Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/83

Rh 'Probably,' he said; 'but I should try to avoid some slight confusion of thought which seems to me either expressed or implied in your dogmatised polemic. However, that is unimportant. On the main point we are clearly at one, which is that Individualism has not a leg to stand upon when it defends civilisation, as we know it, against Socialism, as we prognosticate it, by alleging that the one is "natural" and contains the great natural force of evolution as the dominant factor; while the other is "artificial," and means the sway of dissolution, degradation, and final death. Thus far, we had apparently developed along pretty much the same lines, and I suppose the next question that presented itself to me was the next that presented itself to you too. Granted, the condition of the masses is pitiful; granted, it can be proved to be based on robbery and exploitation, and is therefore radically iniquitous, what can justify this hideous inhuman sacrifice? Clearly only one thing: the impossibility of abolishing it, except at the cost of the ruin of the whole community. If only 30 per cent., if only 20 per cent.—15, 10—nay, even 5 per cent.—can be lifted up to anything approaching a humanly worthy existence, then the 70, 80, 85, 90—nay, even the 95—must, more or less, continue to be virtually sacrificed.'

Hastings was looking at him askance.