In its writings, it affects a delicacy of nerve so feminine as to be unable to listen to a tale of social sufferings; and whilst it has introduced into literature this insipid and mawkish sensibility, it has established in the arts a taste for the trivial and the horrible; in ordinary life, a sort of scarecrow fashion in dress, appearance, and deportment—the long beard, the grim and sullen countenance, the vulgar airs of a village Titan or Prometheus. In politics (where such puerilities are less innocent), Socialism has introduced the doctrine of energetic means of transition, the violence of revolutionary practices, life and material interests sacrificed en masse to what is ideal and chimerical. But what Socialism affects, above all, is a certain show and appearance of religion? This is only one of the Socialist tactics, it is true—such tactics are always disgraceful to a school when they lead to hypocrisy.
These Socialists are perpetually talking to us of Christ; but I would ask them, how it is that while they acknowledge that Christ, the innocent par excellence, prayed in His agony that “the cup might pass from Him,” adding, “Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done,” they should think it strange that mankind at large should be called upon to exercise resignation also.
No doubt, had God willed it, He might have so arranged His almighty plans that just as the individual advances towards inevitable death, the human race might have advanced towards inevitable destruction. In that case, we should have had no choice but to [p507] submit, and science, whether she liked it or not, must have admitted the sombre social dénoûment, just as she now admits the melancholy individual dénoûment.
But happily it is not so.
There is redemption for man, and for humanity.
The one is indued with an immortal soul; the other with indefinite perfectibility. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [p508]
XXIV.
PERFECTIBILITY.
That the human race is perfectible; that it progresses towards a higher and higher level; that its wealth is increasing and becoming more equalized; that its ideas are being enlarged and purified; that its errors, and the oppressions which these errors support, are disappearing; that its knowledge shines with brighter and brighter effulgence; that its morality is improving; that it is learning, by reason or by experience, in the domain of responsibility, the art of earning a constantly larger amount of recompense, and a constantly smaller amount of chastisement; that, consequently, evil is continually lessening, and good continually increasing;—these are conclusions which it is impossible to doubt when we scrutinize the nature of man and that intelligent principle, which is his essence, which was breathed into him with the breath of life, and warrants the scriptural declaration that man is made in the image of God.