the subsequent rise to marriage and a more regular life.]

[Footnote 2: _Pendennis_, vol. i., p. 16.]




CHAPTER III

FIRST PRINCIPLES


"But what can we do?" will be the next question, uttered perhaps in the
forlorn accents of a latent despair.

Before answering this question in detail, I would endeavor to impress
two cardinal points upon you.

The first point I want you to recognize, though it may seem to minister
to the very hopelessness which most lames and cripples for effective
action, is the depth and magnitude of the problem we have to grapple
with. All other great social evils, with the possible exception of greed
or covetousness, which in Scripture is often classed with impurity, may
be looked upon as more or less diseases of the extremities. But the evil
which we are now considering is no disease of the extremities, but a
disease at the very heart of our life, attacking all the great bases on
which it rests. It is not only the negation of the sanctity of the
family and the destroyer of the purity of the home, as I have already
pointed out, but it is also the derider of the sacredness of the
individual, the slow but sure disintegrator of the body politic, the