Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/411

 act of life's drama, not on the body of the play; on the tumult and the decisive battles of a complex, mature life whose work was nearly done, not on its earlier, more primitive phases, nor on the silent, constructive processes, the building up of cell on cell, and organ on organ, that were taking place during the long and peaceful periods of preparation.

They gave us the now familiar picture of life's tragic side, and like all one-sided representations, it was but a caricature, true indeed to the life they portrayed, but misleading in the omission of the truth. They showed us the shameless selfishness; the needless toil and suffering; the wanton wastefulness of life; the endless competitions of strength and skill, in shifting alliance with cunning, hypocrisy and deceit; with blind chance in the background awarding death to the vanquished and to the victor life's bitter spoils.

With master strokes, and with the convincing accuracy of the trained observer, they painted the "disastrous chances" of a tumultuous life; the "moving accidents by flood and field"; the spectacular catastrophes of failure. But they did not portray the slow and benevolent processes of construction; the peaceful cooperations, the careful conservations, and the successful sacrifices of self to higher service. Some writers have indeed recognized the element of benevolence in the cooperation that forms such an important feature of social organization; but usually it has been regarded as something peculiar to the association of a few highly organized animals, and to man, not as something inherent to all stages of organic and inorganic nature.

But a new phase of the primeval method of nature, a new instinct, one that proclaims the universal brotherhood of man with man, and the brotherhood of man with all life and with nature, is seeking expression in the heart of man. It demands the so-called "humanitarian" methods of benevolent union, of cooperative exchange, of sympathy and service. The hand hesitates to obey the heart's commands, because the false prophets of science still dictate the use of nature's crudest, least effective methods, saying that progress can be made only through appropriation, elimination and destruction; through competition and then more competition; through mastery by brute force, or strategy; through selfishness; and the license of freedom uncontrolled. I challenge this interpretation of the order. It is not the real teaching of life, nor of nature. It places the emphasis in the wrong place and on the wrong thing. It measures the cost, but does not see the gain. It counts the failures, but does not recognize the manner of achieving success.

There is nothing new, essentially new, or unlike nature's methods, in the "humanity" of man, for the "humanitarian methods" of making progress through sympathetic, or harmonious, action; through benovelent union; through cooperative exchange and service, are as old