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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
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