The
Jt'NICTPATj problem are only one
M I phase of the great problem cf
' human Ufe. That life Is a strug-
gle has long been . taught by
religion, ana has recently neen
reaffirmed by science. Krom the cradle to
the grave we are engaged In It. A strug
gle In the individual between the higher
and the lower, the animal and the spirit
ual, the sensuous and the super-sensuous.
"The good that I would I do not. the evil I
hute to do," is a very ancient interpreta
tion of this struggle, with which most of
us are familiar. There are few sinners
o apparently hopelessly depraved that
they never enter on this battle. There are
few saints that have won the battle and
have no need for further tight. The city,
the modern city, is the place where the
forces of good and evil are more than
everywhere else lined up fur conflict. The
city is the heart of this great campaign.
The city is the Gettysburg of the long war.
The city Is the Quarte Bras in the Water
loo of the ages. To a great city come
both the worst forces and the best forces
of the nation. Here gather the criminals,
the Ishmaelites, the men whose hand Is
against every man. Here they come to rob
and to plunder, here when they have
robbed and plundered elsewhere they cotne
to live. This is their camping ground.
This is where they easiest find the booty
and the most. Here gather the sensual
forces. Here come the men who want ease
anil indulgence. Here come the men who
like to dress In tine linen and fare sump
tuously every day Here are the great
hotels, the restaurants, the theaters; here
the great pleasure givers of every kind,
and bcre therefore come the men who are
seeking pleasure. Here men come to
gamble, and to drink, and to make merry.
Here come the men who have care for
nothing while life laughs Its hours away.
Here, too, come men Wio are eager for
wealth, who measure all of life by the dol
lar mark, who think success Is measured
by the money a man possesses, not by the
character he develops. Here come the
men and the women who are fond of dis
play. This is the place to show ourselves
olT. This Is the place to ride In the II nest
carriages with footmen and coachman.
Thl3 Is the place to wear the flue dresses,
th. glittering Jrwe!s. This Is the place In
which to go to the opera not always to
hear the music, but sometimes to have
other people look at us. Here Is where
we go to the horse shpw, and people won
der whether we have gone to see the horses
or for the horses to see us. Here come the
wolves that raven, the swine that fatten,
the bees that hive, the peacocks that strut.
But here also come the great forces for
Intelligence and fur virtue. Here the no
blest elements of humanity are found; here
the strength, the heroism and the Intelli
gence compacted together. Here are the
great commercial enterprises; not merely
mency-making but humanity serving. A
great railroad is something more than a
corporation to pay dividends to stockhold
ers. It is a clvilizer. Kun this railroad
across the western prairie und where this
road goes the village springs up, the school
house and the church are built; and send
ing their children to these school houses
and worshiping in these churches are men
and women from across the sea, men and
women who had no hope at home, who
IN OI'H generation we behold a
glqantic spectacle. Only a few
on thij dark and restless earth
(QgSJSSI grasp it in Its full greatness. And
in truth, one should I e on nnnth..r
plar.et In order 1 1 see It a t It Is, monstrous,
yet tulilne in its very terror.
Ijtl in Imagine a perspective.
Instead of humanity we see u single vast
man. And this man, n Hercules, is wrest- '
ling with a hydra.
The hydra of the old tales was an animal,
patterned after the octopus, the polyp or
the cuttlefish an animal that has been
iactd in the f.rst rank of the mollusks by
modern science therefore un animal of rel
atively high development.
But this man that we see battles with a
thiig tl.at is not animal, not plant. It Is
merely alive. It Is without organs, without
Inner structure. It is not gigantic, like the
storied hydra, in the sense of having a
sirg'e huge animal body. But it Is gigantic
In another sense that goes far beyond that
old hydra.
In the hydra a new head grew at once In
pl:i(c of every one that was cut off. Tho
monster to which I refer tears apart under
the hands of the fighting man Into milliards
if nw horrors. Where one threatened
now. countless mjisses threaten In the next
moment.
Ai d in this expanding mass the creatures
tqni.iil over the earth and heaven till a
new. still more dreadful whole Is formed
ugala of tl em. and drives like u bl-ick, kill
ing fog, from all Fides upon the Herrules.
lie strains, gas. will he conquer?
No w Otology has created unything like
th:.t.
It i man-humanity fighting the bicillus.
A most wonderful thing lias, indeed, de
veloped on our old planet. 'XLm Mgueal aud
Battle in the City
existed In a dull despair that men mis
called content Now they have life, hope,
activity, spurred on to life by the opinir
tunlty in this new land. If I were a rail
road man with M.OO0.0CO to Invest I should
not know how much to put Into a railroad
and how much Into a college. I am not
sure that a railroad would not render the
best service of the two much better than
Some colleges. Here are the great news
paxTS. 1 do not think I quite agree with
Jefferson when he said that he would
rather have a country without government
than without newspapers. But I am quite
certain that we could get along without
congress for a year better than we could
get along without newspapers for a year.
Wonderful enterprises they are, reaching
their hands out into all the world and
gathering all the news from all the world,
and serving it to us with our breakfast
coffee. They are great educators. They
teach us what we are, how much our civili
sation is. how much of solid mahogany and
how much very thin veneer. Here are the
great schools. To the towns and cities
come the parents, bringing their children
to be educated, lieeause in the towns and
cities are the great universities, the great
lndustri.il and professional schools. Here
the public school is seen at its best. Here
too are the great churches, Prctestant,
Catholic, Jewish. I do not s ay there are
not preachers as able, as devout, in many
a country village as in the metroMillt:in
pulpits. We are too prone to measure a
man by the place ho stands in rather
than by the work he is doing. Yet In tho
main the great preachers and pastors are
to bo found largely In the great cities.
Here are the auxiliary institutions, the
Young Men's Christian associations, the
Daughters of the King, the various mis
sionary boards. They center here, have
their direction hern, are moulded and
shaped here; but their influence does not
end here, and from these cities, these
homos, from these churches goes out n
Btroam of beneficence to bless our own land
and to bless other binds. I had occasion
ten years ago to make inquiry lis to what
the churches in the city of Brooklyn were
doing: I found that In that one year they
had spent $"J,iriO,0O0 on religious work, and
$1,333,(!C0 on charitable work outside the
churches. And Brooklyn Is not an excep
tionally rich city, nor has it done nearly
as much as New York. Thus we have
these two forces standing face to face In
the city, wrestling with each other, the
forces of sensuality and vice and crime
and Ignorance, and the forces of virtue
and Intelligence and courage and moral
purpose. Here they meet nt close quarters.
We jostle one another on the same car,
we walk by one another on the same
street, we live beside one another on the
same block, I am not sure that we do not
sometimes kneel by the side of one an
other In the same church.
The question of political reform, there
fore, is not a political question. It is the
battle of the ages in a microcosm. It Is
not a prsblem that can he solved by a
political panacea or settled in half un hour.
It cannot tie settled by electing one party
or another to offlee. "Turn the dem.icrath
rascals out," and leave the city as it is, and
the republican rascals will come In. "Turn
the republican rascals out," and leave the
city as it Is, and the democratic rascals will
Humanity's Final and Grimmest Battle
the low::t form of organic life have met at
last in a fight for existence.
The fight against the bacillus Is a naked,
defensive battle of the zoological species
man. It Is the last decisive war between
the culminating point of all life-development
nnd the oldest, most primitive, most
simple existence that life has produced,
with which life beian millions of years
ago, and which life has dragged upward
with it us an undigested primordial rem
nant, side by side with the mighty devel
ment at whose pinnacle stands man.
The full earth-mastery of man strictly
speaking, did not begin before the nine
teenth century.
Man appeared on earth In an epoch In
which it already was possible to reckon
backward millions of years during which
the vertebrates bad become the superior
creatures of the world.
The vertebrates, man's nearest ancestors
and telatives, man had to destroy first.
They faced him In three groups and in
each group was a hi.story of tinv
The smallest und least important group
remained ns the vanishing rest of an epoch
In whose highest period man dl 1 not exist.
We call this the secondary epoch now. It
was the day of the Ichthynsaurians. This
at range world had lasted through Inter
minable spaces of time. Then it broke
down. Probably the slowly strengthen
ing worlds of mammals belpei to force
it under. It happened long before tho
coming of man. He did not meet tho
ichthyoHaurlans. Only here and there did
he find a relic of the epoch.
Australia has preicrved the m -st sin
gular survivors. The few wild men th-re
hardly disturbed them; our advancing Ku
ropeau culture is doing it radically. The
cluck bill u illxapp.:.! iog bwuu luy mIU
Jly Lyman
Abbott, 1). D.
come In. I think New York City has been
perhaps the worst governed city In the
country tinder Tammany rule, unless re
publican Philadelphia has not been a little
worse governed. Political reforms, if they
are simply political, do not go to the root
of the matter. The problem Is more than a
political question. It cannot be solved by
legislation. It Involves the battle of all
the ages, that began In Kden. and will not
end until the great curtain of all human
history drops down and the other life be
gins, that goes on we do not know where
or how.
In this great batt'.e of the ages the
enemies of honest government In our great
cities seem to me to be chiefly thiee:
Ignorance, indifference nnd greed. For
Ignorance the remedy Is education. What
In some sense every political campaign
furnishes Indirectly, teaching us our obligi
tlons. teaching us the principles by which
we should he governed.
Indifference Is a worse enemy than Igno
rance. The chief sinners are not those who
live In the tenement houses on the Ka-n SVn,
but those who live In the brownstone h un s
In the center and heart of the city. Kvory
voter is a trustee. In n hotly rnutcstcd
presidential election, out of TO.000,000 people
about HeOO.noo vote. What does that mean?
It means that every voter votes for live
others, for the women, the children, the
nonvoting population. I am their trustee.
If I neglect to vote I neglect my duty as
a trustee. If I throw away my vote, I
th ow away the lights of these Ave people
who are entrusted to me. If I sell my vote
fur a place or an advantage or a JS bill, 1
sell the r'ghts that have been entrusted to
me. And yet I think the chief est cause, one
certainty of the chicfest causes of this
corruption, has been what I call the in
difference of our better class of citizens. It
Is an old difficulty, very old. as old as the
Hook of Judges.
The trees went forth on a time to anoint
a king over them, and they said unto the
olive tree, Kclgn thou over us. But the
olive tree said unto them. Hhould I leave
my fatness, wherewith by me they honor
(lod nnd man. nnd go to wave to and fro
over the trees? And the trefs said to the
tig tree, Come thou and reign over us. But
the fig tree said tinto them. Hhould I
leave my sweetness nnd my good fruit and
go to wave to and fro over the trees? And
the trees Paid unto the vine. Come thou and
reign over us. And the vine said unto
them. Should I leave my wine, which rheer
eth God and man, and go to wave to and
fro over the trees? Then said all the
tn-es unto the bramble. Come thou and
reign over us. And the bramble said unto
the trees. If in truth ye anoint me king
over you. then com" nnd put yonr trust In
my shadow, nnd If not, let Are come out
of the bramble and devour the cedars of
Lebanon.
The olive and the fig and the vine have
said In America, "We do not care fir poli
tics." Then we have elected the bramble,
and when we have elected it the parable
hus been revers-d. for lire has come out of
the bramble a :d devoured the cedars of
lehanon. Nor can I fail to say here one
IWird of henor to the man who purely be
longed among the vines nnd the figs ami
the olives, who had a position in this city
which any man might covet, a place of dis
tinguished honor and also congenial work,
out of the quiet, pleasant, constructive
have shot the last kangaroo one of the
enrliesl and oldest of mammal forim; the
great lizard-fish Ceratodus, whose ant cstors
formed the link between fish an.l lizard
in the Devon tau period. vegetates Ktlll In
only two tiny rivulets; the mysterious
lizard hatterlu in New Zealand, the oae
surviving arch-reptile, which linked the
reptiles with the amphibians and perhaps
even with the mammals, has become so
rare, only luu years after its discovery that
only the protection of the government and
its Isolated habitat on a few rock Inlands
in Cook sound check its extinction tempo
rarily. On this same New Zealand the Maoris
ate up a race of immense wingless birds,
the moas. Kor all this great world of sur
viv lis, man became the executioner in the
lieglnning and remains so.
Of quite different importance to man In
bis infancy was a second group of large
vertebrates. In North America, Kurope
and North Asia there came a cha'nge ut
this time that altered or destroyed the
animals of tertiary time as the Ichthyo
Haurlans, marsupials and billed mammals
of secondary time bad been swept nway.
However much man may have witnessed
of this change, it certainly occurred with
out his help. When he had become strong,
the entire, still monstrously large rem
nant of the tertiary world dwelled in
south Asia and in Africa. A small distant
remnant also lived in South America
grotesque mammoth sloths and mammoth
armadillos. The latter evidently became
extinct aiiy, and as we have evidence that
in in at.' megatherium and glyptodon in
prehistoric days, it Is likely that he was
III ' hangman of tbi. animal world also.
In other places the battle was not so easy.
JAir U,l)uo years uud tuoru the African and
lalmr of a great university, went forth fm
take tip your work and my work, and to do
good service for you and for me -not to tie
praised for what be did. but to lie scolded,
not to say slandered, for what he was not
nble to do in so short a time.
The great enemy we have to tight Is
greed, the spirit that desires to get some
tiling for nothing, that puts acquisition
li hove everything else; the spirit which
counts honesty as something between man
a nil man, but nothing between man nnd
men; the spirit which considers it wrong to
pick the pocket of a man, but right to put
the arm up to the shoulder in the public
treasury. And this spirit of greeil is worse
when It Is seen In the highest quarters.
It is not at its worst in the man
who sells his vote for a dollar LIU
or a job in the street cleaning department.
It Is worse in the men who swear off the
taxes they ought to pay; worse In the men
that bribe lcgMitors to give public, fran
chises for which they t. light to lie willing
to pay the public a fair compensation;
worse in the men that corrupt in order that
they may gain by the corruption; worse In
the most respectable hi liners, not in those
that are most disgraced and dishonored;
wo-re in the most intelligent, not In the
most ignorant, it la a sin, a black, shame
ful, damnable mm, wherever it appears; in
any man. whatever bis learning, his rank,
his wealth, Ills position, who counts tho
public necessity as something out of which
he may take for pirsmial profit an advan
tage, without giving to the public u fair,
rea: onable, Just equivalent.
What are we going to do? It Is clear that
this is a battle not to be won merely by
voting, nor even chiefly by voting, it Is to
be won by h twins taught and learned in
the home. It is to be won by mothers
teaching their children patriotism and pur
ity and truth and honor. It Is taught by
(he Influences that nre more potent than
political tower. It Is to be won by Ideals
which we hold ourselves nnd foster and
inspire In others. It U to be won by the
work of the minister. Not by his preach
ing on trusts and strikes when they are
being illseunscd by the newspapers; not by
doing the work that bclrngs to tho press;
not that. But by recognizing the fact that
religion Is to do Justly, to love mercy, to
walk humbly with God; by recognlvlng tho
fact that our prayer Is not an Idle one,
"Thy kingdom come, Thy will ho done on
earth as it is in heaven." By so preach
ing and so ministering ns to fit men and
women to live noble lives in New York
City. If the ministers can do this, wo
can leave problems concerning the celestial
city for a little while. We shall lie ready
for it when the time comes. We will be
building a celestial city on earth.
Kor the battle Is not to tie won by politics,
which is a mere metln d of life, but by life
Itself. It Is to be won by the recognition
by us of the truth that we are In thia
world not for pleasure, not for wealth, not
for any subsidiary thing; that we are hero
as our Master was here, to love nnd to
serve; that we are here to fight the battle
so long us God shall give us life; that we
are here so to live that when nt last the
end shall come we can look back upon our
city life nnd siy. not, I was a millionaire,
not, I had a good time, not, I was in
society, but. I fought a good fight and I
kept the faith.
New York City.
Indian tertiary unimul-world with Its ele
phants, rhlnoceii, hippopotami, huge car
nivora aud manlike monkeys, such us
gorilla, und orung, confronted even civilized
humanity like a demoniac specter, sur
rounded with fables, the image of the
"wild world'' that ruled lands and threat
ened humanity.
But aa early as Curthnge man learned
to sulslue the beast. The Carthnglan en
slaved the elephant and made war material
of him. The Iron Roman drugged (he
Jungle brutes into bis arenas In armies.
And when the musket was Invented the
final hour struck for this bit of primeval
and ancestral life. The tertiary world of
giants went tumbling headlong after the
secondary world and "culture" la-came the
executioner of a historical decree.
But inun had to do with another group of
animals The great force that drove the
tertiary mammals out of ttie north con
tinents, before man became strong, wus the
Ice. A certain percentage of mammals not
thus driven south consisted of some that
had adjusted themselves to the cold. So
there curne the red-woolcd mammoth, the
furred rhinoceros, the cave lion, the musk
ox and the reindeer.
This Is the so-called diluvial unlmal
world. And man had to do directly with it
- man, whose plainest remnants show that
he lived on the edges of the glaciers of the
lee period, nnd who perhaps had to thank
the stress of the tee-time for bis greatest
early process, nuch as the discovery of
the way to kindle fire.
Where Is this diluvial world tod i. ? Man
lias eaten It.
This example of the vertebrates practic
ally exhausts almost the whole problem
(Continued on Page Thirteen.)
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