Article February 8, 1913 ISSUE

CONQUERING PERSONAL DESIRES

LUCY HAYS EASTMAN

Few of us, perhaps, realize to what extent our desires shape our careers. Yet, if we but examine our past in the light of Christian Science, we perceive that from the time when as children we cried for prohibited sweets, until in maturity we madly scrambled after the whims and fancies of drifting desire, our experiences have been harmonious or discordant according as the "I-wants" have been based upon or have fallen below the Christly standard of self-immolation.

We see how personal desire and mortal self have all too often banded together to seek the destruction of true happiness, and how we have yielded without a murmur to their unlawful rule, until, inveigled into their castle of anticipations, we become their unresting slaves. Here, however, through the penalties inflicted upon us, we finally learn with what cruelty these satanic majesties wield their asserted but baseless power, and to what selfish ends they demand obedience from their subjects. We discover, too, the subtlety with which they would make us the victims of failure, blockade the higher pathway, dethrone our ideals, and fetter moral strength. Though personal desire be disguised as the queen of all joy, it is but a fleeting phantom. Self is but the straw-man of false belief whom we ourselves have placed upon the throne where the divine idea of man rightly belongs.

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