"For the life of the human creature is but a very little cup in relation to the material goods of life; like the bell of a flower which can hold only one drop of dew, all which you pour in after that can only crush and drown it; it cannot contain it.
"You know, O Tante and Oom, that in South Africa your beasts suffer sometimes from a disease, of which the leading feature is that, while the creature eats more and more, it grows thinner and thinner. By and by it dies, and when you cut it open you find fastened upon its vitals a parasite, which consumed all its strength, which was never satisfied.
"Tante and Oom, it is a disease like unto this which eats deep at the heart of our civilization. It is no new disease; nations and persons have died of it before: the plains and riversides on this planet of ours are studded with the mounds beneath which are buried the remains of societies which once suffered from this disease. Some call it degeneration; some decadence; some over-civilization; some excess of luxury; some forgetfulness of God; it matters not what you call it: though the external symptoms may vary, internally it remains always the same.
"The horse-leech of our material civilization, in which endless wealth and material luxury is thrown into the hands of one section of the community at the cost of others, has three daughters which cry ever: 'Give! Give! Give!' They are fastened on to the very vitals of our modern life, and they cry never--'It is enough.'
"Fixed upon us as individuals, we hunger for more houses, more clothes, more furniture, more jewels, more shares, more dividends, whether we can use what we already have or not; and we hunger and strive after these things with as much passionate avidity as the savage after the hare, which if he nets will save him from death by starvation.
"Fixed on us as nations we cry, 'More lands, more trade, more fruits of the labour of other men in other lands, higher dividends drawn from foreign countries; more--though our national skin should crack, and we burst and die of it at last--more!--more expansion!'
"Oom and Tante, we beg of you, if you must partake of our nineteenth-century civilization with us, examine it carefully, and see what it is you are taking in. It is a brightly coloured flower, but at its centre sits a little gilded worm: if you must eat of it, eat the flower, but spew out carefully the worm, which spells death if once it fastens and breeds inside of you.