And there
is some justification in our regrets. Simplicity of living, hospitality,
courage, patriotism one virtue or another has been more conspicuous
in some particular age than ever before or since. Moral progress
wavers, and not all that is won is retained. But on the whole there
can be no doubt that we stand on a higher level morally than the Greeks
who had vices and sins that we scarcely hear of today and incomparably
higher than savage races. Even within a lifetime one can see the wave
of moral advance push forward. Yet this observable progress is not
so certain of continuance that we can lapse into inertia and trust
it to go on of itself. With the softening of the struggle for existence
among men, with the disappearance of danger from wild animals, and
the increasing conquest over nature, the chief means of moral progress
hitherto are being removed. More and more we must rely on man's
conscious efforts on personal consecration and self-mastery, on
improved and extended legislation, on the growth of a moralized public
opinion, on organizations and institutions that shall work for specific
causes. Moreover, with the changing situations in which man finds
himself, and especially with the growing complexification of society,
new opportunities for sin and new temptations continually arise. No
sooner is one immoral habit stamped out than another begins
insidiously, and perhaps unnoticed, to form.
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