Editorial September 5, 1925 Issue

Establishment in Principle

Ella W. Hoag

From the time in human history when men believed they were expelled from the garden of Eden,—were separated from God, good,—they have been seeking establishment. They have been looking continually for some place where they could settle; where they could gain a sense of permanency; where they could be freed from uncertainty, instability. The sense of being wanderers on the face of the earth has seemed to pursue almost relentlessly multitudes of individuals. Indeed, frequently whole races have been obsessed by the belief that they knew not where to rest.

In the endeavor to make the best of things, mankind, however, has sometimes convinced itself that such wandering spells freedom. Even to the present day this same unsettled sense has deceived myriads of people into thinking that happiness can only be found through the satisfying of an almost perpetual desire to be going somewhere. Others are still always hoping that next month, next year, circumstances may afford the opportunity to become fixed in domicile, in business, in occupation; that circumstances will so shape themselves that they may settle down and really enjoy life uninterruptedly.

All this presents a world with persons more or less discontented and unhappy, either mourning over a restless, unsettled past or looking forward to a fixed future which never comes; or, if it does seem to come for a moment, some untoward happening again unsettles things and the old plaint goes on. There are, perhaps, few questions which present themselves to every one with more insistency than this question of place: Where shall I live? Where shall I work? Where shall I become so definitely and permanently established that all this sense of insecurity, of being unsettled, may be done away with?

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Pure Affection
September 5, 1925
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