colored man in the United States. I have given more study to the race
question in the United States than you may suppose, and I sympathize
with the Negroes there; but what's the use? I can't right their
wrongs, and neither can you; they must do that themselves. They are
unfortunate in having wrongs to right, and you would be foolish to
take their wrongs unnecessarily on your shoulders. Perhaps some day,
through study and observation, you will come to see that evil is
a force, and, like the physical and chemical forces, we cannot
annihilate it; we may only change its form. We light upon one evil and
hit it with all the might of our civilization, but only succeed in
scattering it into a dozen other forms. We hit slavery through a great
civil war. Did we destroy it? No, we only changed it into hatred
between sections of the country: in the South, into political
corruption and chicanery, the degradation of the blacks through
peonage, unjust laws, unfair and cruel treatment; and the degradation
of the whites by their resorting to these practices, the paralyzation
of the public conscience, and the ever over-hanging dread of what the
future may bring. Modern civilization hit ignorance of the masses
through the means of popular education. What has it done but turn
ignorance into anarchy, socialism, strikes, hatred between poor and
rich, and universal discontent? In like manner, modern philanthropy
hit at suffering and disease through asylums and hospitals; it
prolongs the sufferers' lives, it is true, but is, at the same time,
sending down strains of insanity and weakness into future generations.
My philosophy of life is this: make yourself as happy as possible, and
try to make those happy whose lives come in touch with yours; but to
attempt to right the wrongs and ease the sufferings of the world in
general is a waste of effort. You had just as well try to bail the
Atlantic by pouring the water into the Pacific."

This tremendous flow of serious talk from a man I was accustomed to
see either gay or taciturn so surprised and overwhelmed me that I
could not frame a reply. He left me thinking over what he had said.
Whatever was the soundness of his logic or the moral tone of his
philosophy, his argument greatly impressed me. I could see, in spite
of the absolute selfishness upon which it was based, that there was
reason and common sense in it. I began to analyze my own motives, and
found that they, too, were very largely mixed