of living, as in all the arts which illustrate and enrich living, the
amateur and the dilettante have no real position; they never attain
to that mastery of knowledge or of execution which alone give reality
to a man's life or work. Mastery in any art comes to those only who
give themselves without reservation or stint to their task; mastery
in the supreme art of living is within reach of those only who live
completely in every faculty and relation.

To stand in the closest and most vital relation to one's time is,
therefore, the first condition of comprehending one's age and getting
from it what it has to give. But while a man must be in and with his
time in the most vital sense, he must not be wholly of it. To get the
vital enrichment which flows from identification with one's age, and
at the same time to get the detachment which enables one to see his
time in true relation to all time, is one of the problems which
requires the highest wisdom for its solution. It is easy to become
entirely absorbed in one's age, or it is easy to detach one's self
from it, and study it in a cold and critical temper; but to get its
warmth and vitality and escape its narrowing and limiting influence is
so difficult that comparatively few men succeed in striking the
balance between two divergent tendencies.

A man gets power and knowledge from his time in the degree in which he
suffers it to enlarge and vitalise him; he loses power and knowledge
in the degree in which he suffers it to limit his vision and confine
his interests. The Time Spirit is the greatest of our teachers so long
as it is the interpreter of the Eternal Spirit; it is the most
fallible and misleading of teachers when it attempts to speak for
itself. The visible and material things by which we are surrounded are
of immense helpfulness so long as they symbolise invisible and