that mission? Some of them
said: the continuation of the race; and some said: the passing on of the present culture to the coming generation; and some said: the spreading of God's religion upon the earth... and some said: the doing of one's duty... and they said and they said... And I said to them: Nonsense... This mission, however great and lofty and exalted its worth, is still no more than a mission, and we no more than messengers; the important thing, then, is the mission, and we become thereby a means for its performance. So are we human beings a means, or an end glorious in ourselves??...
And if we are an end, what is this end?? And they said: We were made to be happy... I said: And what is happiness?... And one of them said: Happiness is to carry out the mission for which God created you. I said: Are we circling around ourselves and
deceiving ourselves? Since when does the end exist for the sake of the means?...
And another said: Happiness is in the acquiring of wealth. I said: And what is wealth? Is it not a means to the comfort of the body... and is happiness in the comfort of this body?...
And they said: True happiness is in the cultivation of the spirit, and in searching always for all that is true and good and beautiful... And I believed what they said... and I set about cultivating myself... I surrounded myself with every means that might raise a human being above worldly pettiness and lift her to a lofty world that acknowledges no material things and gives no weight to trifles... For this I enlisted an army of works of
thought, and mustered a host of valuable intellectual studies — and I came out of it all perplexed, anxious, and troubled, as I had begun... I came to live in one world, while those about me lived in another... I avoided listening, and my soul turned away from the company of people, for they live in one valley and I wander in another... I came to see things in a way plainly different from the way people see them... And people avoided me in their turn, for they began to see in me a strange girl, kneaded of a clay other than their clay... And I became solitary, anxious... perplexed... visited from time to time by an insistent question... "Why do I live?"
And my companion fell silent... and I pitied her... She had lost her way...
Ipana
Toothpaste
Ipana
Keeps your teeth sound and makes them gleaming white
IPANA TOOTH PASTE
Ipana strengthens the gums
* A farmer brought a photographer to his farm to have a photograph taken of himself to send to his fiancée on her feast day. When the photographer got ready to take the picture, the farmer came up with a donkey and an ox and stood between them. The photographer was astonished and asked him to take the two animals away lest they appear in the picture, but the farmer said:
— Go ahead and shoot. I have a purpose behind this. — The photographer finished his work and handed him the picture; he took it and wrote beneath it the following:
My beloved fiancée, I send you my picture. The one on the right is the donkey and the one on the left is the ox, and in the middle is your fiancé, who adores you. Manuel