s time found favor. 'Let us
try it,' was the general voice. 'Perhaps it may thrive better
elsewhere, and here it is certainly doubtful if it be worth cultivating
longer.' So it came about that the rosebush of humanity was
transplanted, and set in sweet, warm, dry earth, where the sun bathed
it, the stars wooed it, and the south wind caressed it. Then it
appeared that it was indeed a rosebush. The vermin and the mildew
disappeared, and the bush was covered with most beautiful red roses,
whose fragrance filled the world.

"It is a pledge of the destiny appointed for us that the Creator has
set in our hearts an infinite standard of achievement, judged by which
our past attainments seem always insignificant, and the goal never
nearer. Had our forefathers conceived a state of society in which men
should live together like brethren dwelling in unity, without strifes
or envying, violence or overreaching, and where, at the price of a
degree of labor not greater than health demands, in their chosen
occupations, they should be wholly freed from care for the morrow and
left with no more concern for their livelihood than trees which are
watered by unfailing streams,--had they conceived such a condition, I
say, it would have seemed to them nothing less than paradise. They
would have confounded it with their idea of heaven, nor dreamed that
there could possibly lie further beyond anything to be desired or
striven for.

"But how is it with us who stand on this height which they gazed up to?
Already we have well nigh forgotten, except when it is especially
called to our minds by some occasion like the present, that it was not
always with men as it is now. It is a strain on our imaginations to
conceive the social arrangements of our immediate ancestors. We find
them grotesque. The solution of the problem of physical maintenance so
as to banish care and crime, so far from seeming to us an ultimate
attainment, appears but as a preliminary to anything like real human
progress. We have but relieved ourselves of an impertinent and needless
harassment which hindered our ancestor from undertaking the real ends
of existence. We are merely stripped for the race; no more. We are like
a child which has just learned to stand upright and to walk. It is a
great event, from the child's point of view, when he first walks.
Perhaps he fancies that there can be little beyond that achievement,
but a year later he has forgotten that he could not always wa