Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/62



UR ideals are the vehicles of our illusions; our illusions are the motor forces of our desires; our desires are born of an innate, insatiable longing for the Beautiful, the Good, and the True,—for the superlatives, in other words, of what, according to our own light, is the truth; and our own light, that undying spiritual flame in the temple of our being, has its eternal sources in the sun and soil, as in the schools and universities, and the arts and sciences of our time. That is why, from a pure amber flame in the past, when religion was the supreme dominating force in life, it has developed into a complex, many-colored, spasmodically burning mass of inharmonies. The amber hue is seldom seen nowadays; a green ray filters through the smoke; a golden spark now and then illumines it, but only for a spell; the opalescent rays