less accord with known rules of warfare than in the secret conspiring
chambers of the class which in the end controls popular movement. All
serious conflict involves evil, but it is also strengthening to the
race. I wish misery could be banished from the world, but I fear that it
cannot be so banished. I have little confidence in human ability to so
thoroughly comprehend the structure and functions of the Social body as
to correctly fortell the steps in its evolution, or prescribe
constitutional remedies which will banish Social disease. If I were a
Social reformer - and were I with my present knowledge still an
ingenuous youth in the fulness of strength with my life before me I do
not know that I would not be a Social reformer - I would profess myself
a Social agnostic, and prosecute my mission by the methods of the
opportunist. I would endeavor to direct the Social ax to the most
obvious and obtrusive roots of the Social evil, and having removed them
and watched the result, would then determine what to do next. Possibly I
would endeavor to begin with the abolition of wills and collateral
inheritance, and so limiting direct inheritance that no man able to work
should escape its necessity by reason of the labor of his forefathers. I
might say that I recognized the vested rights of the Astors to the soil
on Manhattan Island, but that I recognized no right as vested in beings
yet unborn. I might say that it was sufficient stimulation and reward
for the most eminent Social endeavor to select, within reason, the
objects of public utility to which resulting accumulations should be
applied and to superintend during one's lifetime their application to
those purposes. I might think in this way, and might not, were I an
enthusiastic Social reformer in the heyday of youth, but it appears to
me now that at any rate we shall make most progress toward ultimate
universal happiness if we recognize that out of the increasing
strenuousness of our conflict there is coming constantly increasing
comfort and better division thereof, and if we direct that portion of