Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/165

 left one rather uncertain as to what to do with the Golden Rule.

All men of course believe in the Golden Rule, or say they do, but they believe in it only "up to a certain point," and with each individual this point differs; the moment in which to abandon the Rule and take to "the shotgun and the club" comes to some soon, to others late, and to some oftener than others; but to most, if not to all of us, it inevitably arrives. That is why, no doubt, the world is no farther along in the solution of the many distressing problems it has on its mind.

According to the standards of conduct and of "honor" inherited from the feudal ages, while personal violence may be conceded to be illegal, one is, nevertheless, still generally taught that it is wrong and unmanly not to resent an insult or an injury, by violence, if necessary,—fighting and killing, by individuals, states and nations, are thought to be not only honorable and worthy, but, in many cases, indispensable. Society has an obsession similar to that strange superstition of the feud, which affects the Kentucky mountaineers. Generally we are less afraid to fight than we are not to fight. Our system is based on force, our faith is placed in force, so that nearly all of the proposals of reform, for the correction of abuses, involve the use of violence in some form. We have erected a huge idol in the figure of the beadle, who, assisted by the constable, is to make society over, to make men "good." Jones came upon the scene in America at a time when there was undoubtedly a new and really splendid impetus toward