hem not to belong to themselves,
but to their master, who will require it of them, increased. This
grace, this gift, is what may be called their Cause. Sometimes it
appears to them in winning guise, seen in the depths of the eyes of a
beloved one, or symbolised by a flag, or expressed through a song.
Sometimes they think of it more austerely, and name it "science," or
"the service," or "the truth." Sometimes they conceive it expressly as
a religious object, and call it, not unwisely, "God's will." But
however they conceive it, or whatever name they give to it, it has
certain features by which you may easily know it.

The Cause, for people of this spirit, is never one individual person
alone, even if, as in the lover's case, the devoted person centres it
about the self of one beloved. For even the lovers know that they
transfigure the beloved being, and speak of their love in terms that
could not be true, unless that which they really serve were much more
than any one individual. The Cause for any such devoted servant of a
cause as we have been describing _is some conceived, and yet also
real, spiritual unity which links many individual lives in one, and
which is therefore essentially superhuman, in exactly the sense in
which we found the realities of the world of the reason to be
superhuman._ Yet the cause is not, on that {200} account, any mere
abstraction. It is a live something: "My home," "my family," "my
country," "my service," "mankind," "the church," "my art," "my
Science," "the cause of humanity," or, once more, "God's will,"--such
are names for the cause. One thinks of all these objects as living
expressions of what perfectly concrete and needy people want and
require. But one also thinks of the cause as unifying many individuals
in its service, and as graciously furnishing to them what they need,
namely, the opportunity to be one in spirit. The cause, then, is
something based upon human needs, and inclusive of human efforts, and
alive with all the warmth of human consciousness and of human love and
desire and effort. One also thinks of the cause as _superhuman in the
scope, the wealth, the unity, and the reasonableness of its purposes
and of its accomplishments._

Such is the cause. That the individual loves it is, in any one case,
due to the chances of his temperament and of his development. That it
can be conceived and served is a matter of social experience. That it
is more worthy to be served than are an