it until, perhaps, pushed by some bitter experiences,
instead of moulding it, through the agency of the inner forces, exactly
as we would have it. We need to strike the happy balance between the
custom in this respect of the Eastern and Western worlds, and go to the
extreme of neither the one nor the other. This alone will give the ideal
life; and it is the ideal life only that is the thoroughly satisfactory
life. In the Orient there are many who are day after day sitting in the
quiet, meditating, contemplating, idealizing, with their eyes focused on
their stomach in spiritual revery, while through lack of outer
activities, in their stomachs they are actually starving. In this
Western world, men and women, in the rush and activity of our accustomed
life, are running hither and thither, with no centre, no foundation upon
which to stand, nothing to which they can anchor their lives, because
they do not take sufficient time to come into the realization of what
the centre, of what the reality of their lives is.

If the Oriental would do his contemplating, and then get up and do his
work, he would be in a better condition; he would be living a more
normal and satisfactory life. If we in the Occident would take more time
from the rush and activity of life for contemplation, for meditation,
for idealization, for becoming acquainted with our real selves, and then
go about our work manifesting the powers of our real selves, we would be
far better off, because we would be living a more natural, a more normal
life. To find one's centre, to become centred in the Infinite, is the
first great essential of every satisfactory life; and then to go out,
thinking, speaking, working, loving, living, from this centre.

* * * * *

In the highest character-building, such as we have been considering,
there are those who feel they are handicapped by what we term
_heredity_. In a sense they are right; in another sense they are totally
wrong. It is along the same lines as the thought which many before us
had inculcated in them through the couplet in the New England Primer:
"In Adam's fall, we sinned all." Now, in the first place, it is rather
hard to understand the justice of this if it is true. In the second
place, it is rather hard to understand why it is true. And in the third
place there is no truth in it at all. We are now dealing with the real,
essential self, and, however old Adam is, God is eternal. This m