One is therefore inclined to believe that men are less capable of such deeds than they were in the past. But that is doing them a grave injustice. Dr. Barnardo, who opened a home for the little waifs and strays of the East End of London, is not inferior to St. Vincent de Paul who adopted and brought up forsaken children. John Brown who suffered a martyr's death by hanging because he attempted with arms to liberate the negro slaves of the Southern States, Henry Dumont who devoted the efforts of a lifetime to founding the Red Cross to help those wounded in war, Emile Zola who sacrificed his fortune, his reputation as an author, his personal safety, and suffered persecution, calumny, exile, a shameful condemnation in court, and violent threats to his life in order to get justice for Captain Dreyfus who had been wrongfully accused--all these can well compare with the saints in the Golden Legend. Virtue exists potentially in as many cases as formerly, probably in more; and it is actively practised whenever and wherever it is appealed to. Another result of the long evolution of civilization and Morality is the development of an ethical instinct in all except abnormal, degenerate individuals, which causes men to act morally in nearly all situations without conscious reflection, choice or effort. The individual who is ethically well grounded, in whom moral conduct has become an organized reflex action, does what is right without any conscious effort, and therefore does not in so doing evoke any idea of merit either in himself or in witnesses. But to do right habitually, carelessly and almost without thought, as one breathes and eats, easily makes one unjust in one's judgments. The battle between Reason and blind instinct, between the Will and refractory Impulse, the victory of the lofty principle, of spirituality over what is irrational and materialistic, which give us the illusion that free humanity is superior to the fatality of cosmic forces, have something so elevated and beautiful about them that we are disappointed if they are absent, and practical Morality without this dramatic setting does not appear to be real Morality.