away faith, without supplying knowledge and strength of character, is brutality and cruelty. Millions of mothers have actually believed that they could see an angel taking a child to realms of eternal happiness, where the child will wait for the mother to come.

Who would disturb a picture that has consoled millions of mothers?

The great orator, Burke, old, bitter, disappointed, lost a son to whom he was passionately devoted. He expressed the thought of millions when he heard of the boy's death. "What shadows we are, what shadows we pursue!"

When we realize what death means, life and this world do seem but shadows.

You sit with this publication in your hand, your eye follows the line, and your mind follows the train of thought that comes as you look upon this picture. Everything seems solid and substantial. You take the paper up and put it down. You can move here or there, chop down the tree outside the window, dig a hole in the ground, travel around the earth, talk to your friend at a distance with magic power over the wire—or without a wire.

You are one of the rulers of this earth, a power and a reality.

And before the earth shall have turned on its axis many more times, you and the paper and all that you have thought will disappear-and nothing will be left, except what you may have added to the knowledge of human beings.

A man should think of death, in order to stimulate himself to better work, harder work, during the short life that remains.

He should think of death fearlessly, actually believing that there is no real death; that the so-called death, making everything else seem unreal, is itself unreal and has no existence.

The body disappears. This solid earth itself will disappear in time, stars and planets that surround us will lose their shape and dissolve like the body which we inhabit.

But the power back of the stars, and the power back of the thought in your brain and that thought itself can never die. That is the only real thing.

It is interesting to believe, as some do, that death came because the first man and woman sinned. And that we have gone on dying ever since.

It is interesting also to believe that death is inevitable, because our material brain can receive only so many impressions, because the impulse of life with which we begin our careers can last only so long, because death is necessary to wipe out the writings of a lifetime that cover the slate of the mind, and to bring us back here with a clean slate to begin at a new point in human knowledge.

The thoughts of other men and of past ages concerning death are intensely interesting to the serious man, showing as they do the fact that religion itself—as men have created religion-is based upon thought of death and largely upon fear of death.

We all die, and each of us answers differently the question: "What happens after death?"

The red Indian told himself that he went off to a

happy hunting ground to kill and eat fat bears and buffaloes-and to have squaws as usual working for

him.

The Mohammedan believes that he goes to a comfortable heaven not unlike his own harem, and that he lives forever like a first-class pig in a first-class sty.

Others of higher religious development cling to a faith worthy of human beings and more nearly worthy of the great Power that rules the universe.

Whatever your belief or unbelief, you must and do believe something. Just as surely as the lungs breathe, just so surely does the mind believe.

Can you and do you analyze and understand your own beliefs? Does your thought get away from the material happenings of life occasionally and deal with absolute facts that confront us, especially with the interesting, exciting fact that where you stand today there will be nothing in a short time; that the body you inhabit will "like sheep" be laid in the grave? There will be white bones, then only dust-and where will you be? Will you be in another world, blissful for eternity, or will you be nothing at all-like a candle that goes out, or will you be back here in another body, continuing as one atom of cosmic consciousness and force humanity's task on this planet?

Whatever you believe, tabulate your beliefs, think over the one great question. Nothing is as exciting as death, nothing as interesting, nothing that promises with such absolute certainty relief from monotonynothing that ought to cause more pleasant, exciting and hopeful speculation in the mind of a man who realizes that all must be well now and hereafter in a universe so marvelously and justly governed.

Keep at Your Work, and it

Will Keep You

Keep away from the "let well enough alone" crowd. Old "Well enough" is the general of calamity, disaster and disappointment. There is no such thing as "well enough." No matter how good a thing is, work to make it better.

WE hear the foolish things very often-and so rarely hear the wise things.

Everybody has heard repeated over and over the foolish saying, "Let well enough alone."

Never be satisfied with anything. And don't teach your children to be satisfied-keep their minds free from the dull, discouraging talk about "well enough."

To be satisfied, contented, approving yourself and approving conditions, is a sign of smallness.

Men become great because they are not satisfied, because the more they get of knowledge, wealth or power the more they strive to get.

Columbus was not satisfied with the long sea voyage to India-although others had been satisfied for centuries. And because he was not satisfied Columbus discovered America.

Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, were not satisfied with the fairy stories about a flat earth and all the hosts of heaven revolving around our miserable little planet. And because they were dissatisfied they gave us our wonderful knowledge of astronomy and our glimpse into the infinite-the greatest thing that we possess.

The inhabitants of this country in 1776 were not satisfied. The Tories, friends of King George and the English Government, advised the people of the United States to let well enough alone. The Tories reminded American colonists that England would protect them, England would make them great, England would do everything.

But the colonists were not satisfied to be taxed without representation, and because they were dissatisfied this country is a nation instead of being, like Canada, a colony governed from across the sea.

Dissatisfaction is the motive power in individual life, in national life, in commerce, in politics.

Millions of years ago creatures that inhabited the ocean, only living things on this planet, got dissatisfied and crawled up on the land-hideous serpents and lizards dreadful things to look at they were at first But, luckily, they were dissatisfied.

Some of them became birds and learned to fly.

Some developed wings with hooked joints and gave us the bats and all the pterodactyl family. Others developed into mammals, and moved all over the face of the world, and eventually man appeared in his turn to begin his long career.

He appeared because the wisdom of Nature had transplanted dissatisfaction, struggle and ceaseless effort throughout all animal life.

And man from his first day began his career of dissatisfaction and struggle. Because he was dissatisfied and because he would never consent to let well enough alone, he struggled through the stone age, and the age