You may think you are very comfortable. Let me make you a little
comparison. You may not agree with me. I don’t expect you to and I don’t
ask you to. I am going to ask you to remember what I say this afternoon
and perhaps before I am elected president of the United States you will
believe what I say is true. Now there are those of you who are fairly
comfortable under the present standard. Isn’t it amazing to you how
little the average man is satisfied with? You go out here to the edge of
town and you find a small farmer who has a cabin with just room enough
to keep himself and wife and two or three children, which has a mortgage
on it, and he works early and late and gets just enough in net returns
to keep him in working order, and he will deliver a lecture about the
wonderful prosperity of the country.
He is satisfied, and that is his calamity.
Now, the majority of you would say that is his good fortune. “It is a
blessing that he is satisfied.” I want to see if I can show you that it
is a curse to him and to society that he is satisfied.
If it had not been for the discontent of a few fellows who have not been
satisfied with their condition you would still be living in caves. You
never would have emerged from the jungle. Intelligent discontent is the
mainspring of civilization.
Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation. I have
taken my choice.
This farmer works all day long, works hard enough to produce enough to
live the life of a man; not of an animal, but of a man. Now there is an
essential difference between a man and an animal. I admire a magnificent
animal in any form except in the human form. Suppose you had everything
that you could possibly desire, so far as your physical wants are
concerned. Suppose you had a million to your credit in the bank, a
palatial home and relations to suit yourself, but no soul capacity for
real enjoyment. If you were denied knowing what sorrow is, what real joy
is, what music is, and literature and sculpture, and all of those subtle
influences that touch the heart and quicken the pulses and fire the
senses, and so lift and ennoble a man that he can feel his head among
the stars and in communion with God himself—if you are denied these, no
matter how sleek or fat or contented you may be, you are still as base
and as corrupt and as repulsive a being as walks God’s green earth.