instead. But even so,
the thoughts buzz in one's ears; and then, too, the very wonder about
such things has produced some of the most beautiful things in the
world, such as _Hamlet_, or Keats' _Ode to the Nightingale_, things we
could not well do without. Who is to decide which is the nobler,
wiser, righter course? To lose oneself in a deep wonder, with an
anxious hope that one may discern the light; or, on the other hand, to
mingle with the world, to work, to plan, to strive, to talk, to do the
conventional things? We choose (so we call it) the path that suits us
best, though we disguise our motives in many ways, because we hardly
dare to confess to ourselves how frail is our faculty of choice at all.
But, to speak frankly, what we all do is to follow the path where we
feel most at home, most natural; and the longer I live the more I feel
that we do the things we are impelled to do, the works prepared for us
to walk in, as the old collect says. How often, in real life, do we
see any one making a clean sweep of all his conditions and
surroundings, to follow the path of the soul? How often do we see a
man abjure wealth, or resist ambition, or disregard temperament,
_unexpectedly_? Not once, I think, to speak for myself, in the whole
of my experience.

This, then, is the _motif_ of the following book: that whether we are
conquerors or conquered, triumphant or despairing, prosperous or
pitiful, well or ailing, we are all these things through Him that loves
us. We are here, I believe, to learn rather than to teach, to endure
rather than to act, to be slain rather than to slay; we are tolerated
in our errors and our hardness, in our conceit and our security, by the
great, kindly, smiling Heart that bade us be. We can make things a
little easier for ourselves and each other; but the end is not there:
what we are meant to become is joyful, serene, patient, waiting
momently upon God; we are to become, if we can, content not to be
content, full of tenderness and loving-kindness for all the frail
beings that, like ourselves, suffer and rejoice. But though we are
bound to ameliorate, to improve, to lessen, so far as we can, the
brutal promptings of the animal self that cause the greatest part of
our unhappiness, we have yet to learn to hope that when things seem at
their worst, they are perhaps at their best, for then we are, indeed,
at work upon our hard lesson; and perhaps the day may come when,
looking back upon the