to try impatiently to force the hand of God, and to make amends for
His apparent slothfulness. What really makes a nation grow, and
improve, and progress, is not social legislation and organisation.
That is only the sign of the rising moral temperature; and a man
who sets an example of soberness, and kindliness, and contentment
is better than a pragmatical district visitor with a taste for
rating meek persons.

It may be asked, then, do I set myself up as an example in this
matter? God forbid! I live thus because I like it, and not from any
philosophical or philanthropical standpoint. But if more men were
to follow their instincts in the matter, instead of being misled
and bewildered by the conventional view that attaches virtue to
perspiration, and national vigour to the multiplication of
unnecessary business, it would be a good thing for the community.
What I claim is that a species of mental and moral equilibrium is
best attained by a careful proportion of activity and quietude.
What happens in the case of the majority of people is that they are
so much occupied in the process of acquisition that they have no
time to sort or dispose their stores; and thus life, which ought to
be a thing complete in itself, and ought to be spent, partly in
gathering materials, and partly in drawing inferences, is apt to be
a hurried accumulation lasting to the edge of the tomb. We are put
into the world, I cannot help feeling, to BE rather than to DO. We
excuse our thirst for action by pretending to ourselves that our
own doing may minister to the being of others; but all that it
often effects is to inoculate others with the same restless and
feverish bacteria.

And anyhow, as I said, it is but an experiment. I can terminate it