inciple that one
ought to aim at completeness and perfection. I don't believe that is
the secret of life--indeed I think it is all the other way. One must of
course do one's best to resist immoral, low, sensuous tendencies; but
otherwise I believe that one ought to drink as much as one's glass can
hold of pure and beautiful influences. If sentiment is the nearest that
a man can come to emotion, I think he had better take it thankfully. It
is this ethical prudence which is always weighing issues, and pulling
up the plant to see how it grows, which is the weakening and the
stunting thing. Of course any principle can be used sophistically; but
I think that many people commit a kind of idolatry by worshipping their
rules and principles rather than by trusting God. It develops a larger
and freer life, if one is not too cautious, too precise. Of course one
must follow what light one has, and all lights are lit from God; but if
one watches the lanterns of moralists too anxiously, one may forget the
stars.

July 8, 1889.

I lose myself sometimes in a dream of misery in thinking of the
baseness and meanness and squalor that condition the lives of so many
of the poor. Not that it is not possible under those conditions to live
lives of simplicity and dignity and beauty. It is perfectly possible,
but only, I think, for strong natures possessing a combination of
qualities--virtue, industry, sense, prudence, and above all good
physical health. There must still be thousands of lives which could be
happy and simple and virtuous under more secure conditions, which are
marred and degraded by the influences under which they are nurtured.
Yet what can the more fortunate individual do in the matter? If all the
rich men in England were to resign to-morrow all the wealth they
possessed, reserving only a bare modicum of subsistence, the matter
could not be amended. Even that wealth could not be wisely applied;
and, if equally divided, it would hardly make any appreciable
difference. What is worse, it would not alter the baneful influences in
the least; it would give no increased security of material conditions,
and it would not affect the point at issue, namely, the tone and
quality of thought and feeling, where the only hope of real
amelioration lies, and which is really the source and root of our
social evils.

Moreover, the real difficulty is not to see what the classes on whom
the problem presses most grimly NEED, but what they WAN