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whatever comes up from the inconscient, which, in ordinary natures, expresses itself as the
effects of atavism and of the environment in which one was born. Only an almost abnormal
growth of consciousness and the constant help of Grace can achieve this Herculean task.
That is why this task has rarely been attempted and many famous teachers have declared it
to be unrealisable and chimerical. Yet it is not unrealisable. The transformation of character
has in fact been realised by means of a clear-sighted discipline and a perseverance so
obstinate that nothing, not even the most persistent failures, can discourage it.

The indispensable starting-point is a detailed and discerning observation of the character
to be transformed. In most cases, that itself is a difficult and often a very baffling task.
But there is one fact which the old traditions knew and which can serve as the clue in
the labyrinth of inner discovery. It is that everyone possesses in a large measure, and the
exceptional individual in an increasing degree of precision, two opposite tendencies of
character, in almost equal proportions, which are like the light and the shadow of the same
thing. Thus someone who has the capacity of being exceptionally generous will suddenly
find an obstinate avarice rising up in his nature, the courageous man will be a coward in
some part of his being and the good man will suddenly have wicked impulses. In this way
life seems to endow everyone not only with the possibility of expressing an ideal, but also
with contrary elements representing in a concrete manner the battle he has to wage and
the victory he has to win for the realisation to become possible. Consequently, all life is an
education pursued more or less consciously, more or less willingly. In certain cases this
education will encourage the movements that express the light, in others, on the contrary,
those that express the shadow. If the circumstances and the environment are favourable,
the light will grow at the expense of the shadow; otherwise the opposite will happen. And
in this way the individual’s character will crystallise according to the whims of Nature
and the determinisms of material and vital life, unless a higher element comes in in time, a
conscious will which, refusing to allow Nature to follow her whimsical ways, will replace
them by a logical and clear-sighted discipline. This conscious will is what we mean by a
rational method of education.

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