INTRODUCTION 
5 
unknown, and the power of rapid and irrevocable decision 
without counting the cost. 
I think that it is altogether wrong to allow yourself to be 
worried by "psychological, moral and artistic problems." It is 
no good your starting anything of any kind unless you can 
see clearly into the simplicity of truth. All this humming and 
hawing about things is moral poison. What is the use of being 
a woman if you have not got an intuition, an instinct 
enabling you to distinguish between the genuine and the 
sham? 
Your state of mind suggests to me that you must have 
been, in the past, under the influence of people who were 
always talking about things, and never doing any real work. 
They kept on arguing all sorts of obscure philosophical 
points; that is all very well, but when you have succeeded in 
analyzing your reactions you will understand that all this talk 
is just an excuse for not doing any serious work. 
I am confirmed in this judgment by your saying: "I don't 
know if I want to en ter into a great conflict. I need peace." 
Fortunately you save yourself by adding: "Real peace, that is 
living and not stagnant ." All life is conflict. Every breath that 
you draw represents a victory in the struggle of the whole 
Universe. You can't have peace without perfect mastery of 
circumstance; and I take it that this is what you mean by 
"living, not stagnant." 
But it is of the first consequence for you to summon up 
the resolution to stamp on this sea of swirling thoughts by an 
act of will; you must say: "Peace be still." The moment you 
have understood these thoughts for what they are, tools of 
the enemy, invented by him with the idea of preventing you 
from undertaking the Great Work-the moment you dismiss 
all such considerations firmly and decisively, and say: "What 
must I do?" and having discovered that , set to work to do it, 
allowing of no interruption, you will find that living peace 
which (as you seem to see) is a dynamic and not a static 
condition. (There is quite a lot about this point in Little 
,Issays Toward Truth, and also in The Vision and the Voice.