8o Social Environment 



of history that materialistic science has set 

 forth. It is true that tribal society grew into 

 national organization through the clash of 

 conquest and the unutterable brutality of caste, 

 but this should be recorded as a failure of 

 mankind to foresee and plan rather than as 

 the cause of progress. And greater than the 

 fact of conquest is the spiritual influence which 

 through European history brought hope to the 

 serf and pity to the oppressor, and thus soft- 

 ened class lines so that the modern world 

 became possible. History misleads us by de- 

 scribing the storms but forgetting the days of 

 quiet sunshine and shower that matured the 

 harvest. We see the pageantry and pride of the 

 past, but we overlook the gentle power that 

 brought to more than one mail-clad knight a 

 vision of the lowly Christ and caused him to seek 

 the Holy Grail among his despised serfs. And, 

 paralleling the experience of the early world, 

 the modern age has been thrust by the Indus- 

 trial Revolution into a bewildering, rich heri- 

 tage for which it is only half prepared, and 

 again headlong greed has slipped from control 

 to trample the masses underfoot. But let us 

 not doubt that the harmony of world socializa- 

 tion will yet be achieved ! We cannot balk the 



