 to get a breath of air. It was a
struggle in which men became beasts, and the recital of its horrors by the few
survivors so shocked our forefathers that for a century later we find it a stock
reference in their literature as a typical illustration of the extreme
possibilities of human misery, as shocking in its moral as its physical aspect.
They could scarcely have anticipated that to us the Black Hole of Calcutta, with
its press of maddened men tearing and trampling one another in the struggle to
win a place at the breathing holes, would seem a striking type of the society of
their age. It lacked something of being a complete type, however, for in the
Calcutta Black Hole there were no tender women, no little children and old men
and women, no cripples. They were at least all men, strong to bear, who
suffered.
    When we reflect that the ancient order of which I have been speaking was
prevalent up to the end of the nineteenth century, while to us the new order
which succeeded it already seems antique, even our parents having known no
other, we cannot fail to be astounded at the suddenness with which a transition
so profound beyond all previous experience of the race must have been effected.
Some observation of the state of men's minds during the last quarter of the
nineteenth century will, however, in great measure, dissipate this astonishment.
Though general intelligence in the modern sense could not be said to exist in
any community at that time, yet, as compared with previous generations, the one
then on the stage was intelligent. The inevitable consequence of even this
comparative degree of intelligence had been a perception of the evils of
society, such as had never before been general. It is quite true that these
evils had been even worse, much worse, in previous ages. It was the increased
intelligence of the masses which made the difference, as the dawn reveals the
squalor of surroundings which in the darkness may have seemed tolerable. The
key-note of the literature of the period was one of compassion for the poor and
unfortunate, and indignant outcry against the failure of the social machinery to
ameliorate the miseries of men. It is plain from these outbursts that the moral
hideousness of the spectacle about them was, at least by flashes, fully realized
by the best of the men of that time, and that the lives of some of the more
sensitive and generous hearted of them were rendered well-nigh unendurable by
the intensity of their sympathies.
    Although the idea of the vital unity of the family of mankind, the reality
of human brotherhood, was
