. Francis de Sales, in a letter to the Mere de Chastel, has a
delightfully characteristic passage, full of paternal tenderness
combined with playful and reverent humour, in which he sets forth the
mode of action of the two wills. "Indeed, my dear daughter Marie," he
writes, "you say truly that there are two beings in you. The one is a
Marie who, like St. Peter, is tender, sensitive, ready to be irritated
by a touch. This Marie is a daughter of Eve, and so her temper is
frail. The other Marie wills to be wholly God's; and in order so to
be, she wills in all simplicity to be humble and gentle towards
everyone, and she would fain imitate St. Peter after he was converted.
This Marie is the child of the Blessed Virgin. These two diverse
Maries come into collision, and the bad one is so bad that often the
other scarce knows how to defend herself, and then perforce she fancies
herself beaten, and believes the bad Marie to be stronger. But not so,
my poor, dear child; the bad one is not stronger than you. She is more
perverse, more enterprising, more obstinate, and when you lose heart
and sit down to cry, she is pleased because it is so much time lost for
you; and if she cannot make you lose eternity, at all events she will
try to make you lose time. My dear daughter, rouse your courage ... be
watchful of your enemy; tread cautiously for fear of the foe; if you
are not on your guard against her she will be too much for you. Even
if she should take you by surprise, and make you totter, or give you a
slight wound, do not be put out.... Now do not be ashamed of all this,
my daughter, any more than St. Paul was when he confessed that there
were two beings in him, one rebellious against God, the other obedient
to Him."--St. Francis de Sales, _Spiritual Letters_, lvii.

[11] "It is impossible," says the Abbot Moses, "for the mind not to be
approached by thoughts, but it is in the power of every earnest man
either to admit them or reject them. Their rising does not depend upon
ourselves, but their admission or rejection is in our own power....
The movement of the mind may well be illustrated by the comparison of a
mill-wheel. The headlong rush of water whirls it round, and it can
never stop its work so long as it is driven by the water. Yet it is in
the power of the man who directs it to decide whether he will have
wheat, or barley, or darnel ground by it. For it must certainly crush
that which the man in charge of it put