time I have been contemporary with events of the most horrible
character; as when the mothers in the Balkans cast their own
children from the train to parish in the snow; as when the Princess Alice
foundered, and six hundred human beings were smothered in foul water; as
when the hecatomb of two thousand maidens were burned in the church at
Santiago; as when the miserable creatures tore at the walls of the Vienna
theatre. Consider only the fates which overtake the little children. Human
suffering is so great, so endless, so awful that I can hardly write of it. I
could not go into hospitals and face it, as some do, lest my mind should be
temporarily overcome. The whole and the worst the worst pessimist can say is
far beneath the least particle of the truth, so immense is the misery of
man. It is the duty of all rational beings to acknowledge the truth. There
is not the least trace of directing intelligence in human affairs. This is
a foundation of hope, because, if the present condition of things were
ordered by a superior power, there would be no possibility of improving it
for the better in the spite of that power. Acknowledging that no such
direction exists, all things become at once plastic to our will.

The credit given by the unthinking to the statement that all
affairs are directed has been the bane of the world since the
days of the Egyptian papyri and the origin of superstition. So
long as men firmly believe that everything is fixed for them, so
long is progress impossible. If you argue yourself into the belief that you
cannot walk to a place, you cannot walk there.
But if you start you can walk there easily. Any one who will
consider the affairs of the world at large, and of the individual, will see
that they do not proceed in the manner they
would do for our own happiness if a man of humane breadth of
view were placed at their head with unlimited power, such as is
credited to the intelligence which does not exist. A man of