Finally, it may not appear possible for you to be equally friendly with everybody. Well, then, discriminate among people, but always in favor of the humble, the poor, the simple, the uneducated, the children, even the animals and plants. Never, on the other hand, if you desire a quiet mind, seek the favor of important people, and never expect gratitude for condescension to the humble, but count the love they have for you as precious as you do your love for them. There are many other of these lesser instances of good habits which I might still further mention, and if my reader should recall them, he is not to regard them as unrecognized by me. I only invite him, in the first place, to put to practical use my list as thus far suggested. As he does so, let him notice--as he soon must notice--that it is much more to his purpose to begin practically with one good habit than to begin by making a complete catalogue of all. The real difficulty in this cultivation of good habits--indeed the only difficulty--is in ridding the heart of its natural selfishness. For selfishness is the practical obstacle to good habits, though it may pretend to believe in them. No one who understands himself will deny that there is in every one a curious tendency to moral degeneration. It is often something that literally borders on depravity. Now, this inclination to evil is to be conquered only by a superior force; and the whole problem, both of philosophy and of religion,--a problem as old as the world and yet new with each individual,--is summed up in the question: “Where shall I find this superior force which shall make me inclined to goodness and shall renew that spiritual health which is essential for the right conduct of life?” To this question, there are still given many different answers. Dante, in the famous twenty-seventh canto of the Purgatorio, says: “_When underneath us was the stairway all Run o’er, and we were on the highest step, Virgilius fastened upon me his eyes, And said_: * * * * * _By intellect and art I here have brought thee._”[2] By the guidance of reason, then, the traveller has been led to the Holy Mountain, where at last he hears his guide say: “_Take thine own pleasure for thy guide henceforth; Beyond the steep ways and the narrow art thou._” And yet--and here we notice a marked inconsistency in the great mediæval poet and philosopher--it is an angel who bears these mortal souls across the sea and brings them to the foot of this mountain, and another angel repeatedly restrains them from returning on their way, even when they have passed the Gate of Grace; and by the diamond threshold, beyond which none may pass without his bidding, sits a third angel, to whom one may approach only by a miracle of God’s grace. In all this journey, then, the “intellect and art” which accompany the traveller play, we must confess, a very limited rôle.