ters. Without it, what is the most richly decorated house? A dead
dwelling-place. With it the barest home has life and brightness. Among
the forces capable of transforming the will and increasing happiness,
there is perhaps none in more universal use than this beauty. It knows
how to shape itself by means of the crudest tools, in the midst of the
greatest difficulties. When the dwelling is cramped, the purse limited,
the table modest, a woman who has the gift, finds a way to make order,
fitness and convenience reign in her house. She puts care and art into
everything she undertakes. To do well what one has to do is not in her
eyes the privilege of the rich, but the right of all. That is her aim,
and she knows how to give her home a dignity and an attractiveness that
the dwellings of princes, if everything is left to mercenaries, cannot
possess.

Thus understood, life quickly shows itself rich in hidden beauties, in
attractions and satisfactions close at hand. To be one's self, to
realize in one's natural place the kind of beauty which is fitting
there--this is the ideal. How the mission of woman broadens and deepens
in significance when it is summed up in this: to put a soul into the
inanimate, and to give to this gracious spirit of things those subtle
and winsome outward manifestations to which the most brutish of human
beings is sensible. Is not this better than to covet what one has not,
and to give one's self up to longings for a poor imitation of others'
finery?

XII

PRIDE AND SIMPLICITY IN THE INTERCOURSE OF MEN

It would perhaps be difficult to find a more convincing example than
pride to show that the obstacles to a better, stronger, serener life are
rather in us than in circumstances. The diversity, and more than that,
the contrasts in social conditions give rise inevitably to all sorts of
conflicts. Yet in spite of this how greatly would social relations be
simplified, if we put another spirit into mapping out our plan of
outward necessities! Be well persuaded that it is not primarily
differences of class and occupation, differences in the outward
manifestations of their destinies, which embroil men. If such were the
case, we should find an idyllic peace reigning among colleagues, and all
those whose interests and lot are virtually equivalent. On the contrary,
as everyone knows, the most violent shocks come when equal meets equal,
and there is no war worse than civil war. But that which above all