I say, very little improvement. Men talk loudly of the
enlightenment of the age, and the progress of the species, and the spread
of civilisation, and so forth: but when I read old books, and compare
old times with these, I confess I do not see so much of it as all this
hopeful talk would lead me to expect. Men in general have grown more
prudent, more cunning, from long experience. They have found out that
certain sins do not pay--that is, they interfere with people's comfort
and their power of making money, and therefore they prudently avoid them
themselves, and put them down by law in other men's cases. Men have
certainly grown more good-natured, in some countries, in that they
dislike more than their ancestors did, to inflict bodily torture on human
beings; but they are just as ready, or even more ready, to inflict on
those whom they dislike that moral and mental torture which to noble
souls is worse than any bodily pain. As for any real improvement in
human nature--where is it? There is just as much falsehood, cheating,
and covetousness, I believe, in the world as ever there was; just as much
cant and hypocrisy, and perhaps more; just as much envy, hatred, malice
and all uncharitableness.
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