ALL 'S RIGHT WITH THE WORLD 



not yet reached the top of the hill. Our standards 

 rise as we rise, and the ideal always does and always 

 will outrun the real. We may produce a perfect 

 apple or a perfect peach, or plum, or pear, but not 

 a perfect man, because to man are opened infinite 

 possibilities. Perfect in honesty, in sobriety, in 

 truthfulness, but not perfect in love, or sympathy, 

 in self-denial, in veneration, or in wisdom. That 

 good and evil are not such strangers is seen in the 

 fact that present evil may turn out a future good, 

 and vice versa. All the world looks upon poverty 

 as an evil, yet of what men has it been the making ! 

 Reverses in business have often put a man upon a 

 road that led to a higher success than was possible 

 under the old conditions, a success which only veri- 

 fies the soundness of the principles the disregarding 

 of which led to the past failure. If gravity did not 

 pull your faulty structure down, it would not enable 

 your sound structure to stand up. If the rain did 

 not come through your rotten roof, it would not 

 percolate to the roots of the grass in the ground. 

 Indeed, to abolish the possibility of evil from the 

 universe would be to abolish the possibility of good. 

 If vice and crime did not arise under certain condi- 

 tions in society, all social progress would be barred. 

 Out of the desire to better our condition comes the 

 greed of wealth and the hoggishness of the million- 

 aire. Out of sex love comes lust and fornication; 

 out of the instinct of self-preservation comes base 

 27] 



