m the pressure of insensate things outside us
or within. But such life is the dream of the philosopher. We have
never known it. The records of the life we know are full of
concessions to such pressure.

The vegetative part of life, that part which finds its expression in
physical growth, and sustenance, and death, must always be slavery.
The old primal hunger of the protoplasm rules over it all. Each of the
myriad cells of which man is made must be fed and cared for. The
perennial hunger of these cells he must stifle. This hunger began when
life began. It will cease only when life ceases. It will last till
the water of the sea is drained, the great lights are put out, and the
useless earth is hung up empty in the archives of the universe.

This old hunger the individual man must each day meet and satisfy. He
must do this for himself; else, in the long run, it will not be done.
If others help feed him, he must feed others in return. This return is
not charity nor sacrifice; it is simply exchange of work. It is the
division of labor in servitude. Directly or indirectly, each must pay
his debt of life. There are a few, as the world goes, who in luxury or
pauperism have this debt paid for them by others. But there are not
many of these fugitive slaves. The number will never be great; for the
lineage of idleness is never long nor strong.

When this debt is paid, the slave becomes the man. Nature counts as
men only those who are free. Freedom springs from within. No outside
power can give it. Board and lodging on the earth once paid, a man's
resources are his own. These he can give or hold. By the fullness of
these is he measured. All acquisitions of man, Emerson tells us, "are
victories of the good brain and brave heart; the world belongs to the
energetic, belongs to the wise. It is in vain to make a paradise but
for good men."

In the ancient lore of the Jews, so Rabbi Voorsanger tells us, it is
written, "Serve the Lord, not as slaves hoping for reward, but as gods
who will take no reward." The meaning of the old saying is this: _Only
the gods can serve_.

Those who have nothing have nothing to give. He who serves as a slave
serves himself only. That he hopes for a reward shows that to himself
his service is really given. To serve the Lord, according to another
old saying, is to help one's fellow-men. The Eternal asks not of
mortals that they assist Him with His earth. The tough old world h