Our destiny lies in our hands not in the stars

When Jason in search of the Golden Fleece had to sail past the Syrens, he plugged the ears of his mariners with wax that they might not hear their enchant­ments and seductions. This was the attempt to inhibit the natural desire for pleasure; the forfeiture of a satisfaction they would rather have enjoyed in order to pass on to a better satisfaction farther off. But Ulysses had a higher way. When he sailed past, he had Orpheus on board, and commanded him to play up his best; and the enchanting strains of purer music made his crew deaf to the coarser songs of the Syrens. This is deliverance by displacement: not the inhibition of our desires, but the education of them; making the soul deaf to the lower voices by listening to the higher. Here, then, is the door of escape from these great temptations - a door that is open to each of us. "Cease to do evil” is not enough: we must "learn to do well"; and, indeed, we cannot cease from the one habit without super-inducing, or displacing it by, the other. If, therefore, the tedium and monotony of life begins to creep over your soul, and you are tempted to the foolish excitements of gambling or drink for relief, switch the mind into a higher direction. Generate an interest in something-in anything. Learn the violin, study botany, German, butter­flies, bees, beetles-anything that will occupy the mind with new interests. Buy books, or join a library. Throw yourself into some piece of benevolent or Christian work that will deliver you from lassitude, ennui, disappointment. Who cares for a disappointed or dissatisfied man?

Not even himself. He is a mere ghost, with no blood in the veins, no hope, no initiative, no future. If a man will deliver his soul from these hideous vices, it can only be as Perseus delivered Andromeda from the monster-by fighting it from above, poised in the air on wings that kept him above the plain upon which the monster grovelled. We must fight these monsters, sustained upon the wings of great ideals.