o the goal he would attain is always far ahead of him. Thus are we
tricked and apparently mocked by nature until we finally awake to the
fact that all the objects of desire--the fine raiment, the jewels, the
palaces, the wealth, the power, are but vain and empty things; and
that the real reward for all our efforts to secure them is not these
objects at all _but the new powers we have evolved in getting them;_
powers that we did not before possess and which we should not have
evolved but for nature's great propulsive force--desire. The man who
accumulates a fortune by many years of persistent effort in organizing
and developing a business enterprise, by careful planning and deep
thinking, may naturally enough look upon the fortune he will possess
for a few years before it passes on to others, as his reward. But the
truth is that it is a very transient and perishable and worthless
thing compared to the new powers that were unconsciously evolved in
getting it--powers that will be retained by the man and be brought
into use in future incarnations.

Desire, then, plays a most important role in human evolution. It
awakens, stimulates, propels. What wind is to the ship, what steam is
to the locomotive, desire is to the human being.

It has been written in a great book, "Kill out desire," and elsewhere
it is written, "Resist not evil." We may find, in similar exalted
pronouncements, truths that are very useful to disciples but which
might be confusing and misleading to the man of the world if he
attempted to literally apply them. Perhaps for the average mortal
"kill out desire" might be interpreted "transmute desire." Without
desire man would be in a deathlike and dangerous condition--a
condition in which further progress would be impossible. But by
transmuting the lower desires into the higher he moves steadily
forward and upward without losing the motive power that urges him
forever onward.

To transmute desire, to continually replace the lower with the higher,
really is killing desire out but it is doing it by the slow and safe
evolutionary process. As to crushing it suddenly, that is simply
impossible; but substitution may work wonders. Suppose, for example,
that a young man is a gambler and his parents are much distressed
about it. The common and foolish course is to lecture him on the sin
of gambling and to tearfully urge him to associate only with very
proper young men. But the young gambler is not in the least intere