alled a simple-minded man, because the
essence of simplicity is not to ride a hobby hard. He thought and
talked too much about simplicity; and the fact is that simplicity, like
humility, cannot exist side by side with self-consciousness. The moment
that a man is conscious that he is simple and humble, he is simple and
humble no longer. You cannot become humble by reminding people
constantly, like Uriah Heep, of your humility; similarly you cannot
become simple, by doing elaborately, and making a parade of doing, the
things that the simple man would do without thinking about them.

It is almost true to say that the people who are most in love with
simplicity are often the most complicated natures. They become weary of
their own complexity, and they fancy that by acting on a certain
regimen they can arrive at tranquillity of soul. It is in reality just
the other way. One must become simple in soul first, and the simple
setting follows as a matter of course. If a man can purge himself of
ambition, and social pride, and ostentation, and the desire of praise,
his life falls at once into a simple mould, because keeping up
appearances is the most expensive thing in the world; to begin with
eating pulse and drinking water, is as if a man were to wear his hair
like Tennyson, and expect to become a poet thereby. Asceticism is the
sign and not the cause of simplicity. The simple life will become easy
and common enough when people have simple minds and hearts, when they
do the duties that lie ready to their hand, and do not crave for
recognition.

Neither can simplicity be brought about by a movement. There is nothing
which is more fatal to it than that people should meet to discuss the
subject; it can only be done by individuals, and in comparative
isolation. A friend of mine dreamed the other day that she was
discussing the subject of mission services with a stranger; she
defended them in her dream with great warmth and rhetoric: when she had
done, her companion said, "Well, to tell you the truth, I don't believe
in people being inspired IN ROWS." This oracular saying has a profound
truth in it--that salvation is not to be found in public meetings; and
that to assemble a number of persons, and to address them on the
subject of simplicity, is the surest way to miss the charm of that
secluded virtue.

The worst of it is that the real, practical, moral simplicity of which
I have been speaking is not an attractive thing to a gener