health, very few men in these colonies at all
events, are poor except it be their own fault. The art of healing can
now restore to health millions who, had they lived in an earlier
century, would have suffered agonies. A universal education has opened
the doors of colleges and universities and made it possible for those
born in the humblest conditions of life, to attain to the most
distinguished positions in the land. The private has become the general;
the office boy the judge; the peasant boy the President; the
full-blooded aboriginal has graduated through our universities and been
called to the Bar; and no man can urge class distinction as being the
cause of his failure in any ambition that he has faithfully pursued. All
classes have benefited; almost all classes have advanced.

Undeniably this advance has brought greater happiness into the world;
whether it will continue will entirely depend upon what basis it is
intended to secure this advance.

With an increase of wealth and leisure there is the danger of
demoralisation. Our society may substitute a false aim for its true one.
Already there are an illimitable number of social reformers who are
prepared to describe in very definite terms what is the state of
perfected society and what laws are necessary for immediate enactment in
order that we might rapidly reach that state. We all acknowledge the
existence of the prophetic vision, but we limit its range and regard him
most audacious who declares that he can describe the heaven in which
society shall finally shelter itself securely from all that prey upon
her. Advance as quickly as we may, there is a limit to our speed, and
the future being all unknown we scarcely like to take it at a plunge.
Nevertheless, these social reformers do a good work--their schemes are
at least suggestive, and moreover they point out signs of the times.
They show us unmistakably that with our advance there is a tendency to
become more and more selfish and to regard with less true charity the
condition of the weak. One social reformer will say that there will not
be any suffering because therapeutics will have overtaken every disease
that the flesh is heir to, or better still, that some new discovery will
have made it possible to heal all sicknesses without the tedious work of
surgeons and nurses. Healing will become a pastime like table-turning.
Neither will there be any criminals because the whole social state will
be so happy, contente