EXOD951 In the art of living as in the art of sculpture or painting we must reckon not only with aims and motives but also with patterns. Moses, we are told, was shown at Sinai a fiery model for the lamp which he was to make for the tabernacle. The Rabbis took this to be symbolic of the fashioning of human lives as well. Of them, too, it is said: [this verse]. Like a star a man's ideal is high in heaven. Though he may never quite succeed, he must strive to hitch his wagon to the star. In the very endeavor he finds scope for the expansion of his powers and for the growth of the spirit. The person whose eye is set on the highest cannot be satisfied with a pattern derived from the lower order of being. He refuses to regard life as a "strange interlude," composed of nothing but predatory impulses, sex hungers, and animal satisfactions. Neither is he content with a pattern of utilitarian type. His mind has been fired with a higher vision. He strives to fill his life with richer meaning. He no longer lives in the physical tracks of the body. He is conscious of soul life, of reason, of love, of truth, justice, of goodness, of beauty and of holiness. He is a child of the Divine order, created in the very image of God. While his physical being demands care, it must not dwarf the spiritual side of his being, if he is to work out within himself the pattern revealed to him on the height of religious vision. The Midrash comments on the words of Psalm 100:3, "'It is He that made us, and not ourselves'-- we do not make ourselves." Rab Aha adds: "We do not complete our souls." Our perfection as human beings is attained through our consciousness of the Divine. [Gen. R. 100. I; see Sefer Hasidim, 756.] Herein lies the chief service of religion to morality. Plato recognized that morality based upon considerations of reward and punishment or similar ideas of prudentialism lacks intrinsic worth. True morality consists in assimilating man to God.