over and over again in human history. Families, cities, and nations rot, mainly because they cannot resist the seductions of an overwhelming material prosperity. A man says to his soul, "Take thine ease, eat, drink and be merry," and to that man scripture and science say, with equal emphasis, "Thou fool!" Every upward step in attainment of the comforts of life, of art and science, brings man into new fields not of careless enjoyment but of struggle. They swarm with new enemies and temptations before unknown. The new attainments are not unalloyed blessings, they are merely opportunities for victory or defeat. The uncertain battle is only shifted to a little higher plane. Man has increased the forces at his command only to meet stronger opposing hosts. And retreat is impossible. Man remains a spiritual being only on condition that he resolutely and vigilantly purposes to be so. To lag behind in this spiritual path is death. And the epitaph of nations and individuals is the record of their defeat in this struggle to be masters and not slaves of their material and intellectual attainments. Greece, the most intellectual of all nations of all times, died in mental senility of moral paralysis. Of Socrates's and Plato's "following after truth" nothing remained but the gossipy curiosity of a second childhood, living only to tell or to hear some new thing. And the schools of philosophy were closed because they had nothing to tell which was worth the knowing or hearing. All the wealth of the world was poured into Rome, the home of Stoic philosophy, and it was smothered, and died in rottenness under its material prosperity.