Ideals and Democracy; An Essay in Modernism

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IX ATTAINABLE IDEALS SOMEWHERE in the dim reaches of the past--a distant day as we reckon time but only as yesterday when considered in the light of evolutionary history--the human animal existed in his simplicity. From the rising of the sun in the heavens to the darkening of his world this simple man followed mUii/e nature. His needs were few, his wants hardly greater, his ambitions yet unborn. He lived from day to day, and only the change of seasons made it necessary for him to change his daily mode of action. To procure food and to protect himself from the elements and from savage beasts and human enemies were his only cares. For him a cave was a palace, a hollow tree trunk was a stately dwelling, a sheltering cliff was a modern bungalow. He fished with his hands, hunted with a club, and ate flesh as we eat oysters. There were no latest styles to trouble him, no roads to build, no cities to beautify. His taxes were never delinquent. He had no polished floors to rewax, no trousers to be creased, and milk pasteurized or sterilized was unknown to him. He possessed no watch with a mainspring to be repaired, no plow with a share to be sharpened. He was troubled neither with railroads, telephones, books, breakfast foods (similar in composition but bearing different names), gas stoves, newspapers, steamboats, electric flatirons, nor pure-food laws. The tipping crime was unknown and, because civilization had not yet been substituted for native honesty, graft was not then invented. He studied neither sociology nor ethics, felt no obligation toward that vague thing called society, and interested himself not at all in that still more indefinite element known as culture. He hunted and fished, ate, drank, slept, swam, climbed, lived, and...