It was but yesterday that I heard one of the world’s greatest thinkers and speakers, one of our keenest observers of human affairs, state as his opinion that selfishness is the root of all evil.  Now, if it is possible for any one thing to be the root of all evil, then I think there is a world of truth in the statement.  But, leaving out of account for the present purpose whether it is true or not, it certainly is true that he who can’t get beyond self robs his life of its chief charms, and more, defeats the very ends he has in view.  It is a well-known law in the natural world about us that whatever hasn’t use, that whatever serves no purpose, shrivels up.  So it is a law of our own being that he who makes himself of no use, of no service to the great body of mankind, who is concerned only with his own small self, finds that self, small as it is, growing smaller and smaller, and those finer and better and grander qualities of his nature, those that give the chief charm and happiness to life, shrivelling up.  Such an one lives, keeps constant company with his own diminutive and stunted self; while he who, forgetting self, makes the object of his life service, helpfulness, and kindliness to others, finds his whole nature growing and expanding, himself becoming large-hearted, magnanimous, kind, loving, sympathetic, joyous, and happy, his life becoming rich and beautiful.  For instead of his own little life alone he has entered into and has part in a hundred, a thousand, ay, in countless numbers of other lives; and every success, every joy, every happiness coming to each of these comes as such to him, for he has a part in each and all.  And thus it is that one becomes a prince among men, a queen among women.

Why, one of the very fundamental principles of life is, so much love, so much love in return; so much love, so much growth; so much love, so much power; so much love, so much life,—­strong, healthy, rich, exulting, and abounding life.  The world is beginning to realize the fact that love, instead of being a mere indefinite something, is a vital and living force, the same as electricity is a force, though perhaps of a different nature.  The same great fact we are learning in regard to thought,—­that thoughts are things, that thoughts are forces, the most vital and powerful in the universe, that they have form and substance and power, the quality of the power determined as it is by the quality of the life in whose organism the thoughts are engendered; and so, when a thought is given birth, it does not end there, but takes form, and as a force it goes out and has its effect upon other minds and lives, the effect being determined by its intensity and the quality of the prevailing emotions, and also by the emotions dominating the person at the time the thoughts are engendered and given form.

Science, while demonstrating the great facts it is to-day demonstrating in connection with the mind in its relations to and effects upon the body, is also finding from its very laboratory experiments that each particular kind of thought and emotion has its own peculiar qualities, and hence its own peculiar effects or influences; and these it is classifying with scientific accuracy.  A very general classification in just a word would be—­those of a higher and those of a lower nature.