Read again the history of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. How admirable were the efforts of the "good emperors," and how futile! Consider again the oft-repeated story of the way the humanitarianism of Rousseau ushered in the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.
With such gloomy forebodings do the over-civilized thinkers and writers try to discourage the half-civilized and half-educated workers, who are trying to make things better. How shall we answer the prophets of ill?
Not by denying the existence of the evils they see, or the possibility of the calamities which they fear. What we object to is the mental attitude toward the facts that are discovered. The spoiled child, when it discovers something not to its liking, exaggerates the evil, and indulges its ill-temper.
The well-trained man faces the evil, studies it, measures it, and then sets to work. He is well aware that nothing human is perfect, and that to accomplish one thing is only to reveal another thing which needs to be done. There must be perpetual readjustment, and reconsideration. What was done yesterday must be done over again to-day in a somewhat different way. But all this does not prove the futility of effort. It only proves that the effort must be unceasing, and that it must be more and more wisely directed.
He compares, for example, Christianity as an ideal with Christianity as an actual achievement. He places in parallel columns the maxims of Jesus, and the policies of Christian nations and the actual state of Christian churches. The discrepancy is obvious enough. But it does not prove that Christianity is a failure; it only proves that its work is unfinished.
A political party may adopt a platform filled with excellent proposals which if thoroughly carried out would bring in the millennium. But it is too much to expect that it would all be accomplished in four years. At the end of that period we should not be surprised if the reformers should ask for a further extension of time.
The spoiled children of civilization eliminate from their problem the one element which is constant and significant--human effort. They forget that from the beginning human life has been a tremendous struggle against great odds. Nothing has come without labor, no advance has been without daring leadership. New fortunes have always had their hazards.