discovering true life is the
same thing that the child first does in its desire
for activity in the body,--he must be able to
stand. It is clear that the power of standing,
of equilibrium, of concentration, of uprightness,
in the soul, is a quality of a marked character.
The word that presents itself most
readily as descriptive of this quality is
"confidence."

To remain still amid life and its changes,
and stand firmly on the chosen spot, is a feat
which can only be accomplished by the man
who has confidence in himself and in his
destiny. Otherwise the hurrying forms of life,
the rushing tide of men, the great floods of
thought, must inevitably carry him with them,
and then he will lose that place of consciousness
whence it was possible to start on the
great enterprise. For it _must_ be done knowingly,
and without pressure from without,--this
act of the new-born man. All the great
ones of the earth have possessed this confidence,
and have stood firmly on that place
which was to them the one solid spot in the
universe. To each man this place is of necessity
different. Each man must find his
earth and his own heaven.

We have the instinctive desire to relieve
pain, but we work in externals in this as in
everything else. We simply alleviate it; and
if we do more, and drive it from its first chosen
stronghold, it reappears in some other place
with reinforced vigor. If it is eventually driven
off the physical plane by persistent and successful
effort, it reappears on the mental or
emotional planes where no man can touch it.
That this is so is easily seen by those who
connect the various planes of sensation, and
who observe life with that additional illumination.
Men habitually regard these different
forms of feeling as actually separate, whereas
in fact they are evidently only different sides
of one centre,--the point of personality. If
that which arises in the centre, the fount of
life, demands some hindered action, and consequently
causes pain, the force thus created
being driven from one stronghold must find
another; it cannot be driven out. And all the
blendings of human life which cause emotion
and distress exist for its use and purposes as
well as for those of pleasure. Both have their
home in man; both demand their expression of
right. The marvellously delicate mechanism of
the human frame is constructed to answer to
their lightest touch; the extraordinary intricacies
of human relations evolve the