r its false emphasis and for its perversion of morality--and
the two faults are practically one.

Last night I was reading in _Piers Plowman_ and came upon a passage which
exactly illustrates what I mean. The old Monk of Malvern might be called
the very fountainhead in English letters of that stream of human
brotherhood which has at last spread out into the stagnant pool of
humanitarianism. He wrote when the rebellion of Wat Tyler and Jack Straw
was fermenting, when the people were beginning to cry out for their
rights, and his vision is instinct with the finest spirit of love for the
downtrodden and the humble. Yet never once does his compassion or
indignation lead him to neglect spiritual things for material. Let me copy
out a few of his lines on "Poverte":

And alle the wise that evere were,
By aught I kan aspye,
Preiseden poverte for best lif,
If pacience it folwed,
And bothe bettre and blesseder
By many fold than richesse.
For though it be sour to suffre,
Thereafter cometh swete;
As on a walnote withoute
Is a bitter barke,
And after that bitter bark,
Be the shelle aweye,
Is a kernel of comfort
Kynde to restore.
So is after poverte or penaunce
Paciently y-take;
For it maketh a man to have mynde
In God, and a gret wille
To wepe and to wel bidde,
Whereof wexeth mercy,
Of which Christ is a kernelle
To conforte the soule.

Imagine, if you can, such a speech in the precincts of Hull House! I am
not concerned to exalt poverty, I know how much suffering it creates in
the world; and yet I say that an age to which poverty is only a
degradation without any possible spiritual compensation, is an age of
materialism. I wish I might follow the use of the word _comfort_ from its
early nobility as you see it here down to its modern degeneracy, where it
signifies the mere satisfaction of the body. The history of that word
would be an eloquent sermon. Have I made myself clear? Do you understand
what I mean by the false emphasis of our humanitarianism? And do you see
why I could not stomach your review of Miss Addams's book?--I am se