were due largely to overcrowding. She secured, therefore, some well
furnished cottages in the suburbs and offered them rent free until such
time as the occupants should become well established. Her surprise was
great when they refused to move into these comparatively luxurious
quarters; they seemed to prefer the dirt and disease, the sickness and vice
to which they were accustomed. "She did not know the force of habit; she
was totally ignorant of the hard and fast condition into which people grow.
She had never stopped to consider how necessary it is for the world at
large to have such repression. Without this control there could be no
peace, no safety, no steady growth in civilized society. The poor would
attack the rich, the lawless and violent would assail the peaceful, the
indolent would refuse to labor, the regularity and studied discipline of
well-ordered life would absolutely cease. In their place anarchy would
reign and each day would make confusion worse confounded. Imagine, if you
can, what animals would be if they lacked restraint of habit. Man's power
over them would cease instantly and their strength would be a terrible
engine of destruction. Men would be as much worse as human intelligence
exceeds brute intelligence. One is quite safe in declaring that habit is
the great flywheel that regulates society."

Desirable habits, therefore, together with all necessary reforms, must
come about slowly; they should be the result of conscious training and
education in all the factors that make for a higher civilization.




LESSON IX