the way. But I act, within, as though I
had so expected. I blame. Hence kindliness, hence cheerfulness, is
rendered vastly more difficult for me.

What I ought to do is this! I ought to reflect again and again, and yet
again, that the beings among whom I have to steer, the living
environment out of which I have to manufacture my happiness, are just as
inevitable in the scheme of evolution as I am myself; have just as much
right to be themselves as I have to be myself; are precisely my equals
in the face of Nature; are capable of being explained as I am capable
of being explained; are entitled to the same latitude as I am entitled
to, and are no more responsible for their composition and their
environment than I for mine. I ought to reflect again and again, and yet
again, that they all deserve from me as much sympathy as I give to
myself. Why not? Having thus reflected in a general manner, I ought to
take one by one the individuals with whom I am brought into frequent
contact, and seek, by a deliberate effort of the imagination and the
reason, to understand them, to understand why they act thus and thus,
what their difficulties are, what their 'explanation' is, and how
friction can be avoided. So I ought to reflect, morning after morning,
until my brain is saturated with the cases of these individuals. Here is
a course of discipline. If I follow it I shall gradually lose the
preposterous habit of blaming, and I shall have laid the foundations of
that quiet, unshakable self-possession which is the indispensable
preliminary of conduct according to reason, of thorough efficiency in
the machine of happiness. But something in me, something distinctly
base, says: 'Yes. The put-yourself-in-his-place business over again! The
do-unto-others business over again!' Just so! Something in me is ashamed
of being 'moral.' (You all know the feeling!) Well, morals are naught
but another name for reasonable conduct; a higher and more practical
form of egotism--an egotism which, while freeing others, frees myself. I
have tried the lower form of egotism. And it has failed. If I am afraid
of being moral, if I prefer to cut off my nose to spite my face, well, I
must accept the consequences. But truth will prevail.

VIII

THE DAILY FRICTION

It is with common daily affairs that I am now dealing, not with heroic
enterprises, ambitions, martyrdoms. Take the day, the ordinary day in
the ordinary house or office. Though it comes seven