ABSTRACT
The diversification of sentiment seems to involve some degree of attenuation, or decline in volume, and also some growth of refinement. Communication, by giving abundance and choice of social contacts, also acts to diversify and refine sentiment; the growth of order disaccustoms us to violence, and democracy tends to remove the degrading spectacle of personal or class oppression. An artificial system must maintain itself by suppressing the free play of social forces and inculcating its own artificial ideas in place of those derived from experience. The reason for the association of freedom with truth is that the former is a training in the sense of social cause and effect; the free play of human forces being a constant demonstration of the power of reality as against sham. There is a tribute to truth in the very cynicism and shamelessness with which flagitious politicians and financiers declare and defend their practices.
