even in the highest races of men. We have made more progress in
intelligence than in kindness. For thousands of generations, and until
very recent times, one of the chief occupations of men has been to
plunder, bruise, and kill one another. The selfish and ugly passions
which are primordial--which have the incalculable strength of
inheritance from the time when animal consciousness began--have had but
little opportunity to grow weak from disuse. The tender and unselfish
feelings, which are a later product of evolution, have too seldom been
allowed to grow strong from exercise. And the whims and prejudices of
the primeval militant barbarism are slow in dying out from the midst of
peaceful industrial civilization. The coarser forms of cruelty are
disappearing, and the butchery of men has greatly diminished. But most
people apply to industrial pursuits a notion of antagonism derived from
ages of warfare, and seek in all manner of ways to cheat or overreach
one another. And as in more barbarous times the hero was he who had
slain his tens of thousands, so now the man who has made wealth by
overreaching his neighbours is not uncommonly spoken of in terms which
imply approval. Though gentlemen, moreover, no longer assail one another
with knives and clubs, they still inflict wounds with cruel words and
sneers. Though the free--thinker is no longer chained to a stake and
burned, people still tell lies about him, and do their best to starve
him by hurting his reputation. The virtues of forbearance and
self-control are still in a very rudimentary state, and of mutual
helpfulness there is far too little among men.

Nevertheless in all these respects some improvement has been made, along
with the diminution of warfare, and by the time warfare has not merely
ceased from the earth but has come to be the dimly remembered phantom of
a remote past, the development of the sympathetic side of human nature
will doubtless become prodigious. The manifestation of selfish and