cruel and immoral system of Nature, success is to the good and kind.
Life is like the pious story in the Sunday-school library; evil is the
exception and to practice the simple virtues is to tread with sure step
the highway to riches and fame. This sort of ignorance is taught, is
proclaimed, is apparently accepted throughout the world. Literature and
the drama, representing life as it is dreamed by humanity, life as it
perhaps may be some day, create an impression which defies the plain
daily and hourly mockings of experience. Because weak and petty
offenders are often punished, the universe is pictured as sternly
enforcing the criminal codes enacted by priests or lawyers. But, while
all the world half inclines to this agreeable mendacity about life, only
in America of all civilization is the mendacity accepted as gospel, and
suspicion about it frowned upon as the heresy of cynicism. So the
Galloways prosper and are in high moral repute. Some day we shall learn
that a social system which is merely a slavish copy of Nature's
barbarous and wasteful sway of the survival of the toughest could be and
ought to be improved upon by the intelligence of the human race. Some
day we shall put Nature in its proper place as kindergarten teacher, and
drop it from godship and erect enlightened human understanding instead.
But that is a long way off. Meanwhile the Galloways will reign, and will
assure us that they won their success by the Decalogue and the Golden
Rule--and will be believed by all who seek to assure for themselves in
advance almost certain failure at material success in the arena of
action.

But they will not be believed by men of ambition, pushing resolutely for
power and wealth. So Frederick Norman knew precisely what he was facing
when Galloway's tall gaunt figure and face of the bird of prey appeared
before him. Galloway had triumphed and was triumphing not through
obedience to the Sunday sermons and the silly novels, poems, plays, and
the nonsense chattered by the obscure multitudes whom the mighty few
exploit, but through obedience to the conditions imposed by our social
system. If he raised wages a little, it was in order that he might have
excuse for raising prices a great deal. If he gave away millions, it was
for his fame, and usually to quiet the scandal over some particularly
wicked wholesale robbery. No, Galloway was not a witness to the might of
altruistic virtue as a means to triumph. Charity and all the o