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ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES
gentle and forgiving. With a heart that is ready to bleed at the suffering of others, you have acquired the impulse to relieve distress in so far as lies in your power to do so. In a word, you have been trained and brought up for a kind of life in which there is nothing of the stern struggle for existence that actually characterises the world outside. The problem before you to-day, therefore, is how to reconcile the clash that exists between what is desirable and desired and actuality or fact?
The problem resolves itself into two parts, namely,
(1) how to improve the nature of our surroundings, and
(2) how to regulate our own lives, so as to mix in the world and yet not imbibe its evil ourselves.
You will see that these are the two main questions which, in one way or another, lie at the bottom of all movements of reform that have been set in motion in different countries at different times. If you will now analyse the causes which brought them to nought, you will not fail to notice that their failure was due to an almost exclusive attention to the first of these points (namely, how to improve one's surroundings), and to their ignoring the second. The fact is that we all want to improve others but not ourselves, and as we are ourselves the most important parts of things and institutions that need reform, it is inevitable that our efforts should miscarry unless they are applied to No. 1 in the first instance. The first lesson of life to be learnt, therefore, is that whenever you wish to improve the condition of anything. you should begin by putting your own house in order first of all.
Now reform is either
(1) political,
(2) social, or
(3) religious.
I shall deal with all these three forms of reform briefly here. To begin with Political reform, it is evident that most of our complaints would disappear if we had individually
(a) a heavy well-lined purse,
(b) a strong arm to protect our rights and to knock down aggres
sion and arrogance,
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