I have often of late wished that some one wise enough in knowledge of things Latin would write the history and the inner development of a young Roman Progressive in the early stages of the Roman decadence. What feeling of growth and gain would be there to record! What assurance of outdistancing his crude forefathers! What sense of widening horizons, and of sudden freedom in laying aside old scruples! The point of time chosen should be that at which the word _Salus_, salvation, began to be interpreted as physical salvation, and the persistent concern with bodily life marked the beginnings of decay. The one saving grace of our time perhaps lies in its generous philanthropic and social effort. We are more sensitive to our neighbor’s needs than we used to be, but we have a most limited conception of our neighbor’s needs, and, with all our quickened sympathy, we do our neighbor injustice in failing to recognize his deepest necessity. Grown so pitiful of hunger, why do we fail to realize the spiritual starvation of these years? We devise all sorts of machinery for ameliorating his physical condition, for getting him more pay, securing him better dramatic spectacles; we teach him that his house should be plumbed, his children’s food sterilized; but for him and for his benefactors wider vision would mean great gain. We are feeding the lesser hunger; that is well, but it is not enough; we are arming him to meet the lesser foe. Does he, too, feel a sense of inner loss and lack in it all? All that America has to offer may be a poor exchange for the mystic faith brought with him from the fatherland. At least we should beware lest harm come to our neighbor through our manifold preoccupations with the needs of the body, through the contagion of an ideal of material comfort as the greatest earthly good; for even perfect physical well-being has its limitations as a solution of the problem of existence. The destiny of man--once terror and splendor attended the word; it was once a spiritual mystery, connoting endless endeavor, endless opportunity. Now the highest dream of high destiny is the porcelain bathtub, or some safe shelter behind a wire screen, beyond the attack of germs.