The hour of the decision is now; for this we can see plainly, and as scientists we can proclaim it—­the human race is in a swift current of degeneration, which a new morality alone can check.  The struggle is at its height in our time; if it fails, if the fibre of the race continues to deteriorate, the soul of the race to be eaten out by poverty and luxury, by insanity and disease, by prostitution, crime and war—­then mankind will slip back into the abyss, the untamed giants of Nature will resume their ancient sway, and the tides, the tempest and the lightning will sweep the earth clean again.  I do not believe that this calamity will befall us.  I know that in the diseased social body the forces of resistance are gathering—­the Socialist movement, in the broad sense—­the activities of all who believe in the possibility of reconstructing society upon a basis of reason, justice and love.  To such people this book goes out:  to the truly religious people, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness here and now, who believe in brotherhood as a reality, and are willing to bear pain and ridicule and privation for the sake of its ultimate achievement.

        From discord and defeat,
      From doubt and lame division,
        We pluck the fruit and eat;
  And the mouth finds it bitter, and the spirit sweet.... 
      O sorrowing hearts of slaves,
        We heard you beat from far! 
      We bring the light that saves,
        We bring the morning star;
  Freedom’s good things we bring you, whence all good things are....

#Envoi#

I have come to the end of my task; but one question troubles me.  I think of the “young men and maidens meek” who will read this book, and I wonder what they will make of it.  We have had a lark together; we have gone romping down the vista of the ages, swatting every venerable head that showed itself, beating the dust out of ancient delusions.  You would like all your life to be that kind of lark; but you may not find it so, and perhaps you will suffer disillusionment and vexation.

I have known hundreds of young radicals in my life; they have nearly all been gallant and honest, but they have not all been wise, and therefore not so happy as they might have been.  In the course of time I have formulated to myself the peril to which young radicals are exposed.  We see so much that is wrong in ancient things, it gets to be a habit with us to reject them.  We have only to know that a thing is old to feel an impulse of impatient scorn; on the other hand, we are tempted to welcome anything which can prove itself to be unprecedented.  There is a common type of radical whose aim in life is to be several jumps ahead of mankind; whose criterion of conduct is that it shocks the bourgeois.  If you do not know that type, you may find him—­and her—­in the newest of the Bohemian cafes, drinking the newest red chemicals, smoking the newest brand of cigarettes, and discussing the newest form of #psycopathia sexualis#.  After you have watched them a while, you realize that these ultra-new people have fallen victim to the oldest form of logical fallacy, the non sequitur, and likewise to the oldest form of slavery, which is self-indulgence.