_Mr. Knowlton._—"And perhaps the very discontent which you fear, Doctor, would be just what is needed to lift the masses from their present almost hopeless condition. The discontent from which they suffer now will never cease through mere material means or scientific education, or the making and enforcing of new laws." _The Professor._—"They don't know the cause of their discontent. They think that if they could have money and material comforts they would be happy, but we know very well that these things do not bring happiness. It is the insanity of the age, this pursuit of the phantom of material prosperity, it is this that breeds all the selfishness, all the greed and lust of possession. By regarding physical life as all important, humanity has got off the track, has lost the way that leads to happiness. Material happiness, physical existence, as an end, is a veritable bottomless pit—the more it is sacrificed to, the more insatiable it becomes, the more it demands. The physical life and physical needs must not be neglected, but so long as these are regarded as an end and their gratification as the _summum bonum_, just so long will ever new needs arise, new forms of poverty, new distress." _Dr. Roberts._—"Professor, you startle me! I hardly know what to say. I cannot conceive how social reform can take place on any other lines than the material." _The Professor._—"It certainly requires courage, it requires first of all philosophy as a basis, to deliberately turn around and put physical existence and material comfort in a secondary place while aiming to develop man's inner faculties. Yet I maintain that this is the only way to bring hope and happiness to humanity. It will, as you say, make them discontented with their lot, but this will be but temporary. It will open for them a door to a higher life which alone through its reaction on the collective mind of humanity will make possible and bring about that active brotherliness which will ultimately remove poverty and distress wherever found." _Mr. Knowlton._—"Isn't it a law of Nature that the problems of one plane can ultimately only be solved by rising to the next higher plane? And it seems to me that this is one of Nature's methods in evolution, to create discontent with the lower by awakening that which is higher, thus creating a craving for the higher and a consequent output of energy to attain it." _The Professor._—"And, it should be added, ultimately making the lower of greater service and a more useful instrument."