So we grow, physically, mentally and morally, by activity, by exercise of the organs or the faculties we desire to possess.  It is only by the constant exercise of these things that we can grow at all.  When this great law of nature is understood we see at once how it is that life is full of trouble; why it is that the whole visible world seems to be designed to keep us constantly at work physically and mentally, to challenge our resourcefulness in improving our physical, social and political conditions, to continually try our patience and to forever test our courage.  It is the way of development.  It is the price of progress.

The universe is a training school for evolving intelligence—­a vast gymnasium for the development of moral fibre.  We become mentally clever by playing at the game of life.  We match our courage against its adversities and acquire fearlessness.  We try our optimism against its disappointments and learn cheerfulness.  We pit our patience against its failures and gain persistence.  We are torn from the pinnacle of ambition by opponents and learn toleration of others.  We fall from the heights of vanity and pride, and learn to be modest and humble.  We encounter pain and sorrow and learn sympathy with suffering.  It is only by such experiences that we can grow to rounded measure.  It is only in an environment thus adapted to our spiritual development that we can evolve the latent powers within us.

Such is the universe in which we find ourselves and from it there is no escape.  No man can avoid life—­not even the foolish one who, when the difficulties before him appear for the moment overwhelming, tries to escape them by suicide.  A man cannot die.  He can only choose how he will live.  He may either helplessly drift through the world suffering from all the ills and evils that make so many unhappy or he may choose the method of conscious evolution that alone makes life truly successful.  We may be either the suffering slaves of nature or the happy masters of her laws.

Now, all powers possessed by any human being, no matter how exalted his position in evolution, or how sublime his spiritual power, are latent in all human beings and can, in time, be developed and brought into action.  Of course there is no magic rule by which the ignoramus can instantly become wise or by which a brutal man can be at once transformed into a saint.  It may require scores of incarnations to accomplish a work so great, but when a man reaches the point in his evolution where he begins to comprehend the purpose of life, and to evolve the will to put forth his energies in co-operation with nature, his rise to wisdom and power may be swift indeed.  But this transformation from the darkness of ignorance to spiritual illumination, from helplessness “in the fell clutch of circumstance” to power over nature, must be brought about by his own efforts, for it is a process of evolution—­of forcing the latent to become the active.  Therefore