The fact is, however, that in each of these families there is a natural defect which requires something from the other for completeness. Taking happiness as the standard, the Daytons have it as against the Mores. Taking attainment as the standard, the Mores have it as against the Daytons. A portion of the discontented ideality of the Mores would stimulate the Daytons to refine and perfect many things which might easily be made better, did they care enough to have them so; and a portion of the Daytons’ self-satisfied contentment would make the attainments and refinements of the Mores of some practical use in advancing their own happiness. But between these two classes of natures lies another, to which has been given an equal share of ideality,--in which the conception and the desire of excellence are equally strong, but in which a discriminating common-sense acts like a balance-wheel in machinery. What is the reason that the most exacting idealists never make themselves unhappy about not being able to fly like a bird or swim like a fish? Because common-sense teaches them that these accomplishments are so utterly out of the question that they never arise to the mind as objects of desire. In these well-balanced minds we speak of, common-sense runs an instinctive line all through life between the attainable and the unattainable, and sets the key of desire accordingly. Common-sense teaches that there is no one branch of human art or science in which perfection is not a point forever receding. A botanist gravely assures us, that to become perfect in the knowledge of one branch of seaweeds would take all the time and strength of a man for a lifetime. There is no limit to music, to the fine arts. There is never a time when the gardener can rest, saying that his garden is perfect. Housekeeping, cooking, sewing, knitting, may all, for aught we know, be pushed on forever, without exhausting the capabilities for better doing. But while attainment in everything is endless, circumstances forbid the greater part of human beings from attaining in any direction the half of what they see would be desirable; and the difference between the miserable idealist and the contented realist often is, not that both do not see what needs to be done for perfection, but that, seeing it, one is satisfied with the attainable, and the other forever frets and wears himself out on the unattainable. The principal of a large and complicated public institution was complimented on maintaining such uniformity of cheerfulness amid such a diversity of cares. “I’ve made up my mind to be satisfied, when things are done _half_ as well as I would have them,” was his answer; and the same philosophy would apply with cheering results to the domestic sphere. There is a saying which one often hears among common people, that such and such a one are persons who never could be happy, unless everything went “_just so_,"--that is, in accordance with their highest conceptions.