c work, and accustomed to decide in all matters
pertaining to the daily round, is more likely to gain the victory in
the event of moral conflict than a childless woman who lives in an
enervating atmosphere of domestic idleness, and has accustomed herself
to accept her husband's will as her own. Yet both of these women might
have the same moral vision. The first-mentioned, if left a widow,
might make herself conversant with business and carry on the
undertaking managed by her husband; but the second in like
circumstances would require tutelage, and would run every risk of
disaster. To ensure moral salvation, it is primarily necessary to
_depend_ on oneself, because in the moment of peril we are _alone_.
And strength is not to be acquired instantaneously. He who knows that
he will have to fight, prepares himself for boxing and dueling by
strength and skill; he does not sit still with folded hands, because
he knows that he will then either be lost or he will have to depend,
like the shadow of a body, on some one to protect him step by step
throughout his life, which in practise is impossible.

One single moment served to conquer us,

says Francesca, in Dante's _Inferno_.

Temptation, if it is not to conquer, must not fall like a bomb against
another bomb of instantaneous moral explosions, but against the strong
walls of an impregnable fortress strongly built up, stone by stone,
beginning at that distant day when the foundations were first laid.
Persistent work, clarity of ideas, the habit of sifting conflicting
motives in the consciousness, even in the minutest actions of life,
decisions taken every moment on the smallest things, the gradual
master over one's actions, the power of self-direction increasing by
degrees in the sum of successively repeated acts, these are the stout
little stones on which the strong structure of personality is built
up. This may then be inhabited by morality, as by a princess who lives
among the embattled towers and moats of a medieval fortress that is in
a perpetual state of defense, always under arms, but with every
probability of remaining the "lady," the "_chatelaine_." If to "build
up the house" which morality will inhabit, some mastery of the body is
also necessary, such as abstinence from alcohol, which is the chief
example of poison taken from without and tending to weaken, and
movement in the open air, which facilitates material recuperation by
freeing us from the poisons which