MAN 223 



over and over again in human history. Families, cities, 

 and nations rot, mainly because they cannot resist the 

 seductions of an overwhelming material prosperity. 

 A man says to his soul, " Take thine ease, eat, drink and 

 be merry," and to that man scripture and science say, 

 with equal emphasis, " Thou fool ! " 



Evary upward step in attainment of the comforts of 

 life, of art and science, brings man into new fields not 

 of careless enjoyment but of struggle. They swarm 

 with new enemies and temptations before unknown. 

 The new attainments are not unalloyed blessings, 

 they are merely opportunities for victory or defeat. 

 The uncertain battle is only shifted to a little higher 

 plane. Man has increased the forces at his command 

 only to meet stronger opposing hosts. And retreat is 

 impossible. Man remains a spiritual being only on 

 condition that he resolutely and vigilantly purposes 

 to be so. To lag behind in this spiritual path is 

 death. 



And the epitaph of nations and individuals is the 

 record of their defeat in this struggle to be masters 

 and not slaves of their material and intellectual at- 

 tainments. Greece, the most intellectual of all na- 

 tions of all times, died in mental senility of moral 

 paralysis. Of Socrates's and Plato's " following after 

 truth " nothing remained but the gossipy curiosity of 

 a second childhood, living only to tell or to hear some 

 new thing. And the schools of philosophy were 

 closed because they had nothing to tell which was 

 worth the knowing or hearing. All the wealth of the 

 world was poured into Eome, the home of Stoic phi- 

 losophy, and it was smothered, and died in rottenness 

 under its material prosperity. 



