e windows of your soul are dirty and streaked, covered with matter
foreign to them, then the world as you look out of them will be to you
dirty and streaked and out of order. Cease your complainings, however;
keep your pessimism, your "poor, unfortunate me" to yourself, lest you
betray the fact that your windows are badly in need of something. But
know that your friend, who keeps his windows clean, that the Eternal
Sun may illumine all within and make visible all without,--know that he
lives in a different world from yours.

Then, go wash your windows, and instead of longing for some other
world, you will discover the wonderful beauties of this world; and if
you don't find transcendent beauties on every hand here, the chances
are that you will never find them anywhere.

"The poem hangs on the berry-bush
When comes the poet's eye,
And the whole street is a masquerade
When Shakspeare passes by."

This same Shakspeare, whose mere passing causes all this commotion, is
the one who put into the mouth of one of his creations the words: "The
fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are
underlings." And the great work of his own life is right good evidence
that he realized full well the truth of the facts we are considering.
And again he gave us a great truth in keeping with what we are
considering when he said:

"Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By _fearing_ to attempt."

There is probably no agent that brings us more undesirable conditions
than fear. We should live in fear of nothing, nor will we when we come
fully to know ourselves. An old French proverb runs

"Some of your griefs you have cured,
And the sharpest you still have survived;
But what _torments of pain_ you endured
From evils that never arrived."

Fear and lack of faith go hand in hand. The one is born of the other.
Tell me how much one is given to fear, and I will tell you how much he
lacks in faith. Fear is a most expensive guest to entertain, the same
as worry is: so expensive are they that no one can afford to entertain
them. _We invite what we fear, the same as, by a different attitude of
mind, we invite and attract the influences and conditions we desire_.
The mind dominated by fear opens the door for the entrance of the very
things, for the actualization of the very conditions it fears.

"Where are you going?" asked an Eastern pilgrim o