PREFACE
In matters of external advantage the poor must feed on the crumbs which fall from the rich man's table. In the mental science of how to suspend passion so as to convert it into power, the inverse rule holds good. Or perhaps it would be a truer statement of the case if we said that the same rule holds good in both realms, but the classification is inverted: the rich in the goods of this world have to ask for crumbs which fall from the table of the others.
Many of the world's wealthy ones appear to be sincerely desirous to give to us more than crumbs of their external advantages. But there seems to be some insuperable obstacle in the way. The poor in money, health, sanity, culture, and reputation are always with us, and the other poor, the poor in the science of forging passion into power, are with us too.
Perhaps one reason why the world's favoured ones find it difficult to reach us either to give or to receive effectively, is that we, the poor, do not reach each other. Perhaps if we were more generous to each other, the current thus set flowing might draw with it the possibility of effective currents being set flowing across barriers made by worldly prosperity.
13
