Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/169

 THE "KEDUCTION TO INIQUITY." 51

then ask himself whether this is in accordance with the intent of Nature ?

The Duke of Argyll has explained to me in his " Reign of Law" with what nice adaptations the feathers on a bird's wing are designed to give it the power of flight ; he has told me that the claw on the wing of a bat is intended for it to climb by. Will he let me ask him to look in the same way at the human beings around him? Consider, O Duke! the little children growing up in city slums, toiling in mines, working in noisome rooms ; the young girls chained to machinery all day or walking the streets by night; the women bending over forges in the Black Country or turned into beasts of burden in the Scottish Highlands; the men who all life long must spend life's energies in the eif ort to maintain life ! Consider them as you have considered the bat and the bird. If the hook of the bat be intended to climb by and the wing of the bird be intended to fly by, with what intent have human creatures been given capabilities of body and mind which under conditions that exist in such countries as Great Britain only a few of them can use and enjoy ?

They who see in Nature no evidences of conscious, planning intelligence may think that all this is as it must be; but who that recognizes in his works an infinitely wise Creator can for a moment hesitate to infer that the wide difference between obvious intent and actual accom- plishment is due, not to the clash of natural laws, but to our ignoring them ? Nor need we go far to confirm this inference. The moment we consider in the largest way what kind of an animal man is, we see in the most important of social adjustments a violation of Nature's intent sufficient to account for want and misery and aborted development.

Given a ship sent to sea with abundant provisions for all her company. What must happen if some of that

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