THE ATTRACTION OF ASPIRATION

WHY may we not maintain a level of serenity of mind? Why are we so subject to periods of depression?

It is because, no matter how well-positioned you are in accord with your ideal of living, you are still to a greater or less degree affected by the discordance which reigns about you. Are you gentle and humane toward the animal creation? The wild birds, your free pets who come and build their nests in the grove, are murdered for sport or gain before your eyes and you are quite helpless to prevent it. You live amid a scene of incessant cruelty and slaughter. The animals fostered by man's care are bred under artificial conditions and thereby developed into unnatural and really unhealthy growths for his amusement or profit. This refers to all manner of "fancy breeding." Nature when left alone does best for bird or animal, and the birds or animals have their individual rights as well as man. A strained and morbid taste will grow an enlarged and diseased liver in a goose to make thereof a certain dish. Your race are so growing disease all about you. Disease means mental as well as physical unhappiness. Directly and indirectly this unhappiness affects you.

The finer your organization and the more open is it to a finer life, the more easily annoyed is it here by the many ills about it. You can hardly go abroad without suffering mental or physical pain.

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