All inward dissatisfaction springs from sensuality or selfishness; these two never fail to show themselves as the primal causes, when the matter is run to the ground. Any genuine happiness is not conceivable where the spiritual nature has not gained the day over the sensual, and where a disposition toward liberality, humanity, and kindliness has not won the victory over a disposition to narrow selfishness--a victory already decided in one’s innermost tendency, and, as a matter of practical life, to be daily gained anew. Whoever has not been able thus to subdue himself will never be a match for the world around him, which fights him with the same though thousand fold greater powers of selfishness. All that is left for him is to defend himself in this struggle for existence by continually injuring and destroying others and by uniting himself with others into groups with mutual interests, groups that are likewise of a purely selfish nature. To try to suppress this struggle for existence which now threatens to destroy all the nobility that is in man and to make us like beasts of prey, is the chiefest task of all the truly cultured men of our time. They must first show by their own example that this struggle is not necessary, and that there is a way out of the labyrinths of this life other than the sad one of who shall be strongest in his selfishness. After all, the man who proves strongest in this struggle, even in the most favorable case, only makes the existence of many fellow-men the heavier, and his own better self, besides, has suffered harm. The first step is, that one shall no longer be recognized as a truly cultured man who has any trace of such a conception of life. And it must and will come to that, before long, in our civilized states. On the one hand, selfish solicitude for self and as much as possible of sensual enjoyment during a short life--on the other, human kindness, care for others, mental advancement, and the development of the nobler powers of the soul: these are the two great armies which now stand over against each other, ready for battle, and in one or the other you will be obliged to take your place. 2. The second point is the proper and healthy physical and mental development of all our faculties, in the interest of these higher aims. We are not to live with this better conception of life in cloisters or studies, but as far as possible to bring it into use in our ordinary life and in every calling--but not, of course, in any calling that stands in radical opposition to this better conception of life.