All of this is grist for the industrial mill. I do not say that the Devil arranged it; but he could hardly have arranged the thing more perfectly. The modern industrialist finds everything ready to hand. He is pleased that man knows so much about nature; and he is equally pleased that man knows so little about himself. He can get the few men he needs who know how to regulate nature; and he can get the vast multitude of men he needs who do not know how to regulate themselves. The less they know about that the better. The industrialist need not bother with beings who concern themselves with their rights as rational animals; he can deal, and deal much more conveniently, with beings who concern themselves with their duties as nonrational automata. Under the reign of modern materialism his problem is simplified; and it grows simpler every day. The industrial mill takes all those foolish beings who think they are rational animals and grinds them into line, or out of existence. Science and industrialism, the latter rather more directly and deliberately, work together to invalidate the ancient notion that man is a rational creature, capable of creating a human and rational civilization.

In view of this broad fact, it can hardly be said that the modern man has registered any very substantial achievement. He may imagine that he has achieved what he calls freedom. The obvious fact is that the modern man, especially in America, has been losing in recent years the legal rights which his forbears wrote into the various bills and declarations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But I do not limit the discussion of this point to the level of written charters and enactments. The fundamental

admit that the modern man still retains some of the outer machinery of right which he acquired through the English, the American, and the French Revolutions. The fundamental fact is that he has lost the inner substance of right and freedom, and has lost it mainly through the industrial revolution.

He has, let us admit, freedom of action; but under modern materialism he has no end or goal of action. He has all the material conditions of life, and he still has many of the legal conditions of life; the only thing he does not have is life itself. His freedom, where he still retains it, is a false freedom. It enables him to go nowhere.

Speaking of him very broadly, the modern man is, as we say, unbalanced. He has lost his balance. The normal man keeps up a very delicate balance; for he retains contact with the inner and spiritual centre of his own being, while he moves outward at the same time toward the material component of himself, and of the external universe. But the modern man does not maintain this delicate balance and order; for he loses contact with the centre of his own being, and only moves outward toward the material part of himself, and the material part of the external universe. He rushes outward in a mad desire to possess the world; and he loses his grip on the world, after having first lost his grip on himself. He loses belief in the spiritual and rational life which should properly lie within himself, and then he loses control of the political and social life which obviously lies outside. himself. Thus man devotes himself to matter, and ceases to dominate life and civilization.

Whether the damage that has been done may yet be repaired is another question.

'A JUDICIOUS Selection of one's parents,' says the Japanese philosopher, Ohara, 'is the first important step in life.' His name, as well as the paradoxical character of many of the aphorisms of this sage, betrays the Milesian strain in his otherwise pure samurai blood.

It were presumptuous in me to attempt an analysis of the epigrams of Ohara. His delicate nuances doubtless elude the full appreciation of one to whom his language is but a late and laborious acquirement. It happened that in turning for the hundredth time the rice-paper pages of my well-worn copy of his Book of Ten Thousand Half-Truths I encountered the pearl of Oharian wisdom which seemed for my purpose both text and moral.

In the Decalogue's decree that the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children, there is more injustice than the manifest unfairness of chastising the innocent; for no mention is made of the sins of the mothers. Yet Moses, the editor, is conceded to have been a clever man and, if credence is to be given to a tradition regarding bulrushes and a royal princess, he was familiar from infancy with the caprices and indiscretions of young women in the highest society of his time. That Moses was ignorant of modern science is no reproach to the memory of an able man and a conscientious editor; but observation should have taught him that the maternal misdemeanors have the dominating influence. If the

original material mentioned only the sins of the fathers, while he may have had scruples against altering the text, the matter was certainly worthy of a footnote.

I

This is the story of one who was the innocent victim of heredity, unfortunate in his choice of the authors of his being. His birth superimposed upon a previously immaculate escutcheon that bar sinister which in heraldry is the base of a triangle. His mother and his putative father were both Parisian aristocrats of the old noblesse. Kings and the fair rulers of kings had prized their friendship and their friendship and praised their fidelity; but somewhere in the heart of his handsome mother had been a spark of the roving spirit, a lurking trace of nomad blood, her inheritance from some errant belle of her race. It was this gypsy strain, this impulse to go a-roaming by the light of the moon, that impelled her son to his downfall and caused the untimely end of a career of promise.

Trifles decide our destinies. The supposed grace of God, but for which John Wesley thought he might have been the man in the gutter, may be merely a blood corpuscle more or less, the development of an atom evolved in pangenesis. It was this infinitesimal tilting of the physiological scale which barred Michael Bruno from the high estate, the fair environment of his ancestors. A life of idleness and luxury had been their prerogative for

generations. Liveried lackeys had driven them through the streets of Paris, and they had looked with disdain upon the plebeians wistful with envy or fierce-eyed with resentment.

To the casual observer, Michael had the family good looks; but unhappily the roof of his mouth was not so black as it should have been, and by connoisseurs, learned in such matters, certain defects-scarcely noticeablewere imputed to his legs and tail. His first custodian pursued the policy of honesty, whose results are said by optimists to be eventually satisfactory, and would do nothing to impair the confidence of a valued clientele. Instead of falsely representing Mike to be of unimpeachable lineage and establishing him as a pampered minion of the boudoir, a sale at a reasonable price to the Great Bruno was willingly consummated. This was the identical Great Bruno whose company of strolling players has so long delighted the patrons of the entertainment described by its sponsors as 'polite vaudeville.' Indeed, dramatic criticism has frequently eulogized the acting of Bruno's Dogs with an enthusiasm generally reserved for for human histrions from remote regions, acclaimed as great because not understood.

When Mike was admitted to the Great Bruno's company — or, to be accurate, to the conservatoire in which pupils were developed into sociétaires

he was something less than a foot of curly black wool, from one end of which alert and restless brown eyes blinked upon a world in which sleep and play agreeably alternated. His juniority extended through the greater part of a theatrical season, during which he was a mere neophyte in the Temple of Thespis. The Great Bruno only casually recognized his existence; but Mike was the special protégé of the

even greater Mrs. Bruno, who carried him wrapped in a shawl, smuggling him into day coaches and sleeping-cars, while the regular troopers traveled in baggage cars to which they were carried in their boxes. The weekly migrations were always accompanied by a frenzied yelping and barking, doubtless in protest against such unseemly treatment of artists, or, it may be, expressing those petty jealousies which are inevitable in a profession whose members are proverbially temperamental.

From Mrs. Bruno, - 'Mlle. Leroy' on the programmes, as head of the informal preparatory school, Mike received his rudimentary education and became well grounded in the primary curriculum: such elementary branches as sitting up, rolling over, and jumping through a circle formed for the purpose by Mademoiselle's stout and motherly arms. These simple lessons led to more difficult studies: balancing a lump of sugar on one's nose and waiting patiently for the announcement that breakfast was ready; or 'listening for the Indians,' a feat which consisted of putting an ear to the ground and holding it there till Mrs. Bruno gave utterance to her own exclusive idea of a war whoop.

These talents seemed pleasant to acquire under genial tutelage, the lessons being informal during the afternoon and evening performances, when the Great Bruno was on the stage directing his company. Mrs. Bruno had much leisure, as she appeared only once in each session, merely to impart feminine interest and charm by her pink tights, yellow wig, and long blue earrings. Frequently she would stand in the wings, holding Mike in her arms, while he watched with fascinated gaze and audible panting the strange scenes enacted by his elders. It was in these great moments that the

glories of art were revealed to him, and there awakened within him an eager and restless ambition.

It appeared then that dogs, as well as Mr. and Mrs. Bruno, could wear clothes, little skirts and jackets, trousers and tailed coats, hats of many varieties, some plain, others adorned with ribbons, feathers, and flowers; and it was demonstrated that with practice a dog could carry a fan or an umbrella. Wide-eyed amazement and uncontrollable barks of surprise followed the revelation that an advanced dog walked on two legs nearly as well as on four; that creatures of his kind even had bad habits, like human beings. There was an Irish terrier of clownish countenance, who twice a day was seen going through the swinging doors of a small house, presently emerging and staggering to an adjacent little lamp-post. There he was taken in charge by Flip, the white bull-terrier, in a helmet and a blue coat, with a club under his foreleg, hopping on with all the dignity that a hop can display. Twice a day Mike saw this same little house with smoke and a red glare at its windows, and then, while bells rang and gongs clanged, a wagon was drawn on by two collies, other members of the company riding, wearing bright tin hats. In an upper window Tiny the Maltese appeared, and Flip, now in a scarlet coat instead of a blue one, ran up the ladder and carried her down by the nape of her neck. After this came the grand finale, in which there was always a tumult of barking and much joyful gamboling around the Great Bruno, all snapping for the lumps of sugar, of which the supply was never equal to the demand. Then Mrs. Bruno would trip out to participate in the triumph, bowing and smiling, taking as much of the applause as if she, instead of the greyhound, had done the flying leap over two chairs placed a long distance apart.

The precise relation to life and the cosmos of these strange pranks of his elders Mike could not understand, nor why the fantastic exhibition was always followed by the loud noise of a number of human beings slapping their forepaws together. Nevertheless it was very amusing and, watching from behind a canvas tree, he never could see it without an irrepressible desire to burst out barking, which caused him to be gently spatted into silence by Mrs. Bruno. Soon, however, he realized that all this work, or play, whichever it might be, was necessary if dogs expected to eat. Each performer, after his own achievement, received a small edible honorarium, and following every afternoon performance a substantial repast was served. These memorably enjoyable occasions were often marred by the piteous wailing in outer darkness of some unfortunate brother who, for failure in his specialty or for general dereliction in his professional duty, was paying the penalty of hunger. Evidently the world was governed by an inexorable law that if a dog would not work, or even if with willing heart he tried his best and failed, it was not for him to share in the rewards of industry and good luck.

Naturally Mike had no knowledge of the idle rich. Only by atavistic subconscious memories of the life of his aristocratic forbears did he dream that somewhere there might be sluggards of his race surfeited with luxury and immune from effort. It was obvious that, in the law of causation, food followed the faithful performance of certain duties, each getting a share according to his talent and diligence. His own modest efforts were always thus rewarded by Mrs. Bruno, and consequently, when inclined to hunger, he would approach his protectress, sit up and beg; and if that failed he would offer other exhibitions of his simple