be
made with pleasure and without any extraneous aid.

But who does not know that in every case this making a decision is an
_internal labor_, a genuine effort; so much so that persons of feeble
will try to avoid it, as a thing irksome to them. If possible, the
mistress of the house will leave the decisions to the cook, and to a
dressmaker all the arguments necessary to make one of the many motives
that come into play in the choice of a gown prevail over the rest; the
dressmaker, seeing that a decision will only be reached after long
hesitation, will say at a certain moment: Choose this which suits you
so well, and the lady will agree, more to evade the effort of a
decision than because the garment pleases her. Our entire life is a
continual exercise of decisions. When we go out of the house after
having locked the door, we have a clear consciousness of this act, a
certainty that the house is well protected, and we _decide_ to step
out and walk away from it.

The stronger we are in such exercises, the more independent we shall
be of others. Clarity of ideas, the mechanism of the habit of
decision, give us a sense of liberty. The heaviest chain, which may
bind us in a humiliating form of slavery, is an incapacity to make our
own decisions, and the consequent need to refer to others; the fear of
making "a mistake," the sense of groping in the dark, of having to
bear the consequences of an error we are not certain to recognize,
makes us run behind another person like a dog on a chain. Finally, we
shall fall into an extremity of dependence; we shall no longer be able
to despatch a letter or buy a pocket-handkerchief without asking
advice.

But when an actual conflict arises in such a consciousness, and the
decision has to be instantaneous, irresolution is the portion of one
whose weakness has placed him in subjection to another stronger will,
and then we behold a subjection which has almost imperceptibly become
an incubus: the victim has taken the first step towards an abyss where
the feeble in will run the risk of perdition. Thus the more the young
are placed in subjection, without power to exercise their own wills,
the more easily do they fall a prey to the perils of which the world
is full.

That which gives strength to resist is not the _moral vision_, it is
the _exercise of will-power_; and this exercise is to be found in the
routine of life itself. The mother of a family, much occupied in her
mission of domesti