But society slowly works for unselfishness. The love learned in the family manifests itself in ever-widening circles; it must do so if it is the genuine article. It works for neighbors and friends, then for the poor and helpless of the community. Then it spreads to other communities and nations. For genuine love recognizes no bounds of time or place. Slowly we learn that we are our brother's keepers, and that the brotherhood cannot stop short of the human race. Goodness and kindness radiate from one, perhaps unknown, member of the community to his fellows, and thence all over the world. And the world is the better for his one action.
Primitive society was thus the best possible school of conscience; and the family and it are the great school of unselfishness. But society is even more and better than this. It is the medium through which thought, power, and moral and religious life can spring from man to man. This is its last and culminating advantage: it is that for which society really exists.
For, in the close bonds of family and social life, a new possibility of development has arisen based upon articulate speech. We might almost call it a new form of heredity, independent of all blood-relationship. Progress in anatomical structure in the animal kingdom was slow, because any improvement could be transmitted only to the direct descendants of its original possessor. But in all matters pertaining to or based upon mind, a new invention, or idea, or system becomes the property of him who can best appreciate it. The torch is always handed on to the swiftest runner. Thus Socrates is the true father of Plato, and Plato of Aristotle. Whoever can best understand and appreciate and enter into the spirit of Socrates and Plato becomes heir to their thoughts and interprets them to us. And the thought of one man enriches all races and times.
But a great teacher like Socrates is not merely an intellectual power. "Probe a little deeper, surgeon," said the French soldier, "and you'll find the emperor." Napoleon may have impressed himself on the soldier's intellect; he had enthroned himself in his heart. "Slave," said the old Roman, Marius, to the barbarian who had been sent into the dungeon to despatch him, "slave, wouldst thou kill Cains Marius?" And the barbarian, though backed by all the power of Rome, is said to have fled in dismay. Why did he run away? I do not know. I only know that I should have done the same. One more instance. Some thirty years ago the northern army was fleeing, a disorganized mob, toward Winchester. Early had fallen upon them suddenly in the gray of the morning, and, while one corps still held its ground, the rest of the army was melting away in panic. Then a little red-faced trooper came tearing down the line shouting, "Face the other way boys; face the other way." And those panic-stricken men turned and rolled an irresistible avalanche of heroes upon the Confederate lines. What made them turn about? It was something which I can neither define nor analyze--the personal power of Sheridan. It is the secret of every great leader of men. Now Sheridan had imparted more than information to these men. Is it too much to say that he put himself into them? From such men power streams out like electricity from a huge dynamo.