you are in deepest truth is the unity of these moods and you are the moods too. Do not think of yourself, therefore, as merely the observer. You are all these high desires and aspirations. The self that is just now acting, is your soul, in part The deeper self which attains a receptivity of which you are now consciously incapable is a function of your soul, living on continuously even while you are asleep at night. Do not then expect any miraculous intuition to tell you what you You are in part all that you think, and will, and act. If you cannot now realise yourself fully, when you will to be noble and true and great, it is only because the time has not yet come, there is not yet the proper correspondence between inner and outer, the soul and its environment. must await the occasion.

are.

You

Most of the problems in our psychological life are due to the sundering of that which is not separated in actual existence. Look within, and if you look truly you will note that every moment your mental life is an evolution. Every moment you are feeling, thinking, willing, and doing. These are not separate parts of your life, they are more or less distinguishable phases of an interchanging whole. Now you are more conscious

I The term "will," for example, refers to the whole meaning of our conscious life. See Royce, Outlines of Psychology, p. 334, et seq. Professor Royce's treatise contains many prac

of yourself as desiring to realise a great ideal, and now you are painfully toiling in the valley to attain the great height. But you are no less truly your ideal self. You have not lost your hold. Your will is no less strong. The same soul is now seen in the toils of action rather than in the quietude of contemplation. But activity does not cease when you contemplate, and when you act you are still a resident of that eternal realm whose peace knows no waning. You cannot think without in a measure being active. You cannot think without willing, that is, paying attention, when you attend you act, and when you act you think. You seem to be mentally disjointed only because the apex of consciousness is so small that you cannot pay attention to your whole self at once. But in reality what you discover in successive moments you are all the way along.

tical suggestions of great value. For example, see his account of inhibition and self-control, pp. 70-80. "What, in any situation, we are restrained from doing is as important to us as what we do. 'Self-control' is an essential You teach a man to control or

part of health.

to restrain himself so soon as you teach him what to do in a positive sense. Healthy activity includes self-restraint, or inhibition, as one of its elements. You in vain teach, then, self-control, unless you teach much more than self-control."

CHAPTER VIII

IT

THE MEANING OF SUFFERING

T was evident from the outset of our inquiry into the nature of existence that we were considering a system, an organised whole whose parts are apprehended by means of their immanent connections. Events in that system are found to move forward with a certain rhythm or regularity, describable in terms of law. Everything is related to everything else, cause leads to cause, and everywhere it is the point of view of the whole that promises to explain this interrelatedness. It is difficult to see how a universe could exist unless its substances and forces were unified in an ultimate, orderly whole. A chaotic, an evil, that is, a self-destructive universe is clearly an impossibility. A universe must be good, must realise a unitary end, in order to exist. It takes nothing from the reality and worth of such a system to discover that it is apprehended and understood by means of ideas. As matter of fact, idealism puts one in a position for the first time to understand the real unity of the world. It is clear that there is one ultimate type of reality, that all the

elements of life, however diverse in appearance, are grounded in one Self, whose nature is the basis of all law.

For the moment, it seems difficult to find a place for individual man in such a system. Everything appears to be determined by an all-embracing world-plan. Long before man awakens to self-consciousness, fate seems to have chosen for him. Inheritance compels him to suffer for the sins of his parents. He is born into a world of misery from which he vainly endeavours to escape. Life is at best a conflict. It does not apparently relieve the situation to be assured that, after all, experience is of the nature of mind. For one learns of the existence of a thousand unexpected bondages.

Yet this is scarcely one half of the truth. Man is indeed born into a well-established environment. Law everywhere reigns, and the world resistlessly makes itself known in a certain manner. But the mere description of experience is by no means an adequate account of it. The great question is, What is the worth of life? To what end? What are the ideals towards which the immanent Life is tending?

Man seems to be a product of environment. His thoughts and feelings are apparently the ephemeral outgrowths of matter. But, state the case as strongly as we may, we must add that man is also

a reactive being. What he believes about life, what he does in the presence of environment, is of more consequence for him than the environment. The meanest facts are transfigured by the moral worth of a righteous deed. The mere fact that two or more alternatives are open before man, that as a moral being possessing the power of choice man may act for better or for worse, is alone sufficient to put the whole sphere of experience in a different light.

Man

Life does indeed for ever move forward. is compelled to live and to act. But it is only the most servile creature of habit who obeys instinct alone. In so far as man takes thought he practically makes of life what he will. If he humbly bows before what he is pleased to call "fate," it is on his own responsibility, it is because he has concluded that "fate" is unconquerable. The same principle or fact is regarded as fateful, or as an opportunity for the exercise of freedom, according to our belief concerning it. Once more, then, it is sound philosophy that sets man free.

It is clearly of the utmost importance to arrive at a rational conclusion in regard to the purpose of life, for in the last analysis our actions are regulated, not by the sum total of acquired tendencies and the play of circumstance, but by what we believe. Our conclusion may be ra