Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/186

Rh, if only for that one moment of insight, to enter into the service of the whole of it.

So the illusion of selfishness vanishes for thy present thought (alas! not for thy future conduct, O child of passion!), when thou lookest at what selfishness has so long hidden from thee. Thou seest now the universal life as a whole, just as real as thou art, identical in joy and sorrow. The conflict of selfishness and unselfishness vanishes. Selfishness is but a half realization of the truth expressed in unselfishness. Selfishness says: I shall exist. Unselfishness says: The Other Life is as My Life. To realize another's pain as pain is to cease to desire it in itself. Hatred is illusion. Cowardly sympathy, that hides its head for fear of realizing the neighbor’s pain, is illusion. But unselfishness is the realization of life. Unselfishness leads thee out of the mists of blind self -adoration, and shows thee, in all the life of nature about thee, the one omnipresent, conscious struggle for the getting of the desired. In all the songs of the forest birds; in all the cries of the wounded and dying, struggling in the captor’s power; in the boundless sea, where the myriads of water-creatures strive and die; amid all the countless hordes of savage men; in the hearts of all the good and loving; in the dull, throbbing hearts of all prisoners and captives; in all sickness and sorrow; in all exultation and hope; in all our devotion; in all our knowledge, — everywhere from the lowest to the noblest creatures and experiences on our earth, the same conscious, burning, willful life is found, endlessly manifold as the forms of the living creatures,