Causes of Discontent | Page 4

hold these truths to
be self-evident: that all men are created unequal; that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," it would also have stated the

truth; and if it had added, "All men are born in society with certain
duties which cannot be disregarded without danger to the social state,"
it would have laid down a necessary corollary to the first declaration.
No doubt those who signed the document understood that the second
clause limited the first, and that men are created equal only in respect to
certain rights. But the first part of the clause has been taken alone as the
statement of a self-evident truth, and the attempt to make this unlimited
phrase a reality has caused a great deal of misery. In connection with
the neglect of the idea that the recognition of certain duties is as
important as the recognition of rights in the political and social
state--that is, in connection with the doctrine of laissez faire-- this
popular notion of equality is one of the most disastrous forces in
modern society.
Doubtless men might have been created equal to each other in every
respect, with the same mental capacity, the same physical ability, with
like inheritances of good or bad qualities, and born into exactly similar
conditions, and not dependent on each other. But men never were so
created and born, so far as we have any record of them, and by analogy
we have no reason to suppose that they ever will be. Inequality is the
most striking fact in life. Absolute equality might be better, but so far
as we can see, the law of the universe is infinite diversity in unity; and
variety in condition is the essential of what we call progress--it is, in
fact, life. The great doctrine of the Christian era--the brotherhood of
man and the duty of the strong to the weak--is in sharp contrast with
this doctrinarian notion of equality. The Christian religion never
proposed to remove the inequalities of life or its suffering, but by the
incoming of charity and contentment and a high mind to give
individual men a power to be superior to their conditions.
It cannot, however, be denied that the spirit of Christianity has
ameliorated the condition of civilized peoples, cooperating in this with
beneficent inventions. Never were the mass of the people so well fed,
so well clad, so well housed, as today in the United States. Their
ordinary daily comforts and privileges were the luxuries of a former
age, often indeed unknown and unattainable to the most fortunate and
privileged classes. Nowhere else is it or was it so easy for a man to
change his condition, to satisfy his wants, nowhere else has he or had
he such advantages of education, such facilities of travel, such an

opportunity to find an environment to suit himself. As a rule the mass
of mankind have been spot where they were born. A mighty change has
taken place in regard to liberty, freedom of personal action, the
possibility of coming into contact with varied life and an enlarged
participation in the bounties of nature and the inventions of genius. The
whole world is in motion, and at liberty to be so. Everywhere that
civilization has gone there is an immense improvement in material
conditions during the last one hundred years.
And yet men were never so discontented, nor did they ever find so
many ways of expressing their discontent. In view of the general
amelioration of the conditions of life this seems unreasonable and
illogical, but it may seem less so when we reflect that human nature is
unchanged, and that which has to be satisfied in this world is the mind.
And there are some exceptions to this general material prosperity, in its
result to the working classes. Manufacturing England is an exception.
There is nothing so pitiful, so hopeless in the record of man, not in the
Middle Ages, not in rural France just before the Revolution, as the
physical and mental condition of the operators in the great
manufacturing cities and in the vast reeking slums of London. The
political economists have made England the world's great workshop, on
the theory that wealth is the greatest good in life, and that with the
golden streams flowing into England from a tributary world, wages
would rise, food be cheap, employment constant. The horrible result to
humanity is one of the exceptions to the general uplift of the race, not
paralleled as yet by anything in this country, but to be taken note of as a
possible outcome of any material civilization, and fit to set us thinking
whether we have not got on a wrong track. Mr.