imbecility. It is not a waste of energy, rather it furnishes the
motive-power to all human volition. It comes of the natural working of
the understanding that discerns good, and other good above that, and
so still higher and higher good without limit; and of the natural
working of the will, following up and fastening upon what the
understanding discerns as good. The desire in question, then, is by no
means a necessary evil, or natural flaw, in the human constitution.

10. It follows that the desire of perfect happiness is in man by the
normal growth of his nature, and for the better. But it would be a
vain desire, and objectless, if it were essentially incapable of
satisfaction: and man would be a made and abiding piece of
imperfection, if there were no good accessible to his intellectual
nature sufficient to meet its proper exigence of perfect happiness.
But no such perfect happiness is attainable in this world. Therefore
there must be a world to come, in which he who was man, now a
disembodied spirit, but still the same person, shall under due
conditions find a perfect good, the adequate object of his natural
desire. Else is the deepest craving of human nature in vain, and man
himself is vanity of vanities.

11. It may be objected that there is no need to go beyond this world
to explain how the desire of perfect happiness is not in vain. It
works like the desire of the philosopher's stone among the old
alchemists. The thing they were in search of was a chimera, but in
looking for it they found a real good, modern chemistry. In like
manner, it is contended, though perfect happiness is not to be had
anywhere, yet the desire of it keeps men from sitting down on the path
of progress; and thus to that desire we owe all our modern
civilization, and all our hope and prospect of higher civilization to