round of
reasoning.

Circumstances, however, are so complicated, thought is so deeply
rooted, and the conditions of happiness vary so, vastly with
individuals, that a man's entire soul-condition (although it may be
known to himself) cannot be judged by another from the external
aspect of his life alone. A man may be honest in certain directions,
yet suffer privations; a man may be dishonest in certain directions,
yet acquire wealth; but the conclusion usually formed that the one
man fails _because of his particular honesty,_ and that the other
_prospers because of his particular dishonesty,_ is the result of a
superficial judgment, which assumes that the dishonest man is almost
totally corrupt, and the honest man almost entirely virtuous. In the
light of a deeper knowledge and wider experience such judgment is
found to be erroneous. The dishonest man may have some admirable
virtues, which the other does, not possess; and the honest man
obnoxious vices which are absent in the other. The honest man reaps
the good results of his honest thoughts and acts; he also brings
upon himself the sufferings, which his vices produce. The dishonest
man likewise garners his own suffering and happiness.

It is pleasing to human vanity to believe that one suffers because
of one's virtue; but not until a man has extirpated every sickly,
bitter, and impure thought from his mind, and washed every sinful
stain from his soul, can he be in a position to know and declare
that his sufferings are the result of his good, and not of his bad
qualities; and on the way to, yet long before he has reached, that
supreme perfection, he will have found, working in his mind and
life, the Great Law which is absolutely just, and which cannot,
therefore, give good for evil, evil for good. Possessed of such
knowledge, he will then know, looking back upon his past ignorance
and blindness, that his life is, and always was, justly ordered, and
that all his past experiences, good and bad, were the equitable
outworking of his evolving, yet unevolved self.

Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results; bad
thoughts and actions can never produce good results. This is but
saying that nothing can come from corn but corn, nothing from
nettles but nettles. Men understand this law in the natural world,
and work with it; but few understand it in the mental and moral
world (though its operation there is just as simple and
undeviating), and they, therefore, do