It were better for the individual to follow his desire and afterward repent, than to crush his desires and repent for a lifetime under the false impression that the universe unjustly gives to another that which should have belonged to him.

There is just one kind of growth—­growth in wisdom. We hear of children “who grow up in ignorance.”  We likewise hear that the earth is square and the moon a green cheese.  Children can no more grow in ignorance than they can grow in a dark and air-tight case. All growth, mental, moral, spiritual or “physical,” is by increase in in-telligence; i.e., by recognition of more truth.  All things exist in a limitless sea of pure wisdom waiting, waiting to be understood.  As fast as this universal wisdom is used it becomes in-told—­intelligence—­ recognized wisdom.  We breathe in wisdom and grow in intelligence. All growth, mineral, plant, animal, man or god, conscious or unconscious—­ALL growth is by this process.  It is DESIRE that makes us breathe.  Everything cries out for more, more!—­it cannot define always what it wants, but it wants, with insatiable craving.  It is more wisdom the whole creation groaneth and travaileth to get.  “Give me more understanding or I die!”—­the visible eternally cries out to the Invisible.  Desire is the ceaseless life-urge of all things, from amoeba to archangel.  Desire is “Immanuer’—­God with us—­God in us to will and to do.”

CHAPTER X.

HARMONY AT HOME.

“I have recently married for the second time.  My husband is a splendid man but his grown up children are not in harmony with me.  Good people, but a different point of view.  I make no pretensions to perfection, of course, but I do try to do the best lean.”

This is the gist of several letters I have received from as many different women.  I will answer them together.

When you enter a new home the matter of importance is not whether your new relatives harmonize with you, but whether you harmonize with them.  It is for you to do all the adjusting.

This may seem hard, but it is not.  It is an easier matter for one person to readjust her living than for a whole family to change.  The family has not only its individual customs to hold each one, but its family customs as well; whilst you have left your family and have only your individual self to readjust.  If you refuse to adjust yourself, for no matter what reason, you will act upon this family you have entered, as a red hot iron would act upon a pan of water—­there’ll be boil and bubble, toil and trouble and the family will fly to pieces.  All because you came in with positive notions of your own which you insist upon enforcing.

But if you come into the family like a lump of sugar into a glass of water you will all, in time melt together and the whole family will be the sweeter and better for your coming.  Whatever there is in you which is better and sweeter than their own ideas and customs will in time be absorbed by the family; for what is good is ever positive to the less good, and has a power of its own to convert; and every human soul, if left free, will eventually choose the good.