Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/114

 evitable as the law of gravitation,—the tendency of some to rise above the average, of others to sink below it?"

"You have there stated in a few words," replied Utis, "a question requiring volumes of history for a fair answer In the first place, however, I would warn you to disabuse your mind of those crude generalizations once known as economical laws. A few thousand years before your period it was, no doubt, regarded as an inevitable economical law, that the stronger should eat the weaker. Yet you know, that, in your time, numbers of fat and tender weaklings went about fearlessly in the sight of strong and hungry men. A person never beholding any surface but that of the ocean would be apt to discover a general law, that there exists an inevitable tendency in certain particles of water to rise above the general level, and in others to sink below it.

"The society of your days, as compared with that now existing, was unstable as ocean compared with land. All was fluctuating, and individuals were largely at the mercy of circumstances. Some, without effort on their part, were born to virtue, happiness, and honor: others, through no apparent fault of theirs, seemed born to vice, misery, and degradation. Yet, all imperfect as it was, the civilization of your day was far in advance of that of any former age. Amid much wrong, there were genuine aspirations after justice: amid darkness, an earnest, though blind, groping toward light; amid much selfishness, much self-sacrifice and heroism. I believe, indeed, that could men have become convinced, even at that early period, of a permanently beneficial result from their self-sacrifice, the possessors of what the world had would