But in a society where private property interests dominate, and where classes contend for supremacy, the verdict is quite different. Those who consciously, and out of selfish class interests, oppose the change that would so greatly benefit society as a whole are generally rewarded as if they were really the benefactors of mankind, inasmuch as they enjoy prestige and wealth, whereas the real benefactors of society and the true friends of mankind are reviled and generally suffer penury and persecution. We know this, first, because it is capable of scientific demonstration. We also know it in the same way that we know a tree by its fruit. Society is an organism, and it reacts to artificial promptings, or artificial restraints, as do all organisms.
Human society is a, living thing, a growing thing.
Its roots are in the subsoil of the past, its topmost branches straining toward the sky of the future. Social systems are born, grow and mature, and eventually decay. The system typified in the ancient Roman Empire came into existence out of the dim past. As it grew in size and power, it scattered its seeds over the then known world. Its mission had been to pull society out of the morass of equality in poverty and ignorance.