HIGHER REASON AND JUDGMENT: Page 111

man obeyed the order. Not one, mark you, out of these thousands! They all threw down their guns and ran to him, shouting "Vive l'Empereur!" Yet if you turn to this man's early life, you see him imposing the most painful tasks upon himself. For days he would go without sleep, rest and food, deeply absorbed in study. His hard labours at his studies in early life dwarfed his stature. His appearance at times, we read, was woeful to contemplate because of his painful hardships. But then there was lightning in his eyes which burned and flashed with the fire of his spirit. Truly, most truly, is "pain" transmuted into "Power." The Yogi whose severe austerities strike you dumb with surprise and horror, tames the lions and tigers of the forest simply by a look. In point of fact all advanced Yogis have this and thousands of other such wonderful powers. The fourth function is that pain purifies. "Slowly and resolutely as a fly cleans its legs of the honey in which it has been caught-so remove thou, if it be only for a time, every particle which sullies the brightness of thy mind. Return into thyself content to give but asking no one-asking nothing." Now this cleansing process you set about only under the crucifixion of pain. Hunum nature is obdurate. For ages the animal propensities have been developed. Unless drastic methods be employed they are impossible of subjugation. There is nothing like pain as a teacher. Because first it is a purifier. Once your nature has been passed through the fire of suffering it will have