ds
of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

But we should note this fact: Whitman merely wanted to live with
animals--he did not desire to become one. He wasn't willing to forfeit
knowledge; and a part of that knowledge was that man has some things yet
to learn from the patient brute. Much of man's misery has come from his
persistent questioning.

The book of Genesis is certainly right when it tells us that man's
troubles came from a desire to know. The fruit of the tree of knowledge
is bitter, and man's digestive apparatus is ill-conditioned to digest
it. But still we are grateful, and good men never forget that it was
woman who gave the fruit to man--men learn nothing alone. In the Garden
of Eden, with everything supplied, man was an animal, but when he was
turned out and had to work, strive, struggle and suffer, he began to
grow.

The Volunteers of the Far East have told us that man's deliverance from
the evils of life must come through killing desire; we will reach
Nirvana--rest--through nothingness. But within a decade it has been
borne in upon a vast number of the thinking men of the world that
deliverance from sorrow and discontent was to be had not through ceasing
to ask questions, but by asking one question more. The question is this,
"What can I do?"

When man went to work, action removed the doubt that theory could not
solve.

The rushing winds purify the air; only running water is pure; and the
holy man, if there be such, is the one who loses himself in persistent,
useful effort. By working for all, we secure the best results for self,
and when we truly work for self, we work for all.

In that thoughtful essay by Brooks Adams, "The Law of Civilization and
Decay," the author says, "Thought is one of the manifestations of human
energy, and among the earlier and simpler phases of thought, two stand
conspicuous--Fear and Greed: Fear, which, by stimulating the
imagination, creates a belief in an invisible world, and ultimately
develops a priesthood."

The priestly class evolves naturally into being everywhere as man
awakens and asks questions. "Only the Unknown is terrible," says Victor
Hugo. We can cope with the known, and at the worst we can overcome the
unknown by accepting it. Verestchagin, the great painter who knew the
psychology of war as few have known, and went down to his death
gloriously, as he should, on a sinking battleship, once said, "In modern
warfare