wenty theatres are needed to
satisfy the amusement seeking crowd of New York, in addition to the
half dozen which offer art. This mad race to outdo one another and
this hunting after pleasures which tickle the senses have benumbed the
social mind and have inhibited in it the feeling for deeper values.
But if by a magic word extreme equality of material means were created
and the mere sensuous enjoyments evenly distributed, in that moment
all the other differences from individual to individual would be felt
with heightened sharpness, and would be causes for much stronger
feelings of happiness and unhappiness.

Men differ in their inborn mental powers, in their intelligence and
talent, in beauty, in health, in honours and career, in family and
friends. The contrasts which are created in every one of these
respects are far greater and for the ill-fated far more cruel than
those of the tax-payers. The beautiful face which is a passport
through life and the discouraging homeliness, the perfect body which
allows vigorous work and the weak organism of the invalid unfit for
the struggle of life, the genius in science or art or statesmanship
and the hopelessly trivial mind, the youth in a harmonious, beautiful
family life and the childhood in an atmosphere of discord, the home
full of love from wife and children and the house childless and
chilly, the honours of the community and the disappointment of social
bankruptcy--they are the great premiums and the great punishments,
which are whirled by fate into the crowd of mankind. Even here most of
it is relative. We rejoice in four-score years, but if we knew that
others were allowed a thousand years of life, we should be despondent
that hardly a short century is dealt out to us. We are happy in the
respect of our social community simply because we do not desire the
honours of the czar or of the mikado. But if we began to measure our
fate by that of others, how could we ever be satisfied? Women might
envy men and men might envy women, the poet might wish to be the
champion of sport and the sportsman might be unhappy because he is not
a poet. No one of us can have the knowledge and the technical powers
which the child of the thirtieth century will enjoy. As soon as we
begin to compare and do not find the centre of our life in ourselves,
we are condemned.

Everybody's life is composed of joys and pains which may come from
any of these sources. Where beauty is lacking, wit may brilli