Abolition of poverty is not all that our reformers propose—they
would abolish all that is disagreeable. Let us suppose them to have
accomplished their amiable purposes. We have, then, a country in which
are no poverty, no contention, no tyranny or oppression, no peril to
life or limb, no disease—and so forth. How delightful! What a good
and happy people! Alas, no! With poverty have vanished benevolence,
providence, and the foresight which, born of the fear of individual
want, stands guard at a thousand gates to defend the general good. The
charitable impulse is dead in every breast, and gratitude, atrophied by
disuse, has no longer a place among human sentiments and emotions. With
no more fighting among ourselves we have lost the power of resentment
and resistance: a car-load of Mexicans or a shipful of Japanese can
invade our fool’s paradise and enslave us, as the Spaniards overran
Peru and the British subdued India. (Hailers of “the dawn of the new
era” will, I trust, provide that it dawn everywhere at once or here
last of all.) Having no oppression to resist and no suffering to
experience, we no longer need the courage to defy, nor the fortitude
to endure. Heroism is a failing memory and magnanimity a dream of
the past; for not only are the virtues known by contrast with the
vices, they spring from the same seed, grow in the same soil, ripen
in the same sunshine, and perish in the same frost. A fine race of
mollycoddles we should be without our sins and sufferings! In a world
without evils there would be one supreme evil—existence.
We need not fear any such condition. Progress is infected with the
germs of reversion; on the grave of the civilization of to-day will
squat the barbarian of to-morrow, “with a glory in his bosom” that
will transfigure him the day after. The alternation is one that we can
neither hasten nor retard, for our success baffles us. If, for example,
we could abolish war, disease and famine, the race would multiply to
the point of “standing room only”—a condition prophesying war, disease
and famine. Wherefore the wisest prayer is this: “O Lord, make thy
servant strong to fight and impotent to prevail.”
1900.