“Majorities” decide nothing as to what is true or false, right or wrong. Those who think they do might as well say that Socrates was wrong, in his day, and the Athenians right, on the ground that he was one and they twenty thousand. They may as well also say that cannibalism and slavery were legitimate whenever and wherever they happened to be widespread and looked upon as “normal.” But we notice that, from those very civilizations in which cannibalism was generally admitted, sprang, now and then, a few individuals--an infinitesimal, powerless minority--whom the custom disgusted. And from amidst a world in which slavery was considered as a necessary evil by respectable people, sprang a few individuals who condemned it, either openly or secretly, in the name of human dignity.
One of the best among the ancient Mexicans, King Nezahualcoyotl, tried in vain, in the fifteenth century A.D. to put a stop to human sacrifices within his realm. But today, the murder of a man, be it even as an offering to a deity, is considered a criminal offense and would be punished by law nearly all over the world. The minority, in Mexico, became a majority — and would have become so, apparently, anyhow, even if no Christian adventurers had ever landed there. Minorities often do, with time, become majorities.
