Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/198

 meet any great disaster; the remarkable way in which the working people, out of their miserable poverty, help each other in time of strikes; the waves of public indignation which the exposure of any great injustice is able to arouse; all show that the world is by no means retrograde in respect of morals. What is often called the growing sentimentality of the age, which opens all pockets at the call of want, and doubtless sometimes leads to ridiculous exhibitions of mistaken feeling, is a proof that the ethical sense of the people is by no means blunt; and it shows a constant tendency to become keener. It is mysticism rather than morality which is chiefly lacking to a re-development of the religious spirit. And although the opinions of the mass of the people are likely to be influenced at all times more by the results at which what are called leaders of thought arrive than by the reasons which lead up to those conclusions, it is rational to expect that with the improved and much more thoroughly disseminated education which the necessities of the coming century are going to enforce upon us, will make the people more accessible to philosophical reasoning than they have ever been since Socrates. Consequently, the general attitude of the world a hundred years hence towards mysticism will depend greatly upon the conclusions of eminent thinkers. These conclusions will require time in order to exercise