And who that understands would wish it otherwise? Were the power of rest and peace universal now, it would be a denial of the very cause of rest,—the proper understanding of man’s relations to humanity and to life. Until man has adjusted his economic contrivances to the underlying laws of a true Social Science, he cannot have national or racial rest. The material science, biology, is proving this ethical truth. Recently Dr. Woods Hutchinson has shown that it does not take even three generations to make a high-class man a “thoroughbred,” as he terms it. If good food, light, air, proper clothing, and wholesome recreation were extended to the masses, each generation would produce its own “thoroughbreds” from the “common people.” He says: “Men not only can but do get to be as able, as useful, and as desirable citizens for the community, in every possible regard, in one generation as they will ever get or are capable of becoming. Give the unspoiled, warm-hearted mass of humanity a fair living chance—good food, fresh air, sunshine, decent homes, no overwork, plenty of healthful amusements—and you will reap a far larger crop not merely of happiness, of justice, and of well-being, but also of geniuses, of great men and of all leaders and illuminators than any nation can possibly utilize.”
Until the privilege-created aristocracy of other countries and plutocracy of this country get off the backs of the people and cease to exploit them by monopolies, there can be no complete and permanent rest, for the “mania for owning things” possesses the rich, and the fear of want makes restlessness for the poor. The burden-bearing masses have not yet seen the cause of their burden, even though they feel its intolerable weight at times and make efforts to throw it off. All this deepens their unrest.
The very oneness of all life will put sound sleep and true rest ever beyond the general reach until all are given equal opportunity in Nature’s great gift to man, the Earth.
Then the worker, free of the taxes of rent and monopoly, free of cut-throat competition forced by monopoly, would have some leisure in which to use his brains and cultivate his affections; and liberty—moral, intellectual, and economic—would be here.
Was it not something like this which Jesus had in mind when he said “the Kingdom of God is at hand”? Did not he say that obedience to the laws of the Universe would bring their own immediate and immense reward? The kingdom and the peace of God is within our reach, did we but realize it.
CHAPTER LIII
“IF HE SLEEP, HE SHALL DO WELL”
Oh! thou best comforter of that sad heart
Whom Fortune’s spite assails; come, gentle sleep,