o classes differing in that one is
the foam at the top of the glass and the other the dregs at the
bottom. To these two groups let us add the social parasites,
represented by thieves, drunkards, and persons of the baser sort whose
business it is to trade in human passion. We revolt from the red
aphides upon the plant, the caterpillar upon the tree, the vermin upon
bird or beast. How much more do we revolt from those human vermin
whose business it is to propagate parasites upon the body politic!
The condemnation of life is that a man consumes more than he produces,
taking out of society's granary that which other hands have put in.
The praise of life is that one is self-sufficing, taking less out than
he put into the storehouse of civilization.

A man's original capital comes through his ancestry. Nature invests
the grandsire's ability, and compounds it for the grandson. Plato
says: "The child is a charioteer driving two steeds up the long
life-hill; one steed is white, representing our best impulses; one
steed is dark, standing for our worst passions." Who gave these steeds
their color? Our fathers, Plato replies, and the child may not change
one hair, white or black. Oliver Wendell Holmes would have us think
that a man's value is determined a hundred years before his birth. The
ancestral ground slopes upward toward the mountain-minded man. The
great never appear suddenly. Seven generations of clergymen make ready
for Emerson, each a signboard pointing to the coming philosopher. The
Mississippi has power to bear up fleets for war or peace because the
storms of a thousand summers and the snows of a thousand winters have
lent depth and power. The measure of greatness in a man is determined
by the intellectual streams and moral tides flowing down from the
ancestral hills and emptying into the human soul. The Bach family
included one hundred and twenty musicians. Paganini was born with
muscles in his wrists like whipcords. What was unique in Socrates was
first unique in Sophroniscus. John ran before Jesus, but Zacharias
foretold John. No electricity along rope wires, and no vital living
truths along rope nerves to spongy brain. There are millions in our
world who have been rendered physical and moral paupers by the sins of
their ancestors. Their forefathers doomed them to be hewers of wood
and drawers of water. A century must pass before one of their children
can crowd his way up and show strength enough to shape a tool, ou