as a remarkable experience I had on that evening. And it was not
merely a passing roseate flush due to my being in high spirits, such
as a man feels who has had a good breakfast or has heard that his
investments have paid a big dividend. I am not sure that I was at the
moment in what are usually called high spirits. What I felt was more
of the nature of a deep inner soul-satisfaction. And what I saw
amounted to this--that evil is the superficial, goodness the
fundamental characteristic of the world; affection and not animosity
the root disposition of men towards one another. Men are inherently
good not inherently wicked, though they have an uphill fight of it to
find scope and room for their goodness to declare itself, and though
they are placed in hard conditions and want every help they can to
bring their goodness out. Fundamentally men are consuming with
affection for one another and only longing for opportunity to exert
that affection. They want to behave straightly, honourably, and in a
neighbourly fashion towards one another, and are only too thankful
when means and conditions can be found which will let them
indulge this inborn feeling of fellowship. Wickedness, of course,
exists. But wickedness is not the essential characteristic of men. It is
due to ignorance, immaturity, and neglect, like the naughtinesses of
children. It springs from the conditions in which men find
themselves, and not from any radical inclination within themselves.
With maturity and reasonable conditions the innate goodness which
is the essential characteristic will assert itself. This is what came to
me with burning conviction. And it arose from no ephemeral sense
of exhilaration, nor has it since evaporated away. It has remained
with me for fifteen years, and so I suppose will last for the rest of
my life. Of course in a sense there has been disillusionment, both as
to myself and as to the world. As one comes into the dull round of
everyday life the glow fades away and all seems grey and colourless.
Nevertheless, the conviction remains that the glow was the _real,_
and that the grey is the superficial. The glow was at the heart and is
what some day _will_ be--or, anyhow, _might_ be.

An additional ground I have for believing it to be true is that on that
mountain-side near Lhasa I had a specially favourable opportunity
of looking at the world from, as it were, a proper focal distance. And
it is only from a proper focal distance that we can