when physics was unexplored and chemistry unknown; the law of love saturated a New Testament ignorant of economics and incapable of mental physiology. Justice and kindness we cannot remember it too often are more necessary to man than science and luxury. Any theory which goes back of these immemorial duties, to find in the instincts of brute man a justification for the selfishness and greed which still beset us, is, in fact, reactionary, not evolutionary; not an intellectual advance, it is a moral retrogression. Its teachers mistake a progress in perception of facts for an advance in actual morality; in truth, the theory-unformulated, indeed, yet dimly perceived-long preceded in practice the higher morality. Human animals lived for untold years according to the strictest meaning of the struggle-for-existence ethics. They trampled and tore each other, in blind animal rage and lust. Ignorant of systems of evolution-philosophy and political economy, they fought and died, in relentless warfare, in sheer obedience to pure individualism and the rule of laissez faire. Stern experience gradually subdued, at what a cruel cost of generations poured out like water on the ground, this savage strain of bestial living; and the ages at length brought a finer moral practice, according to the ru diments of purity, justice and kindness. The true human world was not very old when the Dhammapada and the Sermon on the Mount perfected its moral law to a point hardly yet reached by one in a thousand in halting practice.

For the sake of intellectual clearness, for the unity' which it gives to thought, the philosophy of evolution is most welcome; but it is a blunder in thought, as it would be a crime in action, to substitute a system of

ethics which applies to the whole animal world in place of the higher law for man, perceived ages back, and as yet fully obeyed by a few elect souls only. That higher doctrine, in appreciation of which humanity has ebbed and flowed inconstantly, rebukes our native individualism with its undying assertion .that men are members one of another. It animates our personal ethics at their noblest; it inspires public spirit and philanthropy; it has made human society decent and kept it sweet. If sometimes unjust to the individual, ignoring the gain to all that comes from the finest cultivation of each, its errors have been more than compensated in times when gross individualism gives rise to the most partial theories of duty. Do any to-day fear an approaching era of socialistic effort which shall extirpate personal energy, and make the individual a mere cog in a vast machine of State? They should try to appreciate the monstrous development, during the last fifty years, of wealth and the greed of wealth, and estimate, with some approach to accuracy, the debasement of the modern mind, as compared with former times, by the all-prevailing lust for ease and pleasure. What is most needed is not a crusade against socialism in the holy and infallible name of free competition, but a determined reaction against the gross individualism too abundant in our time.

Such a reaction should not be allowed to carry us to the other extreme. The socialistic movement of our time is profoundly important; it indicates the wider range and deeper hold which a true religion of humanity is destined to have. Yet blind surrender even to the best of impulses and tendencies is always unadvisable. Our first duty to all classes of society

is to try to understand their position, entering into their thoughts and feelings with a hospitality that embraces all sorts and conditions of men, -the rich and the poor, the well-to-do and the ill-to-do, the respectable "bourgeois" element and the "proletariat," if such there be. Socialism, in every form, should be held "no longer with the heat of a narrow antipathy, but with the quiet of a large sympathy." In other words, it should be rationalized. The true antidote to a most unsocial socialism is found in constant reference to the other great tendency which is sure to remain, and will certainly avenge every excess of the unbalanced apostles of a new heavens and a new earth in which private possessions may not be held and the individual is severely discouraged from asserting himself. The multitude, apotheosized by the socialist, has never yet been the home and haunt of pure reason. "Always vote with the minority," when great issues are first discussed, is, on the contrary, a comparatively safe rule. "The remnant" will believe in a higher doctrine of individualism than the selfish practice, and in a more rational socialism than sentimentalists applaud. Perpetual discrimination against cant, new and old; against hardness of heart and softness of brain; against watchwords and agitations which set one class in bitter conflict with another; and against a sour philanthropy which, in behalf of the poor, reviles the rich, and, to soothe the lot of the unsuccessful, curses the prosperous, this is one of the first of duties for the benevolent who would deserve and retain the respect of the thoughtful.

CHAPTER II.

THE PRESENT TENDENCY TO SOCIALISM.

THE inclination to embrace some form of Socialism is so strong at the present time that a brief examination of its general causes may well precede an inquiry into the compatibility of the developed system with the American Spirit. It is obvious, at once, when we consider the matter, that the extreme interest of the civilized world in social problems is not a token of degeneration. Only in a society that has been rapidly growing in wealth and benevolence would so much time and thought be spent in discussion of the means of making education and comfort universal. As the number of the well-to-do increases, the community at large has more freedom from "looking out for number one: " the milder feelings of human sympathy erect themselves when the struggle for existence loses its bitterness, and the individual career ceases, indeed, with many to be a struggle. There will, always be a sufficient number of imperfectly developed human beings to whom wealth and leisure will mean only persistent self-indulgence and constant search after a novel pleasure. But, with the large multiplication of moderate fortunes, the great body of those who have a competence that allows a measure of freedom from engrossing personal cares will naturally turn somewhat of their attention to the lot of their less fortunate brethren. It is upon hearts made

tender by delicate living, upon minds "at leisure from themselves" through the ease of their material conditions, that the "bitter cry" of poverty falls with effect. When the stronger half of mankind is still struggling with nature for an adequate subsistence, it will take little thought "how the other half lives," and will often be slightly concerned whether this half lives a properly human life.

If the contrast between wealth and poverty is! greater now than ever before, and this may well be doubted, it is not because the poor are poorer, but because the rich are richer. The greatness of the difference in these latter days not only stirs up many of the poor to envy and hatred; it also excites a few, at least, of the wealthy to thoughts on the responsibility of fortune. Much more important is the fact that it concentrates the attention of the great body of men who are neither rich nor poor upon the whole question of the distribution of wealth. The social agitation is proof of an increase of knowledge, as well as a natural result of remarkable material progress. Great sections of mankind, of whose condition the historian and the statesman have usually been ignorant, have been studied with pains as essential members of "the people." It is the whole people whose progress History endeavors to tell and Statesmanship to continue. There has been a practical limit, heretofore, at which the interest of the historian stayed. Now he explores very carefully the condition of every order of society, so far as the evidence will allow, and stops short, not because of a failure of interest, but because of a lack of material. Such material the students of society to-day are accumulating for the future historian in embarrassing abundance. No

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