To those who could believe in the existence of an all-powerful, beneficent deity--and which of us had grandfathers or fathers who did not?--there was something supremely [p159] logical and inevitable in this idea of Progress. How could life fail to improve seeing that a beneficent deity was controlling it, and must therefore be directing all things towards a common good? But now the objections to this belief scarcely require to be stated. Everybody knows, everybody sees, that it must be wrong. And those exceptional people whose minds and eyes still need some assistance before they feel able to reject it, have only to examine certain statistics in order to become assured that their conservatism is without foundation. And how many ideals have not gone the same way as “Progress”? Who believes in “Democracy” nowadays? Who believes in Parliamentary Government, in the ultimate triumph of Altruism, in the Brotherhood of mankind, in Universal Suffrage? In short, who believes in the desirability of the whole of Western civilisation, or of its extension to countries that are still uncontaminated by it? How could the contemplation of such a hecatomb of perverted ideals fail to create despondency, seeing that despite the lack of other ideals to take their place, and everybody’s horror at what has occurred, every sane man in every civilised land is convinced that, had the hecatomb not already been made, he would have been compelled to pile it up with his own hands? Perhaps it may sound to some an unwarrantable assumption to maintain that a complete negation of the beliefs of a former century--aye, and in some cases, of a former [p160] millenium--necessarily constitutes a state of deep distress. Those who entertain this view can only be recommended to ponder the enormous influence that strong, deep-rooted beliefs play in the lives of large communities, particularly when these beliefs constitute the very confidence, trust and faith which such communities feel in the worthiness and the value of their common aims and endeavours. Shake these beliefs, and the energy which theretofore had been directed evenly towards a certain bourne, a definite goal, finds itself dammed up or lost on the high road; remove them altogether, and it is not impossible that the very generation of energy itself will cease. People become listless, indolent, hopeless; and the acute stage of danger is soon reached when everyone cries openly or in his heart: “What is the good of it all? _Cui bono?_”