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all the difference between principle and detail; between the universal and the individual; between desire and the thing desired; all the difference there is between hunger in the abstract and hunger for a particular food. Desire is soul-hunger-for what? For expression only. The soul, like the starling in Sterne's essay, cries, "I want to get out!" But it does not cry for any particular way or place in which to get out. Desire is of the subjective, of the spiritual life. That which gratifies desire is of the reason, of experience, of the objective life. When you ask me, "Will my desire be gratified?" I answer yes. "Will my desire for that particular thing be gratified?" That depends upon your choice, your persistency, your will. Desire causes us to want. Then we ask ourselves, what we want. Often in this condition we wish. Wishing is weakness; is dissipation of our forces. In wishing the Ideal is held momentarily and is changed so often that life becomes a composite of many pictures, none of which have taken shape and given satisfaction to the conscious mind; but because there has been expression in wishing and the soul has partial satisfaction. No habit is more weakening than that of wishing-day-dreaming. It is idling away hours, vitiating the stream of life with mental poison, "vain imaginings," that simply flit through the mind leaving it weak, because as Will, the Ego is not trained to hold any one of them till it makes an impression upon the objective life. Desire, taking form in a mental picture held by the Will until it materializes, gives satisfaction to the conscious mind. Lowell says:

But, would we learn that heart's full scope
Which we are hourly wronging,
Our lives must climb from hope to hope
And realize our longing.