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Speaker 1: Transcending difficulties and perplexities. Man whom man would be, must

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rule the empire of himself in it, must be supreme,

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establishing his throne on vanquished will, quelling the anarchy of

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hopes and fears, being himself alone. Shelley, have you missed

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your aim? Well? The mark is still shining. Did you

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faint in the race? Will take breath for the next?

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Ella Wheeler Wilcox. To suggest that any degree of blessedness

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may be extracted from difficulties and perplexities will doubtless appear

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absurd to many. But truth is ever paradoxical, and the

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curses of the foolish are the blessings of the wise.

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Difficulties arise in ignorance and weakness, and they call for

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the attainment of knowledge and the acquisition of strength, as

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under standing is acquired by right living. Difficulties become fewer,

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and perplexities gradually fade away, like the perishable mists which

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they are. Your difficulty is not contained primarily in the

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situation which gave rise to it, but in the mental

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state with which you regard that situation and which you

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bring to bear upon it. That which is difficult to

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a child presents no difficulty to the matured mind of

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the man, And that which to the mind of an

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unintelligent man is surrounded with perplexity, would afford no ground

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for perplexity to an intelligent man, to the untutored and

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undeveloped mind of the child. How great and apparently insurmountable

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appear the difficulties which are involved in the learning of

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some simple lesson. How many anxious and laborious hours and

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days or even months its solution costs, and frequently how

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many tears are shed in hopeless contum of the unmastered

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and apparently insurmountable wall of difficulty. Yet the difficulty is

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in the ignorance of the child only, and its conquest

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and solution is absolutely necessary for the development of intelligence

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and for the ultimate welfare, happiness, and usefulness of the child.

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Even so, it is with difficulties of life with which

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older children are confronted, and which it is imperative for

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their own growth and development, that they should solve and surmount.

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And each difficulty solved means so much more experience gained,

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so much more insight and wisdom acquired. It means a

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valuable lesson learned With the added gladness and freedom of

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a task successfully accomplished. What is the real nature of

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a difficulty? Is it not a situation which is not

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fully grasped and understood in all its bearings. As such,

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it calls for the development and exercise of a deeper

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insight and broader intelligence than has hitherto been exercised. It

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is an urgent necessity, calling forth unused energy and demanding

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the expression and employment of latent power in hidden resources.

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It is therefore a good angel, albeit disguised, a friend

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a teacher, and when calmly listened to and rightly understood,

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leads to larger blessedness and higher wisdom. Without difficulties, there

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could be no progress, no unfoldment, no evolution. Universal stagnation

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would prevail, and humanity would perish of anui. Let a

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man rejoice when he is confronted with obstacles, for it

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means that he has reached the end of some particular

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line of indifference or folly, and is now called upon

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to summon up all his energy and intelligence in order

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to extricate himself and to find a better way. That

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the powers within him are crying out for great, greater freedom,

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for enlarged exercise and scope. No situation can be difficult

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of itself. It is the lack of insight into its centricities,

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and the want of wisdom in dealing with it, which

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give rise to the difficulty. Immeasurable. Therefore is the gain

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of a difficulty transcended. Difficulties do not spring into existence

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arbitrarily and accidentally. They have their causes, and they are

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called forth by the law of evolution itself, by the

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growing necessities of the man's being. Herein resides their blessedness.

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There are ways of conduct which end inevitably in complications

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and perplexities, and there are ways of conduct which lead

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just as inevitably out of troublesome complexities. Howsoever tightly a

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man may have bound himself round, he can always unbind

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himself into whatsoever morasses of trouble and trackless waste of

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perplexity he may have ignorantly wandered. He can always find

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his way out again. He can always recover the lost

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highway of uninvolved simplicity, which leads straight and clear to

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the sunny city of wise and blessed action. But he

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will never do this by sitting down and weeping in despair,

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nor by complaining and worrying and aimlessly wishing he were

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differently situated. His dilemma calls for alertness, logical thought, and

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calm calculation. His position requires that he shall strongly command himself,

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that he shall think and search, and rouse himself to

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strenuous and unremitting exertion in order to regain himself. Worry

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and anxiety only serve to heighten the gloom and exaggerate

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the magnitude of the difficulty. If he will but quietly

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take himself to task and retrace in thought the more

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or less intricate way by which he has come to

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his present position, he will soon perceive where he made mistakes,

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will discover those places where he took a false turn,

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and where a little more thoughtfulness, judgment, economy, or self

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denial would have saved him. He will see how, step

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by step he has involved himself, and how a riper

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judgment and clearer wisdom would have enabled him to take

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an altogether different, in truer course. Having proceeded thus far

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and extracted from his past conduct this priceless grain of

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golden wisdom, his difficulty will have already assumed less impregnable proportions,

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and he will then be able to bring to bear

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upon it the searchlight of dispassionate thought, to thoroughly anatomize it,

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to comprehend it in all its details, and to perceive

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the relation with which those details bear to the motive

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source of action and conduct within himself. This being done,

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the difficulty will have ceased, for the straight way out

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of it will plainly appear, and the man will have

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thus learned for all time his lesson will have gained

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an idea of wisdom and a measure of blessedness of

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which he can never again be deprived. Just as there

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are ways of ignorance, selfishness, folly, and blindness which end

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in confusion and perplexity, so there are ways of knowledge,

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self denial, wisdom and insight which lead to pleasant and

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peaceful consummations. He who knows this will meet difficulties in

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a courageous spirit, and in overcoming them, will evolve truth

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out of error, bliss out of pain, and peace out

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of perturbation. No man can be confronted with a difficulty

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which he has not the strength to meet and subdue.

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Worry is not merely useless, It is a folly, for

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it defeats that power and intelligence which is otherwise equal

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to the task. Every difficulty can be overcome if rightly

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dealt with. Anxiety is therefore unnecessary. The task, which cannot

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be overcome ceases to be a difficulty and become an impossibility,

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And anxiety is still unnecessary, for there is only one

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way of dealing with an impossibility, namely to submit to it.

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The inevitable is the best, heartily know. Where half gods go,

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the gods arrive. And just as domestic, social, and economic

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difficulties are born of ignorance and lead to riper knowledge,

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so every religious doubt, every mental perplexity, every heart but

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clouding shadow presages greater spiritual gain is prophetic of a

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brighter dawn of intelligence. For him on whom it falls,

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it is a great day in the life of a man,

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though at the time he knows it not when bewildering,

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perplexed cities concerning the mystery of life take possession of

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his mind, for it signifies that his era of dead indifference,

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of animal sloth, of mere vegetative happiness has come to

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an end, and that henceforth he is to live as

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an inspiring, self evolving being, no longer a mere human animal.

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He will now begin to live as a man, exerting

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all his mental energies to the solution of life's problems,

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to the answering of those haunting perplexities which are the

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sentinels of truth, and which stand at the gate and

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threshold of the Temple of Wisdom. He it is who,

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when great trials come, nor seeks nor shuns them, but

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doth calmly stay. Nor will he ever rest again in

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selfless ease and listless ignorance, nor sleekly state himself upon

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the swine's husks of fleshly pleasures, nor find a hiding

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place from the ceaseless wa whisperings of his heart's dark

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and indefinable interrogatories. The divine within him has awakened. A

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sleeping god is shaking off the incoherent visions of the night,

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never again to slumber, never again to rest, until his

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eyes rest upon the full broad day of truth. It

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is impossible for such a man to hush for any

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length of time the call to his higher purposes and

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achievements which are aroused within him, for the awakened faculties

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of his being will ceaselessly urge him on to the

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unraveling of his perplexities. For him there is no peace

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and sin, no more rest and error, no final refuge.

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But in wisdom. Great will be the blessedness of such

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a man, When, conscious of the ignorance of which his

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doubts and perplexities are born, and acknowledging and understanding that ignorance,

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not striving to hide himself from it, he earnestly applies

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himself to its removal, seeks unremittingly day after day for

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that pathway of light, which shall enable him to dispel

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all dark shadows, dissolve all his doubts, and find the

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solution to all his pressing problems. And as a child

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is glad when it has mastered a lesson long toiled over,

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just so a man's heart becomes light and free when

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he has satisfactorily met some worldly difficulty. Even so, but

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to a far greater degree is the heart of a

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man rendered joyous and peaceful when some vital and eternal question,

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which has been long brooded over and grappled with, is

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at last completely answered, and its darkness is forever dispelled.

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Do not regard your difficulties and perplexities as portentous of ill.

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By doing so you will make them ill. But regard

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them as prophetic of good, which indeed they are. Do

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not persuade yourself that you can evade them. You cannot.

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Do not try to run from them. This is impossible,

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for wherever you go, they will still be there with you.

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But meet them calmly and bravely. Confront them with all

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the dispassion and dignity which you can command. Weigh up

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their proportions, analyze them, grasp their details, measure their strength,

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understand them, attack them, and finally vanquish them. Thus will

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you develop strength and intelligence. Thus will you enter into

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one of those by ways of blessedness which are hidden

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from the superficial gaze.