Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/198

Rh great Commune, but numbers of little communes, to suit the convenience of individual preference. There is to be universal "equality," and women—a redeeming stroke of justice—are to share in all the vocations, offices, emoluments (and the few burdens) of society, equally with men. Instead of compulsory wedlock, there is to come voluntary union from love, the bond to cease when the passion ceases.

We are now certainly at a long remove from the hostility to self-interest that erewhile would prohibit unrestricted competition, and revolted at the selfishness of free-trade. Education is to be reorganised in behalf of these conceptions, which are further supported by an appropriate Philosophy of History. History is simply a continuation of the drama of Nature; it tends to life, the variation of life, and the enhancement of its charm. The test of historic progress is the heightening of self-consciousness; but this Dühring seems to take as the greater and greater accentuation of the individual's sense of his validity just as he stands at each instant. The career of history has, accordingly, three periods: that of the ancien régime, that of the transitional present, and that of the free and exhilarating future. This future, however, is to be conducted by tolerably dry logic; much sentiment and refinement are "aristocratic."