It is
not enough to have a wistful cry for help ringing in our ears; one
wants a philosophical or statesmanlike demand--just the very thing
which from the nature of the case we cannot get. It may be that
education will make this possible; but at present education seems
merely to be a ladder let down into the abyss, by which a few
stronger natures can climb out of it, with horror and contempt in
their hearts of what they have left behind. The question that
stares one in the face is, is there honest work for all to do, if
all were strong and virtuous? The answer at present seems to be in
the negative; and the problem seems to be solved only by the fact
that all are not capable of honest work, and that the weaklings
give the strong their opportunity. What, again, one asks oneself,
is the use of contriving more leisure for those who could not use
it well? Then, too, under present conditions, the survival of the
unfittest seems to be assured. Those breed most freely and
recklessly of whom it may be said that, for the interests of
civilisation, it is least desirable that they should perpetuate
their kind. The problem too is so complicated, that it requires a
gigantic faith in a reformer to suggest the sowing of seed of which
he can never hope to see the fruit.
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