Page:Woman and her possibilities.djvu/25

 There is a comparative morality, of course; but he who follows the old code must fail. What you and I love—what we admire—what we aspire after—does not belong to industrialism; yet only in industrialism can any of us—even a Spencer, or Huxley, or Tennyson exist. We can do what is beautiful or right only by the aid of industrialism, unless, like Thoreau, we prefer to live in the woods. A larger morality will come—but only when competition ends."

All that the old religions and philosophies taught about the curse of the love of money tells with a thousandfold force in this present commercial age. Then it was chiefly the injury to a man's self that had to be reckoned with; the evil effect extended only to the hardening of his heart, the eating away of his soul, the injury to his own self. Now it involves the tragedy of a thousand other lives, the loss of all that is true and sacred in the family, and of all that is good and beautiful in the world and in life. How can any of us contrive to live or make a living without feeling the chilling, paralyzing, soul-withering influence of Mammon?

But our day is also the day of philosophical evolution, the day when everything pertaining to man and man's place is liable to be cast into the melting pot in order to show what is dross and what is gold, what is transient and what is abiding, what is accidental and what is "essential." Elsewhere I have spoken at some length on the subject of man from the point of view of evolution, and have tried to give an outline of what should be taught to men and women on the subject. Let me give the evolutional view of women in another student's words: "Let us think of a sweet young pure girl, with the mother-soul in her but half-fledged &hellip; According to evolutional philosophy, what is she?