and hold
all, the power to grant or to withhold, and you have set all men to asking,
"What should I have, and what should my children have?" and with this come
all the perils of innovation and the hazards of revolution.

To meet such a situation the traditionalist who believes that the last word
in politics or in economics was uttered a century ago is as far from the
truth as he who holds that the temporary emotion of the public is the
stone-carved word from Sinai.

A railroad people are not to be controlled by ox-team theories, declaims
the young enthusiast for change. An age that dares to tell of what the
stars are made; that weighs the very suns in its balances; that mocks the
birds in their flight through the air, and the fish in their dart through
the sea; that transforms the falling stream into fire, light, and music;
that embalms upon a piece of plate the tenderest tones of the human voice;
that treats disease with disease; that supplies a new ear with the same
facility that it replaces a blown-out tire; that reaches into the very
grave itself and starts again the silent heart--surely such an age may be
allowed to think for itself somewhat upon questions of politics.

Yet with our searchings and our probings, who knows more of the human heart
to-day than the old Psalmist? And what is the problem of government but one
of human nature? What Burbank has as yet made grapes to grow on thorns or
figs on thistles? The riddle of the universe is no nearer solution than it
was when the Sphinx first looked upon the Nile. The one constant and
inconstant quantity with which man must deal is man. Human nature responds
so far as we can see to the same magnetic pull and push that moved it in
the days of Abraham and of Socrates. The foundation of government is
man--changing, inert, impulsive, limited, sympathetic, selfish man. His
institutions, whether social or political, must come out of his wants and
out of his capacities. The problem of government, therefore, is not always
what should be done but what can be done. We may not follow the supreme
tradition of the race to create a newer, sweeter world unless we give heed
to its complementary tradition that man's experience cautions him to make a
new trail with care. He must curb courage with common-sense. He may lay his
first bricks upon the twentieth story, but not until he has made sure of
the solidity of the frame below. The real tradition of our people permits
the mason to