"There are principles which have led people to lose all that was good in them. The roads to unattainable ideals and impossible perfections are strewn with countless corpses of lost victims. People lose their health, peace, welfare and all, trying to do for others what, in so many cases, cannot be done at all. All this is wrong. It is wrong to add to the store of the world's misery, though you are attempting to alleviate it. No, no one should work for philanthropy unless he gets a good salary for it. As to asceticism, it has never been a profitable business. Contrary to other religions, Judaism rather stood for the joy of life than the arrest of it. "I have seen much of the problem of immoral principles among our radicals of the Ghetto, many of whom have ruined and wrecked their lives because of the ideas they advocated. If the dream of social justice would be realized to-morrow, many of them would not have the strength to enjoy it. Others are so weak that they would not be able to stand the shock. There were those who had others dependent upon them, and who neglected everything and everybody, particularly themselves, for the sake of 'the cause,' and who finally became utterly useless. They added to the poverty of the East Side in their efforts to abolish it, while if they had taken good care of themselves they would, in the long run, have done vastly more for their ideals. Among my plots for stories that I have never written, is the case of a man who became a tramp, because he was too anxious to abolish the system that produces tramps. One of the finest poets of the East Side is now a mental and physical wreck, because he lived up to his highest principles--and neglected himself. "Enthusiasts very often lose the sense of justice, become oblivious to everything--except the invisible. I know too well the nobility of the motives; I know that there are more of them on the East Side than any other place in America; I know, also, that a cause requires such sacrifices, yet, what are the results? Very often, failure. It has been observed that a man, who in the midst of a savage or barbarous community, in defiance of current social or religious customs, should attempt to live the ideal life of a perfect civilization, would doubtless be quickly eliminated from such a society by violent and tragical means, and thus effectively be stopped from influencing those around him to better ways of living. A great deal of our enforced civilization of savage races has been fatal in its effects upon the health and happiness of the vast majority, while it has failed to elevate the average morals of the survivors. Authorities say that this is likely to be the result, whenever conventional education is forced upon a people in advance of their functional development. The Hawaiian Islanders are pointed out as an impressive example, and the missionaries, as well as the radicals of the Ghetto, trying to convert their orthodox brethren, ought to remember these things.