Excerpt from The World of Suckers
Men judge their acts by a standard of good and evil. Yet the steam of their emotions is not consciously a product of either. Virtue is a mood which man has reduced to writing; it is a logical mood, caused by a tranquility of the mind and body. In action man is impelled by the force of his nature, and such force is singular, or selfish, not logical nor pervaded with his faculty of justice.
Some readers will not understand this book, because it does not deal with right and wrong. If the reader will take a retrospect of all philosophy, both religious and scientific, he will notice one theory that mankind is good and evil, and another theory that mankind is a mass of energy. This is as much as to say that men are going towards Heaven and Hell, from one standpoint; from another, that they may, as wilful creatures, disregard both. Men do disregard both, while pretending to fear them. Otherwise he could not succeed in the uproarious prosperity of this age. Herein I am concerned with what man does, not what he thinks he does nor what he piously ought to do.
Today the world has not the same appearance that it had in the first century A. D. The ideals are the ideals that were promulgated then, but the magnificent structures of civilization are the elaboration of something else. The First Century did not give us working directions for the Twentieth. Something unexpressed was in man that he did what he has done. In fact, most of the important events in history were accomplished in rupture of ideal action.
What has actuated man, I need not say. I watch the pageant of external things, called Progress. And that is my standpoint herein.
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