e can be no peace of mind,
no self-respect, no sense of living truly and for the best, unless
one's action can be conceived as wholly saving and up-building, as
contributing in its place and in its way to the general forward
movement. This, I think, is the deeper explanation of the buoyancy of
devoted people, of that buoyancy which was a source of such great
wonder to the disillusioned wise men of ancient times. And this, I
think, is the meaning of the Christian teaching that it is more blessed
to give than to receive; and that the love of one's God is to grow out
of the love of one's neighbor.

I have endeavored to show that the highest good is the greatest good;
that it may not only be inferred from the present good, but that it
actually _consists_ of the present good, with more like it, and with
the present evil eliminated. By _mysticism_ I mean that species of
formalism in which the highest good, out of respect for its exaltation,
is divorced from the present good, and so emptied of content.
Professor James has said that it is {117} characteristic of
rationalists and sentimentalists, to "extract a quality from the muddy
particulars of experience, and find it so pure when extracted that they
contrast it with each and all its muddy instances as an opposite and
higher, nature." [29] There is a peculiar liability to such
abstraction in religion, for religion involves a judgment of
insufficiency against every limited achievement. A longing after
unqualified good is the very breath of enlightened religion; and in
order that that ideal may be kept pure, it must not be identified with
any partial good. Indeed, the office of religion requires it to
condemn as only partial, good that is commonly taken to be sufficient.
Now there is only one way of defining a good that shall be universal
without being merely formal, and that is by defining perfection
quantitatively rather than qualitatively; substituting for the Platonic
Absolute Good, in which the present good is refined away into a phrase
or symbol, the maximum good, in which the present good is saved and
multiplied. He who believes that he conceives goodness otherwise than
as the good which he already possesses, deceives himself; as does the
author of the _Religio Medici_, when he says:

That wherein God Himself is happy, the holy Angels are happy, in whose
defect the Devils are unhappy, that dare I call happiness; whatsoever
{118} conduceth unto this may with an