Excerpt from Poverty

The Italians have a proverb, The better is the enemy of the good. It is our duty, while there is a better capable of attain ment, not to rest satisfied with the good, and having attained the better, to press forward towards the best, although it may be for the time unattainable. To lessen poverty, to get rid of much of the misery that exists, men must have a more practical training, be better qualified for earning their daily bread, and must recognize the necessity for a higher intelligence, to get a living in an advanced and complicated social system like our own in 1884. It is of the greatest importance for the national pro gress, that it be impressed upon each one as a duty to strive after improvement, to have an ideal before us which we strive earnestly to overtake and to understand that although we may not overtake it, yet our struggle to overtake it is in itself of inestimable advantage to our intellectual and moral character.

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