fact that
our power of self-improvement is limited. Of some qualities we do not
even possess the germs. Some qualities we have in minute quantities,
but hardly capable of development; some few qualities we possess in
fuller measure, and they are capable of development; but even so, our
total capacity of growth is limited, conditioned by our vital energy,
and we have to face the fact that if we develop one set of qualities we
must neglect another set.

I think of it in a whimsical and fantastic image, the best I can find.
Imagine a box in which there are a number of objects like puff-balls,
each with a certain life of its own, half-filling the box. Some of the
puff-balls are small, hard, sterile; others are soft and expansive;
some grow quickly in warmth and light, others fare better in cold and
darkness. The process of growth begins: some of them increase in size
and press themselves into every crevice, enclosing and enfolding the
others; even so the growth of the whole mass is conditioned by the size
of the box, and when the box is full, the power of increase is at an
end.

The box, to interpret the fable, is our character with its
possibilities. The conditions which develop the various qualities are
the conditions of our lives, our health, our income, our education, the
people who surround us; but even the qualities themselves have their
limitations. Two people may grow up under almost precisely similar
influences, and yet remain different to the end; two characters may be
placed in difficult and bracing circumstances; the effect upon one
character is to train the quality of self-reliance, on the other to
produce a moral collapse. Some people do their growing early and then
stop altogether, becoming impervious to new opinions and new
influences. Some people go on growing to the end.

If one develops one side of one's nature, as the intellectual or
artistic, one probably suffers on the emotional or moral side. The pain
which the perceptive man feels in surveying this process is apt to be
very acute. He may see that he lacks certain qualities altogether and
yet be unable to develop them. He may find in himself some patent and
even gross fault, and be unable to cure it. The only hope for any of us
is that we do not know the expansive force of our qualities, nor the
size of the box; and therefore it is reasonable to go on trying and
desiring; and as long as one can do that, it is clear that there is
still room for gro