To
plan, to hope, to do, to accomplish the full measure of our powers,
whatever they may be, is to turn away from Nirvana to real life. A
useful man, a helpful man, an active man in any sense, even though his,
activity be misdirected or harmful, is always a hopeful man.
The feeling that "the only reality in life is pain," is the sign not of
philosophical acuteness but of bodily under-vitalization. The nervous
system is too feeble for the body it has to move. To act is to make the
environment your servant. Its pressure is no longer pain but joy. The
concessions which life has made to time and space are the source of
life's glory and power.
The function of the nervous system is to carry from the environment to
the brain the impressions of truth, that action may be true and safe.
Pain and pleasure are both incidental to sound action. The one drives,
the other coaxes us toward the path of wisdom. If pain is in excess of
joy in our experience, it is because we have wandered from the path of
normal activity. By right-doing, we mean that action which makes for
"abundance of life," and abundance of life means fulness of joy. "Though
life be sad, yet there's joy in the living it" was the word of the
ancient Greeks, "who ever with a frolic welcome took the Thunder and the
Sunshine."
The life of man is dynamic, not static; not a condition but a movement.
"Not enjoyment and not sorrow" is its end or justification. It is a rush
of forces, an evolution towards greater activities and higher
adjustment, the growth of a stability which shall be ever more unstable.
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