80 THE LAWS OF SOCIAL INEQUALITY 



reason lias been given to control those passions and appetites 

 which he has in common with the inferior creatures. Although 

 a social organization cannot exist without competition, yet it 

 does not necessarily follow that we are to oppose each other 

 with the ferocity and cruelty of wild beasts. It is the intention 

 of Providence that we should seek to ennoble each other by 

 mutual rivalry, that the struggle should improve our moral and 

 intellectual nature. As society advances, for the, world moves 

 onward, those will be most successful who fight the inevitable 

 battles of life bravely and HONORABLY. Even now the tendency 

 of the age is to offer increased inducements to a meritorious 

 line of action. What is a mere Millionaire after all ? Frail and 

 perishable mortal, whom men so much envy and admire, you 

 shall not survive the grave! To-day your name is in every 

 body's mouth ; to-morrow you will be forgotten ! Money never 

 rescued any man's name from oblivion, unless it was expended 

 so as to benefit society. Virtue alone is enduring. The mind 

 is the noblest part of man. What of the mind of the Millionaire? 

 Are these the men whose spirits converse with us when their 

 bodies have been mouldering in the grave for ages ? Do you 

 rank the Millionaire with such men as Newton and Franklin, 

 Clay and Webster, and the venerable Humboldt? These men 

 are not dead ; they live, and they will continue to live for ages 

 yet to come 1 Who remembers the Millionaire ? Does his pic- 

 ture adorn the poor man's home ? 



That which is the most remarkable about a tree, is not only 

 the variety, the perfect harmony, and freedom of its individual 

 parts, but that power of centralization by which all these parts 

 are combined together into one harmonious whole. That is 

 only a harmoniously ordered whole, whose parts are free, and 

 those parts are only free which unfold their peculiarities 

 subordinate to a common law, and which in their independent 

 forms equally realize the idea of the whole. In the tree then 

 we have presented for contemplation an illustration, clear and 

 beautiful as the unclouded sun, of a perfectly natural and equit- 

 able social system of labor, combining the highest individual 

 freedom with subordination. The tree shows us a system 

 of harmoniously adjusted labor, where not only the branch 

 and branchlet, but even the little twig, leaf, and leaf- scale are 



