charm,--unless you, equally with all your hearts and all your love,
resolutely and irrevocably WILLED to learn.

Nevertheless, despite your possible indifference,--your often sheer
inertia--I cannot pass you by, having peace and comfort for myself
without at least offering to share that peace and comfort with you.
Many of you are very sad,--and I would rather you were happy. Your
ways of living are trivial and unsatisfactory--your so-called
'pleasant' vices lead you into unforeseen painful perplexities--your
ideals of what may be best for your own enjoyment and advancement
fall far short of your dreams,--your amusements pall on your over-
wearied senses,--your youth hurries away like a puff of thistledown
on the wind,--and you spend all your time feverishly in trying to
live without understanding Life. Life, the first of all things, the
essence of all things,--Life which is yours to hold and to keep, and
to RE-CREATE over and over again in your own persons,--this precious
jewel you throw away, and when it falls out of your possession by
your own act, you think such an end was necessary and inevitable.
Poor unhappy mortals! So self-sufficient, so proud, so ignorant!
Like some foolish rustic, who, finding a diamond, sees no difference
between it and a bit of glass, you, with the whole Universe sweeping
around you in mighty beneficent circles of defensive, protective and
ever re-creative power,--power which is yours to use and to control-
-imagine that the entire Cosmos is the design of mere blind
unintelligent Chance, and that the Divine Life which thrills within
you serves no purpose save to lead you to Death! Most wonderful and
most pitiful it is that such folly, such blasphemy should still
prevail,--and that humanity should still ascribe to the Almighty
Creator less wisdom and less love than that with which He has
endowed His creatures. For the very first lesson in the beginning of