unnecessary pain, but it compares very favorably with natural evolution.

As we grow wiser; as our social consciousness develops, we are beginning
to improve on nature in more ways than one; a part of the same great
process, but of a more highly sublimated sort.

Nature shows a world of varied and changing environment. Into this
comes Life--flushing and spreading in every direction. A pretty hard
time Life has of it. In the first place it is dog eat dog in every
direction; the joy of the hunter and the most unjoyous fear of the
hunted.

But quite outside of this essential danger, the environment waits, grim
and unappeasable, and continuously destroys the innocent myriads who
fail to meet the one requirement of life--Adaptation. So we must not be
too severe in self-condemnation when we see how foolish, cruel, crazily
wasteful, is our attitude toward crime and punishment.

We become socially conscious largely through pain, and as we begin to
see how much of the pain is wholly of our own causing we are overcome
with shame. But the right way for society to face its past is the same
as for the individual; to see where it was wrong and stop it--but to
waste no time and no emotion over past misdeeds.

What is our present state as to crime? It is pretty bad. Some say it
is worse than it used to be; others that it is better. At any rate it
is bad enough, and a disgrace to our civilization. We have murderers by
the thousand and thieves by the million, of all kinds and sizes; we have
what we tenderly call "immorality," from the "errors of youth" to the
sodden grossness of old age; married, single, and mixed. We have all