This is accomplished rather through education than instruction, for it is education that makes men good-natured, so that it will be through education that the last inequality between men will be effaced.
I say, then, that we should as much as possible work toward this end, and above all avoid using expressions which tend to separate men from each other. These expressions belong to a past age; they were perpetuated by usage, and still uphold certain imaginary rights, and modes of thinking—certain prejudices and sentiments which divide society into two parts, and cause it to believe that it is so divided from necessity. In indulging in such prejudices, what in fact is but an imaginary division becomes a real one.
It is, therefore, this imaginary division of classes which must be done away with; for it is from the imagination that all these feelings of distrust, and jealousy, and ill-will generally spring; and they should be combated resolutely, for they carry with them very lamentable consequences. The remedy is where the evil is. These old prejudices residing in the imagination, it is the imagination we should correct. We must accustom ourselves to think differently; we must look upon ourselves not as belonging to a particular class, but to one and the same society, a society of men, men all equals and in different social conditions, all entitled to the same rights.
It is, therefore, in reciprocal good feeling, in the heart of men rather than in any legal reform, that the true safety of society resides. We must give up those old notions which cause some to imagine that they are oppressed, or threatened, or prevented to rise in the social scale, and others, that they run the danger of being dispossessed of their privileges. There is in such antagonism far greater danger than in the actual evils both sides complain of.
To do away with it only requires reciprocal good-will, kindness, readiness to understand each other. The reform which has taken place in our laws, must take place in our minds also. Class feeling must be suppressed, and there will then appear a truly human society, all being united by brotherly love.
Footnotes:
[1] No. CLIX.—July 1, 1884, pp. 246, 247.
[2] The fifth collegiate year will be devoted to theoretical morality.
[3] The word enthusiasm comes from a Greek word signifying, to be filled with a god.