with Intention; and remember the exact meaning of the Word.  It is from the two Latin words “in,” towards, and “tendere,” to stretch, and it therefore means a “reaching out in a certain direction.”  This “reaching out in a certain direction” is the Conception of ourself as arrived at the destination towards which our Thought tends, and is therefore the conceiving of an idea, and our formulated idea is stated, if only mentally, in Words—­and the termination of the series is the realization of the idea in actual fact.  Therefore it is equally true of every series, whether it be the creation of a lady’s blouse or the creation of a world, that “in the Beginning is the Word”—­the Word is the Point of Origination.

Then, since the Word is the Point of Origination, what is our conception of the best thing we can originate with it?  There is a great variety of opinion as to what is desirable; and it is only natural and right that it should be so, for otherwise we should be without any individuality, which means that we should have no real life in us—­in fact such a world is unthinkable; it would be a world that had ceased to move, it would be a dead world.  So it is the varied conception of “the Good” that makes the world go on.  Uniformity means reducing things to one dead level.  But on the other hand there must be Unity—­unity of action resulting from unity of purpose, otherwise the world logically terminates in internecine strife.  If then the world is to go on, it can only be by means of Unity expressing itself in Variety, and therefore the question is:  What is the unifying Desire which underlies all the varieties of expression?  It is a very simple one—­it is just to ENJOY LIVING.  Our ideas of an enjoyable life may be very various, but that is what we all really want; so what we want to get at is:  What is the basis of an enjoyable life?

I have no hesitation in saying that the secret of enjoying life is to take an interest in it.  The opposite of Livingness is Deadness, that is, inertia and stagnation.  Dying of “ennui” is a very real thing indeed, and if we would not die of this malady we must have an interest in life that will always keep going on.

Now for anything to interest us we must enter into the spirit of it.  If we do not enter into the spirit of a game it does not interest us; if we do not enter into the spirit of a book, it does not interest us, we are bored to death with it; and so on with everything.  So from our own experience we may lay down the maxim that “To enjoy anything we must enter into the spirit of it,” and if this be so, then, to enjoy the “Living Quality of Life” we must enter into the Spirit of Life itself.  I say the “Living Quality of Life” so as to dissociate it from all ideas of particular conditions; because what we are trying to get at is the fundamental principle of Life which creates conditions, and not the reflex of sensations, whether physical or mental,