52 MYSTICISM AND LOGIC 



for proving that it is never false, has been the means of 

 purifying our hopes by the discovery of many austere 

 truths. 



But there is in resignation a further good element : 

 even real goods, when they are unattainable, ought not 

 to be fretfully desired. To every man comes, sooner or 

 later, the great renunciation. For the young, there is 

 nothing unattainable ; a good thing desired with the 

 whole force of a passionate will, and yet impossible, is to 

 them not credible. Yet, by death, by illness, by poverty, 

 or by the voice of duty, we must learn, each one of us, 

 that the world was not made for us, and that, however 

 beautiful may be the things we crave, Fate may never- 

 theless forbid them. It is the part of courage, when mis- 

 fortune comes, to bear without repining the ruin of our 

 hopes, to turn away our thoughts from vain regrets. 

 This degree of submission to Power is not only just and 

 right : it is the very gate of wisdom. 



But passive renunciation is not the whole of wisdom ; 

 for not by renunciation alone can we build a temple for 

 the worship of our own ideals. Haunting foreshadowings 

 of the temple appear in the realm of imagination, in 

 music, in architecture, in the untroubled kingdom of 

 reason, and in the golden sunset magic of lyrics, where 

 beauty shines and glows, remote from the touch of 

 sorrow, remote from the fear of change, remote from the 

 failures and disenchantments of the world of fact. In 

 the contemplation of these things the vision of heaven 

 will shape itself in our hearts, giving at once a touch- 

 stone to judge the world about us, and an inspiration by 

 which to fashion to our needs whatever is not incapable 

 of serving as a stone in the sacred temple. 



Except for those rare spirits that are born without sin, 

 there is a cavern of darkness to be traversed before that 



