The Philosophy of Evolution. 357 



philosophy is more profitable than spiritual methods. For 

 the spiritualist's clamor about duties and high aims and 

 altruistic living, and the like, is best met and satisfied by 

 materialistic methods. It may easily be shown that the 

 enormous intercourse of nations and continents produced 

 by modern commerce has done more to promote these vir- 

 tues of toleration and charity than the apothegms of Epic- 

 tetus and the sermons of Chrysostom. A merchant-ship 

 bears more than its cargo of meats or grains or goods ; it 

 bears also the good-will and friendly regard of those Avho 

 trade with each other for gain. The armies of the Chris- 

 tian Powers do not so well defend those Powers against 

 their enemies as do the commercial relations of their sub- 

 jects one with another. And if the meddling, selfish dynas- 

 ties were abolished, and all custom-houses as well, com- 

 merce would, far more than benevolent sentiments, make 

 one peaceful confederacy of German, Russian, Frenchman, 

 Italian and Spaniard, in less than a century. 



So also the steam-engine, by facilitating travel, has done 

 more to destroy bitter distinction of race and religion than 

 devotion to ideal questions could do in aeons of time. For, 

 in the first place, idealistic discussions can touch but few, 

 being the pursuit of the learned; and in the second place, 

 personal contact with strange peoples and other religions 

 ■dissolves prejudice as the sun dissolves dew. By reason of 

 travel, the false and bitter slanders of one nation on another, 

 of ^ one church on another, have been disproved and de- 

 stroyed. 



And a similar moral benefaction has been conferred by 

 the mere multiplication of books and newspapers by the 

 material printing-press. It is not possible for vested 

 wrongs, for ancient and established ignorances, to maintain 

 their places before the merciless fire of the daily papers. 

 JN"o artillery has such precision and range as the batteries 

 ■of the Hoe press. No adjurations to do justice and love 

 mercy have or can have one-half the poAver to realize their 

 desire as these engines of attack on injustice have to compel 

 both to be done. How many rogues have they brought to 

 justice, how many crimes searched out, how many prevented, 

 how many good causes established ! How long could a Czar 

 maintain his Siberian horrors under the steady exposure of 

 a daily press, repeating its incessant denunciations day by 



