the evil itself, but produce other evils almost as great as the one we
intended to cure. The mistake that we commit--and this is, I think,
especially true of us women--is to rush at our moral problems without
giving a moment's thought to their causes, which often lie deep hidden
in human nature. Our great naturalist, Darwin, gave eight years' study
to our lowly brother, the barnacle; he gave an almost equal amount of
time to the study of the earthworm and its functions, revealing to us,
in one of his most charming books, how much of our golden harvest, of
our pastures, and our jewelled garden-beds, we owe to this silent and
patient laborer. Yet we think that we can deal with our higher and more
complex human nature without giving it any study at all. We hit down
directly on its moral inequalities, without giving a thought to what has
caused the imperfection, when constantly, as in the sheet of metal which
has to be straightened, the moral disorder has to be met, not directly,
but indirectly--not at the point of the disorder itself, but of its
often unsuspected cause. Purity, like health, like happiness, like so
many of the higher aims of our life, has to be attained altruistically.
Seek them too directly, and they elude our grasp. Like the oarsman, we
have often to turn our back upon our destination in order to arrive at
our end.

Do not, therefore, think impatiently that I am putting you off with
vague theories when you want practical suggestions, if I ask you first
to give some patient thought to the causes of the disorder which seems
to mark the side of our human nature on which the very existence of the
race depends, and which cannot, therefore, be evil in itself. To me the
problem presented was almost paralyzing. It seemed as if Nature, in her
anxiety to secure the continuance of the species, had taken no account
whatever of the moral law, but had so overloaded the strength of passion
as not only to secure the defeat of the moral law, but even of her own