The Goal of Aspiring Morality i95 



is, and has been, reposed with advantage, in aspirations less 

 assured than this. We can see not only that the prevaiHng 

 effects of the action of associated humanity under the system 

 of conduct which we call conscious altruism is rapidly up- 

 ward, but that it may indefinitely continue upward. We see 

 the individual life not only extended in duration and in- 

 creased in security against the hostile environment, but we 

 can be assured that this extension, and this increase, can 

 continue; and will spread, moreover, to benefit more and 

 more of the world's populations. In mere enlargement of 

 scope of what already exists we have, in our perfect com- 

 prehension, a feasible and worthy development of earthly 

 civilization; in the raising of all mankind out of the afflicting 

 power of hunger and exposure, persecution and war, tyranny 

 and injustice, ignorance and bigotry. These things are 

 today practically in process of subjugation. They are no 

 longer terrors for those who are established in the comforta- 

 ble protection of the power of a free civilized nation. A 

 few years ago that was not so. It is now only partially so, 

 for those preferred, and in a limited degree. In a few 

 years more it will arrive surely (except for the possibility of 

 catastrophe which is always over us, but which the life of 

 the world has survived for all the ages) that millions will 

 enjoy this immunity which has now been achieved for thou- 

 sands. Injury by cold and storm and famine and flood and 

 other manifestations of nature's hostility too, is almost 

 eliminated in the protected civilized life. The proportion of 

 that loss is so small among old people and children, and those 

 in care of altruistic civilization, — housed in dry and warm 

 homes and fed by the aid of railroads — that they live and 



