of course only approximate) when self-consciousness--the
awareness of being a little separate Self--first dawned in the mind.
It was generally at some moment of childish tension--alone perhaps in a
garden, or lost from the mother's protecting hand--that this happened;
and it was the beginning of a whole range of new experience. Before
some such period there is in childhood strictly speaking no distinct
self-consciousness. As Tennyson says (In Memoriam xliv):

The baby new to earth and sky,
What time his tender palm is prest
Against the circle of the breast,
Hath never thought that "This is I."

It has consciousness truly, but no distinctive self-consciousness. It
is this