But the great mistake, which seems peculiar to our nature, is that we
are ever connecting happiness with the idea of receiving, and are always
thinking of giving as of a loss to ourselves. We do not understand that
selfishly to keep is to be impoverished, while freely to relinquish is
to be enriched. Yet here is the grand discovery of the spiritual life;
and once this discovery made, in order that the spiritual life may
attain its object, it only remains to find the strength to put it into
practice. Selfishness is wrong, no doubt, but it is not only wrong, it
is ignorant, for it looks for happiness where it is not; and it is
unhappy, for it wanders from the paths of peace.

Let us now apply these considerations to the Infinite Being, and to the
problem of the end of the creation. Leaving ourselves to the guidance of
the laws of our reason, let us ask what object we shall be able to
attribute to the Creator in His work? Will creation be the effect of a
necessity? No, Sirs, for in that case everything in the world would be a
matter of fate, and liberty would remain inexplicable. If a blind power
were directing the Almighty Will, we should return to the worship of
destiny. Will creation, then, be the carrying out of a design of which
the motive is interest? But what conceivable interest can influence Him
who is the plentitude of being? Or will creation be a duty? But whence
should come the obligation for the Being who is in Himself the absolute
law? Creation can only be conceived of as a work of love. But of what
love? Of that which is the manifestation of absolute disinterestedness,
of supreme liberty. Allow me to introduce into this discussion some
eloquent words, uttered in the year 1848, in the midst of the
revolutionary agitations of Paris. The problem which we are debating was
treated then, in the presence of an excited crowd, by Pere
Lacordaire.[181] He is entering upon this question: What can have been
the motive of the creation? And he distinguishes between love in the
Platonic sense of it, for which he retains the name of love, and the
love which gives itself, which he designates by the term--goodness.
"Was it then love," he asks, "which impelled the Divine Will, and said
to it unceasingly: Go and create? Is it love which we must thus regard
as our first father? But, alas! love itself has a cause in the beauty of
its object; and what beauty could that dead and icy shade possess before
God, which preceded the unive