If the way which I have pointed out ... seems exceedingly hard, it may nevertheless be discovered. Needs must it be hard, since it is so seldom found. How would it be possible, if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labor be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare. But why, we may ask, is salvation by almost all men neglected? The answer is that they do not desire that which they have never learned to desire. “One cannot,” as Voltaire said, “desire that which one does not know.” Can a man love good wine when he has drunk nothing but ginger beer? Did we have naturally and instinctively [p198] a taste for that which constitutes the happiness of the saved, we should already be saved, and their happiness would be ours. We lack the taste, which is, I suppose, another way of saying what the theologians meant when they spoke of original sin. To be saved, in the sense which the sages had in mind, is by conversion, education, and self-discipline to have achieved a certain quality and harmony of the passions. Then the good life is possible. But although men have often heard this said, and have read about it, unless in some measure they already desire it, the whole teaching remains mere words and abstractions which are high, cold, and remote. As long as they feel that the way to happiness is through a will other than their own, and that somehow events can in this fashion be made to yield to their unregenerate wishes, in this world or another, the wisdom of the sages will not touch their hearts, and the way which is pointed out will be neglected. Wisdom will seem inhuman. In a sense it is inhuman, for it is so uncommon. Those who have it speak a strange language, of which the words perhaps have a familiar sound, but the meaning is too high and abstract; their delights are strange delights, and unfathomable, like a passion which we have never known. And if we encounter them in their lives or in their writings, they seem to us a mixture of grandeur and queerness. For they are at once more deeply at home in the world than the transients who make up most of mankind; yet, because of the quality of their passions, they are not wholly of the world as the worldling understands it. But unless the worldling is entirely without the capacity to transcend himself, he is [p199] bound in such an encounter to catch a glimpse now and then of an experience where there is a serenity he himself has never known, a peace that passes his understanding, an ecstasy exquisite and without regret, and happiness so clarified that it seems like brilliant and kindly light.