it cannot be wrong.  And in any event, it is helpful to speak of happiness to those who are sad, that thus at least they may learn what it is that happiness means.  They are ever inclined to regard it as something beyond them, extraordinary, out of their reach.  But if all who may count themselves happy were to tell, very simply, what it was that brought happiness to them, the others would see that between sorrow and joy the difference is but as between a gladsome, enlightened acceptance of life and a hostile, gloomy submission; between a large and harmonious conception of life, and one that is stubborn and narrow.  “Is that all?” the unhappy would cry.  “But we too have within us, then, the elements of this happiness.”  Surely you have them within you!  There lives not a man but has them, those only excepted upon whom great physical calamity has fallen.  But speak not lightly of this happiness.  There is no other.  He is the happiest man who best understands his happiness; for he is of all men most fully aware that it is only the lofty idea, the untiring, courageous, human idea, that separates gladness from sorrow.  Of this idea it is helpful to speak, and as often as may be; not with the view of imposing our own idea upon others, but in order that they who may listen shall, little by little, conceive the desire to possess an idea of their own.  For in no two men is it the same.  The one that you cherish may well bring no comfort to me; nor shall all your eloquence touch the hidden springs of my life.  Needs must I acquire my own, in myself, by myself; but you unconsciously make this the easier for me, by telling of the idea that is yours.  It may happen that I shall find solace in that which brings sorrow to you, and that which to you speaks of gladness may be fraught with affliction for me.  But no matter; into my grief will enter all that you saw of beauty and comfort, and into my joy there will pass all that was great in your sadness, if indeed my joy be on the same plane as your sadness.  It behoves us, the first thing of all, to prepare in our soul a place of some loftiness, where this idea may be lodged; as the priests of ancient religions laid the mountain peak bare, and cleared it of thorn and of root for the fire to descend from heaven.  There may come to us any day, from the depths of the planet Mars, the infallible formula of happiness, conveyed in the final truth as to the aim and the government of the universe.  Such a formula could only bring change or advancement unto our spiritual life in the degree of the desire and expectation of advancement in which we might long have been living.  The formula would be the same for all men, yet would each one benefit only in the proportion of the eagerness, purity, unselfishness, knowledge, that he had stored up in his soul.  All morality, all study of justice and happiness, should truly be no more than preparation, provision on the vastest scale—­a way of gaining experience, a stepping-stone laid down for what is to follow.  Surely, desirable day of all days were the one when at last we should live in absolute truth, in immovable logical certitude; but in the meantime it is given us to live in a truth more important still, the truth of our soul and our character; and some wise men have proved that this life can be lived in the midst of gravest material errors.