IV
It appears then that we can extract no guarantee of progress either from the nature of Man or from the nature of human institutions. There is nolawof progress, if by law be meant a superior power able to coerce the creatures that are said to ‘obey’ it. Neither can we extract from history any proof of the superiority of civilized man over his uncivilized ancestors. Such progress as has been attained has been achieved only by the active co-operation of the progressive organisms: every step has been fought for, and progress has ceased whenevereffort ceased, or was switched off into different directions.
Consequently, modern man has no right to ‘boast himself far better than his fathers’—in intrinsic quality. Intrinsically,i.e.apart from the effects of culture and social training, it is probable that he is slightlyinferiorin capacity to his own ancestors, while very markedly inferior to the great races of antiquity (like the Greeks) in their hey-day. Nor is there any reason to suppose that his moral nature has changed materially. Modern man may be a little tamer and better-tempered, because he has been herded together much more closely than primitive man, and city life, even in slums, demands, and produces, a certain ‘urbanity.’ For many generationsthose who would not pack tight and could not stand the strain of constantly exhibiting ‘company manners’ and accommodating their action to those of their fellows, must have fled away into the wilds, where they could be independent, or have eliminated themselves in other ways,e.g.by committing murder. It is probable that the social history of Iceland, settled as it was by unbridled individualists who would not brook any form of organized government, might throw some light on this process of taming the individual.
Nevertheless there is little doubt that, in the main, humanity is still Yahoo-manity. Alike in mentality and inmoral, modern man is still substantially identical with his palæolithic ancestors. He is still the irrational,impulsive, emotional, foolish, destructive, cruel, credulous, creature he always was. Normally the Yahoo in him is kept under control by the constant pressure of a variety of social institutions; but let anything upset an established social order, and the Yahoo comes to the front at once. The history of the past fifty years abundantly proves that man is still capable of atrocities equal to any in his record. Not only have we lived through the greatest political and the deadliest natural convulsion, the Great War and the Tokio earthquake, but the Russian Revolution has outdone the French and Landru the legendary Bluebeard, while for mingled atrocity and baseness the murders of Rasputin and of Alexander of Serbia are unsurpassed inhistory. The painful truth is that civilization has not improved Man’s moral nature. His moral habits are still mainly matters of custom, and the effect of moral theories is nugatory everywhere. Thus civilization is not even skin deep; it does not go deeper than the clothes.