Men differ in their inborn mental powers, in their intelligence and talent, in beauty, in health, in honours and career, in family and friends. The contrasts which are created in every one of these respects are far greater and for the ill-fated far more cruel than those of the tax-payers. The beautiful face which is a passport through life and the discouraging homeliness, the perfect body which allows vigorous work and the weak organism of the invalid unfit for the struggle of life, the genius in science or art or statesmanship and the hopelessly trivial mind, the youth in a harmonious, beautiful family life and the childhood in an atmosphere of discord, the home full of love from wife and children and the house childless and chilly, the honours of the community and the disappointment of social bankruptcy—they are the great premiums and the great punishments, which are whirled by fate into the crowd of mankind. Even here most of it is relative. We rejoice in four-score years, but if we knew that others were allowed a thousand years of life, we should be despondent that hardly a short century is dealt out to us. We are happy in the respect of our social community simply because we do not desire the honours of the czar or of the mikado. But if we began to measure our fate by that of others, how could we ever be satisfied? Women might envy men and men might envy women, the poet might wish to be the champion of sport and the sportsman might be unhappy because he is not a poet. No one of us can have the knowledge and the technical powers which the child of the thirtieth century will enjoy. As soon as we begin to compare and do not find the centre of our life in ourselves, we are condemned.