live not for
to-day alone, but for to-morrow, for next month, for the next year, for
ten years. This is the man whose volume will just as surely weigh down
that of the unthinking man as a ton will weigh down a pound in the
scale. Avoirdupois is moral, industrial, as well as material, in this
respect; and the primary, most usual cause of unprosperity in industrial
callings therefore lies in the want of intelligence,--either in the
slender endowment of the man, or more likely the want of education in
his ordinary and average endowment. Any class of men who live for
to-day, and do not care whether they know anything more than they did
yesterday or last year--those men may have a temporary and transient
prosperity, but they are the children of poverty just as surely as the
decrees of God stand. Ignorance enslaves men among men; knowledge is the
creator of liberty and wealth.

As with undeveloped intelligence, so the appetites of men and their
passions are causes of poverty. Men who live from the basilar faculties
will invariably live in inferior stations. The men who represent
animalism are as a general fact at the bottom. They may say it is
government, climate, soil, want of capital, they may say what they
please, but it is the devil of laziness that is in them, or of passion,
that comes out in eating, in gluttony, in drinking and drunkenness, in
wastefulness on every side. I do not say that the laboring classes in
modern society are poor because they are self-indulgent, but I say that
it unquestionably would be wise for all men who feel irritated that they
are so unprosperous, if they would take heed to the moral condition in
which they are living, to self-denial in their passions and appetites,
and to increasing the amount of their knowledge and fidelity. Although
moral conditions are not the sole causes, they are principal causes, of
the poverty of the working classes throughout the world. It is their
misfortune as well as their fault; but it is the reason why they do not
rise. Weakness does not rise; strength does.

All these causes indicate that the poor need moral and intellectual
culture. "I was sent to preach the gospel to the poor:" not to
distribute provisions, not to relieve their wants; that will be
included, but that was not Christ's primary idea. It was not to bring in
a golden period of fruitfulness when men would not be required to work.
It was not that men should lie down on their backs under the trees,