clearly right we recognize that the thought is turned toward others, and
that the personal self is forgotten. Wherefore we see that selfishness is
the one great wrong, and that perfect unselfishness is the crown of all
virtue. This gives us at once a rule of life. The man who wishes
intelligently to co-operate with the Divine Will must lay aside all thought
of the advantage or pleasure of the personal self, and must devote himself
exclusively to carrying out that Will by working for the welfare and
happiness of others.

This is a high ideal, and difficult of attainment, because there lies
behind us such a long history of selfishness. Most of us are as yet far
from the purely altruistic attitude; how are we to go to work to attain it,
lacking as we do the necessary intensity in so many of the good qualities,
and possessing so many which are undesirable?

Here comes into operation the great law of cause and effect to which I have
already referred. Just as we can confidently appeal to the laws of Nature
in the physical world, so may we also appeal to these laws of the higher
world. If we find evil qualities within us, they have grown up by slow
degrees through ignorance and through self-indulgence. Now that the
ignorance is dispelled by knowledge, now that in consequence we recognize
the quality as an evil, the method of getting rid of it lies obviously
before us.

For each of these vices there is a contrary virtue; if we find one of them
rearing its head within us, let us immediately determine deliberately to
develop within ourselves the contrary virtue. If a man realizes that in the
past he has been selfish, that means that he has set up within himself the
habit of thinking of himself first and pleasing himself, of consulting his
own convenience or his pleasure without due thought of the effect upon