I forbear to adduce as a proof of progress that the Inquisition no longer rules and nowhere burns its victims. For actually there is no greater toleration of those who hold other opinions than there was formerly. Religious toleration is explained by the fact that the people's consciousness no longer attaches such enormous importance to religion as in past centuries. But political, æsthetic and philosophical antagonisms arouse as much bloodthirsty rage to-day as did formerly heresy in religion, and opponents would unhesitatingly apply torture and the stake to one another if the great mass of the people would develop sufficiently enthusiastic zeal for their views to allow their raging fanaticism to have recourse to violence, as it once permitted domineering religious orthodoxy to do.
Other aspects of civilization, not so essential, are hardly less encouraging than the developments on which I have hitherto dwelt. Drunkenness, formerly an almost universal vice, is on the decrease. Among the educated classes it is only met with exceptionally, and is recognized as a morbid aberration; among the lower classes it continually grows less. The statistics of the savings banks show an ever-growing determination to save. The masses who used to rejoice in dirt now manifest an increasingly vigorous desire for a cleanliness that demands soap and baths. This indicates control of impulse, of the inclination for alcoholic drinks and the tendency to squander, and an increase of self-respect which recognizes dirt to be humiliating. These are activities of the moral feelings, their material activities.
If, in spite of these material proofs of the progress of Morality in all social functions and in many individual habits, serious-minded men still maintain that it stands still or even that it shows retrogression compared with former times, this view, which is undoubtedly a mistaken one, is due to wrong interpretation of facts.
Bouillier's remark that "social progress instead of increasing individual Morality weakens it, because society, in proportion as it is better organized, saves the individual the trouble of a number of virtuous actions" has a perfectly correct point of departure. Many tasks of neighbourly kindness and humane joint responsibility which used to be left to the inclination, the free choice and the noble zeal of individuals, and could be carried out or neglected by them, are now methodically fulfilled by the community. Saint Martin no longer needs to divide his cloak to give half to a poor shivering man. The public charity commission gives him winter clothes if he cannot afford to buy any. No knights are needed to protect innocence, weakness and humility from oppressors. The oppressed appeal successfully to the police, the court of justice, or, by writing to the papers, to public opinion. There is no need for Knights Templar or Knights of St. John to care for strangers and tend the sick. Inns and public hospitals are at their disposal. To-day there would be neither occasion nor reason for the miracle of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, who against the orders of her hard husband took to the starving bread which was turned into roses. The poor are regularly fed in municipal and communal kitchens. Individual deeds of mercy are less necessary now than formerly, when, if they occurred, they were the outcome of exceptionally noble and devout sympathy and heroic self-sacrifice.
One is therefore inclined to believe that men are less capable of such deeds than they were in the past. But that is doing them a grave injustice. Dr. Barnardo, who opened a home for the little waifs and strays of the East End of London, is not inferior to St. Vincent de Paul who adopted and brought up forsaken children. John Brown who suffered a martyr's death by hanging because he attempted with arms to liberate the negro slaves of the Southern States, Henry Dumont who devoted the efforts of a lifetime to founding the Red Cross to help those wounded in war, Emile Zola who sacrificed his fortune, his reputation as an author, his personal safety, and suffered persecution, calumny, exile, a shameful condemnation in court, and violent threats to his life in order to get justice for Captain Dreyfus who had been wrongfully accused—all these can well compare with the saints in the Golden Legend. Virtue exists potentially in as many cases as formerly, probably in more; and it is actively practised whenever and wherever it is appealed to.
Another result of the long evolution of civilization and Morality is the development of an ethical instinct in all except abnormal, degenerate individuals, which causes men to act morally in nearly all situations without conscious reflection, choice or effort. The individual who is ethically well grounded, in whom moral conduct has become an organized reflex action, does what is right without any conscious effort, and therefore does not in so doing evoke any idea of merit either in himself or in witnesses. But to do right habitually, carelessly and almost without thought, as one breathes and eats, easily makes one unjust in one's judgments. The battle between Reason and blind instinct, between the Will and refractory Impulse, the victory of the lofty principle, of spirituality over what is irrational and materialistic, which give us the illusion that free humanity is superior to the fatality of cosmic forces, have something so elevated and beautiful about them that we are disappointed if they are absent, and practical Morality without this dramatic setting does not appear to be real Morality.
Nevertheless we must not give way to this æsthetic point of view. We must always remember that Morality has a biological and sociological aim and must soberly admit that it is all the better if this aim is realized without in every single case depending on uncertain individual decisions. It would be an ideal state of affairs if in a society there were such clear knowledge of all its vital necessities, and this had been so inculcated in all its members, that their harmonious life together and their co-operation for the common weal would never more be troubled by the revolt of ruthless individual selfishness against the love of one's neighbour and willingness to sacrifice oneself for the community. The ideal of Morality would be attained, but the concept of Merit would be transferred from the individual to the community. Superficial observation might object to finding in individuals no victorious struggle against resistance, hence no virtue, and might bemoan the stagnation, nay, the retrogression, of Morality. But whoever views matters as a whole would have to admit that it would imply the greatest progress in virtue if the latter from being an individual merit had become an attribute of the community. I am far from maintaining that we have reached this ideal state; but evolution tends unmistakably in this direction; and this is one of the reasons why Morality may appear to make no progress.
The very rise of the community to a higher stage of Morality may be a fresh cause of error concerning the progress of Morality. The work of the strongest and most clear-headed thinkers for many thousand years, who have bequeathed as a legacy to the community their lifelong labours for the amelioration of the lot of mankind, has developed in us an ideal of active and passive Morality which is always present, even to the mind of the weak or bad man who cannot or will not live up to it. By this ideal, which is that of the community and which we bear within us, we involuntarily judge real life as we observe it, without applying the necessary corrections. We necessarily note a discrepancy between theory and practice, which appears to us to be not mere inadequacy but a contradiction of principles, not a quantitative, but a qualitative difference, and thus he who is not forewarned easily becomes doubtful, pessimistic, and bitterly contemptuous of mankind.
This is the theme with which light literature unweariedly deals. Novels and the drama constantly show us types: "Pillars of society" and other worthy men, who pretend to be honourable, who are full of good principles, preach unctuously and condemn others with pious indignation, but who themselves in all situations behave with the most horrible selfishness and are sinks of iniquity. The creators of these rogues professing virtue, of these secret sinners, think they are mightily superior; they think they know mankind, that they are deceived by no one and can see deep down into men's souls; they call their method realism, and they look down with the greatest contempt upon poets who depict good, unselfish, noble, in short, moral characters, and call them optimists, flirts, distillers of rosewater, who are either too silly or too dishonest to see the truth or to confess it. If realism happens to be the fashion, the public believes these men who depict what is ugly and disgusting, admires them, is impressed by them, and scorns the idealists who have a better opinion of mankind.
However, realism is onesided and exaggerated, and therefore just as far from the truth as enthusiastic idealism. It picks out certain characteristics of human nature, generalizes from them and neglects the others, thereby libelling mankind. The same people who in their flat, insipid daily life unhesitatingly indulge their poor little vanities, their naïve selfishness, their childish jealousy, their secret sensuality and their moral cowardice because it is of no consequence, because it alters nothing in the general constitution of society, because the community takes good care that moral principles shall be maintained, these same people can, on great occasions, which, however, seldom occur, reveal virtues which they themselves never suspected and which we gaze at in blank astonishment with reverent awe. The hypocritical Philistines of realistic literature, rotten at the core, when the Titanic sank, during the plague in Manchuria, at the earthquake of Messina, in the mine disaster at Courrières, and on Arctic and Antarctic expeditions, proved to be heroes who came very near to the theatrical ideal of Morality, if they did not quite reach it. If one takes the valet's point of view and observes man in his dressing-gown and slippers when he does not feel called upon to pull himself together, one may very well form a poor opinion of him. But if one considers the actions of the community and dwells on the loftiest deeds of individuals, one will no longer believe that the Morality of the present time is inferior to that of any other age.