an. But Bill
Walker is not, like Valjean, romantically changed from a demon into an
angel. There are millions of Bill Walkers in all classes of society
to-day; and the point which I, as a professor of natural psychology,
desire to demonstrate, is that Bill, without any change in his
character whatsoever, will react one way to one sort of treatment and
another way to another.

In proof I might point to the sensational object lesson provided by our
commercial millionaires to-day. They begin as brigands: merciless,
unscrupulous, dealing out ruin and death and slavery to their
competitors and employees, and facing desperately the worst that their
competitors can do to them. The history of the English factories, the
American trusts, the exploitation of African gold, diamonds, ivory and
rubber, outdoes in villainy the worst that has ever been imagined of
the buccaneers of the Spanish Main. Captain Kidd would have marooned a
modern Trust magnate for conduct unworthy of a gentleman of fortune.
The law every day seizes on unsuccessful scoundrels of this type and
punishes them with a cruelty worse than their own, with the result that
they come out of the torture house more dangerous than they went in,
and renew their evil doing (nobody will employ them at anything else)
until they are again seized, again tormented, and again let loose, with
the same result.

But the successful scoundrel is dealt with very differently, and very
Christianly. He is not only forgiven: he is idolized, respected, made
much of, all but worshipped. Society returns him good for evil in the
most extravagant overmeasure. And with what result? He begins to
idolize himself, to respect himself, to live up to the treatment he
receives. He preaches sermons; he writes books of the most edifying
advice to young men, and actually persuades himself that he got on by
taking his own advice; he endows educational institutions; he supports
charities; he dies finally in the odor of sanctity, leaving a will
which is a monument of public spirit and bounty. And all this without
any change in his character. The spots of the leopard and the stripes
of the tiger are as brilliant as ever; but the conduct of the world
towards him has changed; and his conduct has changed accordingly. You
have only to reverse your attitude towards him--to lay hands on his
property, revile him, assault him, and he will be a brigand again in a
moment, as ready to crush you as you are to crush him,