JUSTICE, NOT CHARITY 



523 



for it, not only Spiritualists, but all those to whom these 

 beliefs are acceptable, must feel themselves bound to 

 work strenuously for such improved social conditions as 

 may render it possible for all to live a full and happy life, 

 for all to develop and utilize the various faculties they 

 possess, and thus be prepared to enter at once on the 

 progressive higher life of the spirit-world. We know that 

 a life of continuous and grinding bodily labour, in order 

 to obtain a bare existence ; a life almost necessarily devoid 

 of beauty, of refinement, 'of communion with Nature; 

 a life without adequate relaxation, and with no oppor- 

 tunity for the higher culture; a life of temptation 

 and with no cheering hope of a happy and a peaceful 

 old age, is as bad for the welfare of the soul as it is 

 for that of the body. 



If the accounts we get of the spirit world hav^e any truth 

 in them, the reclamation and education of the millions of 

 undeveloped or degraded spirits which annually quit this 

 earth, is a sore though cheerfully accepted burden, a source 

 of trouble and sorrow to those more advanced spirits who^ 

 have charge of them. This burden must, for a long time 

 to come at all events, necessarily be great, on account of 

 the numbers of the less advanced races and peoples still 

 upon the earth ; but that we, who call ourselves civilized, 

 who have learnt so much of the secret powers and 

 mysteries of the universe, who by means of those powers 

 could easily provide a decent and rational and happy life 

 for our whole population — that we should send to the 

 spirit world, day by day and year by year, millions of 

 men and women, of children and of infants, all destroyed 

 before their time through want of the necessary means of a 

 healthy life, or by the various diseases and accidents forced 

 upon them by the vile conditions under which alone we 

 give them the opportunity of living at all — this is a dis^ 

 grace and a crime ! 



I firmly believe — and the fact is supported by abundant 

 evidence — that the very poorest class of our great cities, 

 those that live constantly below the margin of poverty, 

 who are without the comforts, the necessaries, and even 

 the decencies of life, are, nevertheless, as a class, quite as 



V 



m) 



