Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/28

14 whispers that his rights to the blessings of this life are as good as any man's. The rich man is dreading; the poor man is hoping and working to bring about a change in the present condition of property ownership. The faith in a continuance of its present state has been rudely shaken in the minds of all, even in those who will not acknowledge their secret doubts and anxieties.

What do we learn from the domestic politics of each one of all the civilized countries of Europe? The contrasts are becoming sharper all the time, the struggles between the political parties more and more violent. The adherents of the existing state of affairs are gradually dying off, and one of these days there will be none left upon the surface of the earth. In vain will a leader be sought to demonstrate that the present arrangements of state and society should not be disturbed but maintained as they are. There are no more Conservatives. This title would have to be dropped from the political nomenclature of the day if it were applied according to its strictly literal meaning. A Conservative is one who wishes to maintain existing institutions. Nobody nowadays confines himself to this platform. Fighting on the defensive is all out of date; only the offensive systems of political warfare are practiced. There only remains Reaction or Reform—that is, revolution forwards or backwards. The former wishes to recall the past, the latter to hasten the future. The hates the present fully as much as the. This universal mental restlessness and uneasiness exerts a powerful and many-sided influence upon individual life. A dread of examining and comprehending the actualities of life prevails to a frightfully alarming extent, and manifests itself in a thousand ways. The means of sensation and perception are eagerly counterfeited by altering the nervous system by the use of