“There’s just the trouble,” I answered, “that it isn’t their motive, and so it cannot be ours.”
Ruth told us how at the Christian Science church that morning she had left something undone which she regretted. She said: “There was a young man who did not seem to know any one, and he looked lonesome and uncomfortable. I felt as if I ought to go up to him and make him welcome, but I had not the courage.”
“And I think you were right,” I answered her, “for he might not have understood your motive. And yet again he might. It is hard to tell. I am sorry to say we have often to wrong people in this matter.”
I spoke of the sufferings and the wrongs of society, and of how we must realize that these are our sufferings and our wrongs.
“Yes,” said Marian, “but what can we do? We can’t do anything.”
“There is very little we can do, except to be on the right side, and therefore ready to do. I want to have you see the thing as it is, to be conscious of the whole, as your whole self, so that you will act according to that knowledge.”
“Don’t you think,” asked Marian, “that a great many people act the same way, without knowing why they do it?”
“Yes,” I answered, “or else they are only half conscious, or think they have some other motive. But I believe in being fully conscious, and doing things with freedom and from conviction.”
“I don’t believe,” said Marian, “that while I act I think of why I am acting.”
“No,” I answered, “I am quite certain that you do not, and that you never will. No man thinks while he acts. The thinking is done long before. And then the action comes of itself. If you always think and feel a certain way, the good, true way, you need not trouble over your actions. They will be right. Do you suppose the man who gives up his life to save another thinks of what he is doing, and why? He is doing what he must. But all his life long he has been thinking in such a way, and living in such a way, that no other action would be possible.”