lat Life Seems to Me 
 
 Continuous Personality and 
 Social Evolution 
 
 S. F. Shorey 
 
 Our present gain of happiness is de- 
 rived from what we are and what we 
 have as a product of life's unfolding 
 change; the greater happiness ahead 
 must be reached by the same process. 
 
 If, however, rapid strides are to be 
 made, a comfortable and inexpensive 
 move secured, this process must be edu- 
 cationally instituted and intelligently 
 operated. What are you doing about it? 
 
WHAT LIFE SEEMS TO ME 
 
 OR 
 
 CONTINUOUS PERSONALITY 
 
 AND 
 
 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 
 
 By 
 S.F. SHOREY 
 
 Other Books by the same writer: 
 
 "The Greatest Men and Women, as Factors 
 of Human Progress" 
 
 "Human Harmonies and the Art of Making Them" 
 
 "Injustice and National Decay" 
 
 "Human Progress and Party Functions" 
 
 Published by 
 
 S. F. SHOREY, Seattle, Wash. 
 
 October, 1917 
 
BD4S-5 - 
 .Ss 
 
 Copyrighted October, 1917, 
 
 By 
 
 S. F. Shorey 
 
 / 
 
 .NOV -5 1917 
 
 CALVERT-CALHOUN PRINTING CO. 
 
 ©CU477403 
 
SOME PREFATORY REMARKS 
 
 CHOUGH it can be made no more than vague- 
 ly descriptive, there are few who on reading 
 the title of a book, are not hereby led to immedi- 
 ately guess at the contents and to form an opinion. 
 
 Hence, the favorable impression made by its 
 title has sold many a worthless book, and its op- 
 posite has killed the sale of many a meritorious one. 
 
 The aim of these few prefatory remarks is to 
 convey to the examiner of this little volume some 
 further knowledge of its contents than he is likely 
 to gather from the title. 
 
 "Continuous Personality and Social Evolution; 
 or, What Life Seems to Me," offers to the reader 
 some philosophical reflections on the age old sub- 
 ject, of the meaning of life. 
 
 Any one of a dozen other titles would, descrip- 
 tively, have served nearly as well ; as, for instance, 
 for the first part of the title: 
 
 Human Happiness and the Art of Its Increase 
 — The Evolution of Human Happiness — The Art 
 of Happiness Gaining — Personal Continuity and 
 the Evolution of Happiness — A Look at Life, from 
 the Foothills — The Evolution of Human Capacity. 
 
 For what, is herein asked, can be the meaning 
 of life, what, if anything, can be learned hereof, 
 —3— 
 
through a rational consideration of the facts of life 
 as they appear and pass on before us ? 
 
 Life is a term of conscious existence in which we 
 learn by experience, the facts of experience lead 
 us to infer other and similar facts beyond experi- 
 ence, we are led by analogy from what we know, to 
 what we have not yet learned by actual experience ; 
 in other words, we are enticed by the experiences 
 of life to guess, and encouraged to keep on guessing 
 by being able, often, to guess correctly. 
 
 This power to guess is what makes the religionist, 
 the philosopher, the scientist, the business man; 
 and, progress possible. 
 
 Some things in life, through knowledge gained 
 of the evolving process of life, have come to seem 
 quite plain: Social improvement, from which all 
 are gradually receiving some benefit, seems to be an 
 indisputable fact; men and women are moving into 
 higher possibilities of expression; and, since pro- 
 gress is cumulative, conditions of existence and 
 capacity to enjoy greatly transcending the present, 
 seem likely to be reached in the future. 
 
 Specifically, we are being driven, it would seem, 
 through the extraordinary experiences of our own 
 time to gain some greatly needed social results, 
 higher ideals and practices which we are not yet 
 either wise enough nor honest enough to set in* 
 motion voluntarily. 
 
A large part of that which constitutes the fitness 
 of the brute to survive, is its power to overcome 
 and kill other brutes ; the belief that human fitness 
 to survive is the same, must be, and is being driven 
 from the minds of men with suffering, while simul- 
 taneously awakening them to the fact that they 
 must survive through the establishment of a differ- 
 ent and higher fitness, a moral fitness. 
 
 There are many facts in life contributing their 
 testimony in evidence hereof. 
 
 All unreliability of conduct calls out a protest. 
 There is, and always has been in operation, in the 
 affairs of men, a little recognised natural law that 
 makes all instrumentalities of injustice self-de- 
 structive. In its operation, this law is destined to 
 destroy all undemocratic, predatory, and bully types 
 of men, of institutions, and of nations — human 
 fitness to survive must take the place among us of 
 that now occupied by the one of animal fitness to 
 survive — animal fitness to survive, when practiced 
 by the human, constitutes his fitness to pass away. 
 
 Special privileges are destroyed by abuse of the 
 power hereby conferred. Of old it was recognised 
 that, "Those whom the gods would destroy they 
 first make mad." The unfit to survive, of men and 
 of things destroy themselves with their obnoxious- 
 ness. 
 
 There seems to be in this move of progress evi- 
 _5_ 
 
dences of an aim to establish that in the practices 
 of men which they are not yet far enough awakened 
 to render much assistance; consequently, in order 
 to achieve the end sought, the awakening process 
 must work beyond mass understanding, command 
 the social moves of men and make them suffer. 
 
 For, they must become more reliable, less greedy ; 
 higher ideals of life and education must be awak- 
 ened; also, an appreciative understanding of the 
 possibilities of education, and of its importance 
 must be gained; and, through suffering, this appre- 
 ciation must become so firmly fixed in the feelings, 
 as to establish it in practice. 
 
 No man can have perfect freedom of action in a 
 community where there is one man who cannot be 
 trusted. Consequently, in the interest of the legiti- 
 mate freedom of all to act comfortably, it is the 
 duty of every person to frown upon, to discourage, 
 and as far as possible to prevent dishonest conduct. 
 
 Through what avenue, other than the one of 
 work and suffering, has any measure of reliability 
 or can any larger measure of reliability be gained; 
 or appreciation of any value in life? 
 
 Is not this gain — while passing through this 
 brutal phase of unfoldment — the specific, or more 
 immediate aim? 
 
 Are not men now learning — through suffering — 
 to establish more comfortable, inexpensive, shorter, 
 
 —6— 
 
and more humane methods of unfoldment; methods 
 to obtain easily and quickly all that they now use 
 so much energy, destroy so much wealth and sac- 
 rifice so many lives to obtain? For, can not both 
 appreciation and reliability be educated into prac- 
 tice — as soon as men learn the way? 
 
 So much for the evolution of society. But to 
 what end are men being driven to act in mass 
 harmony ? 
 
 Society has no consciousness, no personality; it 
 can neither enjoy nor suffer. 
 
 Unless social unfoldment has in view the building 
 of larger units, larger individuals or personalities; 
 and, unless also, these personalities survive physical 
 death, why should any individual sacrifice much for 
 society? Why, if this life is all, should any man 
 of this generation, sacrifice his happiness and his 
 life to gain that for the next generation which its 
 individuals will no more appreciate than do we 
 what has been gained for us by the sacrifice of 
 those who have passed on before us? 
 
 If this life is all, society demands of the indi- 
 vidual that for which it can give nothing in return. 
 What right has society, more than the god of a 
 pagan temple, to demand this sacrifice? 
 
 This demand is a fact, however, and it is one that 
 seems to be made and operated beyond human 
 
power to control, control seems to be what all the 
 suffering caused hereby is trying to teach. 
 
 Is there not herein then, an aim that lies be- 
 yond the one of social evolution, a further and 
 larger aim, one to unfold human personality, an 
 aim to build that which transcends social forms 
 and survives physical death, an aim, toward the 
 fulfillment of which the social organism serves in- 
 strumentally, merely? 
 
 If not, what matters anything but to squeeze 
 out of this life the last spark of pleasure possible 
 along lines of least personal resistance, as many are 
 doing? If this is all, why spend so much time and 
 effort in learning and earning that which this life 
 allows neither the time nor the opportunity to use? 
 
 Some object there seems to be — in this struggle 
 of life, in which the individual is so wantonly sac- 
 rificed — other than the one of a continuously bet- 
 tering society, nor can it be bettering individuals 
 in a series, each one of which becomes extinguished 
 with physical death. 
 
 This struggle, in which man awakens to find 
 himself submerged, and compelled by the necessi- 
 ties of his existence to take part, with no knowledge 
 of whence he came, whither, and for what purpose 
 he is being driven, and with no possibility of escape, 
 except through the gateway of death, there is evi- 
 dence of some great purpose, but one too vast to be 
 
completely grasped by present human comprehen- 
 sion. 
 
LIFE 
 
 H[FE may be viewed as a mountain, which 
 rises above the range of human vision to a 
 height which no man can estimate, even roughly. 
 
 Many are ascending this mountain — most men 
 unconsciously, being driven up the slope, and are 
 viewing life from foothills but slightly elevated 
 above the surrounding plane — a few are climbing 
 consciously, they have reached the apex of, and 
 see life from foothills that loom farther up the 
 mountain side. 
 
 Between the dead level of the plane and the apex 
 of the highest foothill climbed, a great variety of 
 views are being offered to the world, for the foot- 
 hills are, in number, beyond human estimate. 
 
 Each of the chapters of this book is an essay 
 view from one of these foothills, consequently, each 
 presents a mental landscape as a whole differing 
 from all the others. 
 
 But since life, the matter under consideration, 
 presents a very great complexity evolving from a 
 unity of cause, some features of each view must ap- 
 pear in all ; in other words, there are some thoughts 
 in each of these views of life, common to all views 
 of life; and, for the reason that in the countless 
 forms of life's expression, there are found on 
 
 —11— 
 
tracing them back, comparatively few elements — a 
 parallel is furnished by chemistry. 
 
 There is, then, comparatively little coming to the 
 world, that is new, except in forms of expression, 
 in the combinations, in views from new, different, 
 and higher foothills. 
 
 The discovery of new elements, the move back 
 toward the simple in discovery, more remote causes, 
 facts more fundamentally imbedded, are few and 
 consume a long time between discoveries. 
 
 No new letters are being added to the alphabet; 
 the variety of expression hereby furnished, how- 
 ever, seems no nearer exhaustion than at the be- 
 ginning of its use — in fact its possibilities are on 
 the increase. 
 
 —12- 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 Some Prefatory Remarks 3 
 
 Life 1 1 
 
 No. Chap. 
 
 I. If Death Ends Personality 15 
 
 II. The Meaning of Struggle and Suffering.. 25 
 
 III. Happiness in This Life? 59 
 
 IV. Must Not Happiness Be Earned? 73 
 
 V. The Cosmic Urge Within Us 103 
 
 -13— 
 
IF DEATH ENDS PERSONALITY 
 
 XF the human life has no further purpose than 
 that which may be achieved in about three 
 score years and ten, it has but little value. 
 
 It is not, in fact, worth the trouble of being born 
 and of fighting for existence. For, unless person- 
 ality survives bodily death — unless evolutionary re- 
 sults are individually retained, life (with the strug- 
 gle and suffering that most of the inhabitants of 
 this world are obliged to pass through) is not only 
 worthless, but considerably in the nature of an 
 imposition. 
 
 If this be all — if human personality ends with 
 physical death — life's great irony is that we fail 
 to awaken to most of our possibilities and oppor- 
 tunities till too late for this awakening to be of 
 any value. 
 
 If individual existence ends with this life, there 
 is but little worth being created for; neither is 
 there anything in life that can be satisfactorily 
 explained. If this short life out of which the most 
 fortunate, even, obtain but little, is all, why were 
 we created? To what end all these agonies which 
 no one escapes? 
 
 If our career on earth is all, why pursue either 
 wealth or wisdom at the expense of the pleasures 
 —15— 
 
of each day? For, even with the most successful 
 efforts, neither comes early enough to be long en- 
 joyed. Nor can the fortune that comes ready-made 
 be sufficiently appreciated to be much enjoyed or 
 for long. 
 
 We find compulsory action set up in the law of 
 life as a condition of existence. Life must be 
 fought for — subsistence earned. There is evident 
 in life an ever improving action, an unfolding aim 
 — but to what end ? 
 
 With great effort, men learn and earn much that 
 they have no time to use ; and if they are not given 
 the opportunity of another life in which to use and 
 enjoy that means and knowledge which they gain 
 too late to use and enjoy in this existence, are they 
 not denied that to which they are entitled from an 
 all- wise and just Creator? 
 
 If we know what justice is (and this one life 
 comprises all there is of existence) is it not absurd 
 to assume that Creation is the work of a wise and 
 just God? 
 
 The religions of the world postulate a just Cre- 
 ator, but what proof have most of these to offer in 
 support of their theory, that any rational person 
 could accept? Of course, there are many facts of 
 life leading us to infer that somehow, somewhere, 
 and sometime, to each individual, is given an exact 
 measure of justice. Such inference is wrong, how- 
 
 ^-16— 
 
ever, unless the individual life is a continuous one. 
 
 To create the human being, drive him and en- 
 courage him to learn that which he is given no time 
 to use, to allow him to make mistakes that he is 
 given no time to correct, to compel him to see what 
 he has missed, what he might have been, what 
 he might have accomplished, does not appear to the 
 rational person to be just if this seeing is given no 
 opportunity to serve some purpose that it has no 
 time to serve here. 
 
 If personal existence ends with physical death, 
 why all this unfairness of inequality that lies be- 
 yond the control of the individual, and as found in 
 parentage, education, environment, natural ca- 
 pacity, and what we call accident or circumstance? 
 
 If that which so strongly urges us to learn what 
 can be of no use in this life; to do, also, so much 
 that can be but little or not at all enjoyed — if this 
 desire for personal continuity and the effort to 
 achieve this end has no meaning; if the discoveries 
 of modern science contribute nothing in proof of 
 personal continuity, we have no proof. 
 
 And unless continuous personal life be a fact, 
 what we do on earth can matter but little, for we 
 are deceived by our feelings, our hopes, and by the 
 many facts of life — we are, in fact, merely pup T 
 pets serving, perhaps, as our Creator's playthings. 
 
 So, he who is not reasonably well convinced by 
 
 —17— 
 
the evidence within and around him of the persist- 
 ence of his personality, has a perfect right to be a 
 pessimist; for it must be difficult for one, who sees 
 no proof of further life for the individual, to be an 
 optimist. 
 
 When one tells me that my life is worth living 
 merely for this one life and that if it is not, it is my 
 own fault, if he believes what he says, he is not con- 
 stituted like myself — his consciousness is not like 
 mine — we differ radically. 
 
 Through some element of personality with which 
 I am not equipped, this man has been able to obtain 
 from life so much of satisfaction, that if, as he 
 closes his eyes for the last time, he does not quite 
 welcome extinction, he is but little disturbed by the 
 prospect of doing so. 
 
 This life does not satisfy me — I desire more. Of 
 what value to me is what I might have been, but am 
 not; what I might have accomplished but did not, 
 what I might have enjoyed, but did not; and all for 
 the reason that I did not know enough? 
 
 Why is it that I have failed to make the experi- 
 ences of this life so complete as to satisfy my de- 
 sires for life? In fact, why does living intensify 
 my desire for life, even to the extent of continuous 
 existence? Why do we find so many in search of 
 some elixir of life? 
 
 It cannot be because this present life affords so 
 
 — ia— 
 
much happiness; is it not, then, in the hope it in- 
 spires of better things to come, in the evidence it 
 affords that continuous improvement is possible, in 
 the vision it furnishes of a future of increasing 
 happiness through increase of efficiency and of 
 wisdom? 
 
 Through lack of ability to obtain and to use them, 
 most of the opportunities in the world are at pres- 
 ent of no value to most men. Why is it that ca- 
 pacity to discover, to invent, to use, and to enjoy 
 must be acquired? 
 
 The many wonderful possibilities in ourselves 
 and in our environment, just ahead, and in sight, 
 with others constantly coming into view, indicate 
 that we are moving forward in response to some 
 hidden purpose. 
 
 But of what value to us of today, are all these 
 unrealized visions, all this monopolized and idle 
 wealth, the million and one things of use, things 
 which everybody will be able to obtain a few gen- 
 erations hence, when we are dead and men have 
 become wiser? 
 
 There are millions in the world who, on gradu- 
 ally awakening, would feel the tremendous injus- 
 tice and incompleteness of life much more keenly 
 if, at the same time, they also felt that this one 
 life is the extent of personal duration. 
 
 Could any scheme be better devised to torture 
 
those who believe that individual life ends with this 
 material existence, than the one of awakening them 
 to a knowledge of what they have missed; to a 
 realization of what they might have accomplished 
 and enjoyed, and only at a time of life when too 
 late for this awakening to be, to them, of any use? 
 
 No person, perhaps, cares to repeat the experi- 
 ences of life; but, nearly all do desire with what 
 they have here gained to live on and continue the 
 improvement. 
 
 And if you, reader, do not belong in this great 
 company of men and women who see what they 
 have missed through their ignorance, who see what 
 fools they have been, and only when too late for 
 the discovery to be of any use, you are unique — 
 there are but few of your kind. 
 
 If you feel that life has given you so nearly that 
 which, through your aspirations and surroundings, 
 it promised you, that desire for more is dead within 
 you, and you are quite content at death to bid a 
 final adieu to personal existence, you are certainly 
 unique. So much do you differ in consciousness 
 from the mass of the human family, so far do you 
 depart from the normal that you belong among the 
 human freaks, curios, or unclassified mutations of life. 
 
 If, as a matter of fact, you do feel satisfied, you 
 are a one-life optimist. However, men and women 
 
 —20— 
 
often say one thing while they feel quite another — 
 they like to appear brave. 
 
 If, on the other hand, you feel that personality 
 ends with physical death, while at the same time 
 you see and feel the incompleteness and injustice 
 hereby entailed, see and feel what your ignorance 
 and other handicaps have caused you to miss, and 
 without recourse of further opportunity for ex- 
 pression, you must be a pessimist. What other can 
 you be? 
 
 If it be true that in your interpretation of Na- 
 ture's symbolical expression, in your reading of the 
 external facts, offered you in the well-expressed 
 sciences of life (the biological sciences) in the 
 field covered by physics, and in the promise of 
 hope so strongly implanted by Nature within nearly 
 all, to say nothing of what psychic research has to 
 offer; if you find in all these no proof of con- 
 tinuous personality, neither can you, in conse- 
 quence, find any argument for natural justice — no 
 proof in all Nature of the existence of a moral law, 
 no foundation upon which to build an ethical 
 science. 
 
 If this be true in your case, you have a perfect 
 right to be a pessimist; for if Nature is as cruel 
 and unjust as one life makes it appear to be, it 
 furnishes no argument for the practice of moral 
 conduct among men. In this life, just when the 
 
lessons have been learned which, had they been 
 known at the beginning, would have made life 
 worth living, the learner dies, and if his work has 
 borne fruit, the bulk of this fruit will be gathered 
 and enjoyed (or, as a rule, squandered) by others. 
 
 In fact, if present existence begins and ends all 
 for the individual, those who do most and sacrifice 
 most obtain least. 
 
 If physical death means personal extinction, 
 most lives must be viewed as failures, for life is a 
 stupendous drama in which the shrewdest and most 
 unscrupulous shirks often win; it is made up of 
 stories in which the triumph of the villian is of so 
 frequent an occurrence as to make many deny the 
 existence of any natural justice. 
 
 The lives of at least twenty-five in one hundred 
 of the human family are filled with terrible experi- 
 ences of suffering, with disaster, and with tragedy. 
 These experiences often follow in quick succession. 
 Are these lives, merely for one period of existence, 
 worth while? How many of us, do you think, 
 would voluntarily live a life such as any of these, 
 just for the one life, could we know its plan before- 
 hand? 
 
 Think of being caught in a train wreck, pinned 
 under a car, and slowly roasted to death; think of 
 the religious martyrs of the Middle Ages; think 
 of the poverty-stricken inhabitants of all large 
 
cities; think of the victims of the Titanic or those 
 of any other shipwreck; the victims of bank fail- 
 ures, and coal-mine disasters; the horrors of war! 
 If we have but one life, are these instituted in the 
 Nature of things by a kind and beneficent Father? 
 
 If none of the million and one aspirations inher- 
 ent in each of us are ever to be realized, why do 
 they exist? Have they no meaning? 
 
 We may well believe that the entire future pro- 
 gram of human life is set forth in the facts of 
 present appearances and happenings, and that it 
 could be plainly read were we sufficiently "un- 
 folded" or awakened in consciousness. But think 
 what tremendous educational experiences the race 
 must pass through to awaken this consciousness ! 
 
 Now, therefore, when you and your family are 
 on the verge of starvation, it is most soothing to 
 be told that your condition is unnecessary because 
 there is a pot of gold hidden somewhere and that 
 all you have to do is to find it. It is comforting, 
 also, to be told that the banks are congested with 
 currency, and that there are millions of untilled 
 acres awaiting cultivation. 
 
 The sarcasm is apparent when you realizze that 
 your ignorance makes this stored wealth inaccessi- 
 ble, and that community ignorance holds these un- 
 tilled acres beyond your reach, and the reach of 
 others who need them. 
 
 —23— 
 
This should not be, and if the human being has 
 but one span of years in which to live, and life's 
 program within this span is one of justice, how 
 could it be? 
 
 If human personality ends with physical death, 
 creation is a structure of injustice. For man could 
 not be given justice with but a single life, without 
 being sent into this life equipped with a knowledge 
 of just what to do in order to obtain the greatest 
 amount of happiness, and with no desire for more 
 life. 
 
 In a one-life experience of justice there could 
 be no mistakes, no failure, no disasters, no sick- 
 ness, no poverty; for there would be no fairness 
 in drastic experiences given to teach that which 
 could never be used. 
 
 It seems rational to suppose that if this life is 
 all, man would arrive equipped with all the knowl- 
 edge and everything else to give the highest en- 
 joyment, for further lessons would be unnecessary. 
 
 Effort, in such a life, would be a pleasure, since 
 it would be made for the enjoyment of its im- 
 mediate fruits; there would be no compulsory ac- 
 tion, labor would be either delightful action or 
 wholly unnecessary, existence would be ideal and 
 all would depart this life satisfied and smiling; 
 for, it would be a thing felt to be completed. 
 
THE MEANING OF STRUGGLE AND 
 SUFFERING 
 
 g ONE-LIFE theory does not account for 
 what is ever before us ; it does not approach 
 a satisfactory explanation of the facts of existence. 
 And yet, this theory seems to meet the require- 
 ments of a certain stage of human unfoldment in 
 consciousness, since, (to take their word for it) it 
 is accepted by no small number of the dwellers 
 upon earth. 
 
 Some purpose there must be in this struggle of 
 life, some reason why man is confined to matter 
 and limited to a narrow field of consciousness 
 which he is enticed and even compelled to enlarge 
 upon with effort. This human struggle, this urge 
 into and ever higher intelligence by the process 
 which we call evolution is moving man while teach- 
 ing him to move himself ; and, it would seem toward 
 larger results than he can sense. 
 
 The move from darkness to light, from blindness 
 to sight, from certainty to ever greater certainty; 
 the ignorance that keeps us all guessing and fight- 
 ing; this being divided into individual and class 
 disagreements, this dispute over whether there is 
 or is not any natural justice, whether we have or 
 have not any freedom of choice, whether there is 
 
one life or more, — all these actuating bickerings, 
 are evidently serving a purpose in the unfoldment 
 of human life ; but, a purpose, the ultimate of which 
 we are yet unable to see. 
 
 We can see before us in the present life an un- 
 folding process, an improvement that takes place 
 through struggle, — work and suffering; — and the 
 aim of which seems to be to evolve man into some- 
 thing, a being, very much larger in capacity, than 
 what we now know as man; a being having a far 
 larger expanse of consciousness, greater knowledge, 
 greater strength of will, more reliability, larger 
 sympathies, keener appreciations, higher emotions, 
 a man open and free from deceit and intrigue, one 
 who can act with harmony in co-operation with 
 others; all this improvement cumulating as a pro- 
 duct for the benefit of the individual, through the 
 social organism as one of the important instrumen- 
 talities of the process. 
 
 And, who can say to what extent this improving 
 change may take place in the interest of human 
 capacity and happiness? 
 
 But we have a right, it is our duty to inquire 
 why this creative power we call God found it neces- 
 sary to set up work, tumult, and suffering as a 
 leading feature in the scheme of life; because, to 
 question is a pioneering duty. 
 
 Is all this wonderful creation the work of some 
 
 —26— 
 
omnipotent and omniscient being, some transcend- 
 ent intelligence ; or, is it the spontaneous outgrowth 
 of a blind unconscious force? 
 
 Scientific investigators have, in their endeavor to 
 ascertain the meaning and purpose of life, through 
 the collection, classification and interpretation of 
 the facts of life ; made many important and helpful 
 discoveries. 
 
 But, comparatively few of the facts have yet 
 been observed, collected, and classified. And so 
 far as present knowledge goes to explain life's 
 meaning or purpose, other than that we are im- 
 proving and seem to be on the way into a larger 
 and better life, comparatively little has been ac- 
 complished. And most of the interpretations of 
 religion-makers are unscientific and feeble, mere 
 guesses, many of them absurd. 
 
 So the inquiry goes on: What of the human 
 life? Was it instituted for no purpose other than 
 this one life of suffering — and serving hereby, per- 
 haps, as a Creator's plaything? Or is there not 
 evidence herein of a larger purpose — the one of 
 evolving through man's own efforts a larger man 
 than the one we now know as man, a being of en- 
 larged capacity to do and to enjoy, an ideal or 
 "super-man" ? 
 
 But why, if our Creator is omnipotent, omnis- 
 cient and just and this life is all, did He not set 
 
 —27— 
 
up all of the enjoyable which we have reached in 
 life, at the start, without driving the human family 
 through so much suffering to obtain what seems so 
 little? 
 
 If this life is all and the creative aim was to set 
 up a plan to give justice and human happiness, 
 why the failure to do so ? Why the failure to create 
 a condition to give, and a human capacity to receive 
 far more happiness than can now be obtained? 
 
 Or on the other hand, if this life is all, and this 
 brutality, cruelty, and ignorance, happens some- 
 how to be a necessary part of this life; why, if 
 human happiness is still the aim, were we not so 
 constituted, so equipped with nerves as to enjoy it 
 all? If this life is all, and its Creator is what we 
 believe Him to be, why does life fail so signally to 
 meet the requirements of our belief? An omnip- 
 otent God could not fail — there is something the 
 matter with our theories. 
 
 We are in the habit of inferring that life is a 
 cruel affair because of limited human understand- 
 ing and, therefore perverse conduct. But why, if 
 man is the product of a just and omnipotent Crea- 
 tor, and he has but this one life to live, was he 
 created without sufficient intelligence to enable him 
 to avoid that which brings upon him so much suf- 
 fering ? 
 
 Certain cruel facts of life are evident but since 
 
 —2$— 
 
they are here as a part of the program in which 
 we have found so much evidence of excellent intent, 
 together with so much more, infinitely transcending 
 the greatest power of human comprehension and 
 interpretation, we are led herefrom to infer that 
 the existing plan of life and action is one well fitted 
 — best fitted, it is probable — to secure the highest 
 end of human welfare, and that, somewhere and 
 sometime, will culminate to this end. 
 
 The cruel facts of life are actual, not in the 
 seeming. It gradually breaks in upon the con- 
 sciousness, however, through wwconscious unfold- 
 ment, that this cruelty is serving the purpose of 
 driving man into the undertaking of conscious or 
 self unfoldment. 
 
 What we have learned leads to the legitimate in- 
 ference, we think, that there is instituted in Nature 
 a move of compensation ; hence the work and suffer- 
 ing through which human beings are compelled to 
 pass call for a compensating product — a reward too 
 tremendous for this one life to furnish. 
 
 This fact of being compelled to earn subsistence, 
 to pay for things with effort, with some form of 
 compensation, by rendering an equivalent, seems to 
 argue the existence of a moral law in Nature, that 
 extremely limited visions always deny. Though we 
 are not yet able to follow the Law in all the in- 
 tricacies of its working; from what can be seen we 
 
are led to infer that a great justice lies concealed 
 in the deep down heart of things, beyond the sight 
 of the human average. 
 
 The observing and thoughtful person is obliged 
 to infer that a one life theory fails to account for 
 the facts; it considers but the surface appearance 
 of things; life, in this one term operates in utter 
 disregard of justice. 
 
 There are before us and working among men, 
 two phases of the evolutionary process; one (the 
 lower or animal) the compulsory, involuntary, un- 
 conscious, slave driven phase; and the other (the 
 higher) the conscious, voluntary, sought-for, edu- 
 cational phase. 
 
 The first is a process of slow growth ; the second 
 is not only a much more rapid process, but one that 
 can, by research and education, be continuously en- 
 larged upon and increased in rapidity of move. 
 
 Both phases, however, are natural; the later and 
 higher has evolved from the former and lower — the 
 higher, of course, always being the later product. 
 
 Were we, therefore, to postulate a repeated life 
 expression, it is easy to see that in one life of edu- 
 cational evolution more unfoldment could be at- 
 tained than in several lives of the involuntary type. 
 
 For the majority, voluntary unfoldment (pur- 
 poseful self-cultivation) lies some distance in the 
 future and can be reached only through great im- 
 
provement in the science and in the art of educa- 
 tion, brought about by the efforts of the awakened 
 few. What we call civilized peoples even, have not 
 yet learned to control either birth or education, and 
 they are, therefore, sense-enthralled and compara- 
 tively sluggish. 
 
 Men in the mass are long in learning the most 
 elementary lessons. For ages, suffering has very 
 evidently been trying to make them see the im- 
 portance of reliable conduct with sufficient clear- 
 ness to set up among them confidence and harmony 
 of action. About how far it has succeeded, the 
 present disturbed condition of society shows. 
 
 In a world of nations all led by men so far in- 
 telligent as to be honest — that is, in a world of 
 nations led by wise men — poverty would soon 
 cease; and, consequently, distrust, dishonesty, jeal- 
 ousy, greed, and crime would soon pass away ; and 
 war between nations would then be impossible. 
 
 There is, therefore, one matter in the world of 
 today calling more loudly for recognition — to men 
 sufficiently wise to understand — than all other mat- 
 ters combined, and this is the matter of education. 
 
 The one item in this education needing as much 
 emphasis as all the others combined, is that of 
 honesty, reliability, in the interest of a working 
 harmony among men. Few seem to realize that 
 the expense of living, to say nothing of the high 
 
 —31— 
 
cost, ever increasing, is due to dishonesty, followed 
 by distrust, lack of confidence, evolution of hatred 
 cumulating and intensifying till it culminates in 
 some great social upheaval; strikes followed by 
 revolution or war between nations. 
 
 The majority make the mistake of supposing 
 that their leaders are wise men, when, as a matter 
 of fact, they are, on the whole, not far above the 
 average of intelligence, even; going through the 
 schools of today does not make men wise, neces- 
 sarily ; and far too little home and school effort is 
 expended to make them honest, while our economic 
 system fosters dishonesty. 
 
 Leaders of men are not put in public place by 
 the ballot but by their own energy — usually, by 
 their own "gall"; they select themselves, hire a few 
 to consent to their choice, these in turn, and for 
 pay, gain the consent of the many by emotional 
 persuasion. When once in place they usually be- 
 come grafters. 
 
 In the evolution of human awakening, initial, 
 educational, and moral steps are always taken by 
 the few, men of ideas, who prefer to enlighten men 
 rather than to exploit them. 
 
 The great struggle of progress is with human 
 awakening; is in using the matter of education — is 
 in educating, rather than in the evolution of the 
 matter of education, is in placing it in the minds 
 
of men after it is prepared; the greatest difficulty 
 of progress lies in the schooling. 
 
 Of leaders, there are two types; the first of the 
 two would enlighten those whom they lead, and the 
 second would exploit them to gratify their own 
 selfish ambitions. 
 
 When, in the course of unfolding events, the 
 difference between these two types can be clearly 
 seen by voters, the bully type of the two — the 
 selfish exploiter type — will soon be removed from 
 taking part in their larger social, economical, and 
 political affairs. 
 
 Inferring, then, from the evidence at hand — our 
 present moral standard, the average of present 
 honesty — this bully type will be able to lead, in 
 fact must, for a time yet, lead men to slaughter; 
 for it is in the law of life and progress, in the 
 law of compensation, in the interest of their own 
 growth that men blindly bring upon themselves the 
 experiences of suffering which they, with an equal 
 opportunity, would inflict upon others. 
 
 The majority have not yet suffered enough to 
 evolve in fellow feeling beyond the bully type — the 
 evidence is in their faces as well as in their con- 
 duct. Are not their unfolding needs, then, now 
 better served, and are they not for some time yet 
 to be better served by the toilsome, expensive, de- 
 structive way of warfare in its many forms; and, 
 
 —33— 
 
caused by the existence of that which they are not 
 yet wise and honest enough to discard, and the 
 absence of that which they, for the same reason, 
 fail to supply in practice? 
 
 For there must be some reason, not all bad, why 
 men select the way of suffering when there is 
 abundance of gained information which, if put to 
 use, would bring a rapidly unfolding happiness to 
 all the races of earth. 
 
 Do the majority take to the suffering way to 
 learn specific lessons that can be learned through 
 personal experiences alone? 
 
 Is it possible by other means to cultivate, or burn 
 into the character, fellow-feeling, honesty, conti- 
 nuity, reliable conduct, without which happiness is 
 impossible? Can this be accomplished by proxy 
 education, or education, properly so called? 
 
 Just how much of the involuntary education of 
 suffering must the individual pass through to pre- 
 pare him to take up the short, inexpensive, com- 
 fortable way of precept, of theoretical or voluntary 
 education ? 
 
 Can any method, to awaken right feeling other 
 than this one of warfare, be devised and set in 
 operation? How many have suffered enough to be 
 able to learn at any school, other than the one of 
 experience? When and how can voluntary educa- 
 
 —34— 
 
tion be made to take the place of education by ex- 
 perience? Are men yet ready, is the world ready? 
 
 Some day voluntary education and well planned 
 action will be instituted, else our ideas about educa- 
 tion are entirely wrong, and progress with certain- 
 ty impossible to reach. 
 
 Reverting to facts more fundamentally imbedded 
 in the laws of life; then: schooling does not while 
 in process give to the child very much happiness, 
 but it encounters far less difficulty herein, than it 
 would find in the experiences of adult life without 
 schooling. 
 
 Life opens up along pioneering lines, lines of 
 resistance ; schooling opens up new lines of thought 
 action — it is not, therefore, a thing of pleasure but 
 of increasing consciousness by voluntary effort. 
 Play or desultory action, is the natural heritage of 
 the child. The child does not, as a rule, like either 
 schooling or what we call work. It is not as most 
 persons suppose naturally truthful. The savage 
 is an easy and consciousless liar, and the child is 
 certainly primitive. 
 
 The power of continuity, constructive reliable 
 action, truthfulness are evolved as matters of ex- 
 perience and of education, more than of heritage. 
 The much praised play tendency of men and 
 women, card-playing, etc., is merely an early age 
 relic passed along by education that will ultimately 
 
 —35— 
 
disappear. For it is precisely as simple a matter 
 to cultivate enjoyable habits of utility as habits of 
 time and means wasting. 
 
 On awakening, the human being always finds 
 life too short and too valuable to waste. 
 
 The modern tendency is to eliminate from educa- 
 tion that which instills into the child the most im- 
 portant feature of its character — "pep" — in other 
 words present education is considerably "mushy" 
 — hence, one service of the great war. 
 
 If each individual must pass through approxi- 
 mately the same long time experience, the same 
 mistakes and suffering as every other, in order to 
 awaken to the value of education, the hope of edu- 
 cators is an illusion. 
 
 The "smarty," the youth who runs into all sorts 
 of snares and piles up troubles for himself, and 
 who, in his ignorance, is satisfied with nothing but 
 trying things for himself, having in view the im- 
 provement of all things in his line, and failing in 
 most; might have taken to the shorter and better 
 way had he first been taught what had been al- 
 ready learned in his line through the experience 
 of others — the prodigal youth, evidently, is but the 
 stubborn or petted and untaught youth. 
 
 Nature can not teach the spoiled youth in the 
 hands of his fond and foolish parents. 
 
 What then, is the meaning of life? Does a ra- 
 
tional interpretation of the meaning of the facts of 
 life pronounce unhappiness, an affliction, or what 
 we understand as punishment? 
 
 If so, what becomes of the omniscient and om- 
 nipotent Creator postulated in most religions? 
 What confidence could be placed in a Creator 
 understood by the rationality of man, then proved 
 by his investigations, to have made such a mistake 
 in His creation as to be obliged to correct it 
 through human punishment? 
 
 Is it not evident that such a concept is irrational, 
 is but the conceit of an immature mind; a guess of 
 the early ages, and practically bad for today; but, 
 nevertheless, stupidly adhered to as a habit of 
 practice; and, in fear and trembling? 
 
 Since we find life in motion with an inner im- 
 petus of struggle through which in part it arrives 
 at increase of power, a stronger will and a larger 
 consciousness that enables it to persist in the face 
 of suffering, does not a rational interpretation of 
 the suffering part of this program seem to pro- 
 nounce it the effect of pioneering the way into 
 stamina and new knowledge by the involuntary 
 process, instead of the voluntary way? That is, 
 is it not the effect of being driven to learn, to cul- 
 tivate firmness and reliability, instead of selecting 
 to do so; the effect of the long, because largely 
 wrong way, and, through which attention is ar- 
 
 —37— 
 
rested to make men think out the shorter and easier 
 way? 
 
 Anyhow, this is the individualizing way of all 
 life, and the way evidently, set up to entice and 
 to drive human beings onward and upward to con- 
 scious control of their unfoldment into higher 
 planes of existence. 
 
 We can only guess why, for this purpose, some 
 way, other than the one instituted, was not selected. 
 This way, however, as noted above, confers human 
 responsibility, tends to give to the will ever greater 
 strength and freedom of action, while driving and 
 coaxing men into increasing reliability of word and 
 deed. 
 
 A Being capable of creating and setting in 
 motion this Universe, should be able to devise the 
 best plan for human unfoldment — a small part of 
 the creation. And, in viewing this work in the 
 light of present gain of knowledge, it seems safe 
 to assume that the evolutionary way of life is a 
 most excellent way, the best, perhaps — possibly the 
 only way. If not, what are we to do about it? 
 
 This much is evident: man has been made to 
 improve with action, and in order to make certain 
 of this action (it would seem) he has been equipped 
 with desires, with needs, and placed in an environ- 
 ment where his needs cannot be supplied and his 
 desires gratified without work. In order, also, to 
 
 —38— 
 
make his improvement continuous, he is so con- 
 stituted as never to be quite satisfied with his 
 finished work. 
 
 For the reason that he does not particularly like 
 work, he seeks to supply his needs and to gratify 
 his desires along lines of least resistance, inventing 
 ever easier ways, and gradually learning to like 
 work; thus moving ever more completely out upon 
 the plane of voluntary and more comfortable action. 
 
 All along the way he is enticed to improve by 
 his desire for something better. The discomfort 
 caused by his dissatisfaction with himself, what he 
 has and what he does, drives him to improve both 
 himself and his surroundings to serve his own 
 ends. All improvement is made possible through 
 the instrumentality of the nerve lines of the body ; 
 back over which the experiences of life are passed, 
 to be, somehow, stored as results, in the subcon- 
 scious mind or memory, evidently. This storing 
 process of the nervous system seems to stand at 
 the head of its functions. 
 
 This bustling, stinging, excruciating discipline of 
 life, then, that refuses to let up for a moment, is, 
 perhaps, entirely educative. 
 
 Increase of understanding seems to be the cen- 
 tral purpose of the human life; fitness to survive 
 depends on observing the law in conformity here- 
 with. Each individual is found to be equipped with 
 
 —39— 
 
the freedom of will to work with or against the law 
 of his own enlightenment; this he uses to enlighten 
 as fast as he reaches understanding. 
 
 Understanding and its consequent, voluntary pur- 
 poseful action, are evolved in men by driving and 
 enticing them through a tremendous amount of de- 
 struction and suffering. 
 
 Suffering is not punishment, but an effect accom- 
 panying the unfolding process; through errors of 
 way, in their effort to improve or in their lack of 
 efforts to improve men encounter sickness, poverty, 
 warfare, unreliability, and are hereby taught the 
 right way. 
 
 The suffering caused by waste or non-appre- 
 ciative, ignorant use, prodigality; and, over con- 
 servation, by which is meant lack of change, all 
 retention of back-number forms, the lack of ability 
 to break bad habits and improve; is Nature's pro- 
 test or effort to show the importance and possibili- 
 ties of voluntarily improving form and action. 
 
 For the way of most learning is involuntary ; the 
 rat, even, is not quite automatic; it learns from its 
 mistakes, and the majority of men have learned to 
 do but little more. Can the suffering of the rat be 
 viewed as what orthidox Christians call punish- 
 ment, or as what Theosophists call Karma? 
 
 First acts are seldom right, and never perhaps, 
 quite satisfactory, even when right, till verification 
 
 —40— 
 
has been obtained by trying one or more wrong 
 ways. Thus is slowly evolved an equipment of 
 voluntary education; a supply of books, of maga- 
 zines, or papers, and of schools. 
 
 Since the plan is to unfold intelligence and the 
 free action of the human will, all can be as lazy, 
 as dishonest, as criminal- — all can shirk and lie and 
 cheat and fight as much as they choose. 
 
 But the consequences of all this, the inexorable 
 entail of suffering, the unpleasantness that inevi- 
 tably follows as a result of foolish conduct men 
 are long in the learning. They seem unable to 
 reason their way back from the ills of life to their 
 immediate causes, much less do we find them able 
 to reach causes that lie somewhat remotely im- 
 bedded. 
 
 Consequently, they come to know the easier and 
 better way by suffering the consequences of going 
 the long and toilsome way. This, on the surface 
 of events, looks like punishment in the human sense 
 of punishment; and for this reason, evidently, is 
 the original of the devil and hell of all the "wee" 
 religious that have ever arisen among men. 
 
 The disturbance caused by unreliability gives 
 birth in the minds of men to a Devil concept; and 
 this Devil they find working mischief or raising 
 hell; without realizing that all this is of their own 
 
 —41— 
 
making; and its purpose, evidently, is to enlighten 
 the race and cure it of unreliability. 
 
 Life is a panorama of experience; to make this 
 more deliberate and purposeful constitutes the wis- 
 dom of life and action. The feeling of appreciation 
 and, therefore, of enjoyment comes through the 
 effort that brings not alone bread and butter, but 
 greater wisdom, more freedom, a larger conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 This discard of the poorer things of life that 
 must precede the adoption of the better things, 
 seems to our limited outlook, in the rapidly un- 
 folding move, to be a sacrifice. 
 
 The suffering experienced in the process is due 
 to the reluctance of the parting, the prejudice cling- 
 ing of the affections to old forms and modes of 
 action, the "hold on" of the mind that accompanies 
 and retards the move of all bettering change. 
 
 The meaning of sickness, warfare and suffering 
 is that the evolution of voluntary improvement is 
 too slow to meet the naturally prescribed require- 
 ments of either social or of individual progress. 
 
 This requirement men must learn and meet with 
 intelligently conducted change. Today, the unre- 
 liability of men, their gross and predatory desires 
 keep all men in slavery, and will continue to do so, 
 as long as such desires lead. Little independence 
 
can ever be gained by men to whom living means 
 no more than present gratification. 
 
 There are certain requirements of progressive 
 change that men have always waited and still wait 
 to be driven to make; and, in consequence of wait- 
 ing and being driven, a tremendous cost of penalty 
 is attached in the expense of breaking up and re- 
 moving time accumulations of dead and waste forms 
 and material: as in typhoid fever, the present war 
 in Europe. 
 
 The conservation of privileges and special in- 
 terests are largely responsible for the delay of pro- 
 gressive change; and in consequence the destruc- 
 tion., confusion, tremendous expense, sacrifice and 
 suffering that in making the reform, accompanies 
 the discard of antique forms, customs, religions, 
 governments, and usages — men will be driven till 
 some day they will learn to discard the unfit volun- 
 tarily. 
 
 In order to somewhat alleviate, with mental 
 treatment, the tortures that accompany this involun- 
 tary exchange of the poorer instrumentalities of 
 progress for the better; men set up totem poles 
 in great number and variety of form instead of 
 meeting the requirements of the law at their in- 
 ception. 
 
 Back in the dim ages, sun worship, star worship, 
 sex worship, nature worship were in vogue; later 
 
on many others, coming down to Buddhism, Chris- 
 tianity, Christian Science, New Thought, etc. 
 
 The conduct of life is, on the whole, becoming 
 more purposeful because more thoughtful, more 
 scientific. Men are making for themselves better 
 gods, or better expressed god concepts, because the 
 image (man) in which they make their gods is im- 
 proving. Enlightenment, puts the devils of men 
 out of business ; for enlightenment helps men to be 
 reliable, to improve voluntarily and to cultivate 
 will power without the assistance of a devil. 
 
 The present sum of human knowledge is very 
 largely a product of the undirected struggle of life, 
 more a product of experience than of education, 
 properly so called. 
 
 Men become strong by understanding and over- 
 coming that which makes them suffer. 
 
 The reluctantly yielding soil of a people makes 
 of them firm reliable workers, it brings out their 
 mettle to the extent that they conquer; to the ex- 
 tent that they are mastered by their conflicts, do 
 they deteriorate. 
 
 To have voluntarily acquired good health and the 
 ability to work easily, cheerfully, and skilfully is 
 to have achieved a very large measure of freedom; 
 while he who works under protest is still the slave 
 of his tribal inheritance. 
 
 In their stubborn determination to have inde- 
 
 -44— 
 
pendence of action, men search for freedom by 
 devious ways, while the only highway leading 
 straight thereto is the one of enlightenment. 
 
 Consequently, some learn their elementary les- 
 sons mobilized, others in the treadmill of the fam- 
 ily, the professional or the business life; while a 
 few must yet be awakened by a term in the peni- 
 tentiary. 
 
 The rule of life, so far, is to take long and ex- 
 pensive ways to learn short lessons. 
 
 Awakening instrumentalities there are in abund- 
 ance; and a beneficient provision is, that most of 
 those who, during the smarting experiences of their 
 awakening would be a menace to others, are held 
 in check by their fears of men, institutions, and of 
 their totem poles, or God concepts. 
 
 Compulsory education always comes high; but 
 we meet the expense of our warfare tuition with 
 church support, bonds, mortgages, installment buy- 
 ing, interest, personal property tax; and by invest- 
 ing in other high priced shoddy and quackery. 
 
 Many men take advantage of other men, when 
 and where they find they can do so and see no 
 penalty attached. And, in cases where these others 
 are, by being wronged, driven to learn to protect 
 themselves against wrong, they survive among the 
 fitted to survive. 
 
 Warfare, as a spur to tremendous human action, 
 
must be meeting some requirement of the world's 
 group-education, since the cause (so plainly vis- 
 ible) will not be acknowledged, by men in control, 
 to be the cause and removed, nor by the many who 
 suffer most, while they select to remain impotent 
 through their ignorance. Consequently, warfare 
 must continue till such time as all the lessons have 
 been learned that warfare among the nations can 
 teach. 
 
 Only by assuming the purpose of life to be edu- 
 cational, the process, so far, chiefly involuntary, 
 can what we find in life be explained with any 
 satisfaction; for all the facts of life contribute their 
 testimony in evidence thereof. 
 
 In no way but as an educational function, are 
 we able to explain most of the facts of leadership. 
 However much a leader of men may know, the edu- 
 cational requirements of his constituency prevent a 
 wisdom of service much beyond the average of in- 
 telligence and honesty. To obtain place, he must 
 subscribe to the dominant superstition, and as a 
 representative he must lead his church, club, city, 
 state, or national group into, and through sufficient 
 dishonest, infernal and foolish experience, and suf- 
 fering to meet their expectations and serve their 
 educational needs. 
 
 For instance, no man, however great his wisdom 
 might be, could become president of the United 
 
States without creating the impression that he sub- 
 scribes to the Christian religion. 
 
 Intelligence expands through group experience 
 as well as through individual experience. 
 
 Group rivalry, serves as a spur to action and to 
 preserve the balance of power through which im- 
 proving change, or evolutionary unfoldment is pro- 
 tected — this rivalry protection is indispensible. 
 
 For could there arise, at the present stage of 
 human arrival ; a party, religion, faction, or nation, 
 having the power to dominate the world — a hap- 
 pening against which progress has always been and 
 is still fighting — it would, with its belief in itself 
 and consequent bullying ignorance, wreck civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 But the evident intent of all this struggle is to 
 effect human improvement. From what viewpoint, 
 other than to evolve reliability of conduct among 
 men, can want and suffering be explained, with the 
 abundance of opportunity in the world for all, 
 awaiting use in production and distribution? 
 
 In the nature of things, are not men shut out 
 from abundance and happiness by their dishonesty, 
 and are they not dishonest because they are igno- 
 rant of life's larger purpose? 
 
 Consequently, a matter of the utmost importance 
 is to reach through the opening consciousness a 
 view from whence the purpose of life can be more 
 
clearly seen to be educational ; and, not in the sense 
 of one life merely. 
 
 For it is this one life view that now leads the 
 majority to believe ease, comfort, and pleasure 
 seeking, to be about the only matters in life worth 
 seeking. Consequently, at this stage, with the 
 abundance of material means to use, such as free 
 opportunity to produce would give, would not any 
 race now in existence, deteriorate rather than im- 
 prove. 
 
 Would not such comfortableness as this abund- 
 ance would afford act upon minds of such primitive- 
 ness much like a hot climate? 
 
 Why men are deprived of what they believe to 
 be theirs by reason of natural right, is very evi- 
 dent — they have not yet met but do not clearly see 
 that they have not met, the requirements. They 
 are equipped with sufficient freedom of will to act 
 and to learn, and the price of possession, or the 
 purchase price of what they desire, must be secured 
 by using this equipment; and, using it honestly. 
 
 This conflict in motion between men and their 
 institutions and between nations is serving a very 
 important function, as an eliminating, or dead form 
 smashing spur, in the interest of their mutual im- 
 provement. 
 
 The eliminating, or mutual destruction part of 
 the process, must cause sufficient inconvenience and 
 
 —48— 
 
suffering to prompt the establishment of a better, 
 or scientific system of education, with the art of its 
 application. 
 
 In other words, the central aim of this move of 
 events seems to be to drive man to set up in prac- 
 tice the science and the art of meeting the require- 
 ments of progress with a revising change; to drive 
 him to improve to where he can initiate improve- 
 ment without being driven. 
 
 For instance, monopoly has educated, and is still 
 educating men by making them suffer. Than mon- 
 opoly, special privilege holding, there is no greater 
 injustice in the world, none that has created greater 
 disturbance and caused more suffering. 
 
 But that which does away with the private 
 ownership of these public utilities, and other mon- 
 opolies, is not initiated by the many, but very large- 
 ly by private holders ; and, with the unfair use they 
 make of the means hereby appropriated, the abuse, 
 the greed they show to secure more. 
 
 It is very evident that men have not learned to 
 far initiate their own awakening and freedom; am- 
 bitious and unscrupulous men awaken and inform 
 sluggish, unthinking men by inflicting upon them 
 the injustices which make them suffer. 
 
 That it is established in the unfolding law for 
 the private holding of the public franchise to work 
 its own destruction, explains why it is that we find 
 
 —49— 
 
the beneficiaries of these holdings doing so many 
 things wiser men would not do; watering their 
 stock, and in their efforts to shut out the small 
 competitor, stooping to a low down meanness of 
 conduct such as few small business men would 
 think of indulging in. 
 
 In general terms it may be stated, that the self 
 destruction of ignorance, and of injustice is estab- 
 lished in the unfolding Law of Life. 
 
 The majority learn only so fast as their ignor- 
 ance makes them suffer; few see and remove the 
 obstacles from the pathway of life till hurt by 
 them. 
 
 It is very certain that men do not select the 
 larger moves of their lives; and most men com- 
 paratively few of the minor ones; the great ma- 
 jority, in their action, are very nearly automatic. 
 
 The sphere within which a man's will has some 
 freedom of action and selective control, is com- 
 mensurate with his sphere of consciousness or in- 
 telligence; but his sphere of intelligence is small, 
 consequently the free action of his will not large. 
 
 Within this sphere, already evolved, can be seen 
 some ability to initiate action; and, also, what is of 
 equal importance, some ability to terminate action. 
 For, successful action must be selective, a know- 
 ledge of what to do and how to do must precede 
 and accompany the doing. 
 
 —50— 
 
A continuous gain of initiative ability, in the 
 search for educational experience, is of the utmost 
 importance; but so, also, is. a gain of ability to 
 terminate any given experience at the end of its 
 term of usefulness; that is, to eliminate wrong or 
 progress retarding prejudices, to quit an old so- 
 ciety, an old and progress retarding habit; in fact 
 to break up static forms of all sorts. The needed 
 gain in other words, is one that involves the dual 
 process of reconstruction, and must be operated 
 with the power of discrimination or selection — with 
 what we call good judgment. 
 
 It may be asserted with perfect safety, that in 
 their very large educational experiences men are 
 far from being sufficiently unfolded and awakened 
 to select for themselves ; for one thing, they are a 
 long way from having sufficient right feeling to in- 
 sure honesty. 
 
 Nature, or the law of life, therefore, in selecting 
 for them the means to serve their larger, awaken- 
 ing end, puts them through tremendous experiences 
 of suffering. 
 
 Leaders of men, if successful, can not serve very 
 far beyond the average intelligence and honesty of 
 their constituents. 
 
 There is always a fight on between governments 
 and individuals; the one acting arbitrarily and 
 
 —51— 
 
tyrannically and the other ignorantly and rebel- 
 liously — each corrects and improves the other. 
 
 While the race is crossing this stage of blind 
 unreliability, this involuntary, undemocratic, bully- 
 infested stage of its unfoldment, it can endure much 
 suffering and enjoy an immense amount of tyranny 
 and flattery; for its wisdom is small, its feelings 
 not keen, its ideals not high, and its conduct of life 
 still lower. 
 
 The process is one of awakening men with kicks 
 to the point where they can be awakened with an 
 idea ; the members of a corporation must lose a city 
 franchise to grow them large enough not to corrupt 
 weak men in public life; to awaken them to the 
 fact that the purchase of a state legislature reacts 
 fatally on the purchaser, that watered stock is 
 stolen franchise value. There are yet among us a 
 few back numbers who must be sent to reflect in 
 prison to learn better than to rob a hen roost. 
 
 The more we know the better use can we make 
 of everything. Objects of ambition, as men become 
 wiser, will be less offensively sought and less 
 selfishly expressed. 
 
 Ambitious men, however, are required to awaken 
 other, more sluggish men. 
 
 The world could not move successfully forward 
 without men having a desire to do more than the 
 ordinary. The more vividly you and I can imagine 
 
 —52— 
 
that the world needs and must have us, depends on 
 our efforts; the more we can feel that we are "IT," 
 the more we can convince ourselves or become con- 
 vinced by our own desires and by the applause of 
 others that we are Atlas with the entire world rest- 
 ing upon our broad and able shoulders, the more 
 we are hypnotized with our own egotism into the 
 belief that the world cannot get along without us — 
 the more we can accomplish. 
 
 But the use of ambition needs watching; for, 
 oftener than not it is found in action without moral 
 attachment, invading and usurping the rights of 
 others. 
 
 The world is improving but there yet lingers, and 
 is very much in evidence among us, an early-age or 
 atavistic type of man; a man having by inherited 
 tendency strengthened by education, a pre-civiliza- 
 tion form of ambition; that is, a desire to triumph 
 over others, to play the part of the autocrat and 
 the bully. 
 
 Men of this dark age type love to set themselves 
 apart to dictate, to be admired and applauded by 
 the indiscriminating many. 
 
 This selfish type is very much in evidence among 
 leaders of men; its influence explains the govern- 
 ments, the political parties and the churches, which 
 if allowed to do so would dominate the minds of 
 
 —5a— 
 
all men, roast them at the stake, and, with its bully- 
 ing ignorance throttle progress. 
 
 Hence, the need of vigilance, for in the interest 
 of human progress and happiness, the influence of 
 this type needs to be eliminated as rapidly as pos- 
 sible ; for, when ambitions have been so far elevated 
 with enlightenment, that leaders of men can be 
 lured forward with high ideals, they will serve as 
 progressive factors of tremendous power. 
 
 The time is not yet, however, for the ideals are 
 not yet ready, neither are the masses; few have 
 sufficient of either wisdom or of honesty. 
 
 In the interest of their unfoldment, therefore, 
 the masses must be used by these back number, 
 bullying institutions to forward selfish schemes of 
 ambition — mass ignorance must be cured by a sur- 
 feit of that tyranny which it would itself practice 
 with an equally good opportunity to do so. 
 
 Few can see the meaning of struggle; conse- 
 quently, no race, nation, or community, and few 
 individuals can improve much without being made 
 to suffer. 
 
 What men owe for an opportunity to gratify 
 their ambitions in a place of public trust is honest 
 service ; yet, it is most frequently used as a private 
 possession to graft the public ; many in public place 
 are not satisfied with applause, their salary, and 
 personal improvement, but seek and often obtain 
 
the private monopoly of the natural opportunities 
 of millions of other men. 
 
 The correction of all this, however, is a matter 
 of unfoldment. Before present knowledge, even, 
 can be practiced; the result of which would be re- 
 liability of conduct; the majority must have passed 
 through sufficient suffering, to have unfolded de- 
 mocracy of feeling or enough to kill out the snob 
 in themselves. 
 
 Men suffer to make them learn, and they suffer 
 still more in being driven to practice what they 
 learn — at what time and place will this compulsory 
 education cease to be useful? 
 
 Great benefits, undoubtedly, are ultimately to be 
 derived from democratic forms of government; but 
 only so fast as men suffer enough from the abuse 
 of the freedom hereby secured, to drive them to use 
 this freedom more wisely and honestly. 
 
 The fact — that freedom is an equipment of 
 power, entailing a responsibiliay in the use; and, 
 in proportion to the gain of this power or scope of 
 freedom to act — is altogether too little realized and 
 heeded. 
 
 Economic education and practice, for instance, 
 can be seen limping blindly and dishonestly behind 
 economic theory. Certain principles, with which 
 to estimate the value of men and institutions — well 
 known to a few — need to be placed in the minds of 
 
all voters through educational channels; foolish 
 ballotting and its consequence of dishonesty in gov- 
 ernment, are due to the failure to do so. 
 
 In its evolution, human life is now crossing a 
 stage of tremendous but ill-controlled action ; which 
 may be roughly divided into two phases of manifes- 
 tation; a gain of knowledge accompanied by, or 
 followed by a gain of practice; the first — know- 
 ledge — is gained, largely, through suffering and the 
 second — practice — is gained through more suffer- 
 ing. 
 
 But while this is taking place, the lesson, to act 
 from more deeply imbedded and honest motives is 
 learned; and, the larger meaning of life comes to 
 be seen; when, jealousy gives way to mutual help- 
 fulness, animosity to reciprocity, contempt to ap- 
 preciation, distrust to confidence, intolerance to 
 toleration; the two sides of matters and things 
 come to be seen, each individual awakens to the 
 value of the other individual, each side to the value 
 of the other side, co-operation creeps in between 
 leaders and led; between employer and employed. 
 
 At present there is too great belief in superior 
 and inferior ; and the consequence of which is strife. 
 
 Leaders of men in thought and action are neces- 
 sary, during the early stages of community unfold- 
 ment few are equipped with initiative. Men in 
 common with other animals, improve but slowly. 
 
By means of observation and imitation gradual 
 awakening is obtained, after a long time, self- 
 reliance, the power to infer, to rationate, to gen- 
 eralize, to organize, and to moralize is gained. 
 
 But because, with the many, these later mental 
 equipments are in process of unfoldment merely, 
 largely in the coming, they depend on authorities 
 and pictures, and must have leaders to look up to 
 and imitate. 
 
 Hence, the observing person can see that the 
 present life is an intermingling of every stage, 
 plane, or mountain-range of growth; use any set 
 of tangible figures you prefer to represent the in- 
 tangible unfoldment of the souls or minds of men. 
 
 Account for it as you will, there are compara- 
 tively few among us who have finished crossing the 
 plane of imitation and thrown away the crutches 
 with which they crossed. The majority are cling- 
 ing to something — a church, club, society, lawyer, 
 doctor; they are dominated and taught by author- 
 ities while at the same time being continuously dis- 
 appointed by them. The aim seems to be to cul- 
 tivate in men more self-reliance, for the less self- 
 reliant they are the more do their teachers disap- 
 point them. 
 
 So, there comes a time — as a rule this is but 
 gradual — and, through countless disappointments — 
 when the awakening soul becomes detached and 
 
 — 57— 
 
rebellious, hatches, throws off its shell or shackles 
 and starts crossing the plane of anarchy alone — 
 growling, fighting, and suffering. A few cross this 
 plane quickly with education, in a few years or 
 even months, for the pathway has been surveyed 
 and educationally mapped by those who have gone 
 before us. Yet others consume a lifetime, or even, 
 it may be, many lives in reaching through ex- 
 perience alone, the plane of continuous reconstruc- 
 tion — a condition of comfortable move forward. 
 
 It seems rational, then, to infer that through 
 suffering and the action we call work, all are driven 
 across the planes of lives and over the divides to 
 other planes, each in its succession, a trifle higher. 
 
 —58— 
 
HAPPINESS IN THIS LIFE? 
 
 HET us now view this matter of life's unfold- 
 ment from another of life's foothills. 
 
 What men know of right and wrong they have 
 learned from experience. The right move, the 
 right thing in conduct or in anything else, cannot 
 be known till some one has experienced the wrong 
 and suffered therefrom. 
 
 What the world has gained of wisdom it has 
 gained through great struggle or by wrong moves, 
 and the accompaniment of, or entail of suffering. 
 Wisdom means that somewhere and sometime there 
 has been a great sacrifice of happiness. 
 
 The struggle for a thing creates a feeling of 
 appreciation for that which the struggle brings, 
 and the feeling of appreciation is what gives hap- 
 piness. Happiness consists of that serene and 
 abiding pleasure which is understood feelingly; 
 that is appreciated. 
 
 Does life, then, seem to be purposed to give 
 human happiness in this life? If so, few of the 
 facts of life have, to us as yet, any meaning. 
 
 If the aim of life is to give happiness in this 
 life, why does not direct pleasure-seeking give the 
 happiness sought; why does it not go on increasing 
 in intensity, even, instead of, (as it does) fail in 
 
the first instance, and in the second, instead of 
 increasing, decline till the pleasure has entirely 
 departed ? 
 
 Is it not because true happiness can be ex- 
 perienced by men and women only in the propor- 
 tion that they have gained right feeling through 
 work, because in no other way can a thing be so 
 well understood as to be felt appreciatively? 
 
 Is not our happiness high, then, in proportion 
 to our understanding, and therefore to our appre- 
 ciation of that which we experience? In other 
 words, does not work give understanding, under- 
 standing appreciation, appreciation right feeling, 
 and right feeling give rise to happiness? 
 
 The line of least resistance is always first sought 
 — easy methods, short cuts, the shirk and get rid 
 of work ways ; laziness and play are the old natural, 
 love of work is the new, the later evolved and the 
 higher natural. 
 
 Only at the end of unintelligent and direct 
 pleasure-seeking — in the discomfort entailed — does 
 the victim of such erroneous seeking know better 
 than to repeat. 
 
 And this is the program of life, through which 
 endeavor seems being made to entice and drive all 
 onward, out into the larger light and freedom of 
 ever greater wisdom. 
 
 The rule in this pursuit of happiness, is to find 
 
 —60— 
 
it in small quantities and mixed with much disap- 
 pointment; for the reason, evidently that the pre- 
 paratory steps are usually neglected, the pursuit is 
 too direct, the endeavor is made to steal happiness ; 
 or, perhaps, better to say, men apply for that which 
 they have not yet cultivated the capacity to use 
 enjoyably. Select your illustrations from the abun- 
 dance of experiences of your own life. From the 
 consequence of this neglect and its entail of dis- 
 appointment, many conclude (and in spite of what 
 they claim to the contrary) that life is fatuous 
 rather than purposeful. 
 
 And, they reason, and reasoning, they practice, 
 "If this life is all, and I suspect that it is, what 
 matters anything but to take to the line of least 
 resistance in squeezing out of life the last possible 
 drop of sensual pleasure, regardless of the rights of 
 others." Than this, what better excuse does any 
 man need for his selfish conduct? 
 
 The central aim of this life seems to be a gain 
 of knowledge, and, to insure this gain, enough hap- 
 piness is allowed to keep human beings trying for 
 more, inspired with the hope of a much greater, 
 ultimate happiness. 
 
 This life does not seem to be planned to give 
 happiness as a thing of first consideration; the 
 primary aim seems to be educational experience; 
 it seems purposed to cultivate in men and women 
 
 —61— 
 
an ever greater capacity to receive and use hap- 
 piness. 
 
 In other words, Nature's human program is still 
 in process. Her present achievement is but the 
 foundation of the structure. 
 
 Successive planes of increasing happiness have 
 not been reached, nor are they to be reached, 
 through avenues of direct happiness-seeking; but 
 through the increase of wisdom and growing in- 
 tensity of feeling derived from successfully meet- 
 ing the combats of life. 
 
 The plan of progress is being gradually better 
 understood and a better practice instituted to assist 
 the forward move; but so far men have not volun- 
 teered to improve so much as they have been driven 
 like slaves to improve. The little of happiness 
 reached has been through suffering. 
 
 All that we are enjoying today in the way of 
 improvement as embodied in invention is due to 
 the inconvenience of using poor tools and machines. 
 All along down through the ages poorer things of 
 all sorts — and in a particular way does this hold 
 true of conduct — have destroyed themselves or dis- 
 placed themselves with better things, by making 
 men suffer. 
 
 The automobile is a cumulation of efforts — the 
 up-to-date of inconvenience piled on inconvenience, 
 a product of discomforts, reaching back, no man 
 
dare say how far into the dim ages left behind us. 
 
 Only by suffering do men learn to avoid the 
 wrong which brings suffering. Hence, has arisen 
 the saying "Necessity is the mother of invention." 
 
 All that is known of the art of keeping well has 
 been learned through pain. All the new healing 
 cults ; mental, psychological, magnetic, et cetera ; all 
 alike — except in their names, the form of their 
 expression and application — is the up-to-date of 
 knowledge in this respect, that has been gained by 
 the discomfort of sickness. This body of know- 
 ledge is accessible to those only who have, through 
 some form of personal adversity, overtaken the pro- 
 cession with the selective power of will and under- 
 standing. 
 
 The place in their unfoldment where they can 
 learn much without being kicked has been reached 
 by comparatively few among us ; yet, all, evidently, 
 are destined to move onward to the mental plane 
 where seeking happiness through the gateway of 
 knowledge will be the rule. 
 
 Today, or at the present stage of progress, to 
 the extent that any one of the great human majority 
 obtains that which removes the necessity for effort 
 and gives continuous pleasure, does he fail to learn; 
 and begin hereat, straightway to degenerate. 
 
 This combination ideal of happiness and wisdom- 
 gaining, which certain cults believe they have 
 
reached — as shown by their smug belief in their 
 completeness — is an ideal that extremely few, if 
 any, have reached in the realization — it takes time 
 for a mental picture to materialize, and the imagi- 
 nation often leads us to believe we have already 
 reached in practice that which is yet far away in 
 the land of dreams. 
 
 The greater motive power of the human life lies, 
 as yet, beyond human consciousness. Consequently, 
 much of the bad in human conduct is not purposely 
 so; bad acts appear only because the better things 
 to do lie beyond human knowledge and, therefore, 
 beyond human selection. The move, though for- 
 ward, is largely involuntary, having in view, evi- 
 dently, the object of awakening men to the im- 
 portance of building capacity to enjoy; and, hap- 
 piness does not lead this building move but follows 
 as a consequence. 
 
 The happiness secured along the toilsome way of 
 gaining a larger consciousness, active wisdom and 
 a greater intensity of right feeling, appears in bits 
 as encouraging samples of the greater happiness to 
 come. But in all this move, little freedom of human 
 will is yet exercised, comparatively little intelli- 
 gence used — the building lies, largely beyond hu- 
 man consciousness. 
 
 As shown by the facts of life, we are moving 
 toward something that does not yet appear; a cumu- 
 
 —64— 
 
lation that lies beyond the horizon of this life's 
 consciousness. 
 
 Many are found doing much in life which they 
 can not rationally explain — often taking upon 
 themselves experiences of misery instead of the 
 experiences of happiness which they might have. 
 So far do a small number subordinate happiness to 
 knowledge-gaining as to take away most of the 
 ordinary pleasures of life, and a few sacrifice their 
 lives to what they feel to be their particular duty. 
 
 Whether rich or poor, no one can do precisely 
 what he prefers; no circumstance of life can be 
 found in which the educational experience of suffer- 
 ing can be escaped. 
 
 How much of this experience is selected, how 
 much imposed? Are we not moved in our conduct 
 of life, by a proclivity that lies largely beyond both 
 will and intelligence, a tendency set up in the orig- 
 inal or cosmic plan of life that compels us to act 
 in certain ways while we gradually gain sufficient 
 will and intelligence to act as individuals, volun- 
 tarily? And, if not to gain independence of action 
 and a product of personality to be used beyond the 
 border line of this life, WHAT? — since but little 
 of either gain can be used on this side. 
 
 Is it not very evident that there has been and 
 still is an intelligence operating through human 
 conduct, much larger than human intelligence? 
 
 —65— 
 
If the purpose of this life is to give human hap- 
 piness, it has certainly missed the mark. If this 
 was the creative intent, the human being should 
 have been differently equipped, differently con- 
 stituted and impulsed, differently environed and, 
 as set forth elsewhere in this essay. 
 
 If the creative intent was to give happiness in 
 this life, men should have been sent fully equipped 
 with wisdom, with mutual understanding, with the 
 feeling of appreciation and honesty, with plenty to 
 eat, plenty to wear, and in other ways to enjoy 
 without being obliged to work for it. Why does 
 a warm climate fail to produce a hardy and vigor- 
 ous race? Why do hard knocks produce men best 
 worth while ? Why do men fight so fiercely to gain 
 things of so little worth, and that can be used for 
 so short a time if gained? 
 
 All the facts of life seem to contradict the belief 
 that the first purpose of this life is one to give 
 individual happiness; men are in pursuit of ideals, 
 but were the sole purpose of this life to gain hap- 
 piness, they need not and would not be in pursuit 
 of ideals, they would know all they need to know. 
 
 The pursuit of ideals, however, is a fact; but 
 practically speaking, few have succeeded in cap- 
 turing a high grade. What we are about half con- 
 sciously after, or are being driven to obtain, evi- 
 dently, is not immediate happiness, as a deeper 
 
 —66— 
 
analysis will show, but a happiness that is more 
 remote, greater, and secured through a commensu- 
 rate gain of capacity. 
 
 For, judging by that which is plentifully in evi- 
 dence all around us, no one knows enough, appre- 
 ciates enough, has enough controlled right feeling 
 to enjoy, in any high degree, the gifts of life and 
 the conquests of work already secured. 
 
 This life does not now afford right economic con- 
 ditions; neither is it long enough to build much or 
 to open consciousness to a very high grade of con- 
 trolled appreciative enjoyment. Yet the struggle 
 continues, in large part, for that which can have 
 no possible use in this life. 
 
 The human being of today seems merely the 
 basement of a grand structure yet to appear, the 
 good start of a building far transcending any yet 
 conceived. The rational inference is, that in the 
 dim distance, there looms a revised human being, 
 a man possessed of a power to do and capacity to 
 enjoy impossible for even the best among us to 
 now clearly outline, and to the majority, he has 
 not yet appeared upon the horizon of their dreams. 
 
 To the importance of building this larger man, 
 through education and the more intense voluntary 
 effort, morally pursued, a few have begun to 
 awaken. But at the present rate of structural 
 speed, the rate pursued by the majority, how much 
 
can be accomplished in a century? Can the best 
 human ideals of today be reached by these in one, 
 two, three, or even in a hundred lives like the one 
 the majority of men and women are now living? 
 Justice to these, then, must give them time to live, 
 to fight, to lie, to betray, to steal, and to suffer the 
 consequences of all this foolishness, in the interest 
 of their awakening. 
 
 Since a one-life theory explains, satisfactorily, 
 but few of the facts of life, while a theory of con- 
 tinuous personality explains nearly all the facts, 
 the latter is by far the more rational of the two. 
 
 Why, on reaching a certain stage of unfoldment, 
 do men and women awaken with a tremendous de- 
 sire to learn? Why, upon awakening, do they feel 
 such a keen sense of regret at the waste of time, 
 previous to their awakening? Why do many strive 
 so fiercely for attainments that can have no pos- 
 sible use in this life, and then gradually cease to 
 be interested in these attainments when reached? 
 
 Why desire and find so much need for change; 
 why are men driven by suffering to break up habits ; 
 why unable to find a resting place? Is not life a 
 school rather than a pleasure excursion, and are 
 we not being awakened by the conflict and gradu- 
 ated from grade to grade ? 
 
 Why so much waste of time in quarrelling over 
 trivial matters, why this failure to educationally 
 
 —68— 
 
arrive at mutual understanding in the interest of 
 happiness? If this life begins and ends human 
 personalty, the explanation of the present Euro- 
 pean struggle is a very difficult matter. 
 
 It can not be that we understand the purpose of 
 life, our needed experiences keep ever beyond our 
 vision. For a few of the most truly ignorant men 
 in the world have been allowed to prepare this 
 conflict and set it in motion, at a time when most 
 of the world in both intelligence and in feeling are 
 evolved beyond such barbarism. 
 
 There is something herefrom, evidently, that the 
 world needs to learn; and the lesson seems to be 
 the one of elimination of the atavistic type, the pre- 
 historic left over; to cast out, the barbarian not 
 only from civilization but from ourselves, by educa- 
 tion. Many among us need this, for the pomposity, 
 of these fiends in human form makes them seem to 
 be desirable personages by those who live in moral 
 unfoldment on the same plane; and whom nothing 
 but suffering can cure. 
 
 For there has been established in the unfolding 
 move, a law that eliminates the unfit, a tendency 
 that makes injustice, ignorance, tyranny, falsehood, 
 destroy themselves, together with their authors. It 
 was recorded of old that, "Those whom the Gods 
 would destroy, they first made mad." 
 
 Than this madness, what is more evident in the 
 
 —69— 
 
present conflict? The fiendish responsibles, seem 
 to be acting quite as unconscious of their final doom 
 as so many entrapped rats. 
 
 Watch the assumed dignity, the pomposity, the 
 hatred, the belief of these childish, moral perverts 
 with whiskers, in their greatness. 
 
 Should not these have other lives and oppor- 
 tunities to improve, to become, some day, actual 
 men? 
 
 Is it not evident that all this is taking place 
 because needed to make men learn to secure with- 
 out such conflict all and far more than this con- 
 flict will bring — the larger wisdom, reliability, 
 morality ? 
 
 But what about the innocent parties to this strife 
 — the young men who have fallen in battle? Are 
 these not to have another opportunity of life in 
 which to recover damages, or to compensate them 
 for the sacrifice they have been driven, by a few 
 ignorant men, to make? If not, what becomes of 
 your belief in compensative justice? Is life 
 fatuous ? 
 
 Is there any directing mind or law back of this 
 destructive upheaval? If so, is it human, or cosmic 
 and educational? Is there not a beneficient law of 
 growth acting through unconscious, human instru- 
 mentalities, and in the interest of their enlarged 
 capacity and continuous survival? 
 
 —70— 
 
Could the human race step into a society gov- 
 erned by the best ideals of today, what would it do 
 with the occupancy — would it not act much like a 
 pig in a parlor; in other words, would it not, in 
 such a society, raise sufficient hell to fit it to its 
 own educational needs? 
 
 For many reasons, this life fails to satisfy me. 
 Though I feel that I am slowly improving, there 
 is not yet enough of me to satisfactorily, legitimate- 
 ly command either myself or my surroundings. 
 
 I see myself here learning rather than enjoying; 
 and, out in the distance as a dimly outlined some- 
 thing, larger and better. The Superman cannot be 
 a figment of the imagination when understood. He 
 must be a realizable possibility, and found when 
 realized acting within his own sphere of right, in, 
 harmonious association with others; each acting 
 without conflict of function. 
 
 We are all imprisoned by a limited conscious- 
 ness, the tremendousness of time needed to effect 
 miracles of progressive change, we fail to grasp. 
 Nature's aims and Her resources to achieve Her 
 ends are concepts that lie beyond the human vision. 
 When understood, there must be in process of for- 
 mation, a larger being through human unfoldment. 
 
 -71— 
 
MUST NOT HUMAN HAPPINESS BE 
 EARNED? 
 
 CO the facts of life, then, hold the secret of 
 life's purpose? And if so, can they, by a 
 rational process, be made to give up some part of 
 this secret? 
 
 The contention that the original aim of the 
 human life was to give much happiness in this 
 life, and would do so now, were it not frustrated 
 by human perversity, or conduct intentionally 
 wrong, does not seem to be far sustained by the 
 facts of life, as we find them. 
 
 Why, if this be true, was not the condition for 
 the realization of this aim set up and so firmly 
 established as to preclude the external possibility 
 of unhappiness, and the human being so made, 
 mentally, as to fit into the scheme? 
 
 Rather than punishments for perverse conduct, 
 are not our sufferings the pangs of unfoldment? 
 Are we not growing larger, are not the combats of 
 life serving as a spur to that action which is a 
 necessity of growth ? Plainly, we are yet too small 
 in understanding to manage the facts of life to the 
 end of a happiness having much value. 
 
 As shown above, life seems to be at work on an 
 endeavor too ambitious to culminate in this life; 
 
 —73— 
 
something more remote, greater knowledge, greater 
 strength and freedom of will, more reliability, 
 greater and higher intensity of feeling; in a word, 
 does not life seem to be at work on an increase of 
 human power to execute and of capacity to enjoy? 
 
 For, evidently, the percentage of human happi- 
 ness realized is, on the whole, increasing; and, 
 through the increase of knowledge and a higher 
 grade of emotion. 
 
 So far on the evolutionary way, however, life 
 yields to most of the human family just enough 
 more happiness than misery to keep men and 
 women in pursuit of the happiness — not that they 
 now realize — but that they hope to realizze; and, 
 also, to pause in misery just short of an epidemic 
 of suicide. 
 
 Do not these facts contribute something, and 
 are there not other contributive facts in abundance 
 and ever present, when thoughtfully viewed, to 
 show that there is purpose in the move? Do they 
 not also furnish a means of predicting much that 
 in the not distant future is to come? 
 
 This, though dimly seen by the many, is much 
 plainer to the few who have reached in their on- 
 ward move, the place of a larger insight or power 
 of rational interpretation. 
 
 That prevision, which comes of the ability to 
 interpret the meaning of the phenomena or the 
 
 —74— 
 
facts of life, scientifically, and to predict coming 
 events and conditions with considerable accuray, 
 seems miraculous to some, and a form of super- 
 stition to others who know nothing of the steps 
 taken in the process. 
 
 There is comparatively little happiness in the 
 world at present, but the possibility of its increase 
 furnishes a measure of proof of greater happiness 
 to come. Increase of life's conveniences, and of 
 capacity to receive and use appreciatively, is a 
 fact; and in proportion to this increase is ex- 
 perienced a cumulation of happiness brought under 
 voluntary control. 
 
 In the means to use and the capacity to appre- 
 ciate is hidden the secret of happiness. During 
 the unfolding process sufficient contentment is 
 vouchsafed — granted to ignorance — not to give 
 bliss, as is commonly believed, but to keep it on 
 the way ; superlative j oy is the happiness of under- 
 standing and can begin only where ignorance ends. 
 
 The method adopted by Nature to increase 
 human knowledge in the interest of human happi- 
 ness is to coax and bribe men, throng their sense 
 pleasures to learn, and in cases where they refuse 
 to be coaxed or bribed, a means has been set up 
 to drive them to learn. 
 
 To have learned to co-operate with this law of 
 increasing capacity without being driven to do so 
 
 —75— 
 
is to be in possession of the most important in- 
 strumentality of use and progress that the ex- 
 periences of life have to give. 
 
 Trouble seems to be the effect of refusal to learn, 
 and established to prevent laziness, stagnation, and 
 atrophy. A gain of intelligence with which to meet 
 the new problems of life is required; if we do not 
 volunteer to furnish this gain, we are driven to 
 supply the need by being made to suffer. 
 
 When it can be clearly seen that few will learn 
 during times of happiness; that joyous life (be- 
 cause it lacks the spur to action) is not educating — 
 the present turmoil of life can be understood. 
 
 The solution, then, of continuous and rapid 
 progress, and a fast-growing happiness, must be 
 found in voluntary intelligence-gaining, in the art 
 of education, of education, properly so-called. 
 
 To the extent that the ability to see the better 
 thing ahead is gained is the ability gained, also, to 
 make way for its adoption by the voluntary elimi- 
 nation of the old and less worthy. 
 
 Could the men in power who have brought about 
 the present war, have seen its cause, all of the com- 
 paratively little of value that it is to bring could 
 have been obtained at but a trifle of cost and with- 
 out the sacrifice of a single life. 
 
 It is plain to all that the plans of those who seek 
 and find understanding, terminate far more suc- 
 
 —76— 
 
cess fully and satisfactorily than the plans of those 
 who have made no such search and find. 
 
 Life, apparently, offers the opportunity to earn 
 happiness, merely; and unhappiness will continue 
 so long as, and to the extent that, this opportunity 
 is neglected. 
 
 In other words, life seems to be so impulsed and 
 environed as to bring just the right amount of hap- 
 piness and misery to effect a continuous awakening 
 of the consciousness and to arouse the will into in- 
 creasing freedom of action. This accomplished to 
 the point of voluntary control of action, the im- 
 portance of and opportunity for a continuous gain 
 of wisdom, and greater strength of will, in the 
 interest of human happiness can be readily seen. 
 
 Why weTlo not pause long in life to enjoy much 
 of any one thing is because the plan of life re- 
 quires an onward move. And we proceed involun- 
 tarily ever emerging into something better, reach- 
 ing in practice the educational or conscious process 
 as rapidly as increase of capacity is realized to be 
 the aim or purpose of life. 
 
 Consequently, an indispensable factor of growth 
 is that present dreams of happiness — or in the 
 words of the poet "Listening to the Salutation of 
 The Dawn" — be continuously interrupted by the 
 stings of external conditions and the cosmic lure 
 and urge within us. For could the dreams of men 
 
 —77— 
 
come true with little effort, or were their anticipa- 
 tions always satisfactorily realized; they would 
 pause in sweet content, and move on no more. 
 
 The line of least resistance we call habit, then, 
 admits of a comfortable move for a limited time 
 only ; established in all men, is a desire for change ; 
 and, the tendency of this desire is, and the aim 
 seems to be, to prevent habit-slavery from fasten- 
 ing itself upon and strangling the life of the in- 
 dividual as well as of the human race. 
 
 This desire for change, this unsatisfied longing 
 in man that prompts him to seek something new; 
 the feeling that does not allow him to let well 
 enough alone, is a factor of progress having tre- 
 mendous value. 
 
 Progress, in its action is dual — constructive and 
 destructive. Habit, being a conservator of effects, 
 is chiefly constructive. But since these effects are 
 not always progressive effects, or improvements; 
 since, also, conservation in all its forms, good or 
 bad, tends to produce fixity of structure, immovable- 
 ness, habit-using needs intelligent superintending. 
 
 In consequence of its fixing tendency appears the 
 necessity, in the interest of progress, of breaking 
 habits as well as of making them. 
 
 Not only must bad habits be abandoned, but re- 
 pair must take place, revision; new habits and 
 
 —78— 
 
higher forms must be forever emerging from and 
 displacing the older and lower. 
 
 In a practical and educational way the possi- 
 bilities herein contained are far from being well 
 understood. 
 
 Few have reached the larger understanding of 
 how habit may be used to reach the place of a com- 
 fortable forward move. Men, on the contrary, live 
 in their early-made habit-grooves ; and in their con- 
 duct of life, after a certain age, become ever more 
 helpless and uncomfortable, and, if not ending life, 
 prematurely, they linger on in childishness, being a 
 disturbance to all around them. 
 
 Likewise, in their discussions, their reading and 
 their religion seeking do we find the majority in a 
 static mental condition, unable to improve because 
 of their prejudices. And, if in an argument a bul- 
 wark of lies seems necessary to defend their views 
 they immediately proceed with the building. 
 
 This slavery of prejudice, or mental habit emo- 
 tionally manifesting, now the rule of the human 
 life; it is not in the law of progress to allow to 
 remain permanently in use. 
 
 As, therefore, the sense-controlled and automatic 
 actor allows his non-progressive habits to gain 
 control, he is as gradually seized with an unrest, 
 filled with discomfort, urging a change. 
 
 This urge frequently fails to effect its purpose; 
 
 —79— 
 
consequently to manage these stubborn cases, a 
 more urgent means is found established in the law 
 of life, a spur sufficiently sharp to meet the re- 
 quirements ; such as sickness, business failure, some 
 disaster, some form of suffering, to bring out the 
 adequate intensity of feeling to break up old habits 
 in the interest of new and progressive building. 
 
 To the meaning and use of habit, in an educa- 
 tional way, the world seems to be long in the 
 awakening. As a rule, reconstruction, repair, and 
 revisions are not planned ahead; habit-ruts are 
 abandoned only when the occupant finds them no 
 longer tenable. 
 
 Once driven out, however, and readjustment 
 effected, the change is usually found to be for the 
 better. 
 
 Happiness can be gained only so fast as this 
 Cosmic requirement for improvement, or pro- 
 gressive change is met. 
 
 For present happiness is derived from what we 
 are today as a product of this unfolding change; 
 and the greater happiness ahead must be reached 
 by the same process. But, if rapid gain is to be 
 made it must be purposely instituted — it means a 
 better education, greater freedom, access to the 
 means to produce better men, better women, bet- 
 ter governments, greater inventions and discoveries, 
 greater reliability among men — in a word, happi- 
 
 —80— 
 
ness must be consciously sought along natural lines 
 of unfolding capacity — it must be earned. 
 
 The urge is onward. So, in overhauling his life's 
 experiences, the progressive man finds few among 
 them, even those of the honey-moon sort, that in- 
 spire a longing return ; in the sinders of experience, 
 but few diamonds are found. And, in history he 
 can find that which parallels his own case. 
 
 There is within us all an unsatisfied longing, a 
 feeling that somewhere ahead there is far greater 
 happiness than any yet found, a feeling that we 
 have missed little or nothing in not listening for 
 very long to the "Salutation of the Dawn" — this 
 feeling has much to do with keeping us on the 
 move forward. 
 
 Nature sets men to work with a choice of being 
 slaves or free men, and She pays them what they 
 earn. But, to paraphrase an old expression, "The 
 wage of sin is death," or better to say, the wage 
 of error is suffering, of persistent error, death. 
 
 In Nature's storehouse awaits the abundance to 
 serve all of the specific needs of men. That the 
 panorama of life may be kept moving forward in 
 consecutive order, the species must be kept up. 
 That this task may not be shirked, Nature entices 
 and pays for the service in the glamor of honey- 
 moon experience, followed by parental-love. 
 
 For a term, then, we find, as a compensation, 
 
 —81— 
 
sweethearts buried by their feelings, followed by 
 another term of parentage, in which the man and 
 the woman are again submerged by their feelings 
 in the interest of their children. For these chil- 
 dren, in many instances, no task is found to be too 
 arduous, no sacrifice too great that has to do with 
 their reaching adult age prepared for the battle of 
 life. 
 
 But parents are not allowed to stop with having 
 placed this service with its lessons behind them; in 
 proportion to their further needs, they are obliged 
 to take other lessons of experience. Often, there- 
 fore, they are awakened from their restful feeling 
 of having performed well, by a rude kick from their 
 children, a bruise of forgetfulness, if not of un- 
 gratefulness or deprivation. 
 
 This occurs, however, you may have noticed, 
 much more frequently in the large families of less 
 intelligence than in the smaller families where 
 greater pains have been taken to cultivate greater 
 intelligence. 
 
 Over-breeding and under-educating has a penalty 
 attached that, as a rule, parents must pay in suffer- 
 ing from neglect of themselves by their children; 
 children thrown out into the world in ignorance 
 are, usually, all through life, pressed for time, for 
 means; and often dulled in sensibility. 
 
 It may well be believed that this experience of 
 
parents is a needed part of their education; for, 
 they must, by suffering be taught to feel; and, also, 
 to act more wisely. As a rule, the children of such 
 parents are considerably protected from suffering 
 by being somewhat oblivious to the suffering which 
 they inflict on parents; they act unconsciously and 
 instrumentally, rather than intelligently and pur- 
 posely. Nor do they, at the time, realize that they, 
 too, must pass through about the same experience 
 in case they act with equal foolishness. 
 
 Feeling, confined to the family life, being narrow 
 and selfish often leads to dishonesty, and occasion- 
 ally to crime. It is but a short step on the unfold- 
 ing way; consequently, it must make men and 
 women suffer in order to arouse in them a feeling 
 of larger inclusiveness. 
 
 There seems to be a very great meaning in the 
 fact that, though every experience of this life tends 
 to enlighten, to enlarge upon and to intensify the 
 feelings, no experience seems to give all it should 
 give, perfect satisfaction is nowhere found — the 
 urge is onward and upward — happiness always 
 appears to be just ahead. 
 
 This fact of the imperfection of life's oppor- 
 tunities and of the imperfect satisfaction with our- 
 selves and with all we do is found in every ex- 
 perience of life; it holds true of our books, foods, 
 travels, farms and farming, housework, dwelling 
 
places, climate, neighbors, calls and callers, work, 
 government, children, discussions, plans — in fact, 
 there is no exception; and the greater the need of 
 growth, the greater is the sum of imperfection 
 found; of restlessness, of suifering experienced, 
 the fault found, and the change sought. 
 
 Have you, reader, (be honest with yourself,) 
 ever, during your whole life, had a single ex- 
 perience of perfect satisfaction, a flawless diamond 
 of emotion? 
 
 We have a right of capacity to experience only 
 so much happiness as we have earned. Are not all 
 of life's experiences, even the most intense and 
 thrilling, accompanied by more or less that is un- 
 satisfactory; are they not all shadowed and, just 
 at their finish, have they not made you feel to say, 
 "Well, is this all there is to that about which I was 
 so curious and from which I looked for so much; 
 is this where my anticipations end?" 
 
 Or have you reached in wisdom of selective con- 
 tacts, and in aliveness, a degree of potency suf- 
 ficiently high to give you, in your experiences, flaw- 
 less satisfaction? Before you answer, however, 
 correct any tendency you may have to over- 
 imagine; also, any tendency you may have to lie 
 about the matter, to elevate yourself in the estima- 
 tion of those to whom you lie. 
 
 Anyhow, this lack of ever being able to obtain 
 
 —84— 
 
perfect satisfaction keeps us in pursuit of the 
 ideal; and, by which we are, also, enticed; this, 
 when fully understood, incubates smiles instead of 
 tears. 
 
 The lure of anticipation rewards with the pleas- 
 ures of pursuit, while realization brings with it, the 
 more intense and satisfactory feeling of accomp- 
 lishment and possession; neither, however, brings 
 perfect satisfaction; this incompleteness seems to 
 show, that neither is more than instrumental — that 
 they are but means, serving on the way to some- 
 thing larger. 
 
 Decline of interest in possession and increasing 
 desire for something new and better — for change, 
 for new expression — this unsatisfied longing is one 
 of the most significant and important facts of life ; 
 this and being driven by necessity, are the two 
 facts which make individual, as well as social pro- 
 gress possible. 
 
 By the one we are all kept reaching for improve- 
 ment, and by the other we are driven to improve; 
 each step of this move is taken with but little 
 understanding, and with partial rather than with 
 complete success. 
 
 In all ages men who have bewailingly expressed 
 the way they have been impressed by this fact of 
 striving and obtaining objects of ambition only 
 soon to begin losing interest in these objects after 
 
 —85-— 
 
having secured them, are those who see herein no 
 larger meaning. 
 
 He, it would seem evident, has but a superficial 
 understanding of life's purpose, who sees in the 
 imperfections of life's appurtenances, and in an- 
 ticipation or the lure of life, only illusion; who 
 finds in this decline of interest which nearly always 
 follows possession, only matter for complaint; the 
 person in whose mind "familiarity breeds con- 
 tempt" has failed, we think, to visualize the upward 
 move of life. 
 
 For is there not, even in human conduct, about 
 all at this stage of life that could be rationally 
 looked for; and, much more of the admirable than 
 of the contemptible? This incompleteness found 
 in Nature, and that a short sight views with sus- 
 picion, is a prime necessity of progress, it is the 
 open door to improving change. 
 
 That familiarity, then, which amounts to under- 
 standing of matters of life, form and motion, breeds 
 in all a feeling of gladness, a feeling, which as a 
 greater insight of wisdom is gained, a deeper 
 knowledge of the arrangement to store and hold 
 the products of conduct, in the form of character, 
 enlarged capacity to do and to enjoy, is sighted, 
 ripens into a much larger and more intense feeling. 
 
 Thus equipped then, on becoming familiar with 
 lower orders of human conduct we are able to see 
 
 — 8&— 
 
that the contemptible herein is due far more to lack 
 of intelligence than to evil intent, or, it may be 
 said, that evil intent is due to a lack of intelligence. 
 
 Men and women are seldom as guilty as they 
 seem, for they are less wise than they seem. They 
 do wrong; but, often unconsciously; that which 
 they do, knowing it to be wrong, they feel to do 
 with an intensity which they are not yet sufficiently 
 strong in will to resist. 
 
 It is impossible for any human being to appre- 
 ciatively accept of and use that which he yet lacks 
 the capacity to understand. Consequently, many 
 are found rejecting opportunities to improve or 
 abusing offers of advice, friendships and other mat- 
 ters too large for their capacity to admit to appre- 
 ciative service. 
 
 The too-large is always rejected, often with con- 
 tempt, and the capacity better fitted with something 
 smaller, or a lower order of things, life, and action. 
 Whatever the seeming on the surface of things may 
 be, it is highly probable that we all become in- 
 terested in, and pursue next things in the order of 
 our unfoldment. Are not the lessons of life best 
 taught by experiences of just the right size to meet 
 the requirements of next steps in the earning of a 
 larger wisdom and its consequent happiness? 
 
 For, while a lesson is in progress, there is usually 
 found forming within the mind of the learner a new 
 
desire, a larger ideal, one that nothing but a new, 
 a larger, a more ambitious undertaking of exper- 
 ience will satisfy; and it may be necessary that it 
 involve great suffering and apparent failure. 
 
 This decline of interest in objects of pursuit; 
 that, as a rule, begins to take place soon after 
 these objects are secured, is undoubtedly due to the 
 fact that in no case is the thing secured or made, 
 the end. There is an ever present imperfection of 
 human conduct, and of structure ; few, even, if any, 
 ever find what they do, or say, or make, quite satis- 
 factory. 
 
 In all cases, even where men have done their 
 best and well, they see in their finished work, im- 
 perfections. The fact of the matter is, they are 
 taught by their work; and, knowing more at the 
 finish than at the start, they see in their finished 
 production imperfections that few others are able 
 to see — their insight and foresight or sphere of 
 voluntary control has been enlarged. 
 
 So it is with word and deed, with things made, 
 with acts confined to self, and with the conduct of 
 life toward others. The thing learned, in any 
 given case, is of much more importance than the 
 particular thing of use secured by the specific per- 
 formance; in fact, the lesson learned and filed for 
 future use is the real object of all structure, speech 
 and conduct; if life, as it seems, is engaged in 
 
building the larger man of the larger capacity for 
 happiness. 
 
 So, the correction of mistakes gives a new in- 
 terest and a new lesson. The builder may be able 
 to revise or to improve the old with a change of 
 parts or he may be obliged (it may be cheaper) to 
 build entirely anew, in either machinery or conduct. 
 
 If the knowledge of the individual is cumulative, 
 so, also, is his power of progress — that is, the more 
 a man learns, the faster can he learn — the learning 
 of the ignorant person, his getting a start, is a slow 
 and laborious process. (It must have taken, ages, 
 nearly countless to evolve an alphabet, take note 
 of its power today.) 
 
 Hence, in the interest of their awakening, men 
 of little intelligence are driven from that which is 
 plentiful, easy of access (and to this extent fa- 
 miliar) by lack of appreciation, indifference, a bad 
 temper, j ealousy, or even contempt, the feeling that 
 nothing is worth while, perhaps. 
 
 He who must be educated by experience, almost 
 unaided, must be driven to change and to repeat his 
 lesson often ; he must be torn by his emotions, have 
 sharp reverses, and suffer tremendously therefrom, 
 in order to reach the place in his upward growth 
 where he can control his feelings, see opportunities, 
 and feel the need of improvement with sufficient 
 
 —89— 
 
keenness to act morally and educate himself con- 
 sciously. 
 
 This same thing holds true of Nations. This 
 present world conflict will arouse men to break 
 through into that co-operative, structural and 
 moral action which they could not have reached 
 without this war — and because they were not far 
 enough along. This lack of understanding ex- 
 plains, largely, why the majority of employes hate 
 and lie about their employers, and in the belief that 
 they are the competent ones. 
 
 It also explains why the prodigal youth must 
 leave his home. In the case of the youth — unless 
 he happens to be the occasional one of large mental 
 calibre, and finds his home too narrow and non- 
 progressive to serve his ends — familiarity without 
 understanding creates in his mind a feeling of in- 
 difference; perhaps, nausea, contempt; to him, home 
 may seem to be old fashioned. By this feeling he 
 is driven far away and into other and more needed 
 experiences ! Before, therefore, he can return from 
 his prodigal trip with open eyes of understanding, 
 he must, in other fields, have learned through ex- 
 periences of suffering. 
 
 Ignorant, gossipy, lying, country neighborhoods 
 are thus (in the interest of their awakening) ex- 
 plained; few, if any, of the inhabitants ever under- 
 stand that by which, and those by whom they are 
 
 —90— 
 
surrounded. We find here, men and things of large 
 value are always under-estimated, and equals quar- 
 reling over the most trifling matters. 
 
 If there happens to be one among them showing 
 himself to be a trifle wiser than the rest, instead of 
 being understood and held among them, he is dis- 
 liked, viewed with jealousy or as a freak, lied about, 
 and driven to flee to the city where he will be less 
 familiarly known, but better understood, appre- 
 ciated, and rise nearer to his true value. 
 
 In communities where ignorance reigns supreme, 
 men and women take offense at trifles; and once 
 offended, they proceed to cherish a bitter, revenge- 
 ful, hatred; such constitute a dangerous class — the 
 country school teacher will understand — it is due 
 to narrow living, narrow reading, and narrow 
 thinking. 
 
 He who finds himself living in a country neigh- 
 borhood not of this kind is to be congratulated. 
 
 It holds particularly true of the little informed 
 that they look far away for green fields; they find 
 their greatest enchantment in dead and distant men 
 and distant views. Having little understanding of 
 anything, they must fail to behold the greater 
 among the near things; consequently, that famil- 
 iarity with things of their environment, in which 
 there is no understanding, calls out their contempt 
 of the best herein, instead of their appreciation. 
 
 —91— 
 
Their near and familiar, therefore, may as well 
 be, or had better be, perhaps, made up of the 
 mediocre; for, they have not yet earned the right 
 of capacity to see, to feel, to use, and to enjoy, 
 the greater of the privileges of life. 
 
 In consequence hereof — because they, instead of 
 being able to use, abuse that which lies beyond 
 their understanding — are usually held at arms' 
 length by the few who understand them. 
 
 Communities in which the average of mental and 
 moral capacity is small are always in a turmoil. 
 
 They manage, however, to keep on living and 
 doing, for the compunctionless ease with which they 
 can meet lie with lie, gives them a reasonable com- 
 fort of life in an environment where men and 
 women of larger mental and moral capacity would 
 very soon perish. 
 
 And when this is seen as a process of supplying 
 storage battery needs, is the evolution of under- 
 standing and appreciation of people, places and 
 things, our pessimism vanishes — for, by their con- 
 duct, they are planting and harvesting what they 
 now need, and they will lie less, perform better, 
 and supply themselves better later on. 
 
 If human growth means individualization, if the 
 way is evolutionary, and through repeated embodi- 
 ments, there are, undoubtedly, some of these lives 
 
 —92— 
 
in which but little is learned, while there are others 
 in which much is learned. 
 
 Education is a rapid process of evolution, of 
 voluntary unfoldment. 
 
 The move of progress has always been most 
 rapid in the great and thickly populated centers ; 
 here there is more of the spur of personal contact, 
 rivalry, competition, than in sparsely populated 
 districts; more new ideals break through into ex- 
 pression and become educationally suggestive, there 
 have always been, and to some extent there are 
 now, better schools, better libraries. 
 
 But, as to the benefit derived therefrom, though 
 the number is increasing, there are yet compara- 
 tively few sufficiently awakened to extract high 
 value. The many, instead of making helpful use 
 of their city environment, pick up its self-destruc- 
 tive fads and vices as a chicken picks up worms. 
 
 However, there are many who fear, and this fear 
 of the opinions of others is morally bracing; it 
 bridles the tongue, narrows bad conduct, puts on a 
 clean collar, drives to the bathtub, cleans up the 
 front yard, and makes men and women tolerable 
 long before they are tolerant. 
 
 In our ignorance we all flit from one drastic ex- 
 perience to another, learning a trifle from each. 
 The dog and his master are individuals, but travel- 
 ing in company, each receives a very different edu- 
 
cational product for his experience; each takes up 
 to the limits of his capacity. But so it is with 
 men and women who travel; the amount taken on 
 the way is proportioned to the capacity to take; a 
 capacity determined by previously acquired know- 
 ledge. 
 
 The way men view and use themselves and their 
 surroundings, then, is a very accurate measure of 
 their calibre. 
 
 The cynic, the sneering pessimist, the man with 
 a "chip on his shoulder" and ever ready to fight all 
 opinions other than the narrow ones of his own 
 education, has not yet evolved beyond the "fool" 
 stage. 
 
 He whom you find with the tear filled eyes of 
 self-pity, you will also, as a rule, find to be a 
 growling failure; a failure that is quite as much 
 due to the errors and dishonesties of his own life, 
 as to the dishonesties of the men, institutions, and 
 systems to which he attributes them. 
 
 Such men and women, have not yet sighted the 
 unfolding law of life or rebuilding change; they 
 have not yet learned to use this variety of life in 
 their own building. 
 
 In the law of life a requirement is found estab- 
 lished, living has a price to pay, and he who, in 
 the belief that the world owes him a living, thinks 
 
 —94— 
 
he can shirk paying the price, ere long, finds him- 
 self in trouble, for life is not fatuous. 
 
 Unawakened men and women are far too prone 
 to attribute their poverty and the other troubles 
 and failures of their lives — due to their own waste 
 and laziness — to the dishonesty of others. 
 
 Their "stock" argument is "You cannot win with 
 honesty," when, as a matter of fact, you cannot 
 win without honesty. 
 
 Success, worth the having, is never won by dis- 
 honest methods, and success of no kind can be won 
 by ignorance. 
 
 True success must be won through understand- 
 ing; it must be achieved through honest work, 
 economy, self-denial, a tearless firmness. 
 
 Spending wastefully, many believe, is living — 
 this is a modern mistake that leads to innumerable 
 failures of life. 
 
 Nature, evidently, is trying to make something 
 larger of us all and She is as kind as possible in 
 doing that which must be done, in order to meet the 
 requirements of this aim. 
 
 Reaching the place of wise and deliberate con- 
 duct of life is a matter of slow unfoldment; unless, 
 set about with deliberate educational effort to 
 achieve this particular end. There is a penalty at- 
 tached to prodigal use on the one hand and to 
 
 —95— 
 
miserliness on the other, and all meet their needed 
 discipline of life. 
 
 So the reader need not imagine that his troubles 
 are so much greater than the troubles of most 
 others. Many a trouble is hidden beneath a smiling 
 face ; troubled ones dislike to expose their own mis- 
 takes and foolishness, consequently they conceal 
 their troubles and fight it out largely alone. Lack 
 of sympathy has its value; it puts "pep" into the 
 character, stiffens the backbone, gives stamina, vim, 
 snap, and mastery. 
 
 This program of the human life does not allow 
 the man of millions to shirk and escape his ex- 
 periences of suffering, any more than it does the 
 man of poverty — experience may differ while lead- 
 ing, evidently, to nearly the same goal. 
 
 The rich no less than the poor have their edu- 
 cating experiences of life. Both will obtain more 
 from experience and its discipline, when they have 
 learned more of the futility and unmanliness of 
 complaint ; learned to waste less time weeping over 
 their needed lessons, to spend less time and money 
 fighting and more in educating. 
 
 The man of millions earns the right to be happy, 
 only so fast and so far as he learns the nature of 
 what he holds ; learns that it is considerably in the 
 nature of a loan or trust; and, to be used, beyond 
 his own needs helpfully for others; not to exploit 
 
 —96— 
 
and take advantage of others, neither to take away 
 their experiences. 
 
 So, too, must the poor man earn the capacity to 
 enjoy, the right to be happy, by being true to that 
 with which he has been entrusted. 
 
 Nature's favorites are very largely in the seem- 
 ing; all men are rebuked with more or less suffer- 
 ing for neglecting their opportunities ; also for the 
 privileges granted them and which they proceed to 
 abuse; the wealthy man for his efforts to monopo- 
 lize and exploit, the poor man for his self-neglect, 
 dishonesty, and tears of self-pity. 
 
 Each may find in life the experiences fitted to 
 his needs. When it is seen that even the man in 
 the penitentiary finds his solacing compensations, 
 pity makes way for and admits understanding, for 
 there comes a time when decaying parts must be 
 cast aside. 
 
 But in order to act wisely, we all seem obliged 
 first to act foolishly. The making, or earning of a 
 thing, brings the capacity to understand, to appre- 
 ciate, to use and to enj oy the thing. 
 
 To the extent that something for nothing is ob- 
 tained — like sudden prosperity, an unearned for- 
 tune, wages half earned, stealings — is the recipient 
 thereof made prodigal and to suffer. 
 
 Many are. found in life too timid to claim their 
 own; others, the selfish and the egotistical, the 
 
bully types, as greatly overestimate themselves; 
 and, the value in the world of their service to 
 others. 
 
 Consequently to assist timid persons with words 
 of truth and encouragement, to awaken them to a 
 realization of their true value, is legitimate, and to 
 check the predations of the bully, a duty. But to 
 praise persons of small calibre, flatteringly, to 
 boost, to pay them more than they earn, to trust 
 them, to treat them with a kind consideration be- 
 yond their deserts and understanding, usually leads 
 them into an over-estimate of themselves, and often, 
 also, to abuse the kindness; sometimes, to become 
 an enemy of the person who bestows the gifts. 
 Parents having an only son or daughter are fre- 
 quently guilty or this error. 
 
 Right use is learned through wrong us or abuse. 
 
 In all departments of life, opportunities are 
 found to observe the swagger of ignorance in the 
 event of prosperity. It seems a very difficult thing 
 for most men, on discovering something of their 
 own power, to hold back the snob in themselves. 
 
 To obtain the means of considerable independ- 
 ence is of very great importance in this life, if used, 
 as it very often is not used, in the interest of self- 
 improvement and in other legitimate ways. 
 
 For the discovery of one's ability to secure some 
 independence, means the discovery of a new power, 
 
 —98— 
 
in the use of which the swell of the head needs 
 watching — and, this same danger of abuse lurks in 
 the use of any power which one may discover in 
 himself. 
 
 Poverty is seldom a praiseworthy condition, and 
 it is always inconvenient; it is never an evidence 
 of wisdom; it may mean lack of opportunity, but 
 often it means laziness and extravagance, frequent- 
 ly the unwisdom of the gambler ; or dishonesty, and 
 in spite of all the pretty things men have said in 
 praise thereof, it is simply an evidence of some 
 great lack or wrong. 
 
 Nor, on the other hand, are great possessions 
 praiseworthy, unless obtained by honest means, 
 used without ostentation, and in fairness. The 
 ideal of wise and honest men, in the sense of all 
 having all they can use comfortably, without the 
 two extremes of poverty and riches, will arrive the 
 moment a majority have grown sufficiently wise 
 and honest to deserve to have, by living this ideal. 
 
 Toward this dream, or distant picture, men are 
 moving slowly; and they are moving slowly because 
 they are moving with but little of either intelligence 
 or of honesty. 
 
 Do not imagine then, that this tremendous strug- 
 gle in which the world is now engaged, is a mistake ; 
 it seems, at least, to be the only means of education 
 that can, at this stage of human wwawakeness, 
 
be successfully employed. The fleecing of men 
 awakens them to the use of their means of self- 
 protection and teaches them to feel respect for the 
 rights of others. But so long as they act on the 
 belief in a brutal fitness to survive as being the 
 best, they will live in a world of brutal conduct. 
 
 If the majority reap comparatively little benefit 
 from present gain of progress, who have they to 
 blame but themselves? For their deprivation is 
 due to a system which they in their waste of means 
 and spare time, self-indulged laziness, and there- 
 fore ignorance, allow to persist while they are de- 
 luged with abundance of information, which if 
 heeded, learned and used, would enable them to 
 install a system in which no tyranny, slavery and 
 poverty could exist. 
 
 This system is in process of evolution and means 
 one to be; one not of ever greater compulsion, but 
 of ever greater individual independence of action. 
 When a man has become wise he has reached re- 
 liability. When all men become sufficiently wise, 
 all will be reliable, all free, all rich. 
 
 The evident intent, then, of this struggle of life, 
 is to awaken, to forge out the freedom of a more 
 distinctly marked individuality, character of a 
 higher class — and, to the end of a more remote 
 happiness. Every social system — monopolistic, 
 monarchial, or socialistic — then, that interfere with 
 
individual rights, with freedom to compete, will be 
 found wanting; and ultimately cast off with the 
 tremendous suffering of all concerned. 
 
 In the proportion that the laws of life come to 
 be understood, the events of life's move looked for- 
 ward to as opportunities and (in the order of their 
 appearance) intelligently acted upon, will there 
 come a rapid move forward, harmony of action 
 creep in and its resultant happiness come to prevail. 
 But for some time to come this building must take 
 place largely behind the scenes of life. 
 
 Self-reliance is a matter of great importance; 
 there is plenty in life to make of us social beings 
 while learning to do for ourselves that which we 
 now employ high priced quacks to do for us. The 
 social strength of the individual follows as a result 
 of his individual strength. 
 
 Wisdom will remove the necessity for lawsuits, 
 great doctor's bills, failures, religious revivals, 
 prisons, police, war, and the tendency to suicide. 
 Wisdom, if considerable, can manage the contemp- 
 tible conduct found in most country villages, even. 
 
 In this way, feeling, attachment, detachment, 
 and reattachment run through all life; and its 
 evident purpose is an educational one, the learning 
 of lessons through many experiences — it is the 
 push and the pull of progress. 
 
 This feeling of enough of a thing is one of the 
 
very important iconoclastic impulses in Nature; this 
 desire for something new — for change, is the feel- 
 ing that makes possible construction and recon- 
 struction in all the forms of life's expression. Ex- 
 cept for this fact, life could not break away from 
 the line of least resistance specifically as seen in 
 the bondage of habit, of prejudice and of dogma, 
 and go on with better and higher building — to the 
 end of a higher happiness. 
 
 —102- 
 
THE COSMIC URGE WITHIN US 
 
 GAN these philosophies of life, then, that ad- 
 vocate the retirement of the individual from 
 the broad highways of conflict to the secluded by- 
 ways of life be of the wisest; if so, why are things 
 as we find them? 
 
 In spite of our theories, few of us retire in peace 
 and comfort to the Walden Ponds of life. Is not 
 this fact explained by recognizing that there has 
 been implanted a lure within us all, and within our 
 surroundings an urge that is much wiser than the 
 philosophy of Thoreau, a proclivity here, and a 
 necessity there, that will not allow us to retire? 
 
 To this end, note the difficulty with which a ma- 
 tured young man is kept on the farm; he is drawn 
 by an irresistible desire into the strenuous life, en- 
 ticed into the maelstrom of the street, forced into 
 the bustling current ; he feels that he must take part 
 in its turmoil and its strife; that he must step into 
 the struggle where rapid change takes place; and 
 gladly does he exchange his palling, deadening, 
 changeless contact for variety and rapid motion, 
 even though this may tire, worry, and bring dis- 
 aster. 
 
 Here he may not live as long but he lives more 
 intensively while he does live. Man is a social 
 
being impelled to seek unfoldment in the pleasures 
 and tortures of personal contact, to seek the ex- 
 periences that evolve the better physical, mental 
 and moral man. 
 
 Freedom and comfort of social action appears as 
 fast as men reach mutual understanding through a 
 knowledge of facts learned and held in common, 
 and no other one factor of progress has served so 
 largely to effect this end as the printing press. 
 
 Those who deny that present civilization is of a 
 more highly evolved grade than any of those by 
 which it has been preceded, lack that, we believe, 
 which enables men to measure civilization values; 
 if in possession of the facts of history, they lack 
 the ability to interpret the meaning of these facts. 
 
 The superiority of our own, over the civilizations 
 which have come and gone, is chiefly due to the 
 printing press. To this wonderful disseminator of 
 knowledge is due the fact that a citizen in the storm 
 and bustle of today has an opportunity to live more 
 and learn more in one year, than a citizen in the 
 days of Ancient Rome could live and learn in two, 
 possibly five years. 
 
 Through the printing press men have already 
 reached a large measure of intelligence, of mutual 
 understanding, and freedom of group action; and 
 with its better use they are to reach far more — we 
 are but at the beginning. 
 
 —104— 
 
With the printing press, as an instrumentality 
 through which to gain intelligence and mutual un- 
 derstanding within and among large competing 
 groups, it is very doubtful if ever again any one 
 group of religious fanatics or monopolistic rascals, 
 if any nation led by a half insane bunch of bullying 
 egotists, can arise, sufficiently large in number, in- 
 tensity of belief and power, to dominate the world 
 and plunge it into a darkness such as it passed 
 through during the Middle Ages ; even though there 
 is yet a strong tendency in this direction, that must 
 be watched continuously and fought back. 
 
 The printing press has a great work before it, 
 so has education. 
 
 The very evident object of the experiences of 
 this life is to teach lessons; the more men are 
 driven to learn the faster do they volunteer to 
 learn. 
 
 Rather than to recline during the day in some 
 protected nook, then, it is better to return home at 
 night with something having been accomplished; 
 and, if necessary, tired and with a headache. 
 
 The chief thing that needs to be learned is the 
 why of being tired, of this headache, this lawsuit, 
 this sickness. Investigation usually discovers the 
 cause in some form of dissipation, some lack of self- 
 control; some ignorance in eating, perhaps; in 
 drinking, in thinking, some lack of breathing, un- 
 
wise acting, some form of dishonesty, of ignorance 
 or of foolishness, which we should aim to correct 
 on the morrow, and step forth on the day following 
 somewhat better informed and self-controlled. 
 
 If you, reader, happen to be laboring under the 
 influence of some of these semi-truthful "back-to- 
 Nature" philosophies and, therefore, are blaming 
 yourself for remaining in this bustle of life, you 
 will, if you pause for a moment to think, and think- 
 ing, try to realize what you are actually doing, the 
 thing you are most likely to discover is an urge and 
 a need within you calling for a much wiser conduct 
 of life than this negative philosophy of "back-to- 
 Nature". 
 
 This active life is ours; what we need is not 
 retirement — but sufficient intelligence to demand 
 the opportunity to act, and while in action, to cul- 
 tivate the ability to use opportunity more fully, 
 honestly, wisely, and comfortably. 
 
 Why is it that men and women often turn back 
 to the superstitions of their childhood in religion 
 when they become old and good for but little or 
 when suffering from an attack of indigestion? 
 
 Is it not because they have failed to learn what 
 they must some day learn? By having acquired 
 fixed habits and loaded themselves with dead mat- 
 ter, they have lost their power, to make energy, and 
 improve — in consequence hereof, they are getting 
 
through with life by slow suicide. Is this dream 
 of perpetual youth an illusion; or, the beckoning 
 of a realizable ideal? Few, in this life, learn half 
 what they might learn, and what men will some day 
 come to learn in a longer and better single life. To 
 become more fully conscious of life's purpose is to 
 keep more closely in pursuit of improving ideals. 
 
 Life is a process of unfoldment; discoveries and 
 inventions, break in upon the consciousness through 
 life's contacts and make trouble while their use is 
 being gradually learned? 
 
 So is it found to be with ideals; because every 
 act is preceded by an idea, even in learning a trade, 
 a knowledge of what to do most precede the doing. 
 
 In education, theory precedes practice, and the 
 better the theory is learned, the more wisely con- 
 ducted will be the practice that follows. 
 
 The way to all human achievement is pioneered 
 by an idea, consequently no man can ever express 
 his thoughts quite as well as he can think them. 
 
 An ideal, then, is the lure of the pioneering mind ; 
 it is a picture that breaks in upon the consciousness 
 or is set up by that mental power which makes 
 progress possible. 
 
 Hence it apepars as a forerunner, not as a reali- 
 zation, but, something to practice reaching for — a 
 lure to keep up human interest. 
 
 The realizations of today were once ideals, the 
 
hopes of remote yesterdays ; the ideals of today are 
 the possible realizations of some remote or near to- 
 morrow. 
 
 An ideal may be an unpainted picture, a song 
 unsung, an unachieved ambition, a prospective 
 gold-mine, an imaginary invention, a mental image, 
 an unincarnated idea, an unexpressed thought, a 
 better society, a better self, each of which, from 
 the day of its inception in the mind to the day of 
 its birth in materialized form, keeps clamoring for 
 expression. 
 
 But the march of ideals, or improving change, 
 though taking place at an accelerated rate of speed 
 is still a slow process when compared with what it 
 will, in all probability, become in a not very remote 
 tomorrow, when ideal forming has become the more 
 particular concern of education. 
 
 Through this uproar and expensive conflict car- 
 ried on between those who desire change and those 
 who are opposed to change — both sides, largely 
 ignorant of the right thing to do — the best among 
 men, women, and ideals of today are denied normal 
 expression. 
 
 Nature effects her wonders of improving change 
 through a process of continuous re-construction, a 
 simultaneous move of construction and destruction 
 that, without creating more disturbance than the 
 birth pangs of growth, leaves behind it a product 
 
 —108— 
 
of improvement to show for its effort. This fact 
 already learned, men are neither wise enough nor 
 honest enough to adopt in education. 
 
 But, from the moment of its adoption, by refus- 
 ing to fix upon themselves, or allowing to be fixed 
 upon them, rigid forms of conservatism that must 
 be broken up and cast aside all at one time by some 
 murderous conflict; they will be quietly, comfort- 
 ably and happily progressive. 
 
 So, in time will man, as an individual, learn bet- 
 ter than to destroy himself physically, intellectual- 
 ly, morally, and spiritually with prejudices and 
 other habits that can not be cast aside. 
 
 But not yet; the arrival of natural methods in 
 education lies some distance in the future ; warf ore, 
 turmoil, and suffering, must serve its allotted time 
 in making of men, as educational factors what pro- 
 gress has in view. 
 
 Failing to understand that their suffering is due 
 to Nature's effort to awaken them to their pos- 
 sibility of inexpensive and comfortable improve- 
 ment, many become pessimists and gravitate into 
 groups of so-called reformers. For the most part, 
 we find these performing with but little intelli- 
 gence; as the great army of weeping sentimen- 
 talists, and, also, others of the loud, denouncing, 
 screaming, destructive sort, performing blindly. On 
 the other hand, the same lack of understanding ex- 
 
plains the conduct of the smaller company, made 
 up of a stubborn selfishness, the monopolistic, bully 
 types of men. 
 
 The existence of the two sides to every question 
 will some day be recognized in practice; for, to 
 see but one side brings conflict, conflict suffering, 
 suffering greater wisdom, greater honesty, more 
 reliability; it weakens prejudice, stimulates right 
 thought and allays the greed and fighting passions 
 of men — all this in needed. 
 
 Education is now struggling through its early 
 stages ; knowing but little of what science and 
 history have to give as a warning; or of what Po- 
 litical Economy has to offer as a way out into har- 
 monious community, national, and international 
 action, both sides to this great fight are acting in 
 the darkness. 
 
 Warfare is tremendously expensive, for it is 
 ignorance, greed and dishonesty in action. But, it 
 is at the same time self-destructive and with it must 
 go the other lies of life; splendid ideals, therefore, 
 are herefrom to find their way into life and action. 
 
 Reform is made to appear a slow process by the 
 rapid march of our ideals. 
 
 It is impossible to realize how rapidly the speed 
 of progress is increasing without being able to look 
 back through history over the toilsome and wreck 
 strewn pathway of all the bettering change pre- 
 
vious to our time. And without a knowledge of 
 political economy, it is impossible to realize how 
 slowly we are improving when compared with the 
 speed that might be reached with sufficient knowl- 
 edge of political economy to enable men to act as 
 a unit without fighting. 
 
 An equipment of both the above would serve as 
 an excellent nerve tonic for impatient, would-be, 
 reformers ; it would tend very greatly to make them 
 wise and more comfortable in their reform moves. 
 For, to understand about how rapidly we may hope 
 for improvement to come, and what must be met 
 and overcome to facilitate the move is of indis- 
 pensable importance. Without having yet learned 
 its use, this generation holds in its educational 
 storehouse all of importance that has been gained 
 during the ages left behind us, and in ground rent 
 the funds of its applicaton, which it now allows to 
 flow into private pocket to create disturbance. 
 
 It takes time. Increase of the mental horizon is 
 reaching an ever greater number, but mental change 
 has always waited, and must still wait for physical 
 readjustments to meet its requirements; practice 
 cannot and should not keep pace with theory — the 
 real cannot overtake the ideal. 
 
 Nature educates through warfare, but she edu- 
 cates, also, through symbols, through experience, 
 silently, slowly, but effectively. She uses a Ian- 
 
guage and a method of Her own. Her instruction 
 is telegraphic, wireless, by suggestion, and over 
 nerve lines — this will come to be better understood. 
 To the degree that men approach right action do 
 they find comfort; to the degree of their departure 
 therefrom or to the extent of their wrong action 
 do they meet with discomfort. 
 
 When viewed from the surface, these two effects 
 of action, the good and the bad, seem to be reward 
 and punishment, in the human sense of understand- 
 ing. However, to view these as the effects of the 
 unfolding process, as Nature's way of making 
 known Her educational intent or plan, through 
 feeling — comfort and discomfort — we think, is a 
 far more rational interpretation of the meaning of 
 the effects of action; and is in the nature of a de- 
 mand that accompanies all life. 
 
 For, he who fails to provide himself with the 
 specific demands of life — with food, with clothing, 
 with a place to sleep, with friends, with amuse- 
 ment, with a pursuit, with information, with a 
 strengthened will, with toleration, with honesty, 
 reliability, justice, with self-control, with a variety 
 of things to enjoy and even with things of am- 
 bitious endeavor, finds himself in a very much 
 worse dilemma than when he works to provide 
 these. Earnest, honest endeavor certainly brings, 
 —112— 
 
on the whole, a greater enjoyment of life than is 
 ever reached by the shirk. 
 
 Whether rich or poor, living requires action from 
 all. In time all are driven to learn that even when 
 acting up to their best, the end of each finished 
 piece of work, or specific conquest is reached with 
 a feeling of considerable comfort, that consists of 
 about two- thirds satisfaction and one-third of dis- 
 appointment; while failure to live up to the best 
 adds embarrassment to disappointment; and often 
 an entailment of suffering. 
 
 In his belief that he is the victim of "hard luck" 
 we find the lazy man with tears of self-pity trying 
 to obtain help from some worker; and who, because 
 he finds it difficult to be honest, does not mind get- 
 ting it for nothing. Nearly every man of action, 
 of thrift, and of generous impulse knows the lazy 
 man by having tried to help him and in return for 
 his generosity meeting with not only loss but often 
 with ingratitude, entire lack of appreciation, and in 
 some cases, with treatment of a still meaner kind, 
 particularly in case assistance has been rendered 
 in a charitable way. 
 
 Of course, much of the poverty in the world and 
 most dishonesty may be traced to bad economic 
 conditions, but they can be traced to a cause more 
 remote than bad economic conditions — to the one 
 of ignorance. The majority of those in need are 
 
 —113— 
 
shirks — they are too lazy either to learn or to 
 earn, and too unwise and extravagant to save for 
 an emergency. 
 
 The rebuking experience of the man who comes 
 to the rescue seems to argue very strongly that he 
 has broken a natural law and that this rebuke is 
 the natural penalty. 
 
 There are social problems, but there are, alse 
 individual problems; consisting of self-improve- 
 ment and self-support. There is a sphere, within 
 which, each must work things out for himself, for 
 the law of life's action and growth is such that no 
 one can appreciate that for which he puts forth 
 no effort. 
 
 Nature has so constituted and environed man 
 that he can and must act; and, evidently, till such 
 time as action becomes a pleasure, since refusal is 
 invariably met with some form of rebuke. The 
 reward of work is growth and enjoyment; by an 
 effort of the will directed by reason, laziness can 
 be overcome. 
 
 Work may be viewed as a privilege; so, he who 
 does for another that which Nature planned for 
 this other to do for himself, breaks a natural law 
 involving the payment of a penalty which, as noted 
 above, cannot be shirked. 
 
 He who selects to act as his brothers' keeper 
 fails to understand the law of life and action. In 
 
 —114— 
 
any community where some men need to act as 
 keepers of other men, this need can usually be 
 traced back to some deprivation. Nature says to 
 us all, "Hands off thy brother! I am his better 
 keeper! If your brother needs you as his keeper, 
 it is most likely only because of some wrong having 
 been committed — is because he has been despoiled 
 by either you or others; allow him a chance and I 
 will attend to his laziness. Except in self-protec- 
 tion against his aggressions, hands off thy brother 
 and his belongings, or the penalty is yours !" 
 
 Any individual may legitimately offer informa- 
 tion to another; advice, when called called for, 
 suggestion, or education, but to go farther in dic- 
 tating the use of all this, means trouble for the 
 dictator. 
 
 For a very good reason Nature rebukes the 
 meddler; our charities and most of our well meant 
 gifts are shown to be wrong by a lack of apprecia- 
 tion and even by the resentment of those upon 
 whom we try to impose them. 
 
 To do a brother's work for him, to give him that 
 which will enable him to shirk the best gifts of life, 
 his work lessons, tends to injure both parties to the 
 transaction. 
 
 Prodigal sons are cultivated; they are the petted, 
 pampered, neglected and spoiled sons; they are 
 sepndthrifts, because they have not been taught 
 
thrift, appreciation of means with work and 
 thought — economy. Dwellers of the tropics are 
 Nature's prodigals reserved for the inspection and 
 enlightenment of those who, when given effects, 
 can find the cause. 
 
 Whatever supplies the needs of men without 
 work, before they have learned to like work, what- 
 ever enables them to shirk the natural consequences 
 of their acts, deprives them of their indispensible 
 educational discipline of life. 
 
 Hence, reformatory prohibitions, coercions, sup- 
 pressions, and charities fail in their aim — they are 
 wrong in principle, and are made to seem right 
 only because of the existence of great injustice in 
 the world. 
 
 Charity is made necessary by laziness and ig- 
 norance on the one hand, and on the other hand by 
 the dishonest, monopolistic, exploiters of men who 
 operate beyond the short, dust-dimmed sight of 
 those whom they despoil. 
 
 Despoilation would be impossible if the majority 
 of men knew enough political economy to under- 
 stand so simple a thing as what it is that makes 
 rental value. This once understood, the greed of 
 comparatively few men could not deprive the mil- 
 lions of their means of education, opportunity for 
 action, and legitimate expression of life. But they 
 can not rise above the prejudices of the false edu- 
 
cation imposed upon them by their exploiters. 
 However, is not this blindness of men serving a 
 great chastening purpose in the interest of their 
 education ? 
 
 Life's expression is of two kinds — individual and 
 social. As an individual, you have a natural right 
 to advise your brother but not to coerce him. So 
 long as he remains sane and his conduct affects 
 none but himself, you have no moral right to re- 
 strain him from acting as seems to him best, even 
 to the extent of making what you call a "fool" of 
 himself, for this is the way he learns. 
 
 Rebellion is the product of some form of frustra- 
 tion, such as prohibition, coercion, suppressed ac- 
 tion of individual wills, injustice; of such laws and 
 their administration as strengthen in men that 
 which they aim to weaken. A brother deprived of 
 his right to keep himself becomes a rebel and in 
 the eyes of a large body of sympathizing friends, 
 a martyr; consequently, he may become a rebel 
 leader. In cases where charity does not arouse 
 resentment in the individual it tends further to 
 weaken or to destroy his last spark of ambition 
 and self-respect. 
 
 The complaint, even, of the faithful son tends to 
 make the prodigal son appear to the unthinking to 
 be a victim of wrong; thus winning for him a wide 
 circle of sympathizers who, on his return, slaughter 
 
 —117— 
 
the "fatted calf"; for the many are prodigal. Un- 
 like the faithful son whose superiority offends it, 
 the prodigal element affiliates on a lower plane of 
 life, near the stench and the tumult of the ebbing 
 and flowing tide. 
 
 Progress sanctions, requires even, the restraint 
 of conduct on the part of some that deprives others 
 of their legitimate freedom to act. There will be 
 no more wars when men have learned to practice 
 sufficient restraint to act reliably; each remaining 
 within his own individual sphere of right — it is ob- 
 structive meddling that destroys happiness. 
 
 This same thing holds true in the matter of in- 
 formation giving; information, including advice, is 
 much more apt to be taken when offered in the form 
 of suggestion than when forced upon us. 
 
 Nature has set up in her law of progress an 
 endeavor to protect the unf oldment of individuality 
 by instituting in the individual a feeling that makes 
 him resent the arbitrary commands, that would, if 
 complied with, prevent the free action of his will. 
 
 Consequently, most attempts to manage the af- 
 fairs of others meet with rebuke. If we respect 
 the democracy of the horse, his right to select for 
 himself; in his decision, when, on being led to 
 water, he refuses to drink, why do we so often 
 refuse to pay the same respect to our fellow man? 
 
 The law of independent action provides for the 
 
 —118— 
 
unfoldment of individuality and is the most funda- 
 mental law of education. 
 
 The mind of the child should, therefore, be led 
 out by suggestion — not driven out, not lifted or 
 carried out, but stirred into sufficient wakefulness 
 to improve by its own efforts. 
 
 This freedom to act needs careful guarding. 
 Consequently, dogamtic education, coercions, pro- 
 hibitions are wrong in principle; they are resented 
 by the average person and rejected by all those 
 equipped with a natural proclivity; and are un- 
 folded into a larger understanding. 
 
 -119— 
 
NOTE 
 
 This little book will be followed by the publica- 
 tion of another of about the same size. Title not 
 yet selected. 
 
 This volume discusses life from eight more view- 
 points, or is taken up in eight more short essays, 
 about as follows: 
 
 The Individual and His Environment. 
 
 Life and Action. 
 
 Life's Incompleteness; or, The Unfinished Job 
 of Things. 
 
 The Awakening Consciousness. 
 
 Personal Continuity. 
 
 Force and Matter. 
 
 The Meaning of Life's Turmoil; or, Progress 
 Casting Off Its Dead. 
 
 The Evolution of Reliability. 
 
 What Then Matters Destruction? 
 
 —120— 
 
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