Page:Tyranny of Shams (1916).djvu/34

 temper of our age. The revolt which burns in so much of the abler literature of our time is an unselfish revolt, or non-selfish revolt: it is an outcome of that larger spirit which conceives the self to be a part of the general social organism, and it is therefore neither egoistic nor altruistic. It finds a sanction in the new intelligence, and an inspiration in the finer sentiments, of our generation, but the glow which chiefly illumines it is the glow of the great vision of a happier earth. It speaks of the claims of truth and justice, and assails untruth and injustice, for these are elemental principles of social life; but it appeals more confidently to the warmer sympathy which is linking the scattered children of the race, and it urges all to co-operate in the restriction of suffering and the creation of happiness. The advance guard of the race, the men and women in whom mental alertness is associated with fine feeling, cry that they have reached Pisgah’s slope; and in increasing numbers men and women are pressing on to see if it be really the Promised Land. That is the spirit of the reform-movement of our times. Popes anathematise our age, and the clergy of all sects bemoan its “materialism,” yet it is exulting in a wider and higher idealism than any that ever yet stirred the heart of man. For we now know from what dark and brutal origins we came, and we feel that, if we advance only as we are advancing, we may reach any height that any prophet ever yet saw in his visions.

It is very difficult to avoid what seem to be