hty stoicism of which the religious writer
speaks with so much pity, as the only alternative to supernatural
relations and sanctions, is a product of times of social disruption
when the high-strung individual is thrown back upon himself. To-day,
people live and think in groups, with common hopes, standards and
plans. Their conscience is a social conscience which finds its
supporting echo in the deeds and sentiments of their companions and
fellow workers. It is the supernaturalist who is an egoist at heart.
Even Mr. Wells is so dominated by this anti-social point of view that
he falsifies both psychology and fact in his tirade upon the sane
worker for human values. No one who knew the elements of modern
ethical thought {184} based, as it is, upon an evolutionary social
psychology would subscribe to the following nonsense: "The benevolent
atheist stands alone upon his own good will, without a reference,
without a standard, trusting to his own impulse to goodness, relying
upon his own moral strength. A certain immodesty, a certain
self-righteousness, hangs like a precipice above him.... He has no one
to whom he can give himself. He has no source of strength beyond his
own amiable sentiments, his conscience speaks with an unsupported
voice, and no one watches while he sleeps. He cannot pray; he can but
ejaculate. He has no real and living link with other men of good
will." Of course, one can write such things if one wishes to. But the
social reformer knows that his problems are human problems whose
solution rests upon sentiments of sympathy, enlightened and directed by
intelligence. They who seek for the advent of a better day for
humanity band together as naturally and loyally as ever did the
believers in the second coming of Christ.

The remark is frequently made that the modern world is tending to
return to the Greek view of life. If by the Greek view of life is
meant the outlook characteristic of the Greeks of the classic
period--the era of Plato, Pericles, and Sophocles,--there is much truth
in the judgment. Human values are again coming uppermost in men's
minds. This life is not a sojourn in a vale of tears, but the scene of
the attempts of socially-minded, conscious organisms to achieve a
temperate and fairly happy existence. But the centuries intervening
have not been without their effect; man's moral horizon has been both
deepened and enlarged. Since those halcyon days, man has eaten of the
tree o