ging of birds; but an
arena nevertheless, an arena which offers no seats for idle
spectators, in which one must will and do, decide, strike and strike
back--and presently pass away.

And it needs but a cursory view of history to realize--though all
knowledge of history confirms the generalization--that this arena is
not a confused and aimless conflict of individuals. Looked at too
closely it may seem to be that--a formless web of individual hates and
loves; but detach oneself but a little, and the broader forms appear.
One perceives something that goes on, that is constantly working to
make order out of casualty, beauty out of confusion; justice,
kindliness, mercy out of cruelty and inconsiderate pressure. For our
present purpose it will be sufficient to speak of this force that
struggles and tends to make and do, as Good Will. More and more
evident is it, as one reviews the ages, that there is this as well as
lust, hunger, avarice, vanity and more or less intelligent fear to be
counted among the motives of mankind. This Good Will of our race,
however arising, however trivial, however subordinated to individual
ends, however comically inadequate a thing it may be in this
individual case or that, is in the aggregate an operating will. In
spite of all the confusions and thwartings of life, the halts and
resiliencies and the counter strokes of fate, it is manifest that in
the long run human life becomes broader than it was, gentler than it
was, finer and deeper. On the whole--and now-a-days almost
steadily--things _get better_. There is a secular amelioration of
life, and it is brought about by Good Will working through the efforts
of men.

Now this proposition lies quite open to dispute. There are people who
will dispute it and make a very passable case. One may deny the
amelioration, or one may deny that it is the result of any Good Will
or of anything but quite mechanical forces. The former is the commoner
argument. The appeal is usually to what has been finest in the past,
and to all that is bad and base in the present. At once the unsoundest
and the most attractive argument is to be found in the deliberate
idealization of particular ages, the thirteenth century in England,
for example, or the age of the Antonines. The former is presented with
the brightness of a missal, the latter with all the dignity of a Roman
inscription. One is asked to compare these ages so delightfully
conceived, with a patent medicine vendor