The Unpopular Review Vol. I

The Unpopular Review Vol. I - January-June 1914

The world has always been full of irrepressible conflicts, and will be as long as life is worth living in itand longer. There was one between centrifugal and centripetal force, at the very start (assuming a start), when the star dust began to whirl, and all that have been since have been but differentiations from it. Old ones are between sex-instinct and monogamy, between license and order, or call it liberty and authority if you please, or freedom and slavery. Sex-instinct, license, liberty, freedom are centrifugal; monogamy, order, authority, even slavery, are centripetal. The conflict between freedom and slavery gave rise to the phrase The Irrepressible Conflict. It came through Seward at the time of the Civil War. That Irrepressible Conflict has been succeeded by one which we have called new, but which, though in a comparatively quiescent state, is older than Jack Cade or even than Cleon. It took its start in the fact that in human evolution, from the pithecanthropos up, some of us have not got along as fast as others. Primitively, the conflict began by those in front enslaving those behindthe minority enslaving the majority. But that built Athens; and with it, civilizationas we regard it. (This starting point is selected somewhat arbitrarily, but most starting points must be.) It now looks, though, as if the boot were getting on the other legthe majority trying to enslave the minority; and if they do before humanity is much farther evolved, what Athens started will stop.[Pg 2] But probably the result of the conflict will not be as bad as that. Something like it has happened at times, howeversay when Southern Europe was rolled over by Northern Europe, and when the Paris that had breeches was rolled over by the Paris that had none; and possibly something like it began when Americans that had three thousand dollars a year and found work for the rest of the people, and paid wages, and bought the produce of the soil, and made commerce and finance and the best in statecraft and science and letters and the artswhen in two instances these men were legislated away from powers and immunities granted to others. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 48268
Author: Various
Release Date: Feb 15, 2015
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Holt, Henry, 1840-1926