mselves, as
it were, for the satisfaction of these two great
opposites of the soul.

Pain and pleasure stand apart and separate,
as do the two sexes; and it is in the merging,
the making the two into one, that joy and deep
sensation and profound peace are obtained.
Where there is neither male nor female
neither pain nor pleasure, there is the god in
man dominant, and then is life real.

To state the matter in this way may savor
too much of the dogmatist who utters his
assertions uncontradicted from a safe pulpit;
but it is dogmatism only as a scientist's record
of effort in a new direction is dogmatism.
Unless the existence of the Gates of Gold can
be proved to be real, and not the mere phantasmagoria
of fanciful visionaries, then they
are not worth talking about at all. In the
nineteenth century hard facts or legitimate
arguments alone appeal to men's minds; and
so much the better. For unless the life we
advance towards is increasingly real and
actual, it is worthless, and time is wasted in
going after it. Reality is man's greatest need,
and he demands to have it at all hazards, at
any price. Be it so. No one doubts he is right.
Let us then go in search of reality.

IV

One definite lesson learned by all acute
sufferers will be of the greatest service to us
in this consideration. In intense pain a point is
reached where it is indistinguishable from its
opposite, pleasure. This is indeed so, but few
have the heroism or the strength to suffer to
such a far point. It is as difficult to reach
it by the other road. Only a chosen few have
the gigantic capacity for pleasure which will
enable them to travel to its other side. Most
have but enough strength to enjoy and to
become the slave of the enjoyment. Yet man
has undoubtedly within himself the heroism
needed for the great journey; else how is it
martyrs have smiled amid the torture?
How is it that the profound sinner who lives
for pleasure can at last feel stir within himself
the divine afflatus?

In both these cases the possibility has arisen
of finding the way; but too often that
possibility is killed by the overbalance of the
startled nature. The martyr has acquired a
passion for pain and lives in the idea of heroic
suffering; the sinner becomes blinded by the
thought of virtue and worships it as an end,
an object, a thing divine in itself; whereas it
can only be divine as it is part of that infinite
whole which includes vice as well as v