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doubtless justifies the self-congratulation of the age. But it is to be remembered amid our jubilation that we haven't in the long run and from the loftiest viewpoint gained much, that we have only been regaining our lost ground. It is out of the pits into which we had slipped from our apehood with the coming of humanization that we have been climbing, not above the level of the ground. We have been brutal (but that is a libel on the brutes; let us rather say, savage), and now we are growing human, or let us say, ape-like once more. Why should we protest the comparison? Putting aside our intellectual and esthetic superiorities, and passing upon our spiritual capacity, which I here take, or make to mean our power of love and devotion, we may find much flattering resemblance. Are not the apes too a good-natured lot and, barring unavoidable business competition, very willing to oblige? They will perform the most intimate personal services for one another, I believe, and according to Darwin, they are capable on real demand of almost human heroism all but the medals and the advertising. Even more human seem to me their normal occupations, - their pleasant parties, grinning, affable club gatherings, and chatting coteries, more human, and most democratic. Our manners have changed from theirs, often for the better; but our morals we ourselves have made the distinction necessary remain much the same.

Considered in its mechanism, Democracy is eas

ily our most advanced attempt, and is making further efforts of promise; tested spiritually, it has a very long way yet to go, and isn't trying very hard to get along it,— is even in some cases conscientiously taking an entirely opposite and hopeless course.

8. BROTHERHOOD

"Well, what you want is evidently Brotherhood," observes the reader, with a bored expression. Yes, reader, you are right, in both assumption and expression. For Brotherhood is about the best thing one can want; but so many have been wildly wanting or prettily preaching it that signs of tedium at another mention of it are natural and pardonable. Besides, there can be no good need for further bawling or canting about the fact of Brotherhood: since a century ago we have generally agreed-none denying but those in the lowest stages of neglected ignorance or the highest of cultivated idiocy that there is a bond, derivable either from the same original soulstuff or from the ancient dust of earth, a bond between all men. This bond we are generally willing enough to recognize in the abstract; less so in concrete cases. We own the brotherhood, and disown the brother; and are sometimes conscious of the discrepancy and smitten with the sense of it," but really, this is a workaday world, you know," with little time for feeling sentiment and less for putting it into practice. Or do not many

of us think the recognition, plus the negative practice of refraining from cutthroatery or pocketpicking, perhaps plus the positive achievement of good-nature,- quite enough for any definition of fraternity? And not without a certain show of reason, seeing how few family brotherhoods amount to very much more: why should

universal?

But

In fact, if Brotherhood does signify more than smiling good-nature,- does stand for some degree of love and devotion, there seems little likelihood of our reaching it through any recognition of the fact alone. The fact of itself, whether working through one family or throughout the earth, will do only a limited amount of work without the feeling, and the feeling does not ordinarily spring from the fact. It springs most full from having felt a larger love, the finest property of parenthood or mastership or any like relation, embracing all and aiming to foster love among them. what a rarity both to feel such love and to find such fostering its chief care! Rare enough even in the family bond, where prevention of fraternal hostilities is usually held sufficient, and vastly rarer in the universal, where regulation of them is the furthermost achievement. For here in the universal relationship - what have we to inspire love and devotion? The memory of our affectionate forefather the Amoeba? Not that, I fear; and daily close association does it only for the naturally generous-hearted few. "If a man

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love not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love his Father in Heaven whom he hath not seen?" asked one with a natural gift of loving. But he was in that respect not only the besttalented of twelve but of twelve thousand; and by the remainder a father-love or its equivalent must be felt before a brother-love will follow. For universal brotherhood the best and only good hope lies in the sense of Heavenly fatherhood,-which is not exactly a new saying.

Is it also a good expectation? Alas! the answer here is new, or at least far more freely and widely rendered than of old. We shall not repeat the open expression or interpret the tacit conviction: we do not just now intend to theologize; only to recognize things as they are on earth, however they may be in heaven. And on earth the sense of heavenly fatherhood is not in fashion. "For a father," Zarathustra overhears the watchmen saying to each other, "he takes too little care of his children: human fathers do it better." Watchmen and others whose chief concern is with wages and such things that is, most of humankind are making the same remark,- making it openly, to general approval, or silently, despite their contrary recitations, and practically, whatever they profess. "Hard common sense is the intellectual virtue of the majority, and hard common sense demands the evident and material. Recently we were rejoicing at having got the superstitious fabric of religion down to a common

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sense basis of Fatherhood and Brotherhood, and now we notice common sense at work again, seeking a substantial and material foundation of the doctrine, and dissatisfied with its findings. No; it is not to common sense that we must look in this case; and the uncommon kind is not common, or noticeably increasing.

Well, then, we have not any good expectation from this source? For the present, none. Yet not without hope do we stand and wait; or need not, with several hopeful props at hand. This watchmen's word is not the last word to be said upon the subject: we shall try to say a later and a better before we end our little book. But for some time this word will by the majority be taken as absolutely final; and meanwhile we must work with what we have available.

Before, however, we begin to plan any future operations, let us turn a look upon our operations to this point, and try to recollect from our rambling misty progress the few salient features that are really, the writer thinks, scattered somewhere along its course.

9. LOOKING BACKWARD

The long course that we have been skipping lightly over it is one of fifteen hundred years - offers us not only several varieties of social architecture, but also a chance to notice the change of structure, gradual or sudden, to trace

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