From the point of view of the moralist, the animal world is on about the same level as a gladiator's show. The creatures are fairly well treated, and set to fight--whereby the strongest, the swiftest, and the cunningest live to fight another day. The spectator has no need to turn his thumbs down, as no quarter is given. He must admit that the skill and training displayed are wonderful. But he must shut his eyes if he would not see that more or less enduring suffering is the meed of both vanquished and victor. And since the great game is going on in every corner of the world, thousands of times a minute; since, were our ears sharp enough, we need not descend to the gates of hell to hear
Voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle"
--it seems to follow that, if this world is governed by benevolence, it must be a different sort of benevolence from that of John Howard.
And I think, if you look closely into the social theory based on the naturalistic, or let us say the purely economic, view of life, you will find that beneath its mask of sentimental sympathy the reality is a face of greed and animal rapacity. According to this theory, progress is a result of discontent. Because men are discontented with their present state they push out for something better. And no doubt in a half-way that is true. But when discontent is associated with material standards alone, and purchasable comfort, and worldly opportunity, or, to put the matter in its most favorable light, when success and the goal of achievement are measured by the pleasures, however you may refine them, and by the pride of a few brief years of physical existence, beyond which there is nothing, and when for failure in these no compensation is held out, no supernatural hope, no refuge of peace, here and now, such as the world cannot give--when the driving force of progress is so presented, what is there in the nature of things to offer in the long run any effective resistance to the innate desire of power after power that ends only with death? What equal counterpoise will you set against that instinct of _pleonexia_ which reaches out for ever more and more?
Philosophy is full of mockeries. These honorable gentlemen who are teaching a pure naturalism in the schoolroom, who denounce the content of religion and other-worldly philosophy as a base acquiescence, who in the restlessness of an itching egotism go out as missionaries to the people of the far Orient, may deceive themselves and may try to deceive us; their language may be sleek with the sentiment of brotherly love, but strip off its disguise, and the social theory they are proclaiming will leer forth in its true face as an incentive not to progress but to the anarchy of the jungle. These men are distilling into society a discontent that knows no satisfaction, that must engender only bitterness of disappointment and mutual distrust and hatred, and that in the end, if not checked by other motives, will bring about internecine warfare and a suicide of civilization of which the hideous years through which we have just passed are a warning admonition. And these teachers have the field to-day. We applaud them for their pretensions of philanthropy, even when we doubt the utility of their philosophy. We are browbeaten by the volume of their noisy propaganda. We are mealy-mouthed and afraid to speak out in open denunciation, even when secretly we burn with indignation at the baseness of their words. We sulk in silence, as if we had nothing to say. Meanwhile they have had the field to themselves, and the world every day is more filled with fear and disquiet.