Desire, said William Law, _is_ everything and _does_ everything; it is the primal motive-power. Ruysbroeck, too, finds in desire turned towards the best the beginning of human transcendence, and regards willing and loving as the essence of life. Basing his psychology on the common mediæval scheme of Memory, Intelligence and Will, he speaks of this last as the king of the soul; dominating both the other powers, and able to gather them in its clutch, force them to attend to the invitations and messages of the eternal world. Thus in his system the demand upon man’s industry and courage is made from the very first. The great mystical necessity of self-surrender is shown to involve, not a limp acquiescence, but a deliberate and heroic choice; the difficult approximation of our own thoughts and desires to the thoughts and desires of Divine Reality. “When we have but one thought and one will with God, we are on the first step of the ladder of love and of sanctity; for good-will is the foundation of all virtue.”[26] In _The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage_, Ruysbroeck has used the words said to the wise and foolish virgins of the parable—“Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him”—as an epitome of the self’s relations with and reactions to Reality. First, all created spirits are called to behold God, who is perpetually ‘coming’ to the world of conditions, in a ceaseless procession of love; and in this seeing our happiness consists. But in order really to see a thing, we need not only light and clear sight, but the _will_ to look at it; every act of perception demands a self-giving on the seer’s part. So here we need not only the light of grace and the open eyes of the soul, but also the _will_ turned towards the Infinite: our attention to life, the regnant fact of our consciousness, must be focussed upon eternal things. Now, when we see God, we cannot but love Him; and love is motion, activity. Hence, this first demand on the awakened spirit, ‘Behold!’ is swiftly followed by the second demand, ‘Go ye out!’ for the essence of love is generous, outflowing, expansive, an “upward and outward tendency towards the Kingdom of God, which is God Himself.” This outgoing, this concrete act of response, will at once change and condition our correspondences with and attitude towards God, ourselves and our neighbours; expressing itself within the world of action in a new ardour for perfection—the natural result of the ‘loving vision of the Bridegroom,’ the self’s first glimpse of Perfect Goodness and Truth. We observe the continued insistence on effort, act, as the very heart of all true self-giving to transcendent interests.