THE THRESHOLD OF EVOLUTION 



Oh ! senseless man ! how long will it take you to learn these 

 lessons that teach you that all folly, selfishness and hate are 

 vice, and all virtue but degrees of wisdom, usefulness and 

 charity? Evolution, above everything else, shows you how 

 to be wise. Study it and become so. Success shows you how 

 to be useful. If you cannot afford time to study, we can all 

 be useful. Copy the lives and acts of those who succeed a 

 little better than you do; do not sit down and curse the man 

 who beats you. Do not try to run before you can walk, or 

 you will fall and break your neck and be unable to walk, let 

 alone run. But when you have learned to walk, learn to copy 

 those who are able to run, by being even more useful ; so try 

 and be as useful as you can. Riches are the reward not of 

 labour but of success. Wealth is the power to create ; the 

 more you create the greater your chance of wealth. A bare 

 sufficiency for existence is and ever will be the maximum possi- 

 bility that the majority of mankind can attain. You must 

 work harder and more skilfully than the ordinary man if you 

 would have more than a bare sufficiency for existence. 



Wealth is the reward of energy and skill. Learn to 

 work well if you wish to attain wealth. Capital is the 

 reward of wisdom and thrift. You must first become thrifty 

 and skilful, wise and economical, before you can gain riches. 

 Poverty is but another way of spelling failure. If you do not 

 want to be a poverty-stricken failure, do not sit down and 

 cry over spilt milk, by lamenting that if you had only had 

 Jack's show you would have done better. You can bet your 

 life that if you had the talents Jack had you would have had 

 as good a show. But have you the energy, perseverance and 

 wisdom of judgment that Jack has? Stop lamenting, and 

 rather say, if I had only made as good use of my opportuni- 

 ties, if I had only learnt my trade as well as Jack did, and 

 been as careful to study my employer's interests before my 

 own as Jack did. Perhaps I can hear you remonstrate, " But 

 Jack had a good master, mine was a perfect beast." Quite so, 

 but Jack was a willing worker, a hard master would have 

 spoilt him and made him a less eager workman. You were 

 born tired ; an easy master would have ruined you, and made 

 a discontented loafer of you. The only chance at the start of 

 your becoming a really useful member of the community was 

 an apprenticeship under a hard, mean master. Remember it 



