'Do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe ?' asked Hamlet.

Is humanity more readily straightened than an iron plate ?"[5] Now, in our moral "planishing" we need to know where and how to direct our blows, lest in endeavoring to lessen the evil we not only increase 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.