a country when one element of the population looks down upon and tyrannizes over another element. The final overthrow of the Pharaoic dynasty serves as a vivid illustration of how impossible it is for a land to maintain supremacy or for a government to remain in power if the throne be not established in equity.

All teachers of higher than ordinary thought must establish their claims to call their system of philosophy progressive and advanced by demonstrating in actual life the complete practicability of the gospel of federation. Reciprocity is the soul of all successful communal enterprise; one State, like one individual, must work with and for instead of without or against neighboring States and individuals. Let the new century become a veritable embodiment of new thought concerning neighborliness, for only as new thought enters the general mind and becomes ultimated in newness of social and industrial action can we hope to see fulfilled the glorious dreams we all do well to indulge of a new earth corresponding with a new heaven wherein dwelleth righteousness. The new heaven must be our own regenerated interior nature, whence the new earth-a new exterior condition-will spontaneously proceed as inevitably as a growing tree, with healthy roots beneath the soil, puts forth in orderly sequence leaves, flowers, and fruits in their ap pointed season.

HEAVEN is as present now as ever it will be. God is here in his magnificence to-day, as he is in the courts of the angels. We must not dream of postponing our heaven. We must prepare to enter in now by loyal service of God every instant.-W. H. Channing.

IF your reality be real, it will bear to be lived by in every mean detail of life. If friction with fact belittle your ideal, the fact will never become a falsehood. Your ideal will have to be recast, because it is fanciful.-Mozoomdar.

THE PROBLEM OF HAPPINESS.

BY STANTON KIRKHAM DAVIS.

We are born into the consciousness of material things and are brought under the dominion of the senses when first we open our eyes, and so it is that men fall naturally into the belief that to eat and be clothed, to marry and beget sons and accumulate property, are the paramount considerations-nor ever question it. Only now and then is one born into the consciousness of the Spirit; only now and again one who sees these things to be secondary and not in themselves sufficient ends in life. What wonder, then, that as men grow older they grow disheartened and become cynics? What wonder, indeed, that the problem of happiness finds so seldom a solution in terms of actual life; for, considering the neglect of essential factors, how else can it be?

Many factors, of a truth, enter into our problem. There is courage, for instance, which were it a man's sole possession would in itself confer a considerable degree. There is perception, will, habit-education, which has reference to all of these. Are we being educated, that is, or stimulated, in the direction peculiarly our own, that we may come to express that something which is in us? It is obvious that education without reference to this will not contribute to happiness. If capital lie unused, if character be unformed, there must be unrest. In such case we cannot too soon have done with book learning and begin the culture of the will and the affections. Does our mode of living tend to educate us, above all, away from our false and negative tendencies, in the direction of aspirations and real aims-out of the Adam into the Christ? And this is the education that is never ended, and it is never too late to begin. Nor let us neglect the sense of humor-a brave virtue, a practical virtue, a friend indeed. "To sit on a stile and continue to smile" is a better

philosophy than many another, and is vexed with no dogma. We cannot laugh too much so long as our mirth is kindly. True humor need create no false occasions, and it brings no heartaches. It begets good will and is a mental and moral buffer. The man of coarse habit and coarse thinking needs it not so much as the gentle soul-to him it is indispensable. Out of the flux of things it everywhere extracts some gold. Its possessor carries his own sunshine-gilds the dreariest circumstance and enlivens what else would be monotony. So is it recuperative and wholesome, and, being cultivable, it, no less than the love of the beautiful, comes within the scope of a liberal self-education.

Many factors indeed-factors subjective and psychologic; not legacies and estates and voyages, so much as interior states and aspects, and mental attitudes, to be summed up in this one supreme consideration-you shall find yourself. Until this is accomplished every structure builded is without foundation. Find yourself, provisionally, heart and will and intellect-nor neglect any; find yourself ultimately in God, in the supreme Heart and Will and Intellect, and there perceive your inseparable identity. No outcast, no renegade, no outlaw art thou, O Man, but still and forever the child of the Father; Life and Love and Beauty thine inheritance. For thee ever hope, ever sweet influences; no time too late; no goal too distant. Courage, then!

It has thus been the chief office of any true philosophy of living to show that happiness is something apart from pleasure, which is but a fool's paradise; that it reverts to an inner state, is the outcome of an inward poise and serenity, and therefore not greatly dependent upon externals. We may be unhappyuneasy-in spite of ease of circumstance and the most favorable surroundings. Again, we may be sick and happy, poor and happy, alone and happy. But, thanks be to the genius of the hour, we need no longer state our doctrine so narrowly as did the Stoics, who placed such things as health and environment

beyond the will. We shall still be resigned to the inevitable, but we have wonderfully revised our opinion as to the nature of this. That we shall seek coalition with the Real, as being alone inevitable, were perhaps to state it better, as the necessity now appears. Thus, while happiness reverts to an inner state, it is at the same time from an inner state that health and environment proceed. Our philosophy has so broadened its content as to see that mind which underlies happiness underlies these as well; whereas it was passive it has now become active and regards the will as the instrument of Truth for the projection of harmonious environment and the direction of thought into healthful channels.

If you have no revolution in your life, and are as yet in your period of feudalism, you shall experience anarchy and the overthrow of a whole line of degenerate kings before you emerge from despotism and evolve at last a stable self-government. Alas, if when the time is ripe we leap not to our feet and don the red cap in the name of Liberty! Thence much confusion and strife, the clank of arms, the overturning of all things even to those that are worthy and acceptable; all this before a new order arises from the turbulence: in the end to leave the Jacobins to guillotine one another, and so be rid of them.

It is a thankless task to read philosophy if we can live none. What does it concern us what Kant said, what Hegel, or Fichte, or Schelling, if we have no convictions of our own? Some little philosophy for this daily life is the crying need. But it is alone a spontaneous and inspired utterance that can aid us. Who has not felt the futility of all "systems" of philosophy? They fall cold on our ears-do not warm in us any new life nor hope: just as a treatise on morals is a bore, and rules of conduct an impertinence, while the shining example of a free and noble life is refreshing and uplifting. Because life and love are one we must live from our hearts, write from our hearts, speak from our hearts.

Let us not be at pains, then, to supplant God in our consciousness by a system of metaphysics; for, God-given and indispensable though it be, metaphysics can still be to us but the ground for a working plan of life. But, like everything else,— the science of chemistry no less than the Church of Rome,—it involves an act of faith. We have but to push it far enough and we are confronted by the Mystery of mysteries. It is here the kindly office of Wisdom to show us that the clearing away of this enveloping mystery is in no way essential to our happiness, and further to bid us project that scheme of happiness from the ground of Faith and never from that of Intellect. Pity it is if your mind is so ordered it must perforce carry everything before the bar of Logic; for no world-theory can there prove its case. There remains in religion always an element beyond finite reason. That God is Love, let this be to us both religion and philosophy. And if Logic declare it to be an "ethical assumption," it is still proof enough and to spare that any postulate to the contrary does violence to our very being-is refuted by both intuition and reason, by expediency and common sense no less than the divine sense in man. But it is only in our unregenerate days that we even inquire concerning this. Here, again, Wisdom admonishes us to lay aside the self-imposed burdens of the intellect and be even as a child: so to go forth in love and trust confident in that all-encircling Love.

Much reading, much listening, much wrestling with the angel, and yet wisdom comes slowly. But it is realization only that we lack. We have capital enough for the enterprise of life in our being; the question is to render it available. So need it be no discouragement that wisdom conditions happiness. Still the mind and the Soul will make itself known. It is thus the main purpose of concentration to hold the mind in check, to render it passive that self-illumination may take place. More often than not we are oblivious of the Soul through the over-activity of the mind. Concentration, in fact, should always be in the direction of repose. But in our revolt from mental tyranny