The Ideal State 299 



Disease and triumphs over Death. On the roaring 

 billows of Time, thou are not engulfed, but borne aloft 

 into the azure of Eternity. Love not pleasure ; love 

 God. This is the everlasting Yea, wherein all contra- 

 diction is solved ; wherein whoso walks and works it 

 is well with him." 



Again, we must put to ourselves another question. If 

 men find blessedness in the Good, why do they so 

 universally choose the Evil ? As was said before, 

 environment accounts for much. " We needs must love 

 the highest when we see it," and it is therefore our duty 

 to bring the highest within the reach of all by means of 

 a perfect physical, intellectual, and ethical environ- 

 ment. Further, we know that the mists of passion 

 obscure the mental and spiritual vision. These will 

 come more and more under control when men uni- 

 versally attain to realisation of the true self by means 

 of the renunciation of the baser elements ; and this 

 must follow the permeation of men's minds with the 

 altruism of Jesus' thoughts and teaching. 



We must further ask : Is it the case that men are 

 miserable in doing evil if their evil is successful ? We 

 know that the best minds of the past and the present 

 say they are. With success and a good digestion a man 

 may have little misery over his wrong-doing for a long 

 time, but ultimately his real nature, his true self, will 

 speak, not in the next world, but here. But even if it 

 did not, the argument remains as strong as ever, for 

 the men who are most fully men — who, by common 

 consent, have reached nearest the ideal of manhood, 

 who have seen the beauty and feel the peace of the 

 good — would look and do look upon the fate of such a 

 man as the most miserable of all. He is so false to his 

 higher nature that he has almost ceased to recognise 

 the fact. Whenever a man gets into the region of the 

 true in thought, the beautiful in Art or Nature, and 



