The curse on Adam was, that in the sweat of his face he should eat bread. In this pronouncement of mortal mind has originated the age-old conviction that man works for a living, and that he has to make money in order to exist. When people say they are "looking for work" or "wanting a job," they really mean, not that they wish to employ their faculties or develop their talents, but are seeking to provide themselves with food, clothes, and shelter, in fact to sustain existence. While they are willing to admit that God is Life, they believe that it is necessary for them to be doing something, whether in accord with their individual tastes or not, in order that they may be in possession of an extra material quality and substance.
Religion has been content to preach the theory that God only half created man, that having been the dynamic force that brought life and intelligence into being. He then left man to maintain creation by an industry of his own. On the surface this may sound picturesquely plausible, this representation of a God who gives His child certain attributes of mind and certain toys in the form of vegetable and mineral matter in various stages of solution, and then tells him to go ahead and make what he can out of them. It sounds plausible from the human viewpoint which tries to reconcile life with the evidence of the five physical senses, but there is nothing in it of a divine or truly scientific nature, and the proof of its wholly human origin is that it does not succeed. The money markets and industries of the world today are in a state of upheaval and depression comparable with the volcanic mountains, precipices, and caverns of their own material universe. A century ago Kingsley wrote: "The nations sleep, starving on heaps of gold," and conditions are much the same now. Amidst the general desire to blame some one or some thing for all the poverty and unrest, the truth is gradually coming to light that a new and more scientific understanding of life altogether is needed to adjust conditions.
The signs of the times serve as momentous waymarks to righteous reasoning. There is, for instance, the agitation for the minimum wage, virtually a declaration that a man, apart from the kind of work he is doing, has an independent right to live. Voltaire's observation. "Ce n'est pas nécessaire," there is no necessity for it, no longer obtains among the most autocratic phases of thought. It is recognized that every human being has a right to be sustained in existence. The next question has been, How? In many instances of late years, governments have had to subsidize industries in order that a living wage might be paid. The development has followed that when the subsidy has been withdrawn, it is found that the industry cannot produce enough to meet the progressive demands of the man supposed to get a livelihood out of it. He then appeals again for the government subsidy, and thereby puts his government in the position of a parent to himself and the country at large. But a human government, being composed but of human taxpayers, and not self-existent Principle, breaks down utterly under this strain, and class wars, strikes, are the result, and things are very little better than they were before.
