Page:The International Socialist Review (1900-1918), Vol. 1, Issue 1.pdf/8

8 path of the race in its animal evolution has been a path of blood. We have been for ages a race of fratricides, and we are by no means yet out of the woods. Our old habits still cling to us. The taste for blood, the passion to mangle and mutilate and kill, is still in our veins. And we manage to keep up the reputation of the family pretty well. But it has all been necessary to the development of the physical organism. While we were animals we had to act out the animal nature. Nothing else was possible for us. We were not responsive to anything higher than the lusts and passions of the animal.

It is by no means certain that we have arrived at the human stage even yet. As a matter of fact, no other impulses or incentives have been very powerful in shaping our action, than the purely animal one of gain. We point to the fact that religion has existed for all these long centuries, but we are obliged to note that further fact than religion has been utterly impotent even to modify the direction of our social and political life.

And when you think of the marvellous material results of the plutocratic principle, which has had sway for more than a century, you cannot question its utility. I think we must admit that under the circumstances no other power could have accomplished the material transformation that has taken place. And when we reflect upon the further fact that plutocracy has so swiftly prepared the way for some sort of universal government, we must recognize its inestimable service.

But the real question is whether plutocracy has not fulfilled its function, whether it does not stand now in the way of those further steps in human progress which seem to be necessary. The time often arrives in the evolution of the race when a principle or a force which has been in operation in a previous stage becomes unnecessary. Evolution is marked by the constant leaving behind of some things which once were useful. Many physical attributes which were of value to man, say or fifty thousands years ago, have ceased to exist. The physical appearance of the human race differs widely form that which prevailed in that far distant past. With the dawn of mind and its wonderful development has resulted all that distinguishes the man from his animal companions. The emergence of reason ushered the animal man into a totally new era of existence and brought into play a new set of faculties. His life thenceforward became as different from what it was before as day is unlike night. From that moment the normal development of the physical nature really ceased, and the man of has not a tithe of the physical might which the man of fifty thousand years ago possessed. So when the human race shall have entered into the new era of ethical consciousness, it must be evident that some of the forces potent before will cease to operate. It is my conviction that we have