Mystic masonry, or, The symbols of freemasonry and the greater ...

48 Mystic Masonry.
tarian work being done by thousands of well-disposed
persons who appreciate existing evils, and desire to
get rid of them. In very few instances, however,
the results attained are commensurate with
the energy or tlie sacrifice employed, for selfsacrifice
is a virtue not altogether unknown to
Christendom. But in very many instances these
humanitarian efforts resemble an attempt to destroy
a Upas tree, which being cut down every day grows
again before morning. We imprison and execute
criminals, and crime nowhere decreases. We sequestrate
and "doctor" the insane, and insanity
continually increases. We build hospitals for orphans,
the sick and the aged, and we do well; but
orphanage, sickness and the distress and poverty
of age grow in no wise less. It ought sometime to
occur to us that society is all wrong, or that something
is radically wrong with all our methods. In
the aggregate all the profits derived from scientific
discoveries and from labor-saving machines has to
be returned to the criminal or indigent classes. The
only thing that we can boast of as a result is an increase
in the number of milHonaires ; and these, as a
class, instead of being the fruition of a higher evolution
are almost without exception the very flower
of a Civilization of Competition and Selfishness.