Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/637

Rh —for both these involve discontent—no fear, no good or bad, what would life be? If fully carried out, is not a life without antagonism no life at all, a barren metaphysical conception of existence, or rather alleged conception, for we can not present to the mind the form of such conception? In the most ordinary actions, such as are necessary to sustain existence, we find, as I have already pointed out, a struggle more or less intense, but we also find a reciprocal interdependence of effort and result. The graminivorous animal is, during his waking hours, always at work, always making a small but continuous effort, selecting his pastures, cropping vegetables, avoiding enemies, etc. The carnivora suffer more in their normal existence; their hunger is greater, and their physical exertion, when they are driven by hunger to make efforts to obtain food, is more violent than with the herbivora if they capture their prey by speed or battle, or their mental efforts are greater if they capture it by craft. But then their gratification is also more intense, and thus there is a sort of rough equation between their pain and their pleasure: the more sustained the labor, the more permanent is the gratification. As with food or exercise, deficiency is as injurious in one as is excess in another direction; so, as affecting the mind of communities, as I have stated it to be with individuals, the effect of a life of ease and too much repose is as much to be avoided as a life of unremitting toil. The Pitcairn-Islanders, who managed in some way to adapt their wants to their supply and to avoid undue increase of population, are said never to have reached old age. In consequence of the uneventful, unexcited lives they led, they died of inaction, not from deficiency of food or shelter, but of excitement. They should have migrated to England! They died as hares do when their ears are stuffed with cotton, i. e., from want of anxiety. We have hope in our suffering, and in the mid-gush of our pleasures something bitter surges up:

 We look before and after, and pine for what is not, Our sincerest laughter with some pain is fraught. Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought."

The question may possibly occur to you, Have we more or less antagonism now than in former times? We certainly have more complexity, more differentiation, in our mental characteristics, and probably in our physical, so far as the structure of the brain is concerned; but is there less antagonism? With greater complexity come increased wants, more continuous cares. Higher cerebral development is accompanied with greater nervous irritability, with greater social intricacies—we have more frequent petty annoyances, and they affect us more. With all our so-called social improvements, is there not the same struggle between crime