 very far from being apprehended by them as the moral
axiom it seems to us, yet it is a mistake to suppose that there was no feeling
at all corresponding to it. I could read you passages of great beauty from some
of their writers which show that the conception was clearly attained by a few,
and no doubt vaguely by many more. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that the
nineteenth century was in name Christian, and the fact that the entire
commercial and industrial frame of society was the embodiment of the
anti-Christian spirit must have had some weight, though I admit it was strangely
little, with the nominal followers of Jesus Christ.
    When we inquire why it did not have more, why, in general, long after a vast
majority of men had agreed as to the crying abuses of the existing social
arrangement, they still tolerated it, or contented themselves with talking of
petty reforms in it, we come upon an extraordinary fact. It was the sincere
belief of even the best of men at that epoch that the only stable elements in
human nature, on which a social system could be safely founded, were its worst
propensities. They had been taught and believed that greed and self-seeking were
all that held mankind together, and that all human associations would fall to
pieces if anything were done to blunt the edge of these motives or curb their
operation. In a word, they believed - even those who longed to believe otherwise
- the exact reverse of what seems to us self-evident; they believed, that is,
that the anti-social qualities of men, and not their social qualities, were what
furnished the cohesive force of society. It seemed reasonable to them that men
lived together solely for the purpose of overreaching and oppressing one
another, and of being overreaching and oppressed, and that while a society that
gave full scope to these propensities could stand, there would be little chance
for one based on the idea of coöperation for the benefit of all. It seems absurd
to expect any one to believe that convictions like these were ever seriously
entertained by men; but that they were not only entertained by our
great-grandfathers, but were responsible for the long delay in doing away with
the ancient order, after a conviction of its intolerable abuses had become
general, is as well established as any fact in history can be. Just here you
will find the explanation of the profound pessimism of the literature of the
last quarter of the nineteenth century, the note of melancholy in its poetry,
and the cynicism of its humor.
    Feeling that the condition of the race
