keep it going. Their mental powers will never be greater than those of twelve-year-old children. The vast majority of them will never attain even this meager intelligence. Besides the forty-five millions who haven't any sense, but immense political power, there are about twenty-five millions who have a little sense. Their capacity for mental and spiritual growth is only that of thirteen- or fourteen-year-old children, and you education can add nothing to their intelligence. Next there are twenty-five millions with fair-to-middling sense. They haven't much, but what they have is good. They might possibly keep a civilization going if one were given to them out of heaven. They have considerable executive and learning ability, but little, if any, creative intelligence. Of course there is enormous personal goodness all along the line, but I am not speaking of the qualities that would admit a man into the kingdom of heaven, but of those that would keep us out of a hell on earth. Then, lastly, there are a few over four millions who have a great deal of sense. They have the thing we call "brains." You have never arranged that these four millions could make much use of them in the adventure of human government, but the brains are there. Your first duty is to put these four millions to work, helping you to govern the country, instead of trying to do it all yourself. Now, the danger is not with the ninety-odd millions who have little or no brains, but with the four millions who have. No nation was ever overthrown by its imbeciles. Nature abhors a vacuum, and for that reason weeds out the heads of fools. But you defy nature with your civilization. Evolution is a bloody business, but civilization tries to make it a pink tea. Barbarism is the only method by which man has ever organically progressed, and civilization is the only method by which he has ever organically declined. Civilization is the most dangerous enterprise upon which man ever set out. For when you take man out of the bloody, brutal, but beneficent, 3 [end]