Voltaire,
8. Man must develop his good inclinations. Providence did not implant them in man fully developed; they are embryonic. To make himself better, to improve himself by labor, therein is the principal task of a man's life.
Kant
V.
There is Only One Way to Improve the Life of Human
Society—by the Individual Efforts of Men Striving
After a Righteous and Moral Life
1. Men draw nearer to the Kingdom of God, that is to a righteous and blessed existence, only through the efforts of each individual striving to live a righteous life.
2. If you see that the social order is evil and you would improve it, know that there is only one way to accomplish it, and that is for all people to become better. And in order that all people may become better, there is only one means in your power: to become better yourself.
3. We frequently hear men argue that all efforts to improve life, to eradicate evil, to enthrone righteousness are fruitless, that all these things come about of their own accord. Men travel in a boat, the rowers go ashore, but those remaining on board fail to take up the oars and to row and imagine that the boat will move as before.
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE \7
4. **Ye8, very true, if only everybody understood it and realized that it is evil and unnecessary," thus argue some people on the subject of human ills. "Suppose one man cease from evil, refusing to participate in it, what will this amount to in the life of all people? Improvements in human life are brought about by the concerted action of the whole society and not by individual effort."
True enough, one swallow does not make springtime. But just because one swallow does not make springtime, should that one swallow that senses the spring refrain from flying, sit still and wait? If every bud, every blade of grass did so, springtime would never come. Even so in the coming of the Kingdom of God I must not stop to think whether I am the first or the one thousandth swallow, but sensing the coming of the Kingdom of God, I must right now, though I be alone, do all I can towards its realization.
"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you :
For everyone that asketh, receiveth; and he that seek-eth, findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened."
Matthew VII, 7-8.
5. "I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?" Luke XII, 49.
And why is this fire so slowly kindled? If so many centuries could pass and Christianity still has failed to alter the social order of life, how dare we think that these things come about of their own accord? The majority of people, though led to recognize the imperative truth of Christianity, still refrain from making this truth the basis of their actions. Why? Because people await a change from external conditions and refuse to comprehend that
this change is attained by the efforts of eadi individual in his own soul and not by any external mutaticms.
6. Our life is evil, why?
Because men lead evil lives. And men lead evil lives because they are evil themselves. Therefore, in order to stop life from bein^ evil, we must transform evil men into good men. How can we do this? No one can change all others, but every one can change himself. At first, it would seem, this will not mend matters. .What is one man against all others? But everybody complains that life is evil. And if everybody realizes that the evil of life is due to people being evil, and that no one can change all others, but everybody can change himself, and transform himself into a good man out of an evil man, and everybody begins to correct himself, then immediately all lives will improve.
Therefore it is our fault that life is evil, and it depends on us to make it good.
VI.
The Effort of Striving After Perfection Yields True Happiness to Man
1. Moral effort and the joy of the consciousness of life follow one another as the joy of rest follows the weariness of physical labor. Without physical labor there can be no joy of resting; without moral effort there can be no joy of the consciousness of life.
2. The reward of virtue is in the very effort of a good action. Cicero.
3. Man would cry out with pain if while refraining from labor he suddenly experienced the muscular ache which is the effect of manual toil. Even so the man who Ь a stranger to spiritual labor with his inner self experi-
ences an agonizing pain from vicissitudes which are borne unflincingly by him who sees the chief task of life in the effort of delivering himself from sins, errors and superstitions, that is in striving after moral perfection.
4. Look for no speedy or visible success from your strivings after good. You will not see the fruit of your efforts, for to the extent that you have advanced, so has also advanced the ideal of perfection after which you are striving. The effort of the mind is not a means for attaining a blessing, but the effort of the mind in itself is a blessing.
5. God gave to animals all that they need, but He did not give to man all that he needs; man must attain himself all that he needs. The highest wisdom of man was not bom within him; he must labor to attain it, and the greater his labor, the greater his reward. Babidic tables,
6. The Kingdom of God is taken by force. This means that in order to be delivered from evil and to become good, we require effort.
Effort is needed to refrain from evil. Refrain from evil and you will do good because the soul of man loves that which is good, and will do good if it be free from evil.
7. You 'are free agents, you feel that it is so. All specious arguments that fate or a law of nature, dominates all things, will never silence the two incorruptible witnesses of human freedom: the reproaches of the conscience and the majesty of martyrdom. Beginning with Socrates and down to Christ, and beginning with Christ down to those martyrs of all times who from generation to generation have died for the truth, all martyrs of the faith prove the error of this doctrine of slaves, loudly proclaiming: "We too have loved life and loved those dear ones who made our life worth while and who implored us to give up our
fight. Every heart-beat loudly appealed to us—livel and yet in obedience to the law of life we preferred death I"
And beginning with Cain, down to the meanest wretch of our own day, all those who have chosen the path of evil hear in the depths of their heart the voice of condemnation and of reproach, the voice that gives them no rest, which constantly asks; "Why did you turn from the path of goodness? You could, you can make an effort. You are free agents. It is within your power to remain steeped in sins or be delivered from them." Massini.
People imagine that the course of their life is in time— in the past or in the future. But this is a delusion: the true life of men is not in time, but always IS in that timeless spot where the past and the future meet and which we inexactly call the present time.
In this timeless point of the present, and therein alone, man is free, and therefore the true life of man is in the present, and in the present alone.
The True Life is in the Present
1. The past is no more, the future has not yet come. What is then? Only that point where the past and the future meet. This is seemingly nothing, yet in that point is the whole of our life.
2. We only imagine that there is time. Time is not. Time is merely a device by means of which we gradually see that which is in reality and which is ever the same. The eye does not see all of a globe at once, yet the globe exists all at once. In order that the eye may see the entire globe, the latter must be turned before the observing eye. Even the world revolves before the eyes of men in time. For the supreme reason there is no time: that which will be, is. Time and space is the disintegration of the infinite for the convenience of finite creatures. Amiel.
3. There is no before nor after. That which will happen to-morrow already really exists in eternity.