We are sometimes depressed by the fact that men. however fine their ideals. are now and have always been governed in large measure by evil. selfish Impulses. Yet. if we stop to consider. we have made some small progress even in our behavior. Most of us have moved perceptibly away from the primitive xenophobia that hates all outlanders and strangers. We are not so callous to human suffering even as our European and colonial forebears of the 16th and 17th centuries. Mutilation and the pillory have passed out of our lexicon of punishments.No one would say with Defoe that a bank. rupt who falsifies his declaration ought in justice to be hanged as a felon. or would regard the theft of a sheep or a shilling as a capital offense.
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xenophobia