Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 23.djvu/464

448 views produced by the universal propagation during the last century of this anarchical tendency, should we not rather experience a gratified wonder at discovering that, thanks to the natural good sense and intellectual moderation of men in general, the disorder is not more complete, and that, beneath the decomposition of social maxims, certain rallying-points for humanity may still be dimly discerned? The evil has now reached such a point that all political opinions, though traceable to one or other of the sources mentioned, assume an essentially individual character, owing to the infinite number of variations produced by the intermingling of these three vicious principles. Except in cases where men are carried away by their interest in some common object or measure—which, however, each generally plans to turn to his own especial advantage—it becomes more and more impossible to get even a small number of individuals to adhere to anything like an explicit programme, or one in which vague and ambiguous language has not been employed to produce an illusory appearance of a really unattainable harmony of opinion. In the countries in which this intellectual disintegration has been, as it were, consecrated, since the commencement of the revolutionary era in the sixteenth century, by the political preponderance of Protestantism, diversities of thought, without being less intense, have been much more numerous, the popular mind having given itself over, in the absence of any energetic spiritual authority, to the indefinite discussion of religious opinions, which, of course, are at once the vaguest and the most discordant of all. No country has better verified this tendency than the United States of America, where Christianity is represented by some hundreds of sects radically at variance with one another, and daily undergoing further subdivision into shades of opinion which at last become almost purely individual. The countries that were not brought to a stand by the false "Halt!" of Protestantism do not present so great a total of vagaries; and the false opinions which have taken root in them, being more definite in their character, can be more hopefully dealt with.

The inevitable result of such an intellectual epidemic has been the gradual demolition of public morals. Such is the eminently complex character of social questions that, even when deliberate sophistry is absent, either side can be defended by extremely plausible arguments; seeing that there is no institution whatever, no matter how really indispensable to society, that has not many and serious drawbacks; while, on the other hand, the most extravagant Utopia always presents some undeniable advantages. We must not, therefore, be surprised if we see nearly all the great principles of public morality undergoing attack;