of Nature as a complex of self-seeking cruelties, the strong preying on
the weak, and the weak defenceless, that the mere idea of its containing
a ruling co-operative principle seemed at times far-fetched. To the
common opinion of the day, my own included, the conception of a
universe that would come to a man's aid the minute a man came to his own
was too much like a fairy tale. It may indeed be a fairy tale. All I
know is that in my own case it is the way in which it seems to have
worked. I think I have caught a glimpse of a constructive use for that
which I had previously thought of as only destructive and terrible.

This is what I mean. The life-principle having, through unknown millions
of years, developed the conquest-principle by meeting difficulties and
overcoming them, the difficulties had a value. To man, especially, the
menace of Nature, the ferocity of the beast, and the enmity of his
fellow-man furnished the incentive to his upward climb. Had all been
easy he would have stayed where he was. He would never have called
mental powers to his physical aid, nor appealed to spiritual faculties
when the mental fell short of his requirements. Spurred on by a
necessity which grew more urgent in proportion as the life-principle
widened its scope, the conquest-principle became an impulse which would
brook no denying. Man grew by it; but the fact remains that he would not
have grown had there been nothing for him to struggle with.

To me it seems basic to the getting rid of fear to know that our trials,
of whatever nature, are not motiveless. In our present stage of
development we could hardly do without them. So often looking like mere
ugly excrescences on life they are in reality the branches by which we
catch on and climb. They are not obstacles to happiness for the reason
that the only satisfying happiness we are equal to as yet is that of
wrestling with the difficult and overcoming it. Every call of duty has