rn Christian.' Now, survey--pause for one moment to survey--the
immeasurable effrontery of this speech. First, it replies to a proposal
having what object--our happiness or his? Why, of course, his: how are
we interested, except on a sublime principle of benevolence, in his
faith being right? Secondly, it is a reply presuming money, the most
fleshly of objects, to modify or any way control religion, _i.e._, a
spiritual concern. This in itself is already monstrous, and pretty much
the same as it would be to order a charge of bayonets against
gravitation, or against an avalanche, or against an earthquake, or
against a deluge. But, suppose it were _not_ so, what incomprehensible
reasoning justifies the notion that not we are to be paid, but that he
is to be paid for a change not concerning or affecting our happiness,
but his?

_XXIII. IS THE HUMAN RACE ON THE DOWN GRADE?_

As to individual nations, it is matter of notoriety that they are often
improgressive. As a whole, it may be true that the human race is under a
necessity of slowly advancing; and it may be a necessity, also, that the
current of the moving waters should finally absorb into its motion that
part of the waters which, left to itself, would stagnate. All this may
be true--and yet it will not follow that the human race must be moving
constantly upon an ascending line, as thus:

B
/
/
/
/
/
/
A

nor even upon such a line, with continual pauses or rests interposed, as
thus:

[Illustration]

where there is no going back, though a constant interruption to the
going forward; but a third hypothesis is possible: there may be
continual loss of ground, yet so that continually the loss is more than
compensated, and the total result, for any considerable period of
observation, may be that progress is maintained:

[Illustration]

At O, by comparison with the previous elevation at A, there is a
repeated falling back; but still upon the whole, and pursuing the
inquiry through a sufficiently large segment of time, the constant
report is--ascent.

Upon this explanation it is perfectly consistent with a general belief
in the going forward of man--that this particular age in which we live
might be stationary, or might even have gone back. It cannot, therefore,
be upo