There are many other excellent things I might comment upon that help bring content to the soul. They betoken a glorious and blessed improvement upon the "days of things as they were" and they should lead every man to get into line, to find the step and keep it, marching on with this vanguard of human progress, which seeks the best possible condition of body, mind, and soul for all men.
Yet, in spite of this large-hearted contentment with things as they are, and with the way the world generally is progressing, which I would radiate, I would equally radiate a great discontent with many things as they are. When I look at my own faults and failings, my inadequacies and incompetencies, my blindness and stupidity, my ignorance and willfulness, I find much of my content disappear like the airy visions of a dream. I certainly do not want to be content with these things and so I call up as often as I can a mighty discontent which is a constant urge to the higher, nobler, truer, better life. I am as self-willed as other men, and yet I well know that human will is both ignorant and blind, and that only when it is made subject to the Great Controlling Will of the Universe will it lead me aright and in the paths of ultimate, permanent success. And by success, I do not mean the paltry thing most men regard as success. I certainly wish to radiate discontent with what men generally regard as success. Mere money, fame, honor, social distinction, count for little unless character, divine sympathy with one's needy fellows, and an enlarged conception of the brotherhood of men accompany them.
And how can I do other than radiate a large and tremendous discontent at the suffering and woe of the unfortunates of life? It is little or nothing to me what causes their misfortune. I have learned that the judgment of sociologists, theologists, and reformers generally is of little account in interpreting the causes of things. As a rule, they look only on the surface and see nothing of the hidden springs of action and therefore know little of the movement of hearts of men and women whose condition they so complacently and conceitedly imagine they can change.
Some years ago, Jack London wrote a book entitled, _The People of the Abyss_. It was severely censured and criticised and some critics went so far as to assert that it was full of untruths. It told of the dismal lives of London's poor, who daily find themselves with nothing but one meal, two meals, three meals between themselves and starvation--poor wretches to whom the "wolf at the door" is an ever present reality, and who tremble every time their employers look towards them with a frown or speak with a voice that threatens dismissal. What a frightful, pitiable, pathetic position for men and women--my brothers and sisters--to be in. I certainly do not wish to radiate contentment at the fact of their unfortunate condition. I want somehow to take some of their burdens upon my life. I want to realize something of the spirit that led Walt Whitman to exclaim, "I will take nothing for myself that cannot be given upon equal terms to all men."