ing, the more we will find that they are not only eminently
practical, but in a sense, and in the deepest and truest sense, they
are the only practical things there are.

There are people who continually pride themselves upon being
exceedingly "practical," but many times those who of themselves think
nothing about this are the most practical people the world knows. And,
on the other hand, those who take great pride in speaking of their own
practicality are many times the least practical. Or again, in some
ways they may be practical, but so far as life in its totality is
concerned, they are absurdly impractical.

What profit, for example, can there be for the man who, materially
speaking, though he has gained the whole world, has never yet become
acquainted with his own soul? There are multitudes of men all about us
who are entirely missing the real life, men who have not learned even
the a, b, c of true living. Slaves they are, abject slaves to their
temporary material accumulations. Men who thinking they possess their
wealth are on the contrary completely possessed by it. Men whose lives
are comparatively barren in service to those about them and to the
world at large. Men who when they can no longer hold the body,--the
agency by means of which they are related to the material world,--will
go out poor indeed, pitiably poor. Unable to take even the smallest
particle of their accumulations with them, they will enter upon the
other form of life naked and destitute.

The kindly deeds, the developed traits of character, the realized
powers of the soul, the real riches of the inner life and unfoldment,
all those things that become our real and eternal possessions, have
been given no place in their lives, and so of the real things of life
they are destitute. Nay, many times worse than destitute. We must not
suppose that habits once formed are any more easily broken off in the
other form of life than they are in this. If one voluntarily grows a
certain mania here, we must not suppose that the mere dropping of the
body makes all conditions perfect. All is law, all is cause and
effect. As we sow, so shall we also reap, not only in this life but in
all lives.

He who is enslaved with the sole desire for material possessions here
will continue to be enslaved even after he can no longer retain his
body. Then, moreover, he will have not even the means of gratifying
his desires. Dominated by this habit, he will be