With loss of faith in moral progress men have lost faith in political progress. The ideals of '48 are _passe_. Liberty, equality, and fraternity are exploded bubbles. The imperialism of Bismarck, the foe of popular government and champion of divine right, rules the hour. To the fighting type of society the politics of industrial democracy seem absurd. You cannot set up the hustings in an armed camp of twenty-eight millions. Kings and nobles, rank and privilege, police, spies, and censors--all those hoary abuses that roused the men of '48,--are deemed necessary to a strong military state. They are hallowed by the new phrase of political fatalism "historical continuity." This drift of thought cannot but lead to a despairing view. Civilization seems to have lost itself in a _cul-de-sac_. Progress has ended in an aimless discontent. The schools have produced, according to Bismarck, ten times as many overeducated young men as there are places to fill. The thirst for culture has produced a great, hungry, intellectual proletariat. The forces of darkness are still strong, and it seems sometimes as if the Middle Ages will swallow up everything won by modern struggles. The Liberal wonders at moments if he be not really fighting against destiny. Often in his _Culturkampf_ with Ultramontanism has he proved the truth of Gambetta's saying, "_Le clericalism, voila l'ennemi!_" Science, too, has had its share in disturbing men's minds. Science, during the last twenty years, has been most successful in studying the past. It has traced the origin of institutions and followed the upward path of man. It has lifted the veil of mystery. It says, "See, I can show you how our feelings arose. I will lay bare the root of modesty, of filial piety, sexual love, patriotism, loyalty, justice, honor, aesthetic delight, conscience, religion, fear of God. I will explain the origin of institutions like the household, the church, the state. I will show the rise of prayer, worship, sacrifice, marriage-customs, ceremonies social forms, and laws. Nothing is found mysterious, nothing unique, nothing divine. There is no need of looking for a stream of tendency, an influx from another source, the descent of a new power. The notion of a soul from a spiritual world encysted in customs and feelings developed upon it by nature, is a myth. Man is a formation. The race has accommodated itself to its environment as a stream to its bed. The manifold adaptation of Nature to man is really the adaptation of man to Nature. To marvel at it is as if the cake should marvel at the fit of the dough-pan. Everything in man is the outcome of forces and conditions still present with us. Man and his civilization are held suspended in protoplasm and sunlight. Let but a plague sweep us away to-day, and to-morrow would begin the second evolution of man."