will. Its insidiousness lies in the fact that it appeals to the weakest side of human nature.
What, then, is the most potent antidote to this tendency which is common to all? It is to be found in one thing and one thing only, namely, in the discipline of life which has been imposed upon all as a corrective of natural indolence. The discipline of life is a subtle force which presents itself to different people in different ways, but which is always a spur to activity either of hand or brain, the alternative to which is stagnation and decay. "Life anywhere will swallow a man unless he rise vigorously and try to swallow it." We often hear of the "idle rich." Why is it that many of them are so? It is because the stimulus of the discipline of life has been removed from them by their riches and they have found no discipline of the will to take its place. As their numbers are comparatively small, they are not, except for the example they set, a national danger. With the poor it is otherwise. They constitute the nation, and the destiny of the nation is bound up with theirs. If we remove from large sections of the population this driving force we remove the mainspring of their activity, and withdraw from under them the prop and stay that prevents them from sinking into the slough of pauperism. For them that discipline consists in the forces of self-preservation, in the maintenance of themselves and those who depend upon them, and in the love of family and home life which is the root and anchor of self-control and self-sacrifice. For them, above all, these virtues, which it is the fashion nowadays to ignore or to deride as impossible, are essential, because when they are lost "calamity overtakes them" and "life swallows them up." We know that such virtues are not impossible, because amongst the non-pauperised population we find them existing as strongly as
