There is no special merit that all the works of the Lord should thus praise the Lord in their expression, because below the stage of a human being there is no option. The lower forms of life are like lamps on a circuit which light up by reason of the current over which they exercised no control. But a human being is like a lamp that is connected with the main circuit and yet has its own switch. This ability to switch on or off constitutes our measure of freewill, our power of saying yes or no. It is a necessary accompaniment of our knowledge of good and evil for "no choice, no progress." It betokens our progress from the merely animal stage of consciousness to that of self-consciousness--the phase of existence where we not only know, but we know that we know. This ability to express well, badly, or not at all, just as we may please, is our special prerogative: it gives man the privilege, which is denied to all life below him, of deliberately choosing the worse and of making a fool of himself. The animals know what is good for them because they follow their unreasoning instincts and blindly repeat the racial course of action implanted within them, and the mere survival of the species proves that this particular response to the particular circumstance has been "tried out" by ages of experience. But a man blinds and smothers his instincts (and these at the best, it may be observed, are distinctly mixed) or perhaps indulges them in defiance of his better judgment, and thus his expression of his own divinity is often sadly marred.[5] [Note 5: James Rhoades.] "Know this, O man, sole root of sin in thee Is not to know thine own divinity." A man may even deny the very existence of spirit, and thus by a subtle but efficacious species of self-suggestion prevent its manifestation in himself. But whether he expresses this spirit well or ill, a man does in fact join with all creation below him in manifesting this innate spirituality without which there can be no life. Thus everything stands for something else that is deeper, there is an outer form and an inner soul or spirit. Spenser thus expresses it:-- "For of the soule the bodie forme doth take, For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make." It is only when we grasp this elementary truth that life becomes in the least plain and intelligible, and the result of grasping it is that we cease to be deceived by the apparent values of things, and are able to appraise them more at their true and spiritual worth. We are then enabled to pass from circumstances (which are results) to the realm of causes: the balance is transferred from the seen to the unseen, and the point of view approximates more to the eternal than the transient. A greater poise and certainty follow as a matter of course, since the mental outlook is centred in the true rather than the seeming.