nts, and their traditions, and not only will a new
variety of human being emerge, but the mixing of opposites in idea and
temperament will quicken self-consciousness and heighten mental power
and speed up its activity. The opportunity of the blond beasts of prey
has lain in the torpor and inactivity and ignorance of the multitude.
But I find no torpor in California. And where there is no one that will
allow himself to be preyed upon, even blond beasts take up the new
enterprise of co-operation among equals. This is an inevitable result
of the contact of many varieties of unlikes, the unification, not of
equals, but of supplementary equivalents. When such psychic conditions
have prevailed for a century or more, it is inconceivable that trade
can continue to consist of competition between individuals and the
permission of the successful to amass and hoard fortunes. Either
production and distribution will become communal, or the community will
tax large fortunes into the state and national treasury.

But there are three other distinguishing characteristics of the
twentieth century which make for the replacing of civilization by
humanization, and for the transition of trade from the harshness of the
law into the abounding grace of the gospel.

XXII. THE POWER TO TRANSMIT HUMAN LIFE, ITS SOCIAL CONTROL

First, the limiting of population by the will of human individuals. In
the beginning men stole fire from the gods; but life they allowed the
Almighty to continue to dispense at his own inscrutable pleasure, while
they remained his pleased but puzzled agents in its transmission. It
was only in the eighties of the last century, after a hundred thousand
years, that man hit upon the idea and the practice of controlling life
as he had controlled fire. From the beginning, he had planted the
fire-seed according to his own purpose and social need. And now at last
he has come to look upon the life-seed as not simply in his keeping as
a trust for another, but as his own property to control in the interest
of his own future. Can human audacity reach higher? Can the assumption
of divine and creative responsibility by man out-strip this latest act
of self-government? From beast to citizen, did we say? But have we not
found the process during the last four hundred years to be from
citizenship to godship, from creature to creator? It was one of your
American reformers who entitled a book _Man as Social Creator_. From
beast to citi