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Page 44
As for the general interest in social amelioration, that is the worst
sign of all. "Coming events cast their shadows before," and we may see
the shadow of the coming Revolution. Is there any symptom of decadence
more sure than when the moral temperature suddenly rises above normal?
Watch the clinical charts of Empire. In the period of national vigor the
blood is cool. But the time arrives when the period of growth has
passed. Then a boding sense comes on. The huge frame of the patient is
feverish. The social conscience is sensitive. All sorts of soft-hearted
proposals for helping the masses are proposed. The world rulers become
too tenderhearted for their business. Then comes the end.
Read again the history of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. How
admirable were the efforts of the "good emperors," and how futile!
Consider again the oft-repeated story of the way the humanitarianism of
Rousseau ushered in the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.
With such gloomy forebodings do the over-civilized thinkers and writers
try to discourage the half-civilized and half-educated workers, who are
trying to make things better. How shall we answer the prophets of ill?
Not by denying the existence of the evils they see, or the possibility
of the calamities which they fear. What we object to is the mental
attitude toward the facts that are discovered. The spoiled child, when
it discovers something not to its liking, exaggerates the evil, and
indulges its ill-temper.
The well-trained man faces the evil, studies it, measures it, and then
sets to work. He is well aware that nothing human is perfect, and that
to accomplish one thing is only to reveal another thing which needs to
be done. There must be perpetual readjustment, and reconsideration. What
was done yesterday must be done over again to-day in a somewhat
different way. But all this does not prove the futility of effort. It
only proves that the effort must be unceasing, and that it must be more
and more wisely directed.
He compares, for example, Christianity as an ideal with Christianity as
an actual achievement. He places in parallel columns the maxims of
Jesus, and the policies of Christian nations and the actual state of
Christian churches. The discrepancy is obvious enough. But it does not
prove that Christianity is a failure; it only proves that its work is
unfinished.
A political party may adopt a platform filled with excellent proposals
which if thoroughly carried out would bring in the millennium. But it is
too much to expect that it would all be accomplished in four years. At
the end of that period we should not be surprised if the reformers
should ask for a further extension of time.
The spoiled children of civilization eliminate from their problem the
one element which is constant and significant--human effort. They forget
that from the beginning human life has been a tremendous struggle
against great odds. Nothing has come without labor, no advance has been
without daring leadership. New fortunes have always had their hazards.
Forgetting all this, and accepting whatever comforts may have come to
them as their right, they are depressed and discouraged by their vision
of the future with its dangers and its difficulties. They habitually
talk of the civilized world as on the brink of some great catastrophe
which it is impossible to avoid. This gloomy foreboding is looked upon
as an indication of wisdom.
It should be dismissed, I think, as an indication of childish unreason,
unworthy of any one who faces realities. It is still true that "the
morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the
day is the evil thereof."
The notion that coming events cast shadows before is a superstition. How
can they? A shadow must be the shadow of something. The only events that
can cast a shadow are those which have already taken place. Behind them
is the light of experience, shining upon actualities which intercept its
rays.
The shadows which affright us are of our own making. They are
projections into the future of our own experiences. They are sharply
denned silhouettes, rather than vague omens. When we look at them
closely we can recognize familiar features. We are dealing with cause
and effect. What is done foreshadows what remains to be done. Every act
implies some further acts as its results. When a principle is recognized
its practical applications must follow. When men begin to reason from
new premises they are bound to come to new conclusions.
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