“Happiness belongs to the ideal,” said Bardell. “It is a matter of subjective appreciation, so is its opposite, misery. Perhaps it would be clearer to say that happiness exists in the idea one forms of it, hence it is purely ideal. We are happy, when we believe ourselves happy. But for the most part all the world thinks happiness is to be found in externals; that it can be secured in thick slices which we can eat like bread, while comfortably seated in good houses. Money and marriage are supposed to have a monopoly of it. What idiocy!” “Yes, idiocy,” Cartice echoed. “Thackeray says, ‘For my own part I know of nothing more contemptible, unmanly or unwomanly and craven than the everlasting sighing for happiness.’ When a child, I had a consciousness or memory of a world in which I had once lived where there was no such word as happiness, and yet none were unhappy. I understand that now. It means that happiness only exists where it is not thought of, talked about or pursued. I believe it is intended that we shall be happy; but not in our own foolish way. Freedom is the destiny of the human race, and that freedom holds for us a happiness infinitely greater and higher than we now can imagine, because it contains our full development, our perfected intellectual and spiritual growth. It is the freedom of truth, long since prophesied. When we know the truth, we are free, and happiness comes with freedom. Heaven is within one; it consists in the soul’s unfolding or coming into a knowledge of itself. We reach that through expression. In this way we grow, as every plant struggles to do. So you see, if we strangle our ideals, we stunt our growth, and shall be cut down like the bent, and imperfect tree,--cut down, to come again perhaps, for another trial, and still another and another until our destiny is accomplished. Therefore it is that doing our best should be our religion, as it is nature’s religion. It is the only road we can take which leads to the goal at which we must arrive, sooner or later. It is the price each soul must pay who would be saved. Instead of that, most of us have gone about hunting happiness on a childish plane, and making a great plaint, when we didn’t find it. ’Twould be laughable, were it not so pitiful.” “Isn’t it plain enough,” said Bardell, “that if a wholesome civic and social spirit prevailed, we should be sufficiently enlightened to find our reward in doing our best, whether it were to raise potatoes, polish door knobs or paint pictures. All great men and women who have helped humankind have done so. They gave their best and nothing less, even when the world did not want it, and stoned them for it. They had a far greater reward than human appreciation. They grew to heroic, mental and spiritual stature. If Jesus of Nazareth had not given the best that was in Him, even at the cost of crucifixion, He could not have been the light of the world.