One is therefore inclined to believe that men are less capable of such deeds than they were in the past. But that is doing them a grave injustice. Dr. Barnardo, who opened a home for the little waifs and strays of the East End of London, is not inferior to St. Vincent de Paul who adopted and brought up forsaken children. John Brown who suffered a martyr's death by hanging because he attempted with arms to liberate the negro slaves of the Southern States, Henry Dumont who devoted the efforts of a lifetime to founding the Red Cross to help those wounded in war, Emile Zola who sacrificed his fortune, his reputation as an author, his personal safety, and suffered persecution, calumny, exile, a shameful condemnation in court, and violent threats to his life in order to get justice for Captain Dreyfus who had been wrongfully accused--all these can well compare with the saints in the Golden Legend. Virtue exists potentially in as many cases as formerly, probably in more; and it is actively practised whenever and wherever it is appealed to.
Another result of the long evolution of civilization and Morality is the development of an ethical instinct in all except abnormal, degenerate individuals, which causes men to act morally in nearly all situations without conscious reflection, choice or effort. The individual who is ethically well grounded, in whom moral conduct has become an organized reflex action, does what is right without any conscious effort, and therefore does not in so doing evoke any idea of merit either in himself or in witnesses. But to do right habitually, carelessly and almost without thought, as one breathes and eats, easily makes one unjust in one's judgments. The battle between Reason and blind instinct, between the Will and refractory Impulse, the victory of the lofty principle, of spirituality over what is irrational and materialistic, which give us the illusion that free humanity is superior to the fatality of cosmic forces, have something so elevated and beautiful about them that we are disappointed if they are absent, and practical Morality without this dramatic setting does not appear to be real Morality.
Nevertheless we must not give way to this æsthetic point of view. We must always remember that Morality has a biological and sociological aim and must soberly admit that it is all the better if this aim is realized without in every single case depending on uncertain individual decisions. It would be an ideal state of affairs if in a society there were such clear knowledge of all its vital necessities, and this had been so inculcated in all its members, that their harmonious life together and their co-operation for the common weal would never more be troubled by the revolt of ruthless individual selfishness against the love of one's neighbour and willingness to sacrifice oneself for the community. The ideal of Morality would be attained, but the concept of Merit would be transferred from the individual to the community. Superficial observation might object to finding in individuals no victorious struggle against resistance, hence no virtue, and might bemoan the stagnation, nay, the retrogression, of Morality. But whoever views matters as a whole would have to admit that it would imply the greatest progress in virtue if the latter from being an individual merit had become an attribute of the community. I am far from maintaining that we have reached this ideal state; but evolution tends unmistakably in this direction; and this is one of the reasons why Morality may appear to make no progress.
