Let us then return to Karma properly so-called, the ideal Karma. It rewards goodness and punishes evil in the infinite sequence of our lives. But first of all, some will ask, what is this goodness, what is this evil, what is the best or the worst of our petty thoughts, our petty intentions, our petty ephemeral actions, compared with the boundless immensity of time and space? Is there not an absurd disproportion between the hugeness of the reward or punishment and the pettiness of the fault or merit? Why mix the worlds, the eternities and the gods with things which, however monstrous or admirable at first, are not slow, even within the trivial limits of our life, to lose gradually all the importance which we ascribed to them, to vanish, to fade into oblivion? That is true; but we must needs speak of human things in terms of human beings and on the human scale. What we call good or evil is that which works us good or evil, that which benefits or harms ourselves or others; and, so long as we live upon this earth and have not disappeared, we must needs attach to good and evil an importance which in themselves they do not possess. The noblest religions, the proudest metaphysical speculations, so soon as they involve human morality, human evolution and the human future, have always been obliged to reduce themselves to human proportions, to become anthropomorphous. This is an invincible necessity, by virtue of which, despite the horizons that tempt us on every hand, it behoves us to limit our ideas and our outlook. 10