d plagues and famines has always been traceable to human
error. All accidents happen through those who make accidents
possible,--diseases are bred through human dirt, greed, ignorance, and
neglect. They are no part of the divine scheme of things. The plan is
to advance and make progress from one point of excellence to
another,--not to stop half way and turn back on the road. Humanity
dies, because it will not learn how to live."

She had spoken these words with a quiet simplicity and earnestness that
impressed him at the time as being almost child-like, considering the
depth of thought into which she must have plunged, notwithstanding her
youth and her sex--and on this morning of all others, this morning on
which he had set himself a task for which he had made long and
considerable preparation, he found himself half mechanically repeating
her phrase--"Humanity dies because it will not learn how to live."

There was no fatalism,--no fixed destiny in this; only the force of
Will was implied--the Will to learn,--the Will to know.

"And why should not humanity die?" he argued within himself--"If, in
the long course of ages, it is proved that it will neither learn nor
know,--why should it remain? Room should be made for a new race! A
clever gardener can produce a perfectly beautiful flower from an
insignificant and common weed,--surely this is a lesson to us that it
may be possible to produce a god from a man!"

He bent his eyes lovingly on the case of small cylinders lying open
before him;--the just risen sun brightened them to a glitter as of cold
steel,--and for a moment he fancied they flashed upon him with an
almost sinister gleam.

"Power of good or power of evil?" he questioned his inward spirit--"Who
can decide? If it is good to destroy evil then the force is a good
force--if it is evil to destroy good WITH evil, then it is an evil
thing. But Nature makes no such particular discriminations--she
destroys evil and good together at one blow. Why therefore should I--or
anyone--offer to discriminate?--since evil is always the preponderating
factor. When the 'Lusitania' was torpedoed neither God nor Nature
interfered to save the innocent from the guilty--men, women and
children were all plunged into the pitiless sea. I--as a part of
Nature--if I destroy, I only follow her example. War is an evil,--an
abominable crime--and those that attempt to make it should be swept
from the face of the earth even if good and peace-l