any man ought to have, which is the corresponding motive of the rich,
is quite as bad in its effects; it compels men to close their minds
against justice, and to prevent themselves from thinking honestly on
social questions while in the depths of their hearts they uneasily
feel that their pleasures are bought by the miseries of others. The
injustices of destitution and wealth alike ought to be rendered
impossible. Then a great fear would be removed from the lives of the
many, and hope would have to take on a better form in the lives of the
few.

But security and liberty are only the negative conditions for good
political institutions. When they have been won, we need also the
positive condition: encouragement of creative energy. Security alone
might produce a smug and stationary society; it demands creativeness
as its counterpart, in order to keep alive the adventure and interest
of life, and the movement toward perpetually new and better things.
There can be no final goal for human institutions; the best are those
that most encourage progress toward others still better. Without
effort and change, human life cannot remain good. It is not a
finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination
and hope are alive and active.

It is a sad evidence of the weariness mankind has suffered from
excessive toil that his heavens have usually been places where nothing
ever happened or changed. Fatigue produces the illusion that only
rest is needed for happiness; but when men have rested for a time,
boredom drives them to renewed activity. For this reason, a happy
life must be one in which there is activity. If it is also to be a
useful life, the activity ought to be as far as possible creative, not
merely predatory or defensive. But creative activity requires