nine-tenths of it would disappear. If the effort were to continue the second hundred years, with the added intelligence incident to progress, nine-tenths of the remainder might, under direct effort and the laws of inheritance, be overcome. At the close of a thousand years of such exertion, the remnant of evil would be very insignificant, the amount of pleasure exceedingly great.

Under the moral outlook, then, men have no right to complain of the discipline to which they are subjected, when they remember (1) that unspeakably the worst portion of the pain of the world is of their own direct infliction (2) that much the larger share of the pain of the world follows on after their own heedlessness and vice and (3) that the world is a mild and merciful place, when the sanguine, remorseless and peevish temper of man is contemplated. It is at least doubtful whether its harsh features could be softened without injury to this untractable pupil. What the world waits for is spiritual renovation, and this means that man in mercy is to put away the pain in which he has hourly revelled. The physical features of the world are far softer than the moral ones. To mitigate the former still more, in advance of the latter, would be to reduce the light that now falls on the spiritual and unspiritual action. He who would sentimentally escape suffering, can easily forget the uneradicable relation between purity and peace.

The pessimist may say, "Scarcely is a happy life worth living, and few, indeed, find that life;" none