Book 4 (Part II)

49 there is no capacity which is not necessarily subservient to the destiny of the man who possesses it. One may be unable to tell when a thread of a particular colour will be woven into the carpet of Destiny. It is only when the carpet is fin- ished and seen from a proper distance that the position of that par- ticular strand is seen to be necessary. From this one is tempted to break a lance on that most ancient battlefield, free-will and destiny. But even though every man is "determined" so that every action is merely the passive resultant of the sum-total of the forces which have acted upon him from eternity, so that his own Will is only the echo of the Will of the Universe, yet that consciousness of " free-will " is valu- able; and if he really understands it as being the partial and individual expression of that internal motion in a Universe whose sum is rest, by so much will he feel that harmony, that totality. And though the hap- piness which he experiences may be criticised as only one scale of a balance in whose other scale is an equal misery, there are those who hold that misery consists only in the feeling of separation from the Universe, and that consequently all may cancel out among the lesser feelings, leaving only that infinite bliss which is one phase of the infinite consciousness of that ALL. Such speculations are somewhat beyond the scope of the present remarks. It is of no particular moment to observe that the elephant and flea can be no other than they are ; but £