precautions, and with the formal politeness you would use to a stranger.
Intimacy is no excuse for rough manners, though the majority of us seem
to think it is. You are not in charge of the universe; you are in charge
of yourself. You cannot hope to manage the universe in your spare time,
and if you try you will probably make a mess of such part of the
universe as you touch, while gravely neglecting yourself. In every
family there is generally some one whose meddlesome interest in other
machines leads to serious friction in his own. Criticise less, even in
the secrecy of your chamber. And do not blame at all. Accept your
environment and adapt yourself to it in silence, instead of noisily
attempting to adapt your environment to yourself. Here is true wisdom.
You have no business trespassing beyond the confines of your own
individuality. In so trespassing you are guilty of impertinence. This is
obvious. And yet one of the chief activities of home-life consists in
prancing about at random on other people's private lawns. What I say
applies even to the relation between parents and children. And though my
precept is exaggerated, it is purposely exaggerated in order effectively
to balance the exaggeration in the opposite direction.

All individualities, other than one's own, are part of one's
environment. The evolutionary process is going on all right, and they
are a portion of it. Treat them as inevitable. To assert that they are
inevitable is not to assert that they are unalterable. Only the
alteration of them is not primarily your affair; it is theirs. Your
affair is to use them, as they are, without self-righteousness, blame,
or complaint, for the smooth furtherance of your own ends. There is no
intention here to rob them of responsibility by depriving them of
free-will while saddling _you_ with responsibility as a free agent. As
your environment they must be accepted as inevitable, because they _are_
inevitable. But as centres themselves they have their own