Men tell us that the age of ideals is past, and that we are now come to
the age of expediency, of polite indifference to moral standards, of
careful attention to the bearing of different policies upon our own
personal interests. Men tell us that the rights of man are a poetic
fiction, that democracy has nothing in it to command our allegiance
unless it promotes our individual comfort and prosperity, and that the
whole duty of a citizen is to vote with his party and get an office for
himself, or for some one who will look after him. Men tell us that to
succeed means to get money, because with that all other good things can
be secured. Men tell us that the one thing to do is to promote and
protect the particular trade, or industry, or corporation in which we
have a share: the laws of trade will work out that survival of the
fittest which is the only real righteousness, and if we survive that
will prove that we are fit. Men tell us that all beyond this is
phantasy, dreaming, Sunday-school politics: there is nothing worth
living for except to get on in the world; and nothing at all worth
dying for, since the age of ideals is past.

It is past indeed for those who proclaim, or whisper, or in their hearts
believe, or in their lives obey, this black gospel. And what is to
follow? An age of cruel and bitter jealousies between sections and
classes; of hatted and strife between the Haves and the Have-nots; of
futile contests between parties which have kept their names and confused
their principles, so that no man may distinguish them except as the Ins
and Outs. An age of greedy privilege and sullen poverty, of blatant
luxury and curious envy, of rising palaces and vanishing homes, of
stupid frivolity and idiotic publicomania; in which four hundred gilded
fribbles give monkey-dinners and Louis XV. revels, while four million
ungilded gossips gape at them and read about them in the newspapers. An
age when princes of finance buy protection from the representatives of a