We have yearly three or four high feast days, and many ordinary ones:
there are likewise some very great and dark combats to wage, but beside
these is the multitude of plain and simple duties. Now, while in the
great encounters our equipment is generally adequate, it is precisely in
the little emergencies that we are found wanting. Without fear of being
misled by a paradoxical form of thought, I affirm, then, that the
essential thing is to fulfil our simple duties and exercise elementary
justice. In general, those who lose their souls do so not because they
fail to rise to difficult duty, but because they neglect to perform that
which is simple. Let us illustrate this truth.

He who tries to penetrate into the humble underworld of society is not
slow to discover great misery, physical and moral. And the closer he
looks, the greater number of unfortunates does he discover, till in the
end this assembly of the wretched appears to him like a great black
world, in whose presence the individual and his means of relief are
reduced to helplessness. It is true that he feels impelled to run to the
succor of these unfortunates, but at the same time he asks himself,
"What is the use?" The case is certainly heartrending. Some, in despair,
end by doing nothing. They lack neither pity nor good intention, but
these bear no fruit. They are wrong. Often a man has not the means to do
good on a large scale, but that is not a reason for failing to do it at
all. So many people absolve themselves from any action, on the ground
that there is too much to do! They should be recalled to simple duty,
and this duty in the case of which we speak is that each one, according
to his resources, leisure and capacity, should create relations for
himself among the world's disinherited. There are people who by the
exercise of a little good-will have succeeded in enrolling themselves
among the followers of ministers, and have ingratiated themselves with
princes. Why should you not succeed in forming relations with the poor,
and in making acquaintances among the workers who lack somewhat the
necessities of life? When a few families are known, with their
histories, their antecedents and their difficulties, you may be of the
greatest use to them by acting the part of a brother, with the moral and
material aid that is yours to give. It is true, you will have attacked
only one little corner, but you will have done what you could, and
perhaps have led another