'Don't mistake my meaning. I am not preaching the moral value of poverty. I am no convert to asceticism. That method of ridding one's self of the overweight of the material life is too extreme to the correct solution. I am simply calling attention with all my might to the æsthetic and vital value of Not-Too-Much. I am not afraid of Enough. I am greatly afraid of Too-Much. And the reason I am afraid is this:--
'Just as the capacity of the human stomach is limited to a certain quantity of food, so also is limited the capacity of the human spirit for appropriating and assimilating property in its different forms. Beyond a certain somewhat variable point, material possessions _do the holder no more good_. The common saying, "All you get in this world is your board and clothes," is the popular acknowledgment of this restricted capacity. The affirmation of bounds to our capacity holds good as regards the property of the mind--education, cultivation, æsthetic satisfactions--just as it does of material goods. There is a definite limit to what we can effectively make our own. Beyond that limit, possession is a detriment.'
'The direct result of helping ourselves to too much of anything is to coarsen and degrade. We can see this clearly as regards the primal necessity of food. Nature promptly writes it, in large letters, all over the man or woman of gross appetites.'
'It is as plainly printed, if in smaller type, on the faces of those who want too much of other things,--houses, notoriety, money, power,--what you will. The porcine brand is there, however disguised. Personally, I fear the Mark of the Pig as I fear nothing else on earth. Shaler says that certain lines of evolution terminate in such grotesque effects that one almost believes the guiding thought behind the process was humorous. I never see a stye with its squealing, shouldering inhabitants, without thinking how tremendously satiric it is--a master-caricature of human greed, not over-drawn! And I say, "Brother Pig, Heaven grant that I keep my voracities better concealed than thou."'
Her companions regarded Honoria, in type thin, nervous, ardent, with a keen and vivid face. The comparison was certainly not apparent--but the heart knoweth its own gluttonies.
