TOHU-VA-VOHU 26 living flower. Similarly, a man says, does, lives that which is right, true, or good, for no ‘ because’ con- nected either with this world or the next, but simply for that he is renewed in the image of Christ. It is this constant incursion of a ‘because’ which makes our lives and our religion so much of a play-acting : the ‘ because’ has put a réle upon us which is not our real, spontaneous self. Assuredly, if a ‘ because’ is the father who begets my moral acting, then my actions are, so far as my innermost being is concerned, bastards, not sons. Is that the reason why faith must lie at the root of all spiritual life? For faith is the immediate reception of the higher life, whereas the ‘ because,’ with its strongest motive impelling or forcing us to will and to do, is in its nature of the character of Law. Even failure becomes precious when the effort has been my own, and not dragged after it by a ‘ because.’ A raison d’étre does not really mean a reason for being, but an object in being: it refers to the future, not to the past. The only reason for our being is