760 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



the indignation of those who believe them than are those which 

 rest upon truth. 



The spirit of democracy also lies at the basis of much of the 

 unrest of our age. By democracy is here meant " the natural wish 

 of a people to have a hand, if need be a controlling hand, in the 

 management of their own affairs " ; an attitude of the public mind 

 which makes " itself generally disagreeable by asking the Powers 

 that Be at the most inconvenient moment whether they are the 

 powers that ought to be." " Formerly the immense majority of 

 men our brothers knew only their sufferings, their wants and 

 their desires. They are beginning now to know their opportunity 

 and their power." A people looking upon itself as the source of 

 authority, conscious of its power and confident in its own wisdom, 

 is a fertile soil for the seed of social uneasiness to grow in. Such 

 a spirit is especially characteristic of the United States, where 

 territorial expansion and marvelous social and material develop- 

 ment have favored the feeling of national self-sufficiency. " Men 

 are even more eager than in Europe to hasten to the ends they 

 desire, even more impatient of the delays which a reliance on 

 natural forces involves, even more sensitive to the wretchedness of 

 their fellows and to the mischiefs which vice and ignorance breed." 



A fundamental change in the attitude of men's minds towards 

 life is another primary fact in the restlessness of modern times. 

 For centuries a spirit of other-worldliness gave character to all 

 mental activity, and controlled the conduct of society. 



Humanity . . . passed . . . intent on the terrors of sin, death, and judgment, 

 along the highways of the world, and scarcely knew that they were sight- 

 worthy, or that life is a blessing. Beauty is a snare, pleasure a sin, the world 

 a fleeting show, man fallen and lost, death the only certainty, . . . abstinence 

 and mortification the only safe rules of life. 



To men living in the gloomy presence of such thoughts, the 

 conditions of life here were of little importance. " For the poor 

 there was no physician ; for the dying, the monk and his crucifix. 

 The aim was to smooth the sufferer's passage to the next world, 

 not to save him for this." In marked contrast is the attitude of 

 the thinker of today. How to render existence in this world more 

 tolerable, how to realize an ideal social state, is the aim of the 



