EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 



seval king was unable to secure. Throughout 

 the greater part of civilized society, the struggle 

 nowadays is not for the bare means of subsist- 

 ence, but for the attainment of a certain amount 

 of elegance and luxury. The contrast is great 

 between the mediaeval baron who, in time of 

 peace, had no resources but in hunting or in 

 tournaments, or in getting drunk, and the mod- 

 ern citizen with his theatre and opera, his lec- 

 tures and concerts, his novels and magazines 

 lying on the table, his household pictures and 

 bric-a-brac, his hours of work at his office or in 

 the stock-exchange, relieved by the quiet do- 

 mestic enjoyment of the evening. Accustomed 

 to all this complicated comfort, our growing 

 tendency to shrink from needlessly encounter- 

 ing with what is disagreeable is still further 

 enhanced, and this tendency produces a visible 

 effect upon our manners. Whatever savours of 

 personal contention, whatever is liable to wound 

 the feelings or disgust the senses, is peremptorily 

 proscribed in the usages of polite society. Com- 

 pared with English and American gentlemen 

 of to-day, the gentlemen of Shakespeare's plays 

 often talked like boors or ruffians. 



The diminution in the atrociousness of perse- 

 cution, then, is simply one among a hundred 

 illustrations of the change in men's tempers 

 that has been wrought by the change in men's 

 occupations which has characterized the growth 

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