The problem of our own time—­the reconciliation of the interests of classes—­is as yet very ill defined.  This great movement of labor, for instance, does not know definitely what it wants, and those who are spectators do not know what their relations are to it.  The first thing to be done is for them to try to understand each other.  One class sees that the other has lighter or at least different labor, opportunities of travel, a more liberal supply of the luxuries of life, a higher enjoyment and a keener relish of the beautiful, the immaterial.  Looking only at external conditions, it concludes that all it needs to come into this better place is wealth, and so it organizes war upon the rich, and it makes demands of freedom from toil and of compensation which it is in no man’s power to give it, and which would not, if granted over and over again, lift it into that condition it desires.  It is a tale in the Gulistan, that a king placed his son with a preceptor, and said, “This is your son; educate him in the same manner as your own.”  The preceptor took pains with him for a year, but without success, whilst his own sons were completed in learning and accomplishments.  The king reproved the preceptor, and said, “You have broken your promise, and not acted faithfully.”

He replied, “O king, the education was the same, but the capacities are different.  Although silver and gold are produced from a stone, yet these metals are not to be found in every stone.  The star Canopus shines all over the world, but the scented leather comes only from Yemen.” “’Tis an absolute, and, as it were, a divine perfection,” says Montaigne, “for a man to know how loyally to enjoy his being.  We seek other conditions, by reason we do not understand the use of our own; and go out of ourselves, because we know not how there to reside.”

But nevertheless it becomes a necessity for us to understand the wishes of those who demand a change of condition, and it is necessary that they should understand the compensations as well as the limitations of every condition.  The dervish congratulated himself that although the only monument of his grave would be a brick, he should at the last day arrive at and enter the gate of Paradise before the king had got from under the heavy stones of his costly tomb.  Nothing will bring us into this desirable mutual understanding except sympathy and personal contact.  Laws will not do it; institutions of charity and relief will not do it.

We must believe, for one thing, that the graces of culture will not be thrown away if exercised among the humblest and the least cultured; it is found out that flowers are often more welcome in the squalid tenement-houses of Boston than loaves of bread.  It is difficult to say exactly how culture can extend its influence into places uncongenial and to people indifferent to it, but I will try and illustrate what I mean by an example or two.