The ideals and objectives of yesterday were still ideals of today, but they lost some of their lustre and even, as one seemed to go towards them, they lost the shining beauty which had warmed the heart and vitalised the body. Evil triumphed often enough, but what was far worse was the coarsening and distortion of what seemed so right. Was human nature so essentially bad that it would take ages of training, through suffering and misfortune, before it could behave reasonably and raise man above the creature of lust and violence and deceit that he now wasIJ
