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WHAT ALL THE WORLD'S A-SEEKING

Or, The Vital Law of True Life, True Greatness Power and Happiness

by

RALPH WALDO TRINE

New York
Dodge Publishing Company
220 East Twenty-Third Street







PREFACE.


There are two reasons the author has for putting forth this little
volume: he feels that the time is, as it always has been, ripe for it;
and second, his soul has ever longed to express itself upon this endless
theme. It therefore comes from the heart--the basis of his belief that
it will reach the heart.

R.W.T.
Boston, Massachusetts




PREFACE TO REVISED EDITION.


It is impossible for one in a single volume, or perhaps in a number of
volumes, to reach the exact needs of every reader.

It is always a source of gratitude, as well as of inspiration for better
and more earnest work in the future, for one to know that the truths
that have been and that are so valuable and so vital to him he has
succeeded in presenting in a manner such that they prove likewise of
value to others. The author is most grateful for the good, kind words
that have come so generously from so many hundreds of readers of this
simple little volume from all parts of the world. He is also grateful to
that large company of people who have been so good as to put the book
into the hands of so many others.

And as the days have passed, he has not been unmindful of the fact that
he might make it, when the time came, of still greater value to many.
In addition to a general revision of the book, some four or five
questions that seemed to be most frequently asked he has endeavored to
point answer to in an added part of some thirty pages, under the general
title, "Character-building Thought Power." The volume enters therefore
upon its fifteenth thousand better able, possibly, to come a little more
directly in touch with the every-day needs of those who will be
sufficiently interested to read it.

R.W.T.
Sunnybrae Farm
Croton-on-the-Hudson
New York




CONTENTS.


PART I. THE PRINCIPLE

PART II. THE APPLICATION

PART III. THE UNFOLDMENT

PART IV. THE AWAKENING

PART V. THE INCOMING

PART VI. CHARACTER-BUILDING THOUGHT POWER




WHAT ALL THE WORLD'S A-SEEKING.




PART I.

THE PRINCIPLE


Would you find that wonderful life supernal,
That life so abounding, so rich, and so free?
Seek then the laws of the Spirit Eternal,
With them bring your life into harmony.


How can I make life yield its fullest and best? How can I know the true
secret of power? How can I attain to a true and lasting greatness? How
can I fill the whole of life with a happiness, a peace, a joy, a
satisfaction that is ever rich and abiding, that ever increases, never
diminishes, that imparts to it a sparkle that never loses its lustre,
that ever fascinates, never wearies?

No questions, perhaps, in this form or in that have been asked oftener
than these. Millions in the past have asked them. Millions are asking
them to-day. They will be asked by millions yet unborn. Is there an
answer, a true and safe one for the millions who are eagerly and
longingly seeking for it in all parts of the world to-day, and for the
millions yet unborn who will as eagerly strive to find it as the years
come and go? Are you interested, my dear reader, in the answer? The fact
that you have read even thus far in this little volume whose title has
led you to take it up, indicates that you are,--that you are but one of
the innumerable company already mentioned.

It is but another way of asking that great question that has come
through all the ages--What is the _summum bonum_ in life? and there have
been countless numbers who gladly would have given all they possessed to
have had the true and satisfactory answer. Can we then find this answer,
true and satisfactory to ourselves, surely the brief time spent together
must be counted as the most precious and valuable of life itself. _There
is an answer_: follow closely, and that our findings may be the more
conclusive, take issue with me at every step if you choose, but tell me
finally if it is not true and satisfactory.

There is one great, one simple principle, which, if firmly laid hold of,
and if made the great central principle in one's life, around which all
others properly arrange and subordinate themselves, will make that life
a grand success, truly great and genuinely happy, loved and blessed by
all in just the degree in which it is laid hold upon,--a principle
which, if universally made thus, would wonderfully change this old world
in which we live,--ay, that would transform it almost in a night, and it
is for its coming that the world has long been waiting; that in place of
the gloom and despair in almost countless numbers of lives would bring
light and hope and contentment, and no longer would it be said as so
truly to-day, that "man's inhumanity to man, makes countless thousands
mourn"; that would bring to the life of the fashionable society woman,
now spending her days and her nights in seeking for nothing but her own
pleasure, such a flood of true and genuine pleasure and happiness and
satisfaction as would make the poor, weak something she calls by this
name so pale before it, that she would quickly see that she hasn't known
what true pleasure is, and that what she has been mistaking for the
real, the genuine, is but as a baser metal compared to the purest of
gold, as a bit of cut glass compared to the rarest of diamonds, and that
would make this same woman who scarcely deigns to notice the poor woman
who washes her front steps, but who, were the facts known, may be
living a much grander life, and consequently of much more value to the
world than she herself, see that this poor woman is after all her
sister, because child of the same Father; and that would make the humble
life of this same poor woman beautiful and happy and sweet in its
humility; that would give us a nation of statesmen in place of, with now
and then an exception, a nation of politicians, each one bent upon his
own personal aggrandizement at the expense of the general good; that
would go far, ay, very far toward solving our great and hard-pressing
social problems with which we are already face to face; that, in short,
would make each man a prince among men, and each woman a queen among
women.

I have seen the supreme happiness in lives where this principle has been
caught and laid hold of, some, lives that seemed not to have much in
them before, but which under its wonderful influences have been so
transformed and so beautified, that have been made so sweet and so
strong, so useful and so precious, that each day seems to them all too
short, the same time that before, when they could scarcely see what was
in life to make it worth the living, dragged wearily along. So there
are countless numbers of people in the world with lives that seem not to
have much in them, among the wealthy classes and among the poorer, who
might under the influence of this great, this simple principle, make
them so precious, so rich, and so happy that time would seem only too
short, and they would wonder why they have been so long running on the
wrong track, for it is true that much the larger portion of the world
to-day is on the wrong track in the pursuit of happiness; but almost all
are there, let it be said, not through choice, but by reason of not
knowing the right, the true one.

The fact that really great, true, and happy lives have been lived in the
past and are being lived to-day gives us our starting-point. Time and
again I have examined such lives in a most careful endeavor to find what
has made them so, and have found that in _each and every_ individual
case this that we have now come to has been the great central principle
upon which they have been built. I have also found that in numbers of
lives where it has not been, but where almost every effort apart from it
has been made to make them great, true, and happy, they have not been
so; and also that no life built upon it in sufficient degree, other
things being equal, has failed in being thus.

Let us then to the answer, examine it closely, see if it will stand
every test, if it is the true one, and if so, rejoice that we have found
it, lay hold of it, build upon it, tell others of it. The last four
words have already entered us at the open door. The idea has prevailed
in the past, and this idea has dominated the world, that _self_ is the
great concern,--that if one would find success, greatness, happiness, he
must give all attention to self, and to self alone. This has been the
great mistake, this the fatal error, this the _direct_ opposite of the
right, the true as set forth in the great immutable law that--_we find
our own lives in losing them in the service of others_, in longer
form--the more of our lives we give to others, the fuller and the
richer, the greater and the grander, the more beautiful and the more
happy our own lives become. It is as that great and sweet soul who when
with us lived at Concord said,--that generous giving or losing of your
life which saves it.

This is an expression of one of the greatest truths, of one of the
greatest principles of practical ethics the world has thus far seen. In
a single word, it is _service_,--not self but the other self. We shall
soon see, however, that our love, our service, our helpfulness to
others, invariably comes back to us, intensified sometimes a hundred or
a thousand or a thousand thousand fold, and this by a great, immutable
law.

The Master Teacher, he who so many years ago in that far-away Eastern
land, now in the hill country, now in the lake country, as the people
gathered round him, taught them those great, high-born, and tender
truths of human life and destiny, the Christ Jesus, said identically
this when he said and so continually repeated,--"He that is greatest
among you shall be your servant"; and his whole life was but an
embodiment of this principle or truth, with the result that the greatest
name in the world to-day is his,--the name of him who as his life-work,
healed the sick; clothed the naked; bound up the broken-hearted;
sustained the weak, the faltering; befriended and aided the poor, the
needy; condemned the proud, the vain, the selfish; and through it all
taught the people to love justice and mercy and service, to live in
their higher, their diviner selves,--in brief, to _live_ his life, the
Christ-life, and who has helped in making it possible for this greatest
principle of practical ethics the world has thus far seen to be
enunciated, to be laid hold of, to be lived by to-day. "He that is
greatest among you shall be your servant," or, he who would be truly
great and recognized as such must find it in the capacity of a servant.

And what, let us ask, is a servant? One who renders service. To himself?
Never. To others? Alway. Freed of its associations and looked at in the
light of its right and true meaning, than the word "servant" there is no
greater in the language; and in this right use of the term, as we shall
soon see, every life that has been really true, great, and happy has
been that of a servant, and apart from this no such life _ever has been
or ever can be lived_.

O you who are seeking for power, for place, for happiness, for
contentment in the ordinary way, tarry for a moment, see that you are on
the wrong track, grasp this great eternal truth, lay hold of it, and you
will see that your advance along this very line will be manifold times
more rapid. Are you seeking, then, to make for yourself a name? Unless
you grasp this mighty truth and make your life accordingly, as the great
clock of time ticks on and all things come to their proper level
according to their merits, as all invariably, inevitably do, you will
indeed be somewhat surprised to find how low, how very low your level
is. Your name and your memory will be forgotten long ere the minute-hand
has passed even a single time across the great dial; while your
fellow-man who has grasped this simple but this great and all-necessary
truth, and who accordingly is forgetting himself in the service of
others, who is making his life a part of a hundred or a thousand or a
million lives, thus illimitably intensifying or multiplying his own,
instead of living as you in what otherwise would be his own little,
diminutive self, will find himself ascending higher and higher until he
stands as one among the few, and will find a peace, a happiness, a
satisfaction so rich and so beautiful, compared to which yours will be
but a poor miserable something, and whose name and memory when his life
here is finished, will live in the minds and hearts of his fellow-men
and of mankind fixed and eternal as the stars.

A corollary of the great principle already enunciated might be
formulated thus: _there is no such thing as finding true happiness by
searching for it directly_. It must come, if it come at all, indirectly,
or by the service, the love, and the happiness we give to others. So,
_there is no such thing as finding true greatness by searching for it
directly_. It always, without a single exception has come indirectly in
this same way, and it is not at all probable that this great eternal law
is going to be changed to suit any particular case or cases. Then
recognize it, put your life into harmony with it, and reap the rewards
of its observance, or fail to recognize it and pay the penalty
accordingly; for the law itself will remain unchanged.

The men and women whose names we honor and celebrate are invariably
those with lives founded primarily upon this great law. Note if you
will, every _truly_ great life in the world's history, among those
living and among the so-called dead, and tell me if in _every_ case that
life is not a life spent in the service of others, either directly, or
indirectly as when we say--he served his country. Whenever one seeks for
reputation, for fame, for honor, for happiness directly and for his own
sake, then that which is true and genuine never comes, at least to any
degree worthy the name. It may seem to for a time, but a great law says
that such an one gets so far and no farther. Sooner or later, generally
sooner, there comes an end.

Human nature seems to run in this way, seems to be governed by a great
paradoxical law which says, that whenever a man self-centred, thinking
of, living for and in himself, is very desirous for place, for
preferment, for honor, the very fact of his being thus is of itself a
sufficient indicator that he is too small to have them, and mankind
refuses to accord them. While the one who forgets self, and who, losing
sight of these things, makes it his chief aim in life to help, to aid,
and to serve others, by this very fact makes it known that he is large
enough, is great enough to have them, and his fellow-men instinctively
bestow them upon him. This is a great law which many would profit by to
recognize. That it is true is attested by the fact that the praise of
mankind instinctively and universally goes out to a hero; but who ever
heard of a hero who became such by doing something for himself? Always
something he has done for others. By the fact that monuments and statues
are gratefully erected to the memory of those who have helped and served
their fellow-men, not to those who have lived to themselves alone.

I have seen many monuments and statues erected to the memories of
philanthropists, but I never yet have seen one erected to a miser; many
to generous-hearted, noble-hearted men, but never yet to one whose whole
life was that of a sharp bargain-driver, and who clung with a sort of
semi-idiotic grasp to all that came thus into his temporary possession.
I have seen many erected to statesmen,--statesmen,--but never one to
mere politicians; many to true orators, but never to mere demagogues;
many to soldiers and leaders, but never to men who were not willing,
when necessary, to risk all in the service of their country. No, you
will find that the world's monuments and statues have been erected and
its praises and honors have gone out to those who were large and great
enough to forget themselves in the service of others, who have been
servants, true servants of mankind, who have been true to the great law
that we find our own lives in losing them in the service of others. Not
honor for themselves, but service for others. But notice the strange,
wonderful, beautiful transformation as it returns upon itself,--_honor
for themselves, because of service to others_.

It would be a matter of exceeding great interest to verify the truth of
what has just been said by looking at a number of those who are regarded
as the world's great sons and daughters,--those to whom its honors, its
praises, its homage go out,--to see why it is, upon what their lives
have been founded that they have become so great and are so honored. Of
all this glorious company that would come up, we must be contented to
look at but one or two.

There comes to my mind the name and figure of him the celebration of
whose birthday I predict will soon be made a national holiday,--he than
whom there is no greater, whose praises are sung and whose name and
memory are honored and blessed by millions in all parts of the world
to-day, and will be by millions yet unborn, our beloved and sainted
Lincoln. And then I ask, Why is this? Why is this? One sentence of his
tells us what to look to for the answer. During that famous series of
public debates in Illinois with Stephen A. Douglas in 1858, speaking at
Freeport, Mr. Douglas at one place said, "I care not whether slavery in
the Territories be voted up or whether it be voted down, it makes not a
particle of difference with me." Mr. Lincoln, speaking from the fulness
of his great and royal heart, in reply said, with emotion, "I am sorry
to perceive that my friend Judge Douglas is so constituted that he does
not feel the lash the least bit when it is laid upon another man's
back." Thoughts upon self? Not for a moment. Upon others? Always. He at
once recognized in those black men four million brothers for whom he had
a service to perform.

It would seem almost grotesque to use the word _self-ish_ in connection
with this great name. He very early, and when still in a very humble and
lowly station in life, either consciously or unconsciously grasped this
great truth, and in making the great underlying principle of his life to
serve, to help his fellow-men, he adopted just that course that has made
him one of the greatest of the sons of men, our royal-hearted elder
brother. He never spent time in asking what he could do to attain to
greatness, to popularity, to power, what to perpetuate his name and
memory. He simply asked how he could help, how he could be of service to
his fellow-men, and continually did all his hands found to do.

He simply put his life into harmony with this great principle; and in so
doing he adopted the best means,--the _only_ means to secure that which
countless numbers seek and strive for directly, and every time so
woefully fail in finding.

There comes to my mind in this same connection another princely soul,
one who loved all the world, one whom all the world loves and delights
to honor. There comes to mind also a little incident that will furnish
an insight into the reason of it all. On an afternoon not long ago, Mrs.
Henry Ward Beecher was telling me of some of the characteristics of
Brooklyn's great preacher. While she was yet speaking of some of those
along the very lines we are considering, an old gentleman, a neighbor,
came into the room bearing in his hands something he had brought from
Mr. Beecher's grave. It was the day next following Decoration Day. His
story was this: As the great procession was moving into the cemetery
with its bands of rich music, with its carriages laden with sweet and
fragrant flowers, with its waving flags, beautiful in the sunlight, a
poor and humble-looking woman with two companions, by her apparent
nervousness attracted the attention of the gate-keeper. He kept her in
view for a little while, and presently saw her as she gave something she
had partially concealed to one of her companions, who, leaving the
procession, went over to the grave of Mr. Beecher, and tenderly laid it
there. Reverently she stood for a moment or two, and then, retracing
her steps, joined her two companions, who with bowed heads were waiting
by the wayside.

It was this that the old gentleman had brought,--a gold frame, and in it
a poem cut from a volume, a singularly beautiful poem through which was
breathed the spirit of love and service and self-devotion to the good
and the needs of others. At one or two places where it fitted, the pen
had been drawn across a word and Mr. Beecher's name inserted, which
served to give it a still more real, vivid, and tender meaning. At the
bottom this only was written, "From a poor Hebrew woman to the immortal
friend of the Hebrews." There was no name, but this was sufficient to
tell the whole story. Some poor, humble woman, but one out of a mighty
number whom he had at some time befriended or helped or cheered, whose
burden he had helped to carry, and soon perhaps had forgotten all about
it. When we remember that this was his life, is it at all necessary to
seek farther why all the world delights to honor this, another
royal-hearted elder brother? and, as we think of this simple, beautiful,
and touching incident, how true and living becomes the thought in the
old, old lines!--

"Cast thy bread upon the waters, waft it on with praying breath,
In some distant, doubtful moment it may save a soul from death.
When you sleep in solemn silence, 'neath the morn and evening dew,
Stranger hands which you have strengthened may strew lilies over you."

Our good friend, Henry Drummond, in one of his most beautiful and
valuable little works says--and how admirably and how truly!--that "love
is the greatest thing in the world." Have you this greatest thing? Yes.
How, then, does it manifest itself? In kindliness, in helpfulness, in
service, to those around you? If so, well and good, you have it. If not,
then I suspect that what you have been calling love is something else;
and you have indeed been greatly fooled. In fact, I am sure it is; for
if it does not manifest itself in this way, it cannot be true love, for
this is the one grand and never-failing test. Love is the statics,
helpfulness and service the dynamics, the former necessary to the
latter, but the latter the more powerful, as action is always more
powerful than potentiality; and, were it not for the dynamics, the
statics might as well not be. Helpfulness, kindliness, service, is but
the expression of love. It is love in action; and unless love thus
manifests itself in action, it is an indication that it is of that weak
and sickly nature that needs exercise, growth, and development, that it
may grow and become strong, healthy, vigorous, and true, instead of
remaining a little, weak, indefinite, sentimental something or nothing.

It was but yesterday that I heard one of the world's greatest thinkers
and speakers, one of our keenest observers of human affairs, state as
his opinion that selfishness is the root of all evil. Now, if it is
possible for any one thing to be the root of all evil, then I think
there is a world of truth in the statement. But, leaving out of account
for the present purpose whether it is true or not, it certainly is true
that he who can't get beyond self robs his life of its chief charms, and
more, defeats the very ends he has in view. It is a well-known law in
the natural world about us that whatever hasn't use, that whatever
serves no purpose, shrivels up. So it is a law of our own being that he
who makes himself of no use, of no service to the great body of mankind,
who is concerned only with his own small self, finds that self, small as
it is, growing smaller and smaller, and those finer and better and
grander qualities of his nature, those that give the chief charm and
happiness to life, shrivelling up. Such an one lives, keeps constant
company with his own diminutive and stunted self; while he who,
forgetting self, makes the object of his life service, helpfulness, and
kindliness to others, finds his whole nature growing and expanding,
himself becoming large-hearted, magnanimous, kind, loving, sympathetic,
joyous, and happy, his life becoming rich and beautiful. For instead of
his own little life alone he has entered into and has part in a hundred,
a thousand, ay, in countless numbers of other lives; and every success,
every joy, every happiness coming to each of these comes as such to him,
for he has a part in each and all. And thus it is that one becomes a
prince among men, a queen among women.

Why, one of the very fundamental principles of life is, so much love, so
much love in return; so much love, so much growth; so much love, so much
power; so much love, so much life,--strong, healthy, rich, exulting, and
abounding life. The world is beginning to realize the fact that love,
instead of being a mere indefinite something, is a vital and living
force, the same as electricity is a force, though perhaps of a different
nature. The same great fact we are learning in regard to thought,--that
thoughts are things, that _thoughts are forces, the most vital and
powerful in the universe_, that they have form and substance and power,
the quality of the power determined as it is by the quality of the life
in whose organism the thoughts are engendered; and so, when a thought is
given birth, it does not end there, but takes form, and as a force it
goes out and has its effect upon other minds and lives, the effect being
determined by its intensity and the quality of the prevailing emotions,
and also by the emotions dominating the person at the time the thoughts
are engendered and given form.

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