Page:The Lady Poverty - a XIII. century allegory (IA ladypovertyxiiic00giovrich).pdf/204

 joyous whose joy does not spring from his own soul, or from that inalienable possession of the world which comes of spiritual communion with what is good and true in it, and therefore Eternal.

The joy which is dependent upon the possession of the merely visible and material can never reach the inmost spirit of man, even were such possession not, at best, uncertain and of its nature transitory. Nay, the joy of life, which springs from man's own spirit, is impossible to him