Here, then, and not in hygiene, must we find the secret of our life. We have something more corruptible than our bodies, a life more fragile than our physical life; and the peril of darkness hangs over us. This is the secret of man. If man loses the light that leads him on towards a better world, he falls into an abyss far below all created animals. He who loves, therefore, will bestow all his care on these wellsprings of life; how frail are the lungs of a new-born infant, how easily can an unnatural mother deprive him of air and so suffocate him! Yet what is this easily accomplished act, which nevertheless destroys a life, in comparison with the infinitely easier and more deadly act by which we may procure the death of the soul? The death of the soul, like that of the body, may be readily distinguished from a state of insensibility; in vain do we apply a red-hot iron to a corpse; there is no response. He who is alive, however, is not only capable of reacting to a stimulus very much less intense than a red-hot iron; he who lives and feels may perfect himself--and this is life. It is enough that souls should "feel." How, then, could they live quietly amidst evil? If under the windows of our house people were piling up refuse until we felt that the air was being vitiated, could we bear this without protesting, and insisting on the removal of that which was causing us to suffer? If, moreover, we had a child, we should clamor still more loudly, and should even set to work to clear away the nuisance with our own hands, in our solicitude for his health. But if the bodies of mother and child lay dead, they would no longer be conscious of the pestilential air. It is characteristic of "life" to purge the environment and the soul of substances injurious to health. Christ was called "the Lamb that taketh away the sins of the world," not the Master who preaches, but He who purifies. And this is the morality that springs from sensibility: the _action_ of purifying the world, of removing the obstacles that beset life, of liberating the spirit from the darkness of death. The merits of which every man feels he owes an account to his conscience are not such things as having enjoyed music or made a discovery; he must be able to say what he has done to save and maintain life. These purifying merits, like progress, have no limits. "Leave all ties and follow _Me_," said Christ to those who asked Him what they should do. For man can reinforce his own strength by other powers which will urge him on upwards towards the infinite; before him who sleeps is the invisible ladder of Jacob, trodden by angels who call him heavenwards, that is, towards the supernatural life. Yes, to be _more_ than man. This is a _dream_ to him who lacks faith; but it is the realizable goal, the aim of life, to him who has faith.