________________
spontaneous natural
Virtue 15 not growth, still less an original endowment He has to constitute himself a
of man.
Man has to make him
Dus inan.
moral or virtuous person and has to build self a virtuup his character after a long and toilsome process of self-legislation and self-conquest. And it is the privilege and dignity to him to be the critic of his own impulses, to be the maker of his own destiny and to have in his own hands, the way to his own emancipation. No doubt this way to selfrealisation is beset with many obstacles and impediments and a walk on it entails much struggle and pain-suffering; but looking to the other aspect, we also find, in the depths of a moral being, a joy which is even stronger and more steadfast than the self-imposed pain itself-we mean the joy of the conviction that the struggle is worth while, nay the only thing which has any worth at all; for the goal, he strives after, is not something transitory, fleeting or evanescent, like that of the Buddhist but is everlasting freedom, everlasting omniscience and everlasting bliss. And in the joy of anticipation of this blessed state a state of unparalled sponta
il
471