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BHAKTI-YOGA.
142
the thing he loves is always his own highest ideal. One may see his ideal in the vilest of beings and another in the highest of beingsnevertheless, in every case it is the ideal alone that can be truly and intensely loved. The highest ideal of every man is his God Ignorant or wise, saint or sinner, man or woman, educated or uneducated, cultivated or uncultivated-to every human being, his highest ideal is his God. And indeed the synthesis of all the highest ideals of beauty, of sublimity, and of power gives us the completest conception of the loving and lovable God. These ideals exist in some shape or other, in every mind naturally and form a part and parcel of all our minds. All the active manifestations of human nature are but struggles of those ideals within it, to become realised in practical life. All the various movements that we see around us in society are caused by the various ideals in various souls, trying to come out
