NewThoughtLibrary.com / DivineLibrary.org

on self. We were in a continual attitude of fault- finding, dislike and fear. We were practically materialists. We regarded causation, influence, power as arising from outside. Therefore we led a kind of life which this materialistic conclusion implies. Or rather it was not a conclusion; it was a thoughtless taking of the world of things without thinking about it. But when philosophical thought began, that incomparably valuable discovery that what life yields us is largely conditioned by what we bring to it, the whole face of things was changed. It is not, as we have already noted, that our human thought actually changes the world, but that it changes the world for us. When the awakening comes we realise that nothing under God's fair sky can change life from the old way to the new except our own change of thought, action, and attitude. We must "reform it altogether,'' as Shakespeare says. It does not suffice to think other thoughts; we must do other deeds, adopt a different dynamic attitude towards the whole of life.

In the first place, all blame should cease, for it was not things that enslaved us, but ideas; not other people, but ourselves; not God, but our own condition of development. Other people are as ignorant as we were, therefore we will not blame them. We knew not that our attitude was wrong, therefore we will spend no time in regret,