ain to destroy itself,--were it not better that the tragedy
should cease? For many centuries men have been struggling for richer and
happier life; and yet when we behold the sins, the miseries, the wrongs,
the sorrows, of which the world is full, we are tempted to think that
progress means failure. The multitude are still condemned to toil from
youth to age to provide the food by which life is kept in the body;
immortal spirits are still driven by hard necessity to fix their
thoughts upon matter from which they with much labor dig forth what
nourishes the animal. Like the savage, we still tremble before the
pitiless might of Nature. Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, untimely
frosts, destroy in a moment what with long and painful effort has been
provided. Pestilence still stalks through the earth to slay and make
desolate. Each day a hundred thousand human beings die; and how many of
these perish as the victims of sins of ignorance, of selfishness, of
sensuality.

To-day, as of old, it would seem man's worst enemy is man. What hordes
still wander through Asia and Africa, seeking opportunity for murder and
rapine; what multitudes are still hunted like beasts, caught and sold
into slavery. In Europe millions of men stand, arms in hand, waiting for
the slaughter. They still believe, because they were born on different
sides of a river and speak different languages, that they are natural
enemies, made to destroy one another. And in our own country, what other
sufferings and wrongs,--greed, sensuality, injustice, deceit,--make us
enemies one of another! There is a general struggle in which each one
strives to get the most, heedless of the misery of others. We trade upon
the weaknesses, the vices, and the follies of our fellow-men; and every
attempt at reform is met by an army of upholders of abuse. When we
consider the murders, the suicides, the divorces, the adulteries, the
prostitutions, the brawls, the drunkenness, the dishonesties, the
political and official corruptions, of which our life is full, it is
difficult to have complacent thoughts of ourselves. Consider, too, our
prisons, our insane asylums, our poor-houses; the multitudes of old men
and women, who having worn out strength and health in toil which barely
gave them food and raiment, are thrust aside, no longer now fit to be
bought and sold; the countless young people, who have, as we say, been
educated, but who have not been taught the principles and habits which