CHAPTER VII THE VALUE OF PAIN

" For she is the vestal virgin coiuecrated to the service of the immortal perfection, and when she takes her tme place before the altar of the Infinité she casts off her dark veil and bares her face to the beholder as a révélation of suprême joy." — ^Tagorb, Sadhana,

ARGUMENT

The solution of the Problem of Pain is the disclosure of its lifeward function. This can be done in respect of many kinds of pain ; but there remains a residuum of apparently purposeless pain ; ai this point, where the problem is obstinate, the important * thing to do is to find the right practice of life. Carpenter suggests that the purpose of such pain may possibly be to teach us how to ignore it, and evolve past it.

Pleasure and pain are often experienced as continuous, an incrément in the stimulus causing a pieasurable, to pass into a painful, sensation. Pain quickens the deeper areas of consciousness , and so ministers to psychic growth.

This is as true of society as it is of the individual ; suffering in the social body indicates growth ai that point ; and ail sufferers, whatever be the occasion of their pain, form a brotherhood in whose tra^