t that the sooner it is
gained the happier and more useful will he be.

He recognizes his life as nothing but a day at school, and his physical
body as a temporary vesture assumed for the purpose of learning through it.
He knows at once that this purpose of learning lessons is the only one of
any real importance, and that the man who allows himself to be diverted
from that purpose by any consideration whatever is acting with
inconceivable stupidity. To him the life devoted exclusively to physical
objects, to the acquisition of wealth or fame, appears the merest
child's-play--a senseless sacrifice of all that is really worth having for
the sake of a few moments' gratification of the lower part of his nature.
He "sets his affection on things above and not on things of the earth", not
only because he sees this to be the right course of action, but because he
realizes so clearly the valuelessness of these things of earth. He always
tries to take the higher point of view, for he knows that the lower is
utterly unreliable--that the lower desires and feelings gather round him
like a dense fog, and make it impossible for him to see anything clearly
from that level.

Whenever he finds a struggle going on within him he remembers that he
himself is the higher, and that this which is the lower is not the real
self, but merely an uncontrolled part of one of its vehicles. He knows that
though he may fall a thousand times on the way towards his goal, his reason
for trying to reach it remains just as strong after the thousandth fall as
it was in the beginning, so that it would not only be useless but unwise
and wrong to give way to despondency and hopelessness.

He begins his journey upon the road of progress at once--not only because
he knows that it is far easier for him now than it will be if he leaves the
effort until later, but chiefly because if he makes the endeavour now and
succeeds in achieving some progress, if he rises thereby to some higher
level, he is in a position to hold out a helping hand to those who have not
yet reached even that step on the ladder which he has gained. In that way
he takes a part, however humble it may be, in the great divine work of
evolution.

He knows that he has arrived at his present position only by a slow process
of growth, and so he does not expect instantaneous attainment of
perfection. He sees how inevitable is the great law of cause and effect,
and that when he once grasps the working o