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commentary entry

xi.iii.x-p13.14

xi.iii.x-p13.1496 words

24. will save—"Is minded to save," bent on saving. The pith of this maxim depends—as often in such weighty sayings (for example, "Let the dead bury the dead," Mt 8:22)—on the double sense attached to the word "life," a lower and a higher, the natural and the spiritual, temporal and eternal. An entire sacrifice of the lower, or a willingness to make it, is indispensable to the preservation of the higher life; and he who cannot bring himself to surrender the one for the sake of the other shall eventually lose both.