as,
at least by flashes, fully realized by the best of the men of that
time, and that the lives of some of the more sensitive and generous
hearted of them were rendered well nigh unendurable by the intensity of
their sympathies.

"Although the idea of the vital unity of the family of mankind, the
reality of human brotherhood, was very far from being apprehended by
them as the moral axiom it seems to us, yet it is a mistake to suppose
that there was no feeling at all corresponding to it. I could read you
passages of great beauty from some of their writers which show that the
conception was clearly attained by a few, and no doubt vaguely by many
more. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that the nineteenth century
was in name Christian, and the fact that the entire commercial and
industrial frame of society was the embodiment of the anti-Christian
spirit must have had some weight, though I admit it was strangely
little, with the nominal followers of Jesus Christ.

"When we inquire why it did not have more, why, in general, long after
a vast majority of men had agreed as to the crying abuses of the
existing social arrangement, they still tolerated it, or contented
themselves with talking of petty reforms in it, we come upon an
extraordinary fact. It was the sincere belief of even the best of men
at that epoch that the only stable elements in human nature, on which a
social system could be safely founded, were its worst propensities.
They had been taught and believed that greed and self-seeking were all
that held mankind together, and that all human associations would fall
to pieces if anything were done to blunt the edge of these motives or
curb their operation. In a word, they believed--even those who longed
to believe otherwise--the exact reverse of what seems to us
self-evident; they believed, that is, that the anti-social qualities of
men, and not their social qualities, were what furnished the cohesive
force of society. It seemed reasonable to them that men lived together
solely for the purpose of overreaching and oppressing one another, and
of being overreached and oppressed, and that while a society that gave
full scope to these propensities could stand, there would be little
chance for one based on the idea of cooperation for the benefit of all.
It seems absurd to expect any one to believe that convictions like
these were ever seriously entertained by men; but that they were not
only entertained by our great-grand