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nydus/The Great IllusionPublic
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Table of Contents

THE HUMAN NATURE AND MORALS OF THE CASE

and little the worse for it. One must not overlook the Law of Acceleration. The age of man on the earth is placed variously at from thirty thousand to three hundred thousand years. He has in some respects developed more in the last two hundred years than in all the preceding ages. We see more change now in ten years than originally in ten thousand. Who shall foretell the developments of a generation?

CHAPTER III

UNCHANGING HUMAN NATURE

The progress from cannibalism to Herbert Spencer—The disappearance of religious oppression by government—Disappearance of the duel—The Crusaders and the Holy Sepulchre—The wail of militarist writers at man's drift away from militancy.

All of us who have had occasion to discuss this subject are familiar with the catch-phrases with which the whole matter is so often dismissed. "You cannot change human nature," "What man always has been during thousands of years, he always will be," are the sort of dicta generally delivered as self-evident propositions that do not need discussion. Or if, in deference to the

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