Those who refuse to stand in with them are persecuted and occasionally
executed when they give any trouble to the exploiters. They fall into
poverty when they lack lucrative specific talents. At the present moment
one half of Europe, having knocked the other half down, is trying to
kick it to death, and may succeed: a procedure which is, logically,
sound Neo-Darwinism. And the goodnatured majority are looking on
in helpless horror, or allowing themselves to be persuaded by the
newspapers of their exploiters that the kicking is not only a sound
commercial investment, but an act of divine justice of which they are
the ardent instruments.
But if Man is really incapable of organizing a big civilization, and
cannot organize even a village or a tribe any too well, what is the use
of giving him a religion? A religion may make him hunger and thirst for
righteousness; but will it endow him with the practical capacity to
satisfy that appetite? Good intentions do not carry with them a grain of
political science, which is a very complicated one. The most devoted and
indefatigable, the most able and disinterested students of this science
in England, as far as I know, are my friends Sidney and Beatrice Webb.
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