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Those who thus ridicule the advocate of self-control and equanimity little suspect that this same serene preacher was once extremely excitable and has persistently laboured for a score of years to acquire the repose he now possesses. They do not remember that the mind learns by contrast and grows by mastering opposites.

It is no small task to master a mood which once swayed you. But this is the progressive possibility which awaits those who learn the meaning of their lower and higher mental states. At first one notes only the contrast. Then the great discovery is made that excess on one plane means excess on the other. As surely as a reaction follows intemperate passion and all that makes us devils, so does ecstasy of spiritual emotion cause a descent to the animal plane. Everyone can testify to this who has yielded himself to undue emotional zeal.

Scepticism, agnosticism, self-condemnation morbid consciousness of sin, and a thousand other similar states, are simply excessive reactions from their opposites. If we do not believe too much we do not doubt. When we have not been immoderately negative in our thinking we do not become agnostics. Self-condemnation becomes morbid when we have dwelt too long on one idea. We believe ourselves "hopeless sinners" only while we are negligent of our nobler possibilities.