may possess in making men wiser, happier and more tolerant. But let us now turn frankly to the destructive side. "War generates great discontents, stirs emotions that have lain unused through the years of civilized peace, says Haskell. These discontents and emotions are the yeast of progress. Probably at no former epoch have as many individuals reflected so long and so intently on all manner of international, social and civic problems. We refer here to the World War, 1914-18. The collective result of this vast ebullition will not be lost. Through the spread of knowledge, as well as through a heightened sense of moral obligation, the ends of international justice will be served and social evolution will reply with a more rational Civilization. But while there is no question that images of the Future already exist in the minds of the men and women of the Present, yet all opinion on that score is not necessarily accepted as public opinion. Private opinion, in order to become public opinion must be valiantly set forth, defended often enough at the cost of a life-time of bitter strife. In order to show that you are right, you must prove your right to be heard. You must be willing to suffer and be strong. You must, in unusual cases, as cited in this book on the rise of the masses, be willing to go to the block for your opinions. There is no future for the man who flinches. Great "moral" issues are always pressed to a conclusion against a doubting world. That sort of opposition demands well-nigh superhuman firmness on the part of the moral advocate, even unto death. To cite one illustration, among hundreds set forth in this book: The supreme leader of the 100's A. D. was that marvelous Democrat, commonly known as Saul or St. Paul. This St. Paul stood out against the concentrated wealth and political power of the great Roman Empire. He took his life in his hands, traveled from city to city, proclaiming a strange new doctrine, indeed. He got up in the market place and gathering the swarms around him, this St. Paul did then and there with oratori 1 cal power equaled only by his profound logic, preach that between barbarian and king, between slave and aristocrat, there is absolutely no distinction other than man-made intolerance, based on human vileness. Singularly enough, at the very moment that St. Paul was preaching this new form of social heresy, the Roman Empire, which he had thus defied, was built on spears and on chattel slavery. It was inevitable that St. Paul was held to be a public disturber, and we need scarcely add that he paid for his boldness with his life. But mark you this well: Loss or gain, whether social, moral or financial, all depends on where you close the books. An onlooker of that moment, with the Roman centurions killing St. Paul, would have been convinced that the man's mission was a stupendous failure. But the struggle between the forces of slavery and freedom for human beings, not only spiritually but politically, went on and on, gaining, losing; till the day came at last, centuries hence, when your ancestor who wore the brass collar on which was cut the name of the man who owned your ancestor, threw off that collar and walked this earth a free man! In the light of social evolution such as that to which we have just referred, with the heroism of St. Paul as the central point, it is easy to grasp "why" the case of Masses has been so many centuries in the Court of Historical Chancery-witnesses dying off, dust of ages settling on the documents. The fact is, the cause of the Common Man has been forced to look to the infinitely slow "reasoning" of social evolution, based on the rise of general intelligence with the accompanying growth of the moral idea of responsibility, man for man, nation for nation. The process has been brutal and often maniacal in its rages, but evolution does reason, and at last finds Living Voice to express the pent-up thoughts of forgotten centuries. And at least once in each age this Living Voice does indeed speak, bringing in a New Era, summarizing the inarticulate yearnings of the Past. cannot tell you the exact way in which this social transformation comes to pass; there is an experimental side We about it, and those who speak, write or regard history in the language of theology, hold that social change as evidence of "manifest destiny." On the contrary, it is all simple enough and human enough and obvious enough, as a mental process; and therefore in this book we prefer to believe that social evolution points toward destination and not to destiny-two entirely different ideas. Whatever "movement" there may be in this book, then, is based on "growth" as a vital acquisition, growth in knowledge, growth in moral strength, growth in fraternity; and hence our report of the rise of the Common Man, or the masses, necessarily has to do with a wide interpretation of "historical evidence," rather than with the individualistic side of theological arguments, political, scientific, or other special types of knowledge whatsoever. We find the Common Man in the pit; we leave him centuries later, still groping. For the only way we can impress the importance of a social gain is to picture its absence; or in the language of a modern thinker (J. S. Mill), "A thing is seen to be what it is only in contrast with what it is not." Therefore, we show the social condition of the Common Man in various centuries and note from time to time the slow changes in his life and hopes. Law of historical compensation places hate The Common Man as under dog of the centuries, necessarily must tell a story of kicks, cuffs and blows. Little of it is "officially" recorded, to be sure; but if we stop there and do not use our common sense in regard to the wolf in man respecting his neighbor, we miss the larger part of the tragedy, comedy and satire of the ages. Plautus remarked, 2,000 years ago, "Man is a wolf to his neighbor (homo homini lupus).' Therefore, in addition to all manner of documentary "sources" that necessarily enter into our subject, we must in some sort try to enter the spirit of those "human documents" spicuous in the life of every man, nation and race, otherwise the human passions as clues to men's ways. It is true that written memorials carry us along; but life itself, the little ways of men, as men, virtues and vices inherent in flesh and blood, "interpret" history for us beyond Document whatsoever, any memorial, any mark on an ancient wall, any motto on a coin plowed up in a field. In short, our race exhibits vernacular views, rites and customs, notions of eating, drinking, loving, praying, hating from father to son, into the uncharted Past-all these and many others entirely outside books of sources, on which historians set store. In this connection, we note in passing three opposed but commingling human practices, from the dawn of recorded history. Man loves, fights and prays-doing each in turn with equal impressiveness because by praying, or by fighting, or by loving he is exercising in turn one of his innate urges. In the end, weary of blood-letting, he protests that his love is indeed superior to his hate and thus the two poles, love and hate, are made to balance each other. After the battle comes the churchbuilding and the rearing of peace monuments. The old order that originally caused the hate is now dead as the Egyptian god Osiris, and is henceforth utilized like all the old gods for purposes of a great prose-poem, celebrating men's march upward and on. In due time hate again creeps in, idealisms are shattered; up becomes down, right is left, heaven is hell; and of a sudden the old stars reflect not the beautiful blue sky above but the pestilential pool in the pit. All is to be fought out once more; again the trenches are filled with the slain, and again in turn we welcome our new era of glad tidings. The dragon is killed once more, and now belongs to a dead world, living only in poetry and song. Again and again, the cry is, "At last the people are free and happy, forever." Vain hope! Whatever comes to pass is part of the grist The present writer aims to raise no moral issues, nor yet to warp over modern standards on earlier centuries, to the disadvantage of our ancestors and their institutions. On the other side, we are not cancelling concepts of right and wrong and it would be a gross misunderstanding of our position to assume that our attitude is one of selfish indifference. We are not arguing that whatever happens is right, after it once happens; but we cannot close our eyes to the fact that whatever comes to pass is part of the grist of coarse-grinding human energy; and therefore we neither reject the evil men have done down the centuries nor on the other hand do we find it logical to rail at moral decadence as presented in the long story of the Past. While we are not obliged to answer, yet we must face such questions as these: Does man fulfill a higher function when he goes to war or when he signs the peace treaty? Is man a hypocrite in the first instance, a hero in the second, or vice versa? Are we to affirm that man acts irrationally except when he lifts his eyes from a message from beyond the stars? Is the conventional life of our race as exhibited in feasting, dancing, seducing of women, frauds in business, murders, sex-excesses, moneyhoarding, graft, orphan-baiting, false-witness, to be explained only on the theory that in regard to these things and others of their type, man is "not" acting the plain role of man, but on the contrary is stepping aside? And if he is stepping aside and is consistent only when he regards spiritual values, are we to conclude that our race is safer confined in a mad-house? Did any historian ever report an act that man does that can justly be regarded as "outside human nature"? On the contrary, common sense reveals that man is consistent when he goes to war and slays his tens of thousands; and man is |