PERHAPS no word has ever conjured up more inspiring pictures than the word Equality, and none, surely, has been more abused. Poets have sung its praises, philosophers have taught its beauties, and philanthropists have spent themselves in trying to attain to it, and yet at the opening of the twentieth century the ideal of Equality seems to be far from being realized.
To one who studies history in the light of Christian Science, it is of the deepest interest to trace the working of ideals in the human thought, and to follow the movements resulting therefrom, ls they form an illustration of the gradual emergence out of darkness to a better light, and show how, without a knowledge of Principle to guide and control, the pendulum has simply swung from one extreme to the other, the oppressed of one generation becoming the oppressors of the next.
From the earliest times the strong have tyrannized over the weak, the rich have ground down the poor, injustice has followed hard upon the heels of inequality, until at last in violent re-action, human nature has produced civil war. revolution, bloodshed, and strife. While it is undoubtedly true that out of these upheavals in thought a better belief has been slowly evolved, that some forms of tyranny have vanished forever, and a more tolerant spirit has arisen to control human affairs, yet in some instances it seems to be true, that the tendency of these re-actions themselves, has been to "level down." However noble the sentiments, however pure the aspirations of the individual reformer, the force let loose by the impact of the new ideas, has in practice sometimes seemed to make for a lower, not a higher plane of thought. The probable explanation of this is, that when the force of public feeling has been loosened, elements unforeseen have come to the surface, sweeping the control out of the hands of the disinterested seeker after truth and reform, and placing self-interest, avarice, and greed in the front of the movement.
