Page:John Brown (W. E. B. Du Bois).djvu/387

Rh life. And on all this was built John Brown's own inchoate but growing belief in a more just and a more equal distribution of property. From this he concluded,—and acted on that conclusion—that all men are created free and equal, and that the cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.

Up to the time of John Brown's death this doctrine was a growing, conquering, social thing. Since then there has come a change and many would rightly find reason for that change in the coincidence that the year in which John Brown suffered martyrdom was the year that first published the Origin of Species. Since that day tremendous scientific and economic advance has been accompanied by distinct signs of moral retrogression in social philosophy. Strong arguments have been made for the fostering of war, the utility of human degradation and disease, and the inevitable and known inferiority of certain classes and races of men. While such arguments have not stopped the efforts of the advocates of peace, the workers for social uplift and the believers in human brotherhood, they have, it must be confessed, made their voices falter and tinged their arguments with apology.

Why is this? It is because the splendid scientific work of Darwin, WeissmanWeismann [sic], Galton and others has been widely interpreted as meaning that there is essential and inevitable inequality among men and races of men, which no philanthropy can or ought to eliminate; that civilization is a struggle for existence whereby the weaker nations and