Wherein, then, it will be asked, lies the advantage of the wisdom of the light over the wisdom of this world? Surely, the wisdom of the world is a more obvious possession, and guarantees to us more of the good things of life than the children of light can secure. The advantage of the children of light, I answer, is threefold. It is to be found, first, in the assurance that they are the possessors of truth and are made thereby inwardly and wholly at peace. Lessing, in his well-known words, announced that truth was not a thing which men should desire to possess. Happiness, he conceived, was to be found in the search for truth, not in its possession. But the possession of the truth brings with it the only true happiness--a happiness which is abundant and unspeakable, and which no man who has in any degree obtained it would exchange for all the other good things of earth. For the fundamental question is not of possessing any definite outward thing, but of the inward happiness attained through that possession. Even the selfish, the envious, and the self-indulgent do not regard that which they want to possess as their real aim. It is only in their eyes the essential means to the real end, and that end is their own inward happiness. And this is precisely where they are self-deceived. For there is this solemn fact about the order of the world, which reveals itself to every candid observer,--that such people may attain all that they earnestly desire, yet not attain with it their own peace. Their attainment itself, their very success, becomes their punishment. All this may be perhaps somewhat hard to understand, but for the moment it may be accepted merely as a working hypothesis, and one may later observe in life whether it is not true. It is by using thus a working hypothesis that even natural science most easily reaches the truth.