The first thing to say to them is this: Do not let sin get the least foothold in your life; you must and can not do otherwise. For what afterward becomes a crushing actuality is at first, for the most part, merely a fleeting thought, an arrow from one knows not whence, shot into the unoccupied soul. And if it lingers there, if it is not at once thrust forth while it is still easy, then there soon arises an evil propensity, upon which mostly follows, first the clouding of the moral consciousness, and at last the deed. After the deed comes often enough a despair that hopes for no salvation more; or what has happened is now for the first time justified before oneself with materialistic philosophy: in either case the death of the true spiritual life. But unfortunately this counsel to “resist the beginnings” is only a very theoretical one, and they who have the bold faith of being able always to do this from a voluntary disposition toward the good, and by their own strength, will, in the course of their own life and in their observation of others, be compelled bit by bit to lessen altogether too far the demands they make of human kind. This is the especial weakness of the noble Kantian philosophy. A grievous passage through some Valley of Humiliation, or an abatement in the clear vision of his moral consciousness inevitably comes upon the man who, at first, believed he was able, with uplifted head and without any help from without, to tread the Path of Virtue without wandering from the way.