whole of modern history consists of the slow
process by which they have since been wearing away. We are entering
into an order of things in which justice will again be the primary
virtue; grounded as before on equal, but now also on sympathetic
association; having its root no longer in the instinct of equals for
self-protection, but in a cultivated sympathy between them; and no
one being now left out, but an equal measure being extended to all.
It is no novelty that mankind do not distinctly foresee their own
changes, and that their sentiments are adapted to past, not to coming
ages. To see the futurity of the species has always been the
privilege of the intellectual elite, or of those who have learnt from
them; to have the feelings of that futurity has been the distinction,
and usually the martyrdom, of a still rarer elite. Institutions,
books, education, society, all go on training human beings for the
old, long after the new has come; much more when it is only coming.
But the true virtue of human beings is fitness to live together as
equals; claiming nothing for themselves but what they as freely
concede to every one else; regarding command of any kind as an
exceptional necessity, and in all cases a temporary one; and
preferring, whenever possible, the society of those with whom leading
and following can be alternate and reciprocal. To these virtues,
nothing in life as at present constituted gives cultivation by
exercise. The family is a school of despotism, in which the virtues
of despotism, but also its vices, are largely nourished. Citizenship,
in free countries, is partly a school of society in equality; but
citizenship fills only a small place in modern life, and does not
come near the daily habits or inmost sentiments. The family, justly
constituted, would be the real school of the virtues of freedom. It
is sure to be a sufficient one of everything else. It will always be
a school of obedience for the children, of command for the parents.
What is needed is, that it should be a school of sympathy in
equality, of living together in love, without power on one side or
obedience on the other. This it ought to be between the parents. It
would then be an exercise of those virtues which each requires to fit
them for all other association, and a model to the children of the
feelings and conduct which their temporary training by means of
obedience is designed to render habitual, and therefore natural, to
them. The moral