"We ask ourselves this:--Though we increase endlessly the complexity of our material possessions and our desires, does the human creature who desires and possesses necessarily expand with them? And the answer which comes back to us when we deeply consider this question is: No. "There are times, when, looking carefully at this nineteenth-century civilization of ours, it appears to us much like that concretion which certain deep-sea creatures build up about themselves out of the sand and rubbish on the deep-sea floor, which after a time becomes hard and solid, and forms their grave. It appears to us that under this vast accumulation of material things, this ceaseless thirst for more and more complex material conditions of life, the human spirit and even the human body are being crushed; that the living creature is building up about itself a tomb, in which it will finally dwindle and die. "We vary endlessly the nature and shape of the garments we wear; but the bodies for which they exist do not grow more powerful or agile; we multiply endlessly the complexity of our foods; but our digestions grow no stronger to deal with them; we build our houses larger and larger, but the span of life for inhabiting them grows no longer: the Bedouin of the Desert inhabits his tent as long: our cities grow vaster and vaster, but our enjoyment of life in them becomes no more intense: our states expand, but the vitality of their component parts rises no higher: we rush from end to end of the earth with the speed of lightning, but we love it no better than men who lived in their valley and went no further than their feet would carry them: we put the whole world under contribution to supply our physical needs, but the breath of life is no sweeter to us than to our forefathers whom the products of one land could satisfy. "For the life of the human creature is but a very little cup in relation to the material goods of life; like the bell of a flower which can hold only one drop of dew, all which you pour in after that can only crush and drown it; it cannot contain it. "You know, O Tante and Oom, that in South Africa your beasts suffer sometimes from a disease, of which the leading feature is that, while the creature eats more and more, it grows thinner and thinner. By and by it dies, and when you cut it open you find fastened upon its vitals a parasite, which consumed all its strength, which was never satisfied. "Tante and Oom, it is a disease like unto this which eats deep at the heart of our civilization. It is no new disease; nations and persons have died of it before: the plains and riversides on this planet of ours are studded with the mounds beneath which are buried the remains of societies which once suffered from this disease. Some call it degeneration; some decadence; some over-civilization; some excess of luxury; some forgetfulness of God; it matters not what you call it: though the external symptoms may vary, internally it remains always the same.