his possession, forgetting that anything possessed can only by the immutable laws of life be held temporarily.  He has forgotten that the infinite is his only friend; he has forgotten that in its glory is his only home,—­that it alone can be his god.  There he feels as if he is homeless; but that amid the sacrifices he offers to his own especial idol there is for him a brief resting-place; and for this he clings passionately to it.

Few have the courage even slowly to face the great desolateness which lies outside themselves, and must lie there so long as they cling to the person which they represent, the “I” which is to them the centre of the world, the cause of all life.  In their longing for a God they find the reason for the existence of one; in their desire for a sense-body and a world to enjoy in, lies to them the cause of the universe.  These beliefs may be hidden very deep beneath the surface, and be indeed scarcely accessible; but in the fact that they are there is the reason why the man holds himself upright.  To himself he is himself the infinite and the God; he holds the ocean in a cup.  In this delusion he nurtures the egoism which makes life pleasure and makes pain pleasant.  In this profound egoism is the very cause and source of the existence of pleasure and of pain.  For unless man vacillated between these two, and ceaselessly reminded himself by sensation that he exists, he would forget it.  And in this fact lies the whole answer to the question, “Why does man create pain for his own discomfort?”

The strange and mysterious fact remains unexplained as yet, that man in so deluding himself is merely interpreting Nature backwards and putting into the words of death the meaning of life.  For that man does indeed hold within him the infinite, and that the ocean is really in the cup, is an incontestable truth; but it is only so because the cup is absolutely non-existent.  It is merely an experience of the infinite, having no permanence, liable to be shattered at any instant.  It is in the claiming of reality and permanence for the four walls of his personality, that man makes the vast blunder which plunges him into a prolonged series of unfortunate incidents, and intensifies continually the existence of his favorite forms of sensation.  Pleasure and pain become to him more real than the great ocean of which he is a part and where his home is; he perpetually knocks himself painfully against these walls where he feels, and his tiny self oscillates within his chosen prison.

CHAPTER V

THE SECRET OF STRENGTH

I

Strength to step forward is the primary need of him who has chosen his path.  Where is this to be found?  Looking round, it is not hard to see where other men find their strength.  Its source is profound conviction.  Through this great moral power is brought to birth in the natural life of the man that which enables him, however frail he may be, to go on and conquer.  Conquer what?  Not continents, not worlds, but himself.  Through that supreme victory is obtained the entrance to the whole, where all that might be conquered and obtained by effort becomes at once not his, but himself.