WHAT IS RELIGION ? 309
minority is considered a most usual and necessary event_, and is continually going on.
Men of to-day do not know how to express sufficient delight over the splendid, unprecedented, colossal pro- gress achieved by technical science during the nine- teenth century.
There is no doubt that never in history was such material progress made in mastering the powers of Nature as during the nineteenth century. But, also, there is no doubt that never in history was there such an example of immoral life, freed from any force restraining man's animal inclinations, as that given by our ever-increasingly bestialized. Christian humanity, 'riie material progress achieved in the nineteenth cen- tury has really been great ; but that progress has been bought, and is being bought, by such neglect of the most elementary demands of morality, as humanity never before was guilty of, even in the days of Genghis- Khan, Attila, or Nero.
lliere is no doubt that the ironclads, railroads, printing-presses, tunnels, phonographs, Rontgen-rays, and so forth, are very good. They are all very good, but what are also good — good, as Ruskin says, beyond comparison with anything else — are human lives, such as those of which millions are now mercilessly ruined for the acquisition of ironclads, railways, and tunnels, which, instead of beautifying life, disfigure it. To this the usual reply is, that appliances are already being invented, and will with time be invented, to check such destruction of human life as is now going on — but this is untrue. As long as men do not consider all men their brothers, and do not consider human lives the most sacred of all things — on no account to be sacrificed; since to support them is the very first and most imme- diate of duties — that is, as long as men do not treat each other religiously, they will always, for the sake of personal advantage, ruin one anotlier^s lives. No one will be so silly as to agree to spend thousands of pounds, if he can attain the same end by spending a hundred pounds — with a few human lives that are at
