Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/639

Rh for their wares; and the silly portion of the public, no small body, take them at their word. Though you may not fully agree in this my anathema of the advertising system, and though there may be some small modicum of good in it, I think you will agree that it affords a notable illustration of antagonism. If I were a younger man, I think I should go to Kamchatka to avoid the penny post; possibly I should not be satisfied when I got there. Civilization begins by supplying wants, and ends by creating them; and each supply for the newly created want begets other wants, and so on, "toties quoties."

As far as we can judge by its present progress, mankind seems tending to an automatic state. The requirements of each day are becoming so numerous as to occupy the greater portion of that day; and when telegrams, telephones, electro-motion, and numerous other innovations which will probably follow these, reach their full development, no time will be left for thought, repose, or any spontaneous individual action. In this mechanical state of existence, in times of peace, extremes of joy and sorrow, of good and evil, will become more rare, and the necessary uniformity of life will reduce passion and feeling to a continuous petty friction. The converse of the existence contemplated by the Stoics will be attained, and, instead of a life of calm contemplation, our successors will have a life of objectless activity. The end will be swallowed up in the means. It will be all pursuit and no attainment. Is there a, juste milieu, a point at which the superfluous commoda vitæ will cease? None probably would agree at where that point should be fixed, and the future alone can show whether the human race will emancipate itself from being, like Frankenstein, the slave of the monster it has created. In the cases I have given as illustrations—and many more might be adduced—the evil resulting from apparently beneficial changes is not a mere accident: it is as necessary a consequence as reaction is a consequence of action. In the struggle for existence or supremacy, inevitable in all social growths, the invention, enactment, etc., intended to remedy an assumed evil, will be taken advantage of by those for whom it is not intended; the real grievance will be exaggerated by those having an interest in trading on it, and the remedy itself will have collateral results not contemplated by those who introduce the change. I could give many instances of this by my own experience as an advocate and judge, but this would lead me away from my subject. Evils, indeed, result from the very change of habit induced by the alleged improvement. The carriage which saves fatigue induces listlessness, and tends to prevent healthy exercise. The knife and fork save the labor of mastication, but by their use there is not the same stimulus to the salivary glands, not the full healthy amount of secretion, whereby digestion