, to have solved enigmas. But the noble,
soaring spirit leaves no trace behind, and the dull, mediocre person
plows his name in deep and enduring characters in the soil of his
native land. What was wanting in Eynhardt to make him not only a
harmonious but a useful being? Obviously only the will. But was this
want an organic one? I do not think so, for his lofty moral beauty was
perfect in proportion and balance, and this noble nature could not
possibly have been born incomplete, impossible that in a being so
perfectly formed in all other respects such an important organ as the
will should be missing. His absence of volition was but the result of
his perception of the vanity of all earthly ambitions, and his absence
of desire the outcome of his contempt for all that was worthless and
transitory, his aversion to the ways of the world a tragic foregoing of
the hope of ever getting behind it, and reaching the eternal root and
significance of the thing itself.

"Why was this German Buddhist not endowed with Haber's cheerful
activity? What an ideal and crowning flower of manhood would he not
have been if he had not only thought but acted! But am I not desiring
the impossible? Does not the one nature preclude the other? I fear so.
In order to attack unconcernedly that which lies nearest to us, we must
be unable to see beyond, like the bull charging at the red cloak. He
would not do it, if behind the red rag, he saw the man with the sword,
and behind the man with the sword the thousand spectators who will not
leave the arena till the sharp steel has pierced his heart. He who sees
or divines behind the nearest objects their distant causes, paralyzed
by the vision of the endless chain of cause and effect, loses the
courage to act. And inversely, to retain that courage, to strive with
pleasure and zeal after earthly things, one must make use of the world
and its ordinances, must move the pieces on the chess-board of life
with patience, and, according to its puerile rules, attach importance
to much that is narrow and paltry, and that is what, in his superior
wisdom, the sage will not stoop to do.

"I always come back to this thought. If the world consisted entirely of
Habers the earth would flourish and blossom, there would be abundance
of food and money, but our life would be like that of the beasts of the
field that graze and are happy when they chew the cud. If, on the other
hand, there were only Eynhardts, our existence would