If is true here than many exert a spiritual influence they are unconscious of, it is still truer of the spheres within. Once the soul has attained to any possession like love, or persistent will, or faith, or a power of thought, it comes into psychic contact with others who are struggling for these very powers. The attainment of any of these means that the soul is able to absorb and radiate some of the diviner elements of being. The soul may or may not be aware of the position it is placed in and its new duties, but yet that Living Light, having found a way into the being of any one person, does not rest there, but sends its rays and extends its influence on and on to illumine the darkness of another nature. So it comes that there are ties which bind us to people other than those whom we meet in our everyday life. I think they are more real ties, more important to understand, for if we let our lamp go out some far away who had reached out in the dark and felt a steady will, a persistent hope, a compassionate love, may reach out once again in an hour of need, and finding no support may give way and fold the hands in despair. Often indeed we allow gloom to overcome us and so hinder the bright rays in their passage; but would we do it so often if we thought that perhaps a sadness which besets us, we do not know why, was caused by some heart drawing nigh to ours for comfort, that our lethargy might make it feel still more its helplessness, while our courage, our faith, might cause "our light to shine in some other heart which as yet has no light of its own." --March 15, 1897 Priest or Hero? "I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, No one kneels to another, nor to one of his kind that lived thousands of years ago." ---Walt Whitman