The New Morality 



as a privilege. I The general lines, I say, of 

 morality would be secure, and much more secure 

 than they now are, if we could only bring the 

 children up in an educational and practical at- 

 mosphere of that solidarity which as a matter of 

 fact is demanded to-day by socialism and the 

 economic movement generally. 



And on this ground-work, as I have hinted, 

 Personal Affection and Sympathy would build 

 a superstructure of their own ; they would outline 

 a society as much more beautiful, powerful and 

 closely knit than the present one founded on the 

 Cash-nexus, as, say, the Athenian society of the 

 time of Pericles was superior to that of the 

 Lapithae who first bitted and bridled the horse. 



While the general Life, equal, pervasive, and 

 in a sense undifferentiated, is a great fact which 

 has to be acknowledged ; so this personal Love 

 and Affection, choosing, selecting, and giving 

 outline and form to that life, is equally a fact, 

 equally undeniable, equally sacred — and one 

 which has to be taken in conjunction with the 

 other. 



I say equally sacred : because there has been 

 a tendency (no doubt due to certain causes) to 

 look upon personal affection, in its various phases 

 from slight inclinations of sympathy to the stronger 

 compulsions of passion, as something rather dubi- 



* Many Japanese committed suicide on account of not being 

 allowed to join in the Russian War. See also Lafcadio Hearn's 

 description of the habitual dignity and courtesy of the youth of 

 Japan, — Life and Letters, vol. i, pp. 12, 113. 



253 



