husbandmen believed that if they neglected it the gods would
give them but a scanty crop of dates. It was reserved for the science
of our century, through Drummond, to explain the fact that the one palm
saved its dates because the other palm lost its fertilizing pollen.
Should nature refuse to obey this law of losing life in order to save
it, man's world would become one vast Sahara waste, an arctic
desolation.

The law of sacrifice is also industrial law. Great is the power of
wealth. It buys comfort, it purchases travel, it secures instruments
of culture for reason and taste, it is almoner of bounty for sympathy
and kindness. Flowing through man's life, it seems like unto some Nile
flowing through Egypt with soft, irrigating flow, bearing man's burdens
upon its currents, giving food to bird and beast. But the story of
each Peter Cooper, each Peabody, each Amos Lawrence, is the story of
the ease of life lost to-day that the strength of life may be saved
to-morrow. Each young merchant loved luxury and beauty, but in the
interests of thrift he denied the eye its hunger, the taste its
satisfaction. When pride asked for dress and show, the youth rebuked
his vanity. When companions scoffed at the young merchant as a niggard
he subdued his sensitiveness and inured himself to rigid economy. When
increasing wealth began to lend influence, and society urged him to
give his evenings to gayety, the young merchant denied the social
instinct and gave his long winter evenings to broadening his knowledge
and culture. Having lost the lower good, at last the time came when
the American merchant and philanthropist had saved for himself
universal fame. Having lost ease and self-indulgence during the first
half of his life, he saved the higher ease and comfort for the second
period of his career.

Similarly of the young men in Parliament who to-day have charge of the
destinies of the English empire, it may be said that they have saved
their lives, because the fathers lost theirs. One hundred years ago
these fathers made exiles of themselves in the interests of their sons
and daughters. The East India merchant exiled himself into the tropic
land where heat and malaria made his skin as yellow as the gold he
gained. Others braved the perils of the African forests, dared the
dangers of Australian deserts, endured the rigor of the arctic cold.
Losing the lower and present happiness, they saved the higher ease and
comfort for th