elop the underlying virtues
in private life. He must strengthen the individual character, and to do
this he must deal with many things seemingly remote and inconsequential
from a national point of view. Everything that crosses a man's path in
his day's round of little or great moment requires of him an attitude
towards it, and the conscious or unconscious shaping of his attitude is
determining how he will proceed in other spheres not now in view.
Suppose the case of a man in business or social life. He has to work
with others in a day's routine or fill up with them hours of leisure
they enjoy together. Consider to what accompaniment the work is often
done and with what manner of conversation the leisure is often filled.
In a day's routine, where men work together, harmonious relations are
necessary; yet what bickerings, contentions, animosities fill many a day
over points never worth a thought. You will see two men squabble like
cats for the veriest trifle, and then go through days like children,
without a word. You will see something similar in social life among men
and women equally--petty jealousies, personalities, slanderings, mean
little stories of no great consequence in themselves, except in the
converse sense of showing how small and contemptible everything and
everyone concerned is. A keen eye notes with some depression the absence
from both spheres of a fine manliness, a generous conception of things,
a large outlook, that prevents a squabble with a smile, and because of a
consciousness of the need for determination in a great fight for a
principle, holds in true contempt the trivialities of an hour. For in
all the mean little bickerings of life there is involved not a
principle, but a petty pride. One has to note these things and decide a
line of action. In the abstract the right course seems quite natural and
easy, but in fact it is not so. A man finds another act towards him with
unconscious impudence or arrogance, and at once flies into a rage; there
is a fierce wrangle, and at the end he finds no purpose served, for
nothing was at stake. He has lost his temper for nothing. In his heat he
may tell you "he wouldn't let so-and-so do so-and-so," but on the same
principle he should hold a street-argument with every fish-wife who
might call him a name. He may tell you "he will make so-and-so respect
him," but he offends his own self-respect if he cannot consider some
things beneath him. One must have a sense of p