“—So, to come to the end of the matter, we have evolved a secular morality that knows no more of creeds, or threats of future punishments, or promises of future bliss than I know of Hindustanee; which lives above all men, yet touches all men; which abhors lust and cruelty and oppression; which teaches the kindness of Christ to men and of Buddha to animals, and before which Atheists and Christians, Jews and Gentiles all bow. A morality which, by the influence of the press, the telegraph, and the steam-engine, those three Apostles, will spread to the uttermost depth of China and to the last temple of that hideous black blot, India; and which, in the course of ages, will change the individual brain of man and raise it ethically far above its present advanced position. No; development has not ceased. Development has only begun. Give the world a thousand years more.”
“I do not want to be unduly optimistical. I foresee set-backs even in the world of universal thought. Give it a thousand years under this new influence, and I foresee Man, individual man, on the heights immeasurably above us.”
“And then—who knows? The world spirit that has reached so many limits, and broken through them to higher things, will reach the limit of perfection in man. If there is a field of perfection beyond, it will break those limits and flow on.”
“Then this whole business would be as senseless as a farce by M. Crebillon the younger—whom I hope you have never read.”
THE HOME AS THE HIGHEST POINT YET REACHED IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WORLD
[Sidenote: The Advance on Material Lines]
“I cannot deny the truth of what you have told me,” she said. “I can see clearly the different steps up which the world has come, but does it not seem that this new universal mind which is the latest great stage in the advance of the world has, according to you, been produced by purely material causes? It is as much as to say that the printing-press, the telegraph, and the steam-engine have created Good—that they, surely, never could do?”
“They have not; they have only circulated thought; they have only created the platform for thought to spread on. They have only created conditions favourable to collective thinking. Collective thought, infinitely more powerful and complex than individual thought, has worked purely on the material given to it by individual brains. It had no other origin or food. Had that material been essentially evil, or if the evil in it had been excessive in comparison with the good, the printing-press, the telegraph, and the steam-engine would have increased the evil in the world.