question which stands before all the world, and which sets people at
variance, and that we shall settle it in such wise that life will be
better to them, that their conscience will be more at peace, and that
they will have nothing to fear; the result will be, that other people
will see that the happiness which they are seeking everywhere, lies
there around them; that the apparently unreconcilable contradictions
of conscience and of the constitution of this world will be
reconciled in the easiest and most joyful manner; and that, instead
of fearing the people who surround us, it will become necessary for
us to draw near to them and to love them.

The apparently insoluble economical and social problem is merely the
problem of Kriloff's casket. {2} The casket will simply open. And
it will not open, so long as people do not do simply that first and
simple thing--open it.

A man sets up what he imagines to be his own peculiar library, his
own private picture-gallery, his own apartments and clothing, he
accumulates his own money in order therewith to purchase every thing
that he needs; and the end of it all is, that engaged with this
fancied property of his, as though it were real, he utterly loses his
sense of that which actually constitutes his property, on which he
can really labor, which can really serve him, and which will always
remain in his power, and of that which is not and cannot be his own
property, whatever he may call it, and which cannot serve as the
object of his occupation.

Words always possess a clear significance until we deliberately
attribute to them a false sense.