“Doubtless it is,” answered the young woman, hesitatingly, “but there are other ways of looking at it, Arthur. I have read somewhere that the secret of happiness is to reconcile oneself with one’s environment.”
“Yes, I know. That is an abominable thought, a paralyzing philosophy. In another form the privileged classes have written it into catechisms, teaching their less fortunate fellow beings that it is their duty to ‘be content in that state of existence to which it hath pleased God’ to call them. As a buttress to caste and class privilege and despotism of every kind, that doctrine is admirable, but otherwise it is the most damnable teaching imaginable. It is not the duty of men to rest content with things as they are. It is their duty to be always discontented, always striving to make conditions better. ‘Divine discontent’ is the very mainspring of human progress. The contented peoples are the backward peoples. The Italian lazzaroni are the most contented people in the world, and the most worthless, the most hopeless. No, no, no! No man who has brains should ever reconcile himself to his environment. He should continually struggle to get out of it and into a better. We have liberty simply because our oppressed ancestors refused to do as the prayer book told them they must. Men would never have learned to build houses or cook their food if they had been content to live in caves or bush shelters and eat the raw flesh of beasts. We owe every desirable thing we have—intellectual, moral and physical—to the fact that men are by nature discontented. Contentment is a blight.”
Edmonia thought for a while before answering. Then she said:
“I suppose you are right, Arthur. I never thought of the matter in that way. I have always been taught that discontent was wicked—a rebellion against the decrees of Providence.”
“You remember the old story of the miller who left to Providence the things he ought to have done for himself, and how he was reminded at last that ‘ungreased wheels will not go?’ ”
“Oh, yes.”
“Well, in my view the most imperative decree of Providence is that we shall use the faculties it has bestowed upon us in an earnest and ceaseless endeavor to better conditions, for ourselves and for others.”
“But may it not sometimes be well to accept conditions as a guide—to let them determine in what direction we shall struggle?”
“Certainly, and that is precisely my case. When I consider the peculiar conditions that specially fit me to do my proper work in the world it is my duty, without doubt, to fight against every opposing influence. I feel that I must get rid of the conditions that are now restraining me, in order that I may fulfil the destiny marked out for me by those higher conditions.”
“Perhaps. But who knows? It may be that some higher work awaits you, here, some nobler use of your faculties, to which the apparently adverse conditions that now surround you, are leading, guiding, compelling you. It may be that in the end your unwilling detention here will open to you some opportunity of service to humanity, of which you do not now dream.”