o have to surmount themselves as well as their tasks,
and who cannot forget themselves in their activity.

In many of the modern mills, they called it a fine thing when the labour
hours were shortened from ten to eight. As I see it, the man who is
allowed to do the same thing every second or two for eight hours
presents a picture of the purest tragedy.

Two of the primary causes of human misery are competitive education of
children and the endless multiplication of articles of trade by
mechanical means. Of the first only a thought or two need be added. I
have suggested the spirit of the Chapel, in its upholding of the one
whom I undertook lightly to reprimand for repeating a technical error.
All the others sustained him and waited almost breathlessly for me to
cease, so that I suddenly found myself out of order with one entity, as
it were.

The big plan of unity and brotherhood has been enunciated again and
again--from the tub of Diogenes, from Socrates and his golden-haired
disciple; from that superb slave, Epictetus, whose spirit has since been
a tonic for all races of men; from the deep-hearted emperor
Aurelius--and even before these, whom we have the temerity to call
Pagans. Then the Master Jesus came down, and left the story told more
clearly and perfectly than any.

A loaf of bread may be leavened by yeast over night, but it requires
thousands of years to leaven a planet with a new spiritual power. We
look at the world just now and are inclined to say that it is at its
worst. In truth, this is the hour before daybreak. In every land men are
watching the East. Already some have cried out at the false dawns; and
in their misery afterward have turned back hopelessly to the
strife--immersed themselves again in the long night of war.

But the causes of war are still operative in our midst, and they are
more terrible than trenches in Flanders, because their effects must
still be reckoned with after the madmen of Europe have found their rest.
The idea of Brotherhood has been brooding over the planet for thousands
of years. It tells us that all life is one; that we do the best unto
ourselves by turning outward our best to others, and that which is good
for the many is good for the one; that harmony and beauty and peace is
in the plan if we turn outward from self to service.

Yet behold the millions of children taught at this hour on a competitive
plan that reverses every idealism and shocks every impulse toward unit