Cooperative System Amongst Lower Animals 783 



trianism, from which the Jews had drawn their best aspira- 

 tions, flung themselves into the arms of Egypto-Semitic poly- 

 theism, and so flung aside the lofty teachings of Socrates and 

 Plato. Thereby they failed to see that they were working 

 out for themselves moral, and so — alongside other and more 

 earnest nations — physical death. 



In the western world these social principles triumphed in 

 the abstract. In not a few sects of the Christian Church, 

 as well as amongst a few of the Jews, the Parsees, and the 

 stricter Buddhists, they have in part been lived up to in the 

 concrete. But 2000 years in the seething pot of human vanity, 

 ambition, tyranny, of "divine right of kings," of unhallowed 

 individuahstic "liberty" had to be passed through; rapid 

 means of intercommunication, by thought, word, and action, 

 between great nations had to be discovered and applied; an 

 extensive cheap and quick means of disseminating printed 

 knowledge had to be devised; international travel and dis- 

 course as inaugurated by Paul had slowly to be made a heri- 

 tage of many, before mankind could be educated to believe 

 in, accept, and adopt cooperative Christian socialism. 



Throughout those twenty centuries the writings of Plato, 

 Aristotle, Christ, and Paul shone forth as teachings that were 

 universally revered and studied. But man excused himself 

 from practising them by silently or openly saying, "Oh! Plato 

 and Aristotle were cultivated idolaters whose writings we can 

 admire, but need not follow," also "Christ's and Paul's teach- 

 ings were idealistic, they were intended more to teach us of 

 a future life of heavenly blessedness than of an earthly life 

 that could be lived according to their standard." So, in the 

 Alexandrian, the Byzantine, the Moorish, the Italian, tlie 

 French, the British, and the German schools and universities 

 the classics of Plato, Aristotle, and their successors were read 

 as mental gynmastics, not as highest human forms of wisdom 

 that could advance and regenerate humanity. The teachings 

 of Christ and of Paul were read and api)rovingly commented 

 on in family, in school, in church, and in lofty cathedral, if 

 the doctrines read exactly fitted the time and the mood; were 



