IV.

The earth slept.

Age upon age passed and man dwelt upon the earth and fought and toiled and traded with his kind. Man, king of creation, walking erect, engaged in competition with his fellows, and battled fiercely with them in the struggle for existence.

Kingdoms were set up and thrown down. Dynasties arose and died out. Whole peoples came and went upon the face of the earth, but still the struggle for existence went on; still men vied with each other in the competition of trade; still the strong struggled for greater gain and the weak went down, crushed, helpless, thrown to the earth, unable to do battle in the struggle for existence. The rich grew richer, the poor poorer, and the whole world was caught in the vise-like grip of competition.

“Oh, men!” cried one man to his fellows, “I feel the stirring of a strange impulse within me—the dawning of a great truth. We are brothers. Our lives are knit up in each other. Fraternity, and not competition, is to be the main spring of our racial life!”

“Nonsense!” replied his fellows. “You talk neither policy nor logic. Fraternity is a dream of the poets, an ideal for a future life. Competition is the life of trade.”

So they gathered about him and silenced him; but his light they could not quench, the truth they could not smother, hide it as they would. Up and down the earth it wanders, showing itself in a great deed here, a great thought there, the stirring of a mighty force yonder, yet beaten back by the throng of competing men.

And the earth sleeps.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

  1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
  2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.