mass, he said, was a barren thing. Order, truth, beauty, love had to come to it, in fitful gleams, from a world beyond, over which man had no control. We know now that Plato was wrong. Order, truth, beauty, and love have developed on the earth—they are “sublunary” things—and man can control their sources and enlarge their proportions. They do not properly make men great: men make them great. They are as surely under our direction as are applied science and commerce and the franchise. We can cultivate them as we now cultivate pansies or sheep. It depends on us if lies and disorder and dishonour are to linger among us, or if truth and justice and beauty are to prevail.
Again therefore it is quite natural that we should hear a demand for a more extensive use of these powers of ours. The ships and ploughs and illuminants of a hundred years ago were made by the same men, or the same generations of men, as the religions and polities and moralities of the time. Why assume that the wisdom of the race was almost infallible in its spiritual and more difficult creations, but capable of enormous improvement on the material side? Conservatism, as anything more than an attitude of caution and prudence, has not a plausible air.
It is well also to regard the essential or characteristic line of human evolution. Apart from a few who are caught by a transient attempt to glorify instinct, we agree that the development of intelligence is one of the main sources of progress.
