father; here and
there spontaneous groups who have learned "these good tidings"
and propagated them; small scattered communities which live in the
expectation of an ideal order of things and yet, by anticipation,
realizing it from this time forth; "All[5321] were of one heart and one
soul,... for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them,
and brought the prices of the things that were sold and laid them
down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man
according as he had need," all happy in being together, in mutual love
and in feeling themselves regenerate or pure.

Here is to be found in the soul a new regulator and motor, and moreover
a powerful organ, appropriate and effective, obtained through internal
recasting and metamorphosis, like the wings with which an insect is
provided after its transformation. In every living organism, necessity,
through tentative effort and selections, thus produces the possible and
requisite organ. In India, five hundred years before our era, it was
Buddhism; in Arabia, six hundred years after our era, it was Islam;
in our western societies it is Christianity. At the present day, after
eighteen centuries on both continents, from the Ural to the Rocky
Mountains, amongst Russian moujiks and American settlers, it works as
formerly with the fishermen of Galilee and in the same way, in such a
way as to substitute for the love of self the love of others; neither
in substance nor in use has any change taken place; under its Greek,
Catholic or Protestant envelope, it is still, for four hundred millions
of human beings, the spiritual means, the great, indispensable pair
of wings by which man rises upward above himself, above his groveling
existence and his limited horizons, leading him on through patience,
hope and resignation to serenity, and beyond to temperance, purity,
goodness, and self-devotion and self-sacrifice. Always and everywhere,
for the past eighteen hundred years, as soon as these wings grow feeble
or give way, public and private morals degenerate. In Italy, during
the Renaissance, in England under the restoration, in France under the
Convention and Directory, man becomes as pagan as in the first century;
the same causes render him the same as in the times of Augustus and
Tiberius, that is to say voluptuous and cruel: he abuses himself and
victimizes others; a brutal, calculating egoism resumes its ascendancy,
depravity and sensuality spread, and