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paralysing despair and these corrosive suspicions concerning a 

 fundamental characteristic of human nature. 



We perceive, for example, that it is one thing to say to one- 

 self, "A man should stand erect, not be held erect by others", 

 "Pass your life in honesty and purity of heart", "Be master 

 of your appetites", "Be perfect", and quite another matter to 

 realise these maxims in our conduct. Yet why should any one 

 be surprised at this? Suppose we said to those who desired 

 to paint beautifully, or to those who wished to be athletes, 

 "Be ye perfect", should we consider it just to expect that forth- 

 with there should stand before us perfect painters or perfect 

 athletes ? Yet where lies the difference ? The ordinary man- 

 would-be painter or lover of the right has many firmly rooted 

 habits to extirpate and many new habits to plant and tend. 

 Neither to exaggerate nor to understate, to place oneself in the 

 position of another, to become self-reliant, to feel kindly dis- 

 posed towards all whatever their character, to be alert in order 

 to perform some good act, to assume complete and easy control 

 over our bodily desires and long-established habits, to display 

 delicate insight into the needs of others, and much else that 

 a live conscience exacts, manifestly requires minute adjustments 

 which only long, deliberate, and experimental practice can 

 properly effect. Not a line can be written about the methods 

 of acquiring an art, which does not apply to the art of conduct. 



We learn, accordingly, that absence of definiteness in thought, 

 i.e., of a proper perspective, is the cause of men and women 

 falling far short of their ideal and being in incessant conflict 

 therewith. Let the art of conduct become a genuine art, and 

 let children from infancy onwards be systematically trained to 

 develop all the virtues pursuant to the law of development in 

 all the arts, and we shall have a right and a reason to anti- 

 cipate lives where the ideal and the real almost meet. 



114. Or let us probe the question of peace and war by 

 means of the test of definiteness. It is a common argument, 

 sometimes urged with regret, that war, like penury or vice, 

 has always existed and will consequently, it is alleged, con- 

 tinue for aye. If we definitely ask ourselves, however, what 

 war is, this depressing conclusion seems by no means self- 

 evident. For instance, erstwhile private war or revenge was 

 universal, and yet in the most civilised lands lawlessness has 

 virtually passed away. Again, towns and provinces were for- 

 merly often at war, whilst nobles boasted of their retainers 

 and fought one another a condition of society now wholly 

 obsolete. Small countries frequently at war with one another 

 have been fused together and have become large countries, 

 e.g., England, Germany, Italy, the old feuds never recurring. 

 It is, therefore, manifest that with the growth in humaneness, 

 the granting of personal and corporate autonomy, and the in- 

 tegration of international relations, the time must arrive when 



