Although nothing but first-hand discovery of and response to spiritual values is in the end of any use to us, that discovery and that response are never quite such a single-handed affair as we like to suppose.

Memory and environment, natural and cultural, play their part.
And the next most natural and fruitful movement after such a personal discovery of abiding Reality, such a transfiguration of life, is always back towards our fellow-men; to learn more from them, to unite with them, to help them,--anyhow to reaffirm our solidarity with them.

The great men and women of the Spirit, then, either use their new power and joy to restore existing institutions to fuller vitality, as did the successive regenerators of the monastic life, such as St.Bernard and St.Teresa and many Sufi saints; or they form new groups, new organisms which they can animate, as did St.Paul, St.Francis, Kabir, Fox, Wesley, Booth.

One and all, they feel that the full robust life of the Spirit demands some incarnation, some place in history and social outlet, and also some fixed discipline and tradition.
In fact, not only the history of the soul, but that of all full human achievement, as studied in great creative personalities, shows us that such achievement has always two sides.

(1) There is the solitary vision or revelation, and personal work in accordance with that vision.