Page:Education and Life; (IA educationlife00bakerich).pdf/171

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suggestions, and considerable false theory. He claims that the demands of modern civilization place men under too great a strain, that the human race is tending toward insanity, and that by and by we shall stop our daily newspapers, remove the telephones from our homes, and return to a life of greater simplicity. It is true that tension never relaxed loses its spring, and worry kills, but the most potent causes of degeneration are false pleasures and lack of healthful work. Evolution's most important ethical maxim is that deadheads in society degenerate as do parasites in the lower animal kingdom. Every idler violates a great law of his being, which demands that thought and feeling shall emerge in action. Every class of people has its idlers, men who desire to possess without earning. The aimless son of wealth and the tramp tread the same path. Universal interest in honest, healthful employment would cure nearly all the evils of society and state. Manual labor is the first moral lesson for the street Arab and the criminal, and the best cure for some species of insanity. True charity does not give when it can provide the chance to earn. Idlers, lacking the normal source of happiness, seek harmful pleasures, and learn sooner or later that for every silver joy they must pay in golden sorrow. False stimuli, false excitement, purposeless activities, take the place of vocation. Tramps are not the only vagabonds; there are mental and moral vagabonds whom a fixed purpose, a definite interest and principles of conduct would turn from degeneration to regeneration. Balzac, with his keen analysis, describes the career of a graceless spendthrift who, finally weary of himself, one day resolved to give