Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/331

Rh the guide, the answer is not difficult and must be in the negative. And while, as has been said, there is no observable difference between the historical ancient and the modern, as to strength and virility of mind and body, the latter stands higher in the social scale by reason of the accumulations of the centuries between.

Invention, discovery, experience in all the ways of life, scientific research, etc., all have lifted him into a serener and more reflecting atmosphere than his brother of the dim and cloudy past, enjoyed. He has outgrown the swaddling clothes of race-childhood; the genetic myths which held him enthralled have lost their potency; evil is no longer the work of the devil, but excesses in his own nature and of qualities in themselves useful and essential. And out of it all has grown the unalterable conviction that man's actions are not chance products, but the legitimate consequences of congenital conditions as affected by the physical and social environment, and the no weaker conviction that without a modification in some of these antecedents no reformation can take place.

Certainly, if the hereditary organization, the individual, the man, acts out of harmony with the society in which he is placed, there must be a change of something to bring him into conformity therewith or else reason has no place in human affairs. Modification, change, yes but how, where? These are the questions which society has been trying to answer from the first. Not, however, by a patient and methodical examination of all the elements of the problem, but in a spontaneous and impulsive sort of way, and upon the assumption that it is the duty of the individual to conform to whatever social environment, without any assistance other than the law and its penalties.

For thousands of years the chief business of government has been lawmaking and law enforcement, with