Excerpt from Socialism and Character: A Contribution Towards a System of Applied Ethics
The occasional spectacle of great devotion to the public good sometimes inclines one to think that faith is not so much dead as that the form of it has merely changed; that it is now social instead of religious; that whereas men formerly believed in a Moral Governor of the universe whom they could not see, and a future life of which they did not know, they now believe in the advent of a great Social Revolution in spite of many and disheartening evidences of the slowness of social progress. But this devotion to the public good is confined to a comparative few; the generations now living do not generally deserve any credit for it; and it springs not so much from faith as from confidence. Faith implies an element of credulity: it is belief without evidence, belief held sometimes contrary to the believer's experience. But the belief in a great social future and its near advent may be a reasoned and reasonable one. The progress made in the past is a guarantee of progress in the future; and the belief in a Social Revolution becomes certainty when we see how little the present system has to offer to the self-interest of those who hold the vast preponderance of political power.
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