60 INTELLIGENCE AND MORALS 



racy is estimable only through the changed con 

 ception of intelligence, that forms modern science, 

 and of want, that forms modern industry. It is 

 essentially a changed psychology. The substitu 

 tion, for a priori truth and deduction, of fluent 

 doubt and inquiry meant trust in human nature 

 in the concrete ; in individual honesty, curiosity, 

 and sympathy. The substitution of moving com 

 merce for fixed custom meant a view of wants as 

 the dynamics of social progress, not as the pathol 

 ogy of private greed. The nineteenth century in 

 deed turned sour on that somewhat complacent op 

 timism in which the eighteenth century rested: the 

 ideas that the intelligent self-love of individuals 

 would conduce to social cohesion, and competition 

 among individuals usher in the kingdom of social 

 welfare. But the conception of a social harmony 

 of interests in which the achievement by each in 

 dividual of his own freedom should contribute to 

 a like perfecting of the powers of all, through a 

 fraternally organized society, is the permanent 

 contribution of the industrial movement to morals 

 even though so far it be but the contribution 

 of a problem. 



Intellectually speaking, the centuries since the 

 fourteenth are the true middle ages. They mark 

 the transitional period of mental habit, as the so- 

 called medieval period represents the petrifaction, 

 under changed outward conditions, of Greek ideas. 



