Again and again it has been proved, that those who aim at God do better work than those who start with the declared intention of benefiting their fellow-men.

We must _be_ good before we can _do_ good; be real before we can accomplish real things.

No generalized benevolence, no social Christianity, however beautiful and devoted, can take the place of this centring of the spirit on eternal values; this humble, deliberate recourse to Reality.

To suppose that it can do so, is to fly in the face of history and mistake effect for cause.
This brings us to the _Second Character_: the rich completeness of the spiritual life, the way in which it fuses and transfigures the complementary human tendencies to contemplation and action, the non-successive and successive aspects of reality.

"The love of God," said Ruysbroeck, "is an indrawing _and_ outpouring tide";[51] and history endorses this.