fulfils the greater part of his vocation; while woman, as she has a smaller number of duties, if she is false to one of them, instantly falls lower than a man who has been false to ten out of his hundreds of duties. Such has always been the general opinion, and such it will always remain-because such is the substance of the | matter. . . . In the general vocation of serving God and others, man and woman are entirely equal, notwithstanding the difference of the form of that service. The equality consists in the equal importance of one service and of the other-that the one is impossible without the other, that the one depends upon the other, and that for efficient service, as well for man as for woman, the knowledge of truth is equally necessary.

The ideal woman, in my opinion, is one who, appropriating the highest view of life of the time in which she lives, yet gives herself to her feminine mission, which is irresistibly placed in her-that of bringing forth, nursing and educating the greatest possible number of children, fitted to work for people according to the view which she has of life. But in order to appropriate the highest view of life, I think there is no need of attending lectures; all that she requires is to read the gospel, and not to shut her eyes, ears, and, most of all, her heart. Well, and if you ask what those are to do who have no children, who are not married, or are widows, I answer that those will do well to share man's multifarious labour. But one cannot help being sorry that such a precious tool as woman is should be bereft of the possibility of fulfilling the great vocation which it is proper to her alone to fulfil.-What then is to be Done?

CHAPTER III

THE GREAT COMMANDMENTS

1. THE LAW OF REASON

To those who ask my opinion whether it be desirable to endeavour by the aid of reason to attain complete consciousness in one's inner spiritual life, and to express the truths thus attained in definite language, I would answer in the positive affirmative, that every man to achieve his destiny on earth and to attain true welfarethe two are synonymous-must continually exert all his mental faculties to solve for himself and clearly to express the religious foundations on which he livesthat is, the meaning of his life. I have often found among illiterate labourers, who have to deal with cubic measurements, an accepted conviction that mathematical calculations are fallacious, and not to be trusted.... A similar opinion has obtained among men who, I will boldly say, are bereft of true religious feelings, that reason is unequal to the solution of religious questions, that the application of reason to such questions is the most fruitful source of error, and that the solution of such questions by the aid of reason is sinful pride. . . . Man has been given by God one single instrument to attain knowledge of self, and of one's relation to the universe: there is no other-and that one is reason. Man cannot be conscious of anything independently of

reason. It is said, Accept the truth by revelation, by faith. But a man cannot believe independently of reason. If a man believes this and not that, it is only because his reason tells him that this is credible and that is not.-Demands of Love and Reason.

The law which men should follow is so plain that it is accessible to every child, the more so as no man has to discover anew the law of his life. Those who have lived before him have discovered and expressed it, and he has but to verify it with his reason, and to accept or refuse those propositions which he finds expressed in tradition. Traditions may proceed from men and be false, but reason indubitably comes from God, and cannot be false. Particular intellectual qualities are needful, not for the acquirement and expression of truth, but for the concoction and expression of error. A righteous God has created evil, persecutes men, demands redemption, and so forth; and we, professing the law of love and mercy, execute, make war, rob the poor, etc. To disentangle these impossible contradictions, or rather to conceal them from oneself, much mental capacity and special talent are indeed necessary; but to learn the law of one's life, or, as already expressed, to bring one's faith into complete consciousness, no special mental capacity is required; one has but to refuse to admit anything contrary to reason, not to deny reason, religiously to guard one's reason and to rely on it alone.

According to the doctrine of Christ, a man who limits his observation of life to the sphere in which there is no freedom-to the sphere of effects, that is, of acts-does not live a true life. He only lives a true life who has transferred his life into the sphere where freedom lives—

into the domain of first causes-by the recognition and practice of the truth revealed to him. He thus unites himself with the source of universal life and accomplishes not personal, individual acts that depend on conditions of time and space, but acts that have no causes, but are in themselves causes of all else and have an endless and unlimited significance. . . Men have but to understand this: that they must cease to care for material and external matters, in which they are not free; let them apply one-hundredth part of the energy now used by them in outward concerns to those in which they are free-to the recognition and profession of the truth that confronts them, to the deliverance of themselves and others from the falsehood and hypocrisy which conceal the truthand then the false system of life which now torments us, which threatens us with still greater suffering, will be destroyed at once without struggle. Then the Kingdom of Heaven, at least in that first stage for which men through the development of their consciousness are already prepared, will be established. As one shake is sufficient to precipitate into crystals a liquid saturated with salt, so at the present time it may be that only the least effort is needed in order that the truth already revealed to us should spread among hundreds, thousands, millions of men, and a public opinion become established in conformity with the existing consciousness, and the entire social organisation become transformed. It depends upon us to make this effort.-The Kingdom of God is Within You.

The ideal is to take no thought for the morrow, to live in the present; and the commandment the fulfilment of which is the point beneath which we must not fall is against taking oaths or making promises for the future.

In order to free himself from religious deception in general, man must understand and remember that the only instrument he possesses for the acquisition of knowledge is reason, and therefore that every teaching affirming what is contrary to reason is a delusion, an attempt to set aside the only instrument for acquiring knowledge which God has given to man. Man can receive truth only through his reason. The man, therefore, who thinks that he receives truth through faith and not through reason only deludes himself and uses his reason for a purpose for which it was never intended—namely, to solve questions as to which of those who transmit what is given out as truth must be believed, and which rejected. Whereas reason is intended, not to decide between whom one must and must not believe (this, indeed, it cannot do), but to verify the truth of what is presented to it. This it can always do; for this purpose it was designed.

Misinterpreters of truth generally say that one cannot trust reason because its assertions vary in different men, and that it is therefore better, for the sake of union, to believe in revelation confirmed by miracles. But they make a mistake, and, intentionally or unintentionally, confuse reason with speculation and invention. Speculations and inventions, it is true, may be, and are, infinitely diverse and numerous, but the conclusions of reason are the same for all men at all times. . . . Therefore, to avoid falling a prey to religious deception, man must understand and remember that truth is revealed to him only through reason, given him by God for the purpose of discovering the will of God, and that the practice of inspiring distrust in reason is founded on the desire to deceive, and is the greatest blasphemy.-The Christian Teaching.