Man and the Community. 209 



to snatch pleasure from the lower rather than the 

 higher sources, — he lives a life of internal conflict, 

 without peace and without happiness. Too late he 

 learns that only through the higher conception of 

 love can life be crowned ; that he has missed the 

 great prize which would have reconciled him to 

 the universal, and constituted him one of those 

 in the van of the upward and onward march of that 

 Great Progress which is inherent in Life. 



Divorced from the higher human love, the finest 

 and grandest possession of the sons of men, he 

 looks back at a life wasted in the pursuit of pleasures 

 which turned to pain and lamentation in his grasp. 

 Man is ever striving, though it may be uncon- 

 sciously, to conceive of and to attain that high and 

 perfect love which shall reconcile him to life and 

 to the universe. 



Even in failure, even when pursuing a false ideal, 

 there glimmers before him the saving and alluring 

 light of the true love. And so struggling on, 

 sometimes winning, sometimes failing, but always 

 striving and yearning, the race of man goes up- 

 ward. In time the efforts of these half-seeing, yet 

 ever longing souls pierce through the clouds, and 

 the sun streams with quickening radiance upon the 

 whole mass of humanity. 



Thus does the experience of the individual 

 become the knowledge of the race. 



14 



