I do not think human nature will have to be transformed to get these things. It is a question of vision. We need to see. When once we understand what we want we will organize and get it.
THE HUMANITIES VERSUS THE IDEALS
The humanities are the ordinary universal feelings, such as family affection, aversion to cruelty, love of justice and of liberty.
The ideals are the so-called big enthusiasms, as religion, patriotism, reform, and the like.
The humanities are sometimes called the red passions; the ideals the white passions.
The great institutions of the race have been formed and kept alive by the white passions. These include churches, political parties, nations, and various societies and associations, secret and public.
The progress of mankind has been made through institutions, embodying ideals, which we may call the centrifugal force. The humanities have always pulled against this, and may be termed the centripetal force.
Thus, although great ideals present themselves to men as beneficial, yet in the carrying out of them men often become cruel, unjust, and tyrannical. So the greatest crimes of earth are committed under the influence of movements designed to do the greatest good.
Under the church we have seen persecution, a ruthless disregard of human feeling, families torn asunder, opinion coerced, bodies tortured.
The humanities in time destroyed the baleful power of the religious ideal, its dreams of dominance and its inhuman fanaticism. Plain pity and sympathy battered down the monstrous structure of iron idealism. The horrors of the medieval inquisition and the dark intolerance of puritanism had to yield to the humanities.