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INTRODUCTORY
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is not given to man that it may be wasted, or that it may be frittered away or trifled with. It is to manifest in full glory and activity the Power, the Wisdom and the Love that are its birthright. It is to become perfect, as perfect as the 'Father in Heaven is Perfect.' Herein lies the true and rational solution of the great problem of life, one in which Science and Religion and Philosophy find their proper place and function, and are all welded together into one harmonious and magnificent whole.
THE LAW OF SELF-SACRIFICE THE LAW OF DEVELOP
MENT FOR MAN But, in order to reach this highest state, the state of perfection, the craving of selfishness should be first destroyed. Everything that is selfish, everything that is personal, everything that is of the lower nature must be burnt up before the goal is reached and attained. Hard, hard it is for man to get rid of selfishness; for, in doing so, he has to conquer a habit which he took years and ages in forming. This personal element of selfishness had its use and its place in those earlier stages; as one of the Masters of Wisdom once put it: The law of the survival of the fittest is the law of evolution for the brute; but the law of intelligent self-sacrifice is the law of development for man.' So it comes that man needs to transcend what was formerly his own nature and to build into himself the excellent virtue of unselfishness, in order that he may learn to sacrifice what seems his
