6i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



merely are there the struggles of poor against rich going on, but 

 the battles for position and pre-eminence are constant. The sub- 

 jugated party or sect seeks first for toleration, then for equaliza- 

 tion, and then for domination. We call contentment a virtue, but 

 we inculcate discontent. A father reproaches his son for not ex- 

 erting himself to improve his position, and at school and college 

 and in subsequent periods of life efforts at advancement in the so- 

 cial scale are recommended. Individual antagonisms, class an- 

 tagonisms, political, trading, and religious antagonisms take the 

 place of war. Can war exhibit a more vigorous and persistent 

 antagonism than competition does ? Take the college student 

 with ruined health; take the bankrupt tradesman with ruined 

 family ; take the aspirants to fashion turning night into day, and 

 preferring gas or electric light to that of the sun. But our very 

 amusements are of a combative character : chess, whist, billiards, 

 racing, cricket, foot-ball, etc. And in all these we, in common par- 

 lance, speak of heating our opponent. Even dancing is probably 

 a relic and reminiscence of war, and some of its forms are of a 

 military character. I can call to mind only one game which is 

 not combative, and that is the game you are in some sort now 

 playing, viz., " patience," and with, I fear, some degree of internal 

 antagonism ! 



Take, again, the ordinary incidents of a day's life in London. 

 Fifteen to twenty thousand cabs, omnibuses, vans, private car- 

 riages, etc., all struggling, the horses pushing the earth back and 

 themselves forward, the pedestrians doing the same, but the horses 

 compulsorily — they have not as yet got votes. The occupants of 

 the cabs, vans, etc., are supposed to act from free will, but in the 

 majority of cases they are as much driven as the horses. Insol- 

 vents trying to renew bills, rich men trying to save what they 

 have got by saving half an hour of time. Imagine, if you can, the 

 friction of all this, and add the bargaining in shops, the mental 

 efforts in counting-houses, banks, etc., and road-repair, now a per- 

 manent and continuous institution. Take our railways : similar 

 efforts and resistances. Drivers, signal-men, porters, etc., and the 

 force emanating from the sun millions of years ago, and locked up 

 in the coal-fields, as Stephenson suggested, now employed to over- 

 come the inertia of trains and to make them push the earth in this 

 or that direction, and themselves along its surface. Take the daily 

 struggles in commerce, law, professions, and legislation, and some- 

 times even in science and literature. Politics I can not enter upon 

 here, but must leave you to judge whether there is not some de- 

 gree of antagonism in this pursuit. In all this there is plenty of 

 useful antagonism, plenty of useless — much to please Ormuzd and 

 much to delight Ahriman ; but of the two extremes, overwork or 

 stagnation, the latter would, I think, do Ahriman's work more 



