whatever plane. We may not have literary, artistic, or scientific skill to
present to others the results of our communings with Nature, but the joy of
this sympathetic indrawing will nevertheless produce a corresponding
outflow manifesting itself in the happier look and kindlier mien of him who
thus realizes his oneness with every aspect of the whole. He realizes--and
this is the great point in that attitude of mind which is not directed to
any specific external object--that, for himself, he is, and always must be
the centre of all this galaxy of Life, and thus he contemplates himself as
seated at the centre of infinitude, not an infinitude of blank space, but
pulsating with living being, in all of which he knows that the true essence
is nothing but good. This is the very opposite to a selfish
self-centredness; it, is the centre where we find that we both receive from
all and flow out to all. Apart from this principle of circulation there is
no true life, and if we contemplate our central position only as affording
us greater advantages for in-taking, we have missed the whole point of our
studies by missing the real nature of the Life-principle, which is action
and re-action. If we would have life enter into us, we ourselves must enter
into life--enter into the spirit of it, just as we must enter into the
spirit of a book or a game to enjoy it. There can be no action at a centre
only. There must be a perpetual flowing out towards the circumference, and
thence back again to the centre to maintain a vital activity; otherwise
collapse must ensue either from anaemia or congestion. But if we realize
the reciprocal nature of the vital pulsation, and that the outflowing
consists in the habit of mind which gives itself to the good it sees in
others, rather than in any specific actions, then we shall find that the
cultivation of this disposition will provide innumerable avenues for the
universal livingness to flow through us, whether as giving or receiving,
which we had never before suspected: and this action and re-action will so
build up our own vitality that each day will find us more thoroughly alive
than any that had preceded it. This, then, is the attitude of repose in