(2) As to the pleasurableness which, in normal psychic conditions, more or less immediately accompanies or follows the virtuous acts of the soul, the realizations of its own deeper and deepest ideals, we should note that, in its earthly degree and form, it is not included in what theologians mean by the “rewards” of virtuous action. And in this they are thoroughly self-consistent, for they adhere, I think with practical unanimity, to Catherine’s doctrine that these immediate consequences of virtuous acts are not to be considered a matter of positive and, as it were, separate divine institution,--as something which, given the fundamental character of man’s spiritual nature, might have been otherwise; but as what,--given the immutable nature of God and of the image at nature in His creature, man,--follows from an intrinsic, quite spontaneous necessity.--Hence, at this point especially, would it be foolish and fanatical, because contrary to the immanental nature of things, and to the right interplay of the elemental forces of all life, to attempt the suppression even of the several actual irruptions of such pleasure, and still more of the source and recurrence of this delectation. Fortunately success is here as impossible as it would be undesirable,--as much so as, on a lower plane, would be the suppression of the pleasure concomitant with the necessary kinds and degrees of eating. Indeed, it is clear, upon reflection that unless a man (at least implicitly) accepts and (indirectly) wills that spiritual or physical pleasure, he cannot profitably eat his food or love his God. But from this in nowise follows what Bossuet tried so hard to prove,--that what is thus necessarily present in man, as a psychical or physical prompting and satisfaction, must also of necessity be willed by him, directly and as his determining reason and justification. In turning to eat, man cannot help feeling a psychic pleasure of an all but purely physical kind; and, if he is wise, he will make no attempt to meddle with this feeling. But he can either deliberately will, as his action’s object, that pleasure which is thus inevitably incident to the act, and the more he does so, the more simply greedy and sensual he will become; or he can directly will, as his determining end, that sustenance of life and strength for his work and spiritual growth, which is the justification and ultimate reason of eating (the _rationale_ of that very pleasure so wisely attached by nature, as a stimulus, to a process so necessary to the very highest objects), and the more he does so, the more manly and spiritual he will grow.