________________
The state after realisa
tion of the highest good.
niety, freedom and naturalness, all the pity of pain and sorrow, of struggle and defeat,
of mortifications, and penances sinks out of heart and mind. This is the state, where in the language of a philosopher, the indefinite potentiality of either vice or virtue, has been transformed into a definite capacity for virtue, nay even more, into an incapacity for vice. Here he soars above the region of merit and demerit, of reward and punishment, of public sanction or censure, shuns off what is stiff, stereotyped and artificial, and lives a life which is "free down to its very root," And we may conclude by saying that because man is a citizen of a higher world, and is potentially free, he feels the bondage, of the lower form of life and the burden of selfrealisation becomes one which he is willing and eager to bear and which becomes 'the lighter, the longer, and more faithfully it is borne." For better, he feels this noble discontent than the most perfect animal
contentment.
472
