issue between capital and labor, for example, is full of generating
heat and hate. Who shall say that, let loose in the crowded centers of
population, it may not one day engulf us all?

Is this rank pessimism or merely the vagaries of an old man dropping back
into second childhood, who does not see that the world is wiser and better
than ever it was, mankind and womankind, surely on the way to perfection?



V


One thing is certain: We are not standing still. Since "Adam delved and Eve
span"--if they ever did--in the Garden of Eden, "somewhere in Asia," to the
"goings on" in the Garden of the Gods directly under Pike's Peak--the earth
we inhabit has at no time and nowhere wanted for liveliness--but surely
it was never livelier than it now is; as the space-writer says, more
"dramatic"; indeed, to quote the guidebooks, quite so "picturesque and
interesting."

Go where one may, on land or sea, he will come upon activities of one sort
and another. Were Timon of Athens living, he might be awakened from his
misanthrophy and Jacques, the forest cynic, stirred to something like
enthusiasm. Is the world enduring the pangs of a second birth which shall
recreate all things anew, supplementing the miracles of modern invention
with a corresponding development of spiritual life; or has it reached the
top of the hill, and, mortal, like the human atoms that compose it, is it
starting downward on the other side into an abyss which the historians of
the future will once again call "the dark ages?"