before he has fully put forth his strength, and so giving his life the
pathos of an anti-climax. The more noble and able a man is, the less
satisfaction can he find in any material return which his work brings him;
no man with a touch of the artist in him can ever rest content with
anything short of the complete putting forth of all that is in him, and
the consciousness of having done his work well.

For a man's ultimate responsibility is met by what he is and does, not by
what he gains. When he sets an exterior reward of any kind before him as
the final goal of his endeavour, he breaks away from the divine order of
life and destroys that deep interior harmony which ought to keep a man's
spirit in time and tune with the creative element in the world.

We are not to seek specific rewards; they must come to us. They are the
recognition and fruit of work, not its inspiration and sustaining power.
Let a man select the right seed and give it the right soil, and sun, rain,
and the warm earth must do the rest. Goethe touched the heart of the
matter when he wrote:

"Shoot your own thread right through the earthly tissue
Bravely; and leave the gods to find the issue."

In all work of the highest quality God must be taken into account. No man
works in isolation and solitude; he works within the circle of a divine
order, and his chief concern is to work with that order. To aim
exclusively at one's own advancement and ease is to put oneself outside
that order and to sever oneself from those sources of power which feed and
sustain all whom they reach. In that order a man finds his place by
bringing to perfection all that is in him, and so making himself a new
centre of life and power among men.