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 have proved by their life and works that the world did need them and could illy have spared them, are not more than a score or two.

Much more is it a remarkable idea that men in general should ever be in demand. If we do not go beyond current habits of thought, we think that the world was made for men, that it has no significance without men; that its existence is, as it were, a call or demand for men; that of course we all ought to be here, and, having come, that we ought to be made welcome and honorably provided for. Our complaints are for the most part complaints of those very conditions of earthly life by virtue of which it is possible that we may be here. If there is any "banquet of life" offered, by the fact that the world is here, we find that there are a great number of us who have come to be guests at it and that there is a hungry crowd of other animals, upon whom we look down as not fit to dispute the banquet with us, but who defend their possession of it with as much ferocity and tenacity as if they were revolutionists and could declaim about natural rights. Our assumption is that we should all be here, under any circumstances whatever, and that the provision for us here is, or ought to be, somewhere on hand.

Unfortunately none of these ideas can be verified by an examination of the facts. We are not needed here at all; the world existed no one knows how long without any men on it. They were never missed by the other forms of nature, who absorbed, enjoyed, and gave back again into the cosmos the energy and the material of organized existence, generation after generation; and there is no room for any idea that the universe suffered any lack or fell short of anything which was necessary to keep it going on in a round of transformations and