Nothing
came out as it should. In principle, according to figures, any
one could set up or pull down a society. One could frame no sort
of satisfactory answer to the constructive doctrines of Adam
Smith, or to the destructive criticisms of Karl Marx or to the
anarchistic imprecations of Elisee Reclus. One revelled at will
in the ruin of every society in the past, and rejoiced in proving
the prospective overthrow of every society that seemed possible
in the future; but meanwhile these societies which violated every
law, moral, arithmetical, and economical, not only propagated
each other, but produced also fresh complexities with every
propagation and developed mass with every complexity.
The human factor was worse still. Since the stupefying
discovery of Pteraspis in 1867, nothing had so confused the
student as the conduct of mankind in the fin-de-siecle. No one
seemed very much concerned about this world or the future, unless
it might be the anarchists, and they only because they disliked
the present. Adams disliked the present as much as they did, and
his interest in future society was becoming slight, yet he was
kept alive by irritation at finding his life so thin and
fruitless. Meanwhile he watched mankind march on, like a train of
pack-horses on the Snake River, tumbling from one morass into
another, and at short intervals, for no reason but temper,
falling to butchery, like Cain.
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