And as the tapestry of life unrolled its pictures before his eyes he read its lesson. Happiness is a dream and sorrow a truth and individual life a misfortune from which impersonal contemplation is the only enfranchisement. Could this be true? Could it be possible that a barren soul, a proud and complete selfishness and heedlessness of all other sufferers than himself, disdain of the crowd and indifference to all that the vulgar covet, represent the only escape for the wise man from the entanglements of Maya—Illusion? No—a thousand times no! Better to drop into the jaws of darkness and be extinguished than remain petrified and apart in a world where men must bleed and die. Then is goodness itself a lie? Is man the eternal dupe of words and phrases contrived to make us docile to suffering as slaves to the whip? Is hope but a watery rainbow painted on a dissolving cloud? Is the Way itself a dream begotten of Misery, the Mother, and Pride, the father—Pride that will have man think himself a something when in reality he is nothing and his fate concerns the universe as much as blown grains of sand in a whirlwind, rising and settling as aimlessly? And at such times the Bodhisattva felt the endless turning of the Wheel within his own soul, and a vertigo of perception seized him as the Infinities gazed over his head in untroubled calm, and only the Wheel turned and turned in merciless revolution. Then were it not better to submit to passive ignorance and fight no more? To sink into wearied submission, accepting the lash and fetter for doom? For each life is built up of millions, and where is the redemption for its infinite littleness? Let all pass for all is nothing. But at such times he steadied himself upon the thought of Law. Could a man nobly agree with necessity which is the other name of Law, were that no peace and enlightenment? Is not Law beheld in nature? What is this incessant changing yet unchanging series of phenomena unperplexed by self-contemplation and analysis which man sees about him. What? Is it a play—a spectacle that Brahm the Universal Spirit has set in motion for Its own delight, or is it Itself expanded throughout the Universe, and if this be so is man the one thing outside Its circumference, and if he be within it, shall he only be ignorant of the Law and agonized because he does not obey it? If man is capable of conceiving the Law surely it exists and is his and him. So he looked down the abyss and beheld nothing but persistence in change and the infinity of infinities. Was there anywhere a fixed point? Surely only in the relation of all to Law. Therefore he hungered and thirsted for Law, forgetting the emaciation of his body and its pitiable weakness, thirsting for the Way with a deathly thirst that consumed him, rendering him incapable of all other suffering.