y assume.

We limit ourselves when we try to fix accurately beforehand the
particular form of good that we shall produce. We should aim not so much
at having or making some particular thing as at expressing all that we
are. The expressing will grow out of realising the treasures that are
ours already, and contemplating the beauty, the affirmative side, of all
that we are _now_, apart from the negative conceptions and detractions
which veil this positive good from us. When we do this we shall be
astonished to see what possibilities reside in ourselves as we are and
with our present surroundings, all unlovely as we may deem them: and
commencing to work at once upon whatever we find of affirmative in
these, and withdrawing our thought from what we have hitherto seen of
negative in them, the right road will open up before us, leading us in
wonderful ways to the development of powers that we never suspected, and
the enjoyment of happiness that we never anticipated.

We have never been out of our right path, only we have been walking in
it backwards instead of forwards, and now that we have begun to follow
the path in the right direction, we find that it is none other than the
way of peace, the path of joy, and the road to eternal life. These
things we may attain by simply living naturally with ourselves. It is
because we are trying to be or do something which is not natural to us
that we experience weariness and labour, where we should find all our
activities joyously concentrated on objects which lead to their own
accomplishment by the force of the love that we have for them. But when
we make the grand discovery of how to live naturally, we shall find it
to be all, and more than all, that we had ever desired, and our daily
life will become a perpetual joy to ourselves, and we shall radiate
light and life wherever we go.

XII

RELIGIOUS OPINIONS

That great and wise writer, George Eliot, expressed her matured views on
the subject of religious opinions in these words: "I have too profound a
conviction of the efficacy that lies in all sincere faith, and the
spiritual blight that comes with no faith, to have any negative
propagandism left in me." This had not always been her attitude, for in
her youth she had had a good deal of negative propagandism in her; but
the experience of a lifetime led her to form this estimate of the value
of sincere faith, independently of the particular form of thought which
leads to it