Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/76

 new recreations will develop. Some of these considerations might easily give us pause. We might perhaps fear that vice—either the extension of existing vices or {if that indeed be possible) the invention of new ones—might be a terrifying problem of the next century, if we had not foreseen, concurrently with the other developments anticipated, a marked moral improvement in human nature. There is in the calculations of the pessimist and the reactionary no fallacy more mischievous than the oft-recited aphorism that human nature is the same in all places and at all times. That is precisely what human nature is not. Spectacles which delighted ancient Rome would revolt modern civilisation. Spectacles which are still keenly enjoyed in Spain would revolt England or the United States, and probably awaken the activity of the police. Human morality has demonstrably advanced in historic time: it has very perceptibly advanced, as I showed in an earlier chapter, during the nineteenth century. But the improvement in this respect which the next hundred years will show must, in all human probability, greatly excel that of the past time. And thus, though a sane and reasonable anticipation will not exclude the possibility of regrettable accidents in the future moral history of mankind, it will also regard them as probably transient. The vices re-