In commerce, the revolt is against the purity of standards and the integrity of business morals.  Who can question that this is pre-eminently the age of the sham and the counterfeit?  Science is prostituted to deceive the public by cloaking the increasing deterioration in quality of merchandise.  The blatant medium of advertising has become so mendacious as to defeat its own purpose.

In the recent deflation in commodity values, there was widespread “welching” among business men who had theretofore been classed as reputable.  Of course, I recognize that a far greater number kept their contracts, even when it brought them to the verge of ruin.  But when in the history of American business was there such a volume of broken faith as in the drastic deflation of 1920?

In the greater sphere of social life, we find the same revolt against the institutions which have the sanction of the past.  Social laws, which mark the decent restraints of print, speech and dress, have in recent decades been increasingly disregarded.  The very foundations of the great and primitive institutions of mankind—­like the family, the Church, and the State—­have been shaken.  Nature itself is defied.  Thus, the fundamental difference of sex is disregarded by social and political movements which ignore the permanent differentiation of social function ordained by Nature.

All these are but illustrations of the general revolt against the authority of the past—­a revolt that can be measured by the change in the fundamental presumption of men with respect to the value of human experience.  In all former ages, all that was in the past was presumptively true, and the burden was upon him who sought to change it.  To-day, the human mind apparently regards the lessons of the past as presumptively false—­and the burden is upon him who seeks to invoke them.

Lest I be accused of undue pessimism, let me cite as a witness one who, of all men, is probably best equipped to express an opinion upon the moral state of the world.  I refer to the venerable head of that religious organization[4] which, with its trained representatives in every part of the world, is probably better informed as to its spiritual state than any other organization.

[Footnote 4:  Reference is to the late Pope Benedict.]

Speaking last Christmas Eve, in an address to the College of Cardinals, the venerable Pontiff gave expression to an estimate of present conditions which should have attracted far greater attention than it apparently did.

The Pope said that five plagues were now afflicting humanity.

The first was the unprecedented challenge to authority.

The second, an equally unprecedented hatred between man and man.

The third was the abnormal aversion to work.

The fourth, the excessive thirst for pleasure as the great aim of life.

The fifth, a gross materialism which denied the reality of the spiritual in human life.