1891.] The Coming Man. 619 
law, with occasional relapses into the older methods of adjust- 
ment, afforded object lessons in expediency which sages and 
patriarchs dwelt upon to the inexperienced. 
The history of the world includes the evolution from lower to 
higher expediency ideals. Disregard for the rights of others was 
a means by which our savage ancestors sought to prolong life 
and secure enjoyment. With less of this brutality, but nevertheless 
with plenty of suffering abounding through his thoughtlessness 
and his inability to curb his passions, the barbarian is an improve- 
ment upon the savage in this matter of expediency ideals. His 
love of ornamentation, luxuriance, and similar childish traits 
cause his actions to be merely an exaggeration of what we find 
to-day in civilized society. “ Civilized” nations are but barba- 
rians masquerading in the apparel afforded them by a develop- 
ment of the arts and sciences beyond their deserts. The ear- 
rings, the bustles, the tight lacing, the artificialities generally, the 
worship of wealth, the indifference as to how one may have 
acquired money, the abandonment-to pleasure procuring, sight- 
seeing in and avoidance of scenes of suffering and squalor, the 
social vanities and dissipations, prove that the masses, rich and 
poor alike, divested of the tinsel afforded them by the fair devo- 
tees of science and art, might as readily be Turks or Hottentots. 
Vulgar expediency ideals pervade our popular novels. The 
getting of wealth, the capturing of beauty, the utter want of a 
worthy aim in life prevail, and the success of authors who pander 
to this taste is a measure of what the purchasers of these books 
appreciate, 
The right does not change, but our ideas of right do. Hero 
worship is dying out, and principles, not men, receive more 
deference. The race has had to make this advance through bitter 
experience, constant disappointments, disillusions, the shattering 
of idols, the growth of knowledge. Religion, with its hopes and 
fears, its system of rewards and punishments, notwithstanding 
these were “other worldly,” became stimuli to good and de- 
terrants from evil. The bare fact that some would act con- 
= sistently with belief that there was a life after death, where he 

would suffer pain or pleasure according to what he had done in- 
