554 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



growth of capacity in them for the knowledge of knowable things ; 

 and as to the growth of power in them to control the material condi- 

 tions of their existence, within such limits as are set by physical law. 

 They do not belittle the modern triumphs of the race in commerce, 

 science, art, invention, and organization. But they look upon all this 

 as an evil, delusive, vainglorious show a devil's work of tinsel and 

 veneer a bubble-blown fabric, quite empty of the substance of eternal 

 things. They insist that there has been no moral growth in human 

 nature, as a whole, to accompany the evolution of rational faculties 

 and powers ; and that, while human conduct has been gathering its 

 potent gains of prudence, ingenuity, skillfulness, and the like which 

 are qualities relative to means and ends it has gained, on the whole, 

 in tlie absolute qualities of rightness and goodness, either nothing at 

 all or less. 



This denial of moral progress, as a general fact, is made, however, 

 with some necessary qualifications. There are certain moral fruits so 

 conspicuous in the history of civilization, that no pessimist can dis- 

 pute them. That the long, slow movements in society, which have 

 been tending, with steady purpose and sure result, to establish order 

 and the reign of equal laws ; to extinguish slavery ; to break oppres- 

 sion of every form ; to mitigate the barbarities of war, and to put re- 

 straints upon it; to diminish human sulFering ; to help the unfortu- 

 nate, and to lift the debased ; to cultivate the cosmopolitan sentiment 

 and the spirit of cooperation among men ^^that the movements which 

 bear this ripening fruitage are moral movements, it is impossible to 

 deny. However the sullen pessimist may disparage them, as senti- 

 mental and superficial, the moral quality in them is unmistakable. 

 He yields, therefore, to the evidence of a moral growth of human 

 character in these amiable directions, but he contends that it is all 

 awry, and more deforming than otherwise in the result. He points to 

 the other sides of the historical exhibition of humanity, and asks us 

 what we can find to please us in the total showing. Is there less 

 hypocrisy among men, he demands to know, than there was twenty 

 centuries ago? Is there less chicanery, less duplicity, less grasping 

 greed and selfish meanness? Is there less rapacity, in fact, after all 

 the rude violence that you have subdued by softer manners is taken 

 out ? Is there less ruthlessness in the pursuit of ambitious or avari- 

 cious ends ? Has any nobler type of character been fashioned by all 

 your schools and institutions than the type of Socrates and Plato? 

 Is your democratic Yankee, with his newspaper, his caucus, his party 

 " platform," and his patent ballot-box, a more admirable patriot than 

 the grim republican of old Rome ? Is your modern mechanic, with 

 his cunning tools and his marvelous engines, a more honest workman 

 than the patient cathedral-builders of the middle ages ? Is your 

 modern merchant, with his steam carriers, his electric messengers, and 

 his bills of credit, a more scruj)ulous speculator than the camel-driv- 



