But why? Why, oh why? Is human life just opposed to human reason? The Allies _did_ have to win the war. For it would certainly not have been any better letting Germany win. Unless a very great disaster might have shocked men to their deeper senses. But doubtful. Things _had_ to go as they went. So, it was just Thomas Hardy’s Blind Fate? No, said Lovat to himself, no. _Fata volentem ducunt, nolentem trahunt._ The Fates lead on the willing man, the unwilling man they drag. The Fates? What Fates? It takes a willing man to answer. Man is not a creature of circumstance, neither is he the result of cause-and-effect throughout the ages, neither is he a product of evolution, neither is he a living _Mind_, part of the Universal Mind. Neither is he a complicated make-up of forces and chemicals and organs. Neither is he a term of love. Neither is he the mere instrument of God’s will. None of these things. Man lives according to his own idea of himself. When circumstances begin really to run counter to his idea of himself, he damns circumstances. When the running-counter persists, he damns the nature of things. And when it _still_ persists, he becomes a fatalist. A fatalist or an opportunist--anything of that sort. Whose fault is it? Fate’s? Not at all. It is man’s fault for persisting in some fixed idea of himself. Yet, being an animal saddled with a mental consciousness, which means ideas, man _must_ have some idea of himself. He just must, and those that deny it have got a more fixed idea than anybody. Man must have some idea of himself. He must live _hard_, _hard_, up to this idea of himself. But the idea is perishable. Say what you like, every idea is perishable: even the idea of God or Love or Humanity or Liberty--even the greatest idea has its day and perishes. Each formulated religion is in the end only a great idea. Once the idea becomes explicit, it is dead. Yet we must _have_ ideas. When a man follows the true inspiration of a new, living idea, he then is the willing man whom the Fates lead onwards: like St. Paul or Pope Hildebrand or Martin Luther or Cromwell or Abraham Lincoln. But when the idea is really dead, and _still_ man persists in following it, then he is the unwilling man whom the Fates destroy, like Kaiser Wilhelm or President Wilson, or, to-day, the world at large. For the idea, or ideal of Love, Self-sacrifice, Humanity united in love, in brotherhood, in peace--all this is dead. There is no arguing about it. It is dead. The great ideal is dead. How do we know? By putting off our conscious conceit and listening to our own soul.