es which they fear. What we object to is the mental
attitude toward the facts that are discovered. The spoiled child, when
it discovers something not to its liking, exaggerates the evil, and
indulges its ill-temper.

The well-trained man faces the evil, studies it, measures it, and then
sets to work. He is well aware that nothing human is perfect, and that
to accomplish one thing is only to reveal another thing which needs to
be done. There must be perpetual readjustment, and reconsideration. What
was done yesterday must be done over again to-day in a somewhat
different way. But all this does not prove the futility of effort. It
only proves that the effort must be unceasing, and that it must be more
and more wisely directed.

He compares, for example, Christianity as an ideal with Christianity as
an actual achievement. He places in parallel columns the maxims of
Jesus, and the policies of Christian nations and the actual state of
Christian churches. The discrepancy is obvious enough. But it does not
prove that Christianity is a failure; it only proves that its work is
unfinished.

A political party may adopt a platform filled with excellent proposals
which if thoroughly carried out would bring in the millennium. But it is
too much to expect that it would all be accomplished in four years. At
the end of that period we should not be surprised if the reformers
should ask for a further extension of time.

The spoiled children of civilization eliminate from their problem the
one element which is constant and significant--human effort. They forget
that from the beginning human life has been a tremendous struggle
against great odds. Nothing has come without labor, no advance has been
without daring leadership. New fortunes have always had their hazards.

Forgetting all this, and accepting whatever comforts may have come to
them as their right, they are depressed and discouraged by their vision
of the future with its dangers and its difficulties. They habitually
talk of the civilized world as on the brink of some great catastrophe
which it is impossible to avoid. This gloomy foreboding is looked upon
as an indication of wisdom.

It should be dismissed, I think, as an indication of childish unreason,
unworthy of any one who faces realities. It is still true that "the
morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the
day is the evil thereof."

The notion that coming events cast shadows before is a su