eptions,
are men on the whole trying to change this situation at once indecent
and impious? This is a yet more important query. Our world has
obviously awakened to the rottenness in Denmark. But where are we
turning for our remedy? Is it to the penitence and confession, the
public-mindedness, the identification of the fate of the individual
with the fate of the whole group which is the religious impulse? Is it
to a disinterested and even-handed justice, the high legalism of the
Golden Rule, which would be the humanist's way? Or is it to the old
law of aggression and might transferring the gain thereof from the
present exploiters to the recently exploited?

It would appear to be generally true that society at this moment is
not chiefly concerned with either love or justice, renunciation
or discipline, not with the supplanting of the old order, but
with perpetuating the naturalistic principle by means of a partial
redivision of the spoils, a series of compromises, designed to make it
more tolerable for one class of its former victims. Thus in capital we
have the autocratic corporation, atoning for past outrages on humanity
by a well-advertised benevolent paternalism, calculated to make men
comfortable so that they may not struggle to be free, or by huge gifts
to education, to philanthropy, to religion. In labor we see men rising
in brute fury against both employer and society. They deny the basic
necessities of life to their fellow citizens; they bring the bludgeon
of the picket down upon the head of the scab; by means of the closed
shop they refuse the right to work to their brother craftsmen; they
level the incapable men up and the capable men down by insisting upon
uniformity of production and wage. Thus they replace the artificial
inequality of the aristocrat with the artificial equality of the
proletariat, striving to organize a new tyranny for the old. It is
significant that our society believes that this is the only way by
which it can gain its rights. That betrays our real infidelity. For
between the two, associated capital and associated labor, what is
there to choose today? By what law, depending upon what sort of power,
is each seeking its respective ends? By the unwritten law of heaven?
No. By the humane law, some objective standard of common rights and
inclusive justice? No! By the ancient law that the only effectual
appeal is to might and that opportunity therefore justifies the deed?
On the whole it is to