TO THE POOR. 263 



better, you must first alter and improve its constituent 

 units; and this, as all the laws of life and all the ex- 

 perience of history teach, is a thing not to be done easily 

 or speedily. Men's natures, regarding them in the 

 aggregate, cannot be quickly changed. One generation 

 cannot be raised much above the one immediately pre- 

 ceding it, because it inherits the same general nature, 

 the same sentiments, ideas, prejudices, and imperfections 

 as its predecessor. Even were society ripe and ready 

 for a new social or religious departure, as at the rise of 

 the Christian or Mohammedan religions, the Reformation, 

 or the French Revolution, yet such revolutions, slowly 

 prepared for and slowly accomplished as they really are, 

 are yet never brought about by intellectual conviction 

 of the evils of the existing system of things. There is 

 further required a widespread discontent and a general 

 enthusiasm, aroused and sustained by one or a few 

 leading spirits, and men now lack alike the motive and 

 guiding force. But even if there were a sufficient amount 

 of diffused discontent and social misery everywhere 

 prevalent, to be fanned by the socialist propaganda into 

 a fierce destroying flame all over Europe, from Russia 

 with her nihilists, to Spain with her socialists ; and even 

 if, in the general conflagration, the existing social order 

 should be dissolved, still all this would not in the 

 sequel deeply or essentially alter the social structure of 

 any modern civilized community. It could only produce 

 temporary change or temporary chaos; because, after 

 the wave of fanaticism and destroying fury had spent 

 its strength, supposing only men had not in the interim 

 annihilated each other, they would return to their old 

 average, normal, human natures ; the governmental and 

 other regulative agencies, and an industrial system 

 essentially the same in character as the old, would re- 



