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this soul most greatly desires to return to him. And as a pilgrim who goes by a way he has never travelled, who believes every house he sees afar off to be his inn, and not finding it to be so directs his belief to another, and so from house to house till he come to the inn, so our soul forthwith on entering upon the new and never-travelled road of this life directs its eyes to the goal of its highest good, and therefore believes whatever thing it sees that seems to have in it any good to be that.
And because its first knowledge is imperfect by reason of not being experienced nor indoctrinated, small goods seem to it great.
Wherefore we see children desire most greatly an apple, and then proceeding further on desire a bird, and then further yet desire fine raiment, and then a horse, and then a woman, and then riches not great, and then greater and greater.
And this befalls because in none of these things it finds that which it goes seeking, and thinks to find it further on. ’
Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston, 1876.
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