children. All that we can do is to attack, in a serious, practical
spirit the worst and most pressing evils, knowing that if we do our
duty we obey the voice of God. He is the Captain of our Salvation.
If we but follow where He leads we shall not want for marching orders,
nor need we imagine that He will narrow the field of operations.

I am labouring under no delusions as to the possibility of inaugurating
the Millennium by any social specific. In the struggle of life the
weakest will go to the wall, and there are so many weak. The fittest,
in tooth and claw, will survive. All that we can do is to soften the
lot of the unfit and make their suffering less horrible than it is at
present. No amount of assistance will give a jellyfish a backbone.
No outside propping will make some men stand erect. All material help
from without is useful only in so far as it develops moral strength
within. And some men seem to have lost even the very faculty of
self-help. There is an immense lack of common sense and of vital
energy on the part of multitudes.

It is against Stupidity in every shape and form that we have to wage
our eternal battle. But how can we wonder at the want of sense on the
part of those who have had no advantages, when we see such plentiful
absence of that commodity on the part of those who have had all the
advantages?

How can we marvel if, after leaving generation after generation to grow
up uneducated and underfed, there should be developed a heredity of
incapacity, and that thousands of dull-witted people should be born
into the world, disinherited before their birth of their share in the
average intelligence of mankind?