that contrast
that we find ourselves in the presence of a phenomenon for which
history offers no precedent, however far back we may cast our eye. One
might almost be excused who should exclaim, 'Here, surely, is
something like a miracle!' Nevertheless, when we give over idle
wonder, and begin to examine the seeming prodigy critically, we find
it no prodigy at all, much less a miracle. It is not necessary to
suppose a moral new birth of humanity, or a wholesale destruction of
the wicked and survival of the good, to account for the fact before
us. It finds its simple and obvious explanation in the reaction of a
changed environment upon human nature. It means merely that a form of
society which was founded on the pseudo self-interest of selfishness,
and appealed solely to the anti-social and brutal side of human
nature, has been replaced by institutions based on the true
self-interest of a rational unselfishness, and appealing to the social
and generous instincts of men.

"My friends, if you would see men again the beasts of prey they seemed
in the nineteenth century, all you have to do is to restore the old
social and industrial system, which taught them to view their natural
prey in their fellow-men, and find their gain in the loss of others.
No doubt it seems to you that no necessity, however dire, would have
tempted you to subsist on what superior skill or strength enabled you
to wrest from others equally needy. But suppose it were not merely
your own life that you were responsible for. I know well that there
must have been many a man among our ancestors who, if it had been
merely a question of his own life, would sooner have given it up than
nourished it by bread snatched from others. But this he was not
permitted to do. He had dear lives dependent on him. Men loved women
in those days, as now. God knows how they dared be fathers, but they
had babies as sweet, no doubt, to them as ours to us, whom they must
feed, clothe, educate. The gentlest creatures are fierce when they
have young to provide for, and in that wolfish society the struggle
for bread borrowed a peculiar desperation from the tenderest
sentiments. For the sake of those dependent on him, a man might not
choose, but must plunge into the foul fight,--cheat, overreach,
supplant, defraud, buy below worth and sell above, break down the
business by which his neighbor fed his young ones, tempt men to buy
what they ought not and to sell what they should not, gri