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Title: The false assumptions of "democracy"
Author: Anthony M. Ludovici
Author of introduction, etc.: baron Richard Greville Verney Willoughby de Broke
Release date: September 11, 2025 [eBook #76859]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Heath Cranton, Ltd, 1921
Credits: Sean/IB@DP
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FALSE ASSUMPTIONS OF "DEMOCRACY" ***
THE
FALSE ASSUMPTIONS
OF “DEMOCRACY.”
By
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
(Author of “A Defence of Aristocracy,” “Man’s
Descent from the Gods,” etc., etc.)
_With an INTRODUCTORY LETTER from
the Right Hon. Lord Willoughby de Broke._
HEATH CRANTON, LTD.,
Fleet Lane, London, E.C. 4.
_Printed in Great Britain by Love & Malcomson Ltd.,
London and Redhill._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY LETTER FROM LORD WILLOUGHBY DE BROKE vii.
PREFACE ix.
INTRODUCTION THE CONFUSION OF LANGUAGE
AND ITS RELATION TO REVOLUTION 11
CHAPTER I. THE PRINCIPLE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY 27
CHAPTER II. JUSTICE 44
CHAPTER III. EQUALITY 61
CHAPTER IV. FREEDOM 77
CHAPTER V. SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM 95
CHAPTER VI. EDUCATION 126
CHAPTER VII. SOCIAL REFORM 153
CHAPTER VIII. THE PHYSIOLOGY OF SOCIAL UNREST 179
CHAPTER IX. THE GREAT ALTERNATIVE TO SOCIAL REFORM 199
INDEX 217
[p. vii] INTRODUCTORY LETTER FROM THE RIGHT
HON. LORD WILLOUGHBY DE BROKE
_12, Wilton Crescent,
London, S.W. 1.
May 1st, 1921._
Dear Mr. Ludovici,--
Thank you very much for letting me see the proofs of your book. It
seems to me to be written at a very opportune moment, and to suggest a
line of thought which could be followed with great advantage.
In these days of “propaganda,” when our fine old language is being
wrested every hour of the day in speeches, pamphlets and leaflets,
to illustrate the views of political parties, it is more than ever
important that we should have a clear understanding of the true meaning
of words.
Nor is the vague use of phrases confined to the pioneer of political
causes. Our very war memorials are utilised to inform us that the brave
fellows whose honour they commemorate died for “freedom.” If that were
true, they indeed died in vain. Nothing can be further from even the
most elementary conception of freedom than the present condition of
society in these islands. But the pious and devout people who wrote
those inscriptions are possibly not to blame.
Long before the war the nation had been so content to be governed by
phrases that [p. viii] we were actually asked to enlist for such phrases
as “The rights of small nations,” “Self-determination,” and the like,
whereas in very truth we were forced to fight to save our own skins.
Your suggestions open up so many considerations that I cannot explore
them all. But your proposition that the quality of our institutions
may, after all, be sounder than the quality of the men who have failed
to work them, seems especially worthy of notice. If your book serves
to direct attention to the wisdom of our ancestors, it will be a great
benefit to the public.
Yours very truly,
Willoughby de Broke.
[p. ix] PREFACE.
The Great War has left the world, and particularly poor old battered
Europe, with many a high ideal shattered and many a respected principle
destroyed. Not only the beliefs of our grandfathers, but also the
convictions of our fathers, seem now old-fashioned and no longer
seaworthy. Certainly an old era is dead; but has a new era been born?
A new era suggests new ideals, new leading principles; it suggests a
breastful of new and stout convictions. Have we of this dawning era any
new ideals or principles? Have we any new and stout convictions?
It seems as if we had been plunged into this new world unclothed. True
enough, millions have doffed their khaki; but the citizen clothing they
have donned in exchange--is it all make-believe, all eye-wash? Are we
really naked?
At all events, before we can possibly tell where we are, or how we
stand, the most necessary preliminary step would seem to be a general
stock-taking of our ideals, principles and convictions--a re-definition
of the big words that once led us, and of the great phrases with
which we were once inspired. Only then, only when this re-definition
shall have been accomplished, does it seem possible that we shall be
able to [p. x] clothe ourselves in the ideology of our new and brightly
illuminated age.
This book is a modest attempt at this spade work of re-definition. It
does not pretend to be either exhaustive or expert. It takes up just a
few of the old words and phrases, and by re-examining them in the new
light, hopes rather to point the way than to cover the whole distance
to the destination.
Alarming sounds fill the air. There are wars and rumours of wars
wherever you turn. Indeed, there are rumours abroad and at home of
the worst kind of war, the cruellest and most devastating kind of
war--civil war. Can it be possible that a good deal of this threat of
civil war arises from the very need which this book undertakes however
imperfectly to supply? Can it be possible that revolution and even
Bolshevism may arise out of this need for a re-definition of terms?
At all events, even if this need is only a small contributory cause,
it is serious enough and cannot be lightly passed over. It is for fear
lest this need may be something more serious than a small contributory
cause, that the author has suggested the remedy of re-definition
outlined both in precept and example in this book. If his pioneer
effort, however limited in range, may lead others to produce more
thorough examples of his method, he will consider that his pains have
been more than adequately repaid.
Anthony M. Ludovici.
_London, August, 1921._
[p. 11] THE FALSE ASSUMPTIONS OF “DEMOCRACY.”
INTRODUCTION.
THE CONFUSION OF LANGUAGE AND ITS RELATION TO REVOLUTION.
“Babble, babble; our old England may go down in babble at last.”
Tennyson (_Locksley Hall--Sixty Years After_).
Nothing on earth leads more certainly to disunion than a division of
tongues. When it became necessary to disperse the iniquitous builders
of the Tower of Babel, we know the expedient to which the Lord
resorted, and how effective it proved to be. But whereas unity is a
desirable condition, and a common tongue is one of the most potent
means of realising it, people not infrequently forget that a common
tongue presupposes a common uniform culture. It depends upon a common
view of human life and the world. This common culture provides the
frame, so to speak, to the design of life, in which every word of a
language fits like a piece of mosaic. Remove the frame, disturb the
arrangement, and the odd pieces of mosaic fall all about you and lose
their significance and their necessary association. They can be used
only as--missiles. [p12]
Whatever weight the usual arguments against the Middle Ages may
possess, at least this is plain, that in mediæval times a common
culture prevailed among the leading nations of Europe. Indeed, if we
wished to sum up the effect of the Middle Ages in one sentence, we
could not express ourselves more clearly than by saying, that in those
days the leaders of men attempted to convert Europe into a single
nation. This effort, though only partially successful, at least led to
the magnificent result that most men, of what nation soever, understood
one another--understood one another particularly in their use of
abstract or general terms. For that is the test. In the end the names
of things remain. The words representing common objects are usually as
permanent as those objects themselves. Fashion may destroy the object
and thus render the word obsolete; but for hundreds of years none will
dispute the proper connotation of the word “chair,” “table,” “basket,”
for instance; while in the realm of abstract and general terms such
severe fluctuations may have taken place as to make the same word mean
something different to each generation.
Now the supreme importance of abstract or general terms lies in the
fact that they are the words with which we guide our lives, mark out
our goals and direct our effort. It is therefore urgently necessary
that they should stand for very precise ideas, and that as the current
coinage of speech they should mean the same things to all men of the
same group, body, or nation. [p13]
As opposed to the effort of the Middle Ages, however, the effort of
this Age, or the Muddle Age, seems to be directed towards turning
every nation into a Europe--into a unit, that is to say, without
unity. And this lack of unity is nowhere more acute and more apparent
than in the realm of abstract or general terms. People of the same
nation, nowadays, no longer speak the same language. They no longer
mean the same things, or convey the same ideas, when they speak of
Happiness, Beauty, Order, Right, Freedom, Liberty, Justice, etc. The
frame has gone. The common culture has been replaced by a congeries
of pseudo-cultures, all in active conflict. The consequence is that
the all-important words of this class have fallen out of place in the
design of life; they have no unifying whole in which they can find a
stable position, they are at a loose end, so to speak, and they can be
used not as intelligent missives, but only as missiles between isolated
groups and parties that are doomed to eternal conflict.
A word at a loose end, however, is a word devoid of definite
associations and therefore of meaning. Can a word devoid of meaning be
used as a missile? Certainly it can, provided that it be given, despite
its loss of an intellectual appeal, sufficient motive power to provoke
an emotion. But of this anon.
There can be no doubt that we have reached a condition in modern
Europe, in which each nation is, as it were, a complex of nations--a
complex in which the majority of the most important words (the
abstract [p14] and general terms) not only mean different things to
different groups and coteries, but also convey no precise meaning
whatsoever to anybody. This, however, constitutes a state of complete
confusion, and therefore a very grave danger. Just as one cannot help
appearing stupid when one is trying and failing to understand a foreign
tongue, one really is stupid when one cannot understand one’s own
tongue.
If stupidity seems to be increasing--and there surely cannot be
much doubt concerning at least this form of “Progress,”--it is due
chiefly to men’s growing incapacity to understand their mother tongue.
Abstract and general terms are no longer comprehensible even to the
most literate; to the illiterate they are simply fireworks, flags or
flagstones.
Now this would be all very well if it ended in stupidity. But that is
not the final bourne of the present confusion of language. The final
bourne is something much more serious, much more disastrous. It is
revolution.
All those who may be tempted to regard this conclusion as extreme,
would do well to pause a moment here, in order to dwell upon the
possible consequences of a confusion of language.
Is it not clear that at all times and in all climes where a confusion
of language has existed, man has been doomed not only to be misleading
and misled, but also to be incapable of leading? That is the worst
danger. A lack of precision amounting almost to incomprehensibility is
sure in any case to mislead; but what if it makes it no longer possible
to lead? [p15]
There will always be thousands of men prepared to mislead their
fellows. Even in the heydey of every culture this has been so. Even
with language at its brightest and best in precision and adequacy
this is always so. But how about those who are prepared to lead their
fellows, and who are admirably equipped for so doing? What are they to
do if the only medium which lies to hand is so corrupt, so devoid of
meaning, that they cannot use it without the tragic certainty of being
misunderstood?
And yet who would undertake to stand up and speak to-day, even before
an educated audience, without feeling certain beforehand that he
would be misunderstood if he used the words Liberty, Freedom, Right,
Democracy, Patriotism, etc.?
That is the danger. While there is a harvest prepared for those who
would mislead in days like the present; for the rare individual who
would lead, who is sufficiently gifted to lead, and whose leadership is
needed, there can be but disappointment and barrenness.
This is the pass to which our present confusion of language has brought
us. It makes revolution possible, because it makes the pursuit of false
ideals inevitable, and conflict and misunderstanding a certainty.
The causes of our present condition are to be sought, first and
chiefly, in the decline of a common and uniform culture, secondly in
the cheap literature that has come into being since the Education Act
of 1870, and thirdly in modern journalism.
In modern journalism the distortion and abuse of terms, the crippling
of words has [p16] become almost a habit. Catachresis, or the forcing
and straining of words, is the rule; nowhere is the sacred duty of
precision less observed than in the very quarter where its sway should
be most uncontested. The journalist, intent only on sensation, is the
first to debase words into missiles or empty symbols. He it is who
sets the example to the crowd, by picking up these unfortunate fallen
pieces of mosaic, in order to fling them about with the wantonness of
a schoolboy. He it is who shakes the shoddy frame of modern culture
in the hope of making even more of these sparkling fragments fall out
of the design of life, until ultimately when some one does arise who
would choose to construct rather than to destroy, he finds nothing to
hand but shapeless and irrecognisable monstrosities, chipped into mere
stones by the mad fury with which they have been hurled about.
Matters would not be so bad if it were possible to point to one class,
one stratum of society in England, in which language was treated with
more respect. Unfortunately this is no longer possible. Even among
speakers of good education this misuse of language is all too common.
The present writer once heard the Bishop of London address a cultivated
audience on the subject of Reconstruction, and was compelled to take
exception at least a dozen times to that dignitary’s illegitimate use
of the word “Democracy.”[1]
The reality of the danger, its imminence, will perhaps strike the most
incredulous when it is pointed out to them that the [p17] French
Revolution itself was the outcome of a confusion of language; nor can
there be any doubt that the Russian Revolution had a similar origin.
The French Revolution can be traced, and has been traced, even by
writers quite friendly to “democracy,” to the radical misunderstanding
of three words--Nature, Freedom, and Man--by Jean Jacques Rousseau.
This writer, as is well known, after having formed a totally fantastic
and false concept of Nature, began to speculate upon the unhappy
contrast that human civilisation presented in comparison with this
fairylike figment of his mind. He compared man in the state of
Nature--Rousseau’s “Nature”--with civilised man in the 18th century,
and then proceeded to show how impure, immoral and corrupt, was the
second kind of man as compared with the former. The fact that the whole
comparison was vitiated by the absurd impossibility of this so-called
“thinker’s” arbitrary definition of Nature, was only discovered
scores of years later, when the untold damage to which his insane
misunderstanding led, had long been past repair.
For the “Nature” of Rousseau was the Nature of our most successful
Victorian poets--all smiling meadows, babbling brooks, nodding flowers
and innocence. He had neither the profundity nor the honesty to see
Nature as she really is--immoral, hard, merciless and tasteless.[2]
Like our Victorian poets when Rousseau gazed upon a rustic scene, he
thought neither of the stoat in the hedge quietly devouring its field
mouse, nor of the starling in the coppice solemnly and methodically
hammering a snail to a pulp before swallowing it. He gave no thought
either to the pitiless and eternal conflict of all the vegetation at
his feet, or to the struggle probably going on in the adjoining village
between a beautiful child and the microbe of tuberculosis. He dwelt
only on that something which was not Man and proceeded to endow that
something, which was not Man, with all the qualities that his feverish
imagination regarded as desirable.
When, therefore, he proceeded to plant his “natural man” down in this
utterly fanciful scenario of Rousseau-esque “Nature,” he perforce drew
a picture even more distorted of humanity than he had already drawn of
Nature, and thus proceeded to his ultimate fatuous conclusion that “Man
was born free and everywhere he is in chains.”
Absurd and meaningless as this phrase was, it succeeded, as Lord Morley
has pointed out, in thrilling the generation to which it was uttered
in two continents; and it was not until a hundred years later that
someone appeared who demonstrated that Rousseau was not only a liar
but a pernicious liar. Meanwhile, Napoleon had proved to the French
people, in deeds if not in words, how ludicrously fantastic were the
ravings of this Genevan firebrand; but the philosophic demonstration
of his radical misunderstanding of the three words, “Freedom,” [p19]
“Nature,” and “Man,” had to be left to a later generation.
The fact that the French Revolution was the outcome of this radical
misunderstanding is now no longer contested by any serious thinker.
A searching and forcible re-definition of “Nature,” “Freedom,” and
“Man,” in the light of history, biology, psychology, and a sound
outlook on life and humanity, if it had been rapidly prepared and
widely circulated in Rousseau’s lifetime, might have defeated the
efforts of this Arch-charlatan to poison his own country and the world;
but, in those days, who dreamt that the misunderstanding, or the
deliberate misinterpretation, of three such simple words as Freedom,
Nature, and Man, could lead to so much horror and bloodshed?
The world at that time was only faintly aware of the far-reaching
practical effect even of sound ideas; how could it justly estimate the
consequences of false or unsound ideas?
Now, however, we know. There is no longer any excuse for us; our
lesson is before us. And, alas! to-day, we are confronted not by the
mere misunderstanding of three simple words, we are confronted by the
very much more formidable fact that there is scarcely one general
or abstract term in the whole of our language that has any definite
meaning. We are confronted by the imminent menace of no longer having
any language at all with which to appeal either to the reason or the
unreason of man.
All the words by which our life, our [p20] aspirations and our energy
can be directed, have long ago become so meaningless, as the result of
repeated falsification, mutilation and counterfeiting, that we may soon
be reduced to the expedients of animals and savages, in order to make
ourselves clear, and drown our voices in the clash of arms.
And yet it can be shown that these abstract and general terms, which
no longer have any definite meaning, or which have acquired an utterly
misleading meaning, do provoke emotions and feelings which are none the
less harmful for being indefinite and vague.
How is this possible? If it is claimed that a word has ceased to make
any intellectual or rational appeal, owing to repeated catachresis
or misunderstanding, how can it still provoke dangerous feelings
and emotions? If it fails, owing to the variety of ways in which it
is understood, from meeting with uniform interpretation, how can it
provoke uniform action?
A word may have ceased from making any intellectual appeal, and yet be
forcibly associated by word-counterfeiters and other agitators with
certain vague desiderata which defy analysis. For instance, suppose a
certain adult A. repeat again and again to a child B. that one day, if
it is obedient and amenable, it will be taken to “Chekko’s.” The child
may press for a description of “Chekko’s”; but all A. does is to nod
his head, smile with prophetical good humour, and say: “Ah, you’ll see.
It’s wonderful! It’s magic!”
Here we have a case of a child to whom the word “Chekko’s” means
literally nothing. It is, however, associated vaguely [p21] with
something mysteriously desirable. “Chekko’s” may have no real
existence, but certain emotions are nevertheless suscitated in the
child by the sound of the word, because it has been led to believe that
something dimly pleasant is associated with the name. Ultimately even a
flag inscribed with the word “Chekko’s” will make the child shout with
joy; a signpost with the direction: “To Chekko’s” will make it leap
with excitement, and a mere passing reference to the “Checko-Slovaks”
will lead it to suspect that these people must be a very pleasant and
happy nation.
A correct definition of “Chekko’s” given by someone whom the child
trusts, would suffice either to dispel the emotion provoked by the
sound, or else to confirm it, according to whether it had or had not
a real existence, and that existence corresponded with the child’s
fostered mental image of it. But in any case the process of dissuasion
would take time, and the re-definition would have to be inculcated upon
the child as assiduously as the false and hazy original association had
been.
It is possible, therefore, to provoke dynamic emotions by means of an
absolutely meaningless sound, even when the intellect of the listener
receives no appeal whatsoever.
In view of this elementary fact in psychology, the extreme danger of
having a very large number of both meaningless and inflammable words in
our current speech will perhaps begin to be obvious.
The fact that the word “Freedom” has now become practically
meaningless--even more meaningless than Rousseau made it, [p22]
because now it has not even a fictitious meaning--does not render it
a whit less potent in provoking cheers and wild enthusiasm when it is
shouted from the mystic eminence of a public platform.
Presumably when Rousseau spoke of “Freedom” he meant a certain lack
of compulsion regarding actions which are peculiar to civilisation,
a certain absence of constraint in regard to conventions that do not
harass the savage. The savage does not require to wear clean linen,
he does not require to wear a hat, he may if he choose eat with his
fingers, or come to breakfast unshaven; he may have three or four
wives, he may eat human flesh, he may live in the open and shoot down
his prey without considering whether it belongs to the squire or to
the lord of the manor. Rousseau cannot have meant anything but this
by “Freedom.” If Rousseau had been told that while it was true that
the savage does not require to perform much that the civilised man has
to perform, the civilised man, on the other hand, is “free” from many
a duty that is incumbent on the savage, he would have perceived that
to drop the constraints of civilisation for those of barbarism merely
amounted to exchanging one form of bondage for another. For instance,
the savage of certain climes has to tattoo his flesh, sometimes with
great pain; he has to observe certain rigid taboos, he has to hunt for
his food, he has to fight every day of his life against wild animals
and the hostile tribe of his neighbourhood into the bargain; he has to
work hard during boyhood and early [p23] manhood to acquire efficiency
in the arts of the chase and of war; he is obliged to recognise a
chieftain, etc. In fact, it could be shown that Man in a “state of
nature” is perhaps even more constrained by conventions and laws than
civilised man. Only by deliberately falsifying the evidence--that is
to say, by giving a thoroughly distorted notion of Nature, would it be
possible to contend that man “in a state of nature” is more “free” than
civilised man. Rousseau, as we have seen, however, did not hesitate to
falsify the evidence. Hence he was able to say: “Man is born free and
everywhere he is in chains.”
But if we turn to the modern idea of Freedom, we shall find that it
is even more difficult to understand than Rousseau’s. For at least
Rousseau’s “Freedom” can be traced to a romantic distortion of the true
attributes of “Nature”; the modern idea of “Freedom” can be traced to
nothing.
In its two forms, the alleged desideratum of modernity. Freedom and
Liberty, means literally nothing.
If we put the questions--freedom and liberty from what? and freedom
and liberty for what?--it will be seen immediately that there is no
definite idea whatsoever behind the words. Freedom or liberty as an
aim, presupposes emancipation from a yoke. What is the yoke from which
modern man wishes to be free? Is it work? Is it timed work?
Freedom or liberty as an aim presupposes emancipation from a yoke for
a definite purpose. What is this purpose? Is it a higher or a lower?
Is it more entertainment [p24] or more usefulness? Is it desirable or
undesirable?
To none of these questions is there any answer, because the modern
words Freedom and Liberty connote nothing. And the same applies to such
words as Equality, Right, Justice. These mere sounds have ceased to
be words. But they all imply some mysterious desideratum which it may
be worth while fighting for. They are missiles, fireworks, unmusical
chords--anything! All they have retained of their original nature, is
the power of directing energy. They no longer call up any definite or
expressible idea.
Now when the most hortatory and inspiriting words of a language have
ceased to have any definite meaning, the nation using that language is
in imminent danger of internal discord and rupture, and the beneficent
influence of indolence and inertia alone can avert a catastrophe. The
only question is, have we sufficient native indolence and inertia to
tide over this crisis in our language?
Even if we have, the Continent has not, and ultimately by infection or
contagion, our inertia and indolence, too, will be overcome.
What is the remedy? What is the corrective? What is the best means of
resisting the influence of the Continent and of the corrosive elements
at home without relying too confidently upon our negative qualities
alone?
Strange as it may sound, the present writer suggests, as one of the
most direct roads to a recovery of political and national [p25]
health, in the first place, that the disease of language should be
cured. Everywhere, in the whole of the civilised world, disease of
language is rampant. That country alone will resist and survive the
revolutionary epidemic, which first cures its disease of language.
But how is this to be done?
The grand method, the best method, would of course consist in
re-creating a common and uniform culture, in which the spiritual words
and phrases of the national language would find a new and definite
place, a fresh and unmistakable association.
This, however, is perhaps a counsel of perfection. For where are
the men to-day who would be prepared to embark on this gigantic
undertaking, even if they were equipped for it? It is possible, and
the material for its accomplishment lies close at hand. But where are
the free spirits who have the courage, and who are capable of the
solidarity, that would be required for such a task?
The second best method, and the one more compatible with the power of
our best men of to-day, would consist in rescuing the meaningless terms
of our language--and there are thousands of them--from their pointless,
unattached and almost disreputable existence. It would consist in
re-defining them in the realistic light of history, biology and
psychology, and in the light of a sane and sound outlook on humanity
and the world. It would consist, further, in creating a convention as
rigorous as the existing convention regarding all reference to sexual
questions and organs, according to which [p26] it would be regarded
as an act of gross immorality and indecency to commit the sin of
catachresis or abuse against any of the words thus re-defined, and it
should be incumbent upon the ordinary citizen to report to the nearest
police station any such breach of decency which he might happen to
discover while reading his daily paper, or a novel, or any treatise
printed after the promulgation of the law.
How many false ideals, false aspirations, and pernicious creeds and
doctrines would then be dispersed? How many agitators, tub-thumpers,
self-seeking bell-wethers, would then be put to flight! How many
politicians would then starve! But how fresh and crisp the air of every
debating chamber would then become!
This is a possible and highly practical method of dealing with our
present situation. There is no excuse for its not being adopted. When
once it had achieved all it could achieve, the masses should be made to
benefit from the results of the undertaking. Indeed, it would be more
or less futile if they were not made to benefit in this way. They would
then become the alert and merciless critics of people who now sway them
as easily as if they were corn in the wind; and seven-eighths of our
present-day literature would cease from being published.
It is the surest, the speediest, and the most fruitful method of
saving what still remains of Order and Culture. But it is a stupendous
undertaking and one that will exact a heavy toll from all those who
embark upon it.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: He used the word in the sense of the “proletariat” or the
“masses.”]
[Footnote 2: Perhaps Tennyson should be honourably excepted here (see
_In Memoriam_ LVI., line 15); but while the realistic estimate of
Nature is certainly hinted at in the lines referred to, it could not be
claimed that Tennyson consistently upheld this attitude.]
[p27] CHAPTER I
THE PRINCIPLE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY
“There is nothing wrong either in great wealth or in extensive
property, provided that it be wisely administered.”--William Cobbett
(_Rural Rides_).
Behind most of the modern hostility towards established and traditional
institutions, it is not only a matter of mere caution, but also
essentially scientific to suspect a certain amount of physical as well
as psychical exhaustion. Modern mankind is tired, both bodily and
spiritually. The pale fireless eyes of our urban adults alone ought
to make us suspect the truth about this matter. Two thousand years of
the increasing complication of Life, during which man’s attention has
had ever more and more detail to occupy it, together with a feeling
of very genuine disillusionment on the part of the most enlightened
regarding the highest ideals of the past; two thousand years, moreover,
of progressive debilitation, during which the resisting powers of
exuberant health have gradually and steadily been worn down--must have
had their effect upon recent generations, and materially impaired
their ability to face the institutions of their forefathers with their
forefathers’ spirit, health and understanding.
It cannot be repeated too often that it would be gravely unscientific,
nay imprudent, to proceed to an examination of the modern hostility to
traditional ideas and principles without taking into account [p28] the
attitude of mind, the tone of mind, and the degree of health, of those
who represent this hostility. The fact that modern books on political
questions usually take as their data the very conclusions to which this
hostility has led, without previously determining the validity of the
whole standpoint, or discovering the kind of minds that are responsible
for it, need not deter us from departing from the customary method. Nor
can our superior caution in this respect be fairly interpreted as bias.
It must surely be clear to most of us that, not only we ourselves, but
all our contemporaries as well, are radically and incurably weary. Our
physical resistance against disease is as seriously in peril as is our
spiritual resistance against error, or against those ideals and desires
that can appeal only to invalids.
Where life is ebbing, however, her most fundamental principles, her
most inexorable demands, must be losing the force of their appeal. An
ear is therefore lent ever more willingly and eagerly to doctrines and
precepts which are non-vital, which already have about them the bitter
effluvia of death; and it becomes ever more and more difficult to
withstand the fascination of this new persuasiveness.
But because Man has reached a degree of lassitude that induces him to
listen more patiently and submissively than of yore, to doctrines and
precepts of decline and decay, it does not follow that these doctrines
are irresistible either in their rational or emotional appeal. It does
not even follow that their _rational_ dressing is any more [p29] above
suspicion than they are themselves. The attempt intellectually to
justify and bolster up a sickly tenet may be as unhealthy as that tenet
itself.
It is suspicion, above all, that is needed wherever we turn in our
modern storehouse of ideals and panaceas--suspicion coupled with the
conviction that man is desperately weary in body and soul.
Now there is a state of weariness and apathy in which things that
have become out of gear are no longer readjusted or repaired, but
deliberately and ruthlessly destroyed. Each of us can picture in our
mind’s eye, the behaviour of the nervous invalid who, too exhausted
to repair a persistently clanging bell, tears down the whole fitting,
wires and all, so that the disturbing sound may cease for ever. Such
an act is typical of exhaustion. It amounts to a deep-seated surrender
of the power of repair. Brain and body tissues that are not themselves
regularly repaired or recreated can hardly be expected to devise the
means of repairing or recreating other things.
Thus we should expect the modern and exhausted mind to proceed in its
corrective lust, not by means of readjustment, but by amputation,
not by therapeutic art, but by extirpation. There are thousands of
bells clanging discordantly in the house of civilisation to-day. The
temptation of the modern man is therefore to tear them down, wires and
all.
Whenever anything goes wrong--and things cannot always work smoothly
in society, particularly in vast and complex communities like those
of Western Europe--it is [p30] natural for a certain large element
in the population to proceed by means of suppression and amputation,
by lopping off some creation of the past, and advancing the most
convincing arguments for so doing.
If the Lords fail us, the simplest method is to do away with them. If
individual enterprise falls short of its promise, a clamour is raised
for its abolition. Family life goes wrong, married life goes wrong,
and the remedy suggested is to make the dissolution of the marriage
tie easier. It does not matter whether you are destroying a portion of
your organism and therefore impoverishing yourself thereby, for you
are simplifying your task, and this for an invalid is an achievement
of maximum importance. Everything thus falls into a process of general
disintegration, all troublesome appendages are sloughed off, and the
body of civilisation is gradually truncated or dissolved. Meanwhile,
however, since every step in this process of decomposition receives
the most convincing intellectual support, no one suspects that there
are other and better methods of setting to work. It never occurs to
the typical modern mind that if institutions are to be abolished as
fast as degenerate people show themselves unable to uphold them,
then an immediate and far more speedy way of refuting and abolishing
all civilisation would be to fill all its leading positions, and to
invest all its institutions, with raw savages from the Cannibal Isles.
Every institution and tradition would then break down, and presumably
the modern mind would be satisfied that the only remedy [p31] would
consist in the abolition of all institutions and traditions.
Long ago the present writer pointed out that to set a buffoon on the
throne is not to confute monarchy, and yet this is the principle we
work upon in all our reforms. We never once question whether it may not
be modern man himself who is wrong or decadent. This at least might
lead us to look in the proper direction for improvement. We merely
assail with savage fury every institution that modern man can no longer
run to his and our own satisfaction.
Thus the instinctive and morbid indolence of sickness, to which
amputation and suppression are naturally the most tempting corrective
methods, becomes the standard of judgment for all ills; and where
ignorant minds are added to sick minds, the natural bankruptcy of
ignorance joins hands with the destructive lust of the sick, and the
two together, hatchet in hand, set out to “reform” the world.
Can anyone doubt that this is indeed what we are witnessing on all
sides? And does not the very specious seductiveness of the Socialist
and Bolshevist propaganda lead us to suspect that here, at least, we
are invalids listening to invalids?
The principle of Private Property is being assailed on all sides. It is
now the fashion to talk glibly of the evanescence of private property,
just as it is the fashion to be suffering from pyorrhœa or caries.
Private property is another of the features of ancient societies which
in this Muddle Age has got out of order; and the consequence is, as we
should expect, that it is beginning [p32] to be suggested--nay, it has
already been loudly proclaimed--that private property, as the root of
all evils, should be abolished.
Now in this new project of vandalism, we have not only one symptom
of disease, but two. For, while we have our old friend, the morbid
indolence of the sick, which cannot recreate or repair, but must
suppress, we also have a frontal attack on Life itself, pressed by the
forces of decay and disintegration disguised as Utopians. For private
property is a principle of Life.
The fact that this is everywhere apparent, does not, of course,
prevent the myopic from overlooking it; it should, however, prevent
the multitude from being deceived, and we believe the multitude are
still not deceived. For it is obviously the multitude, the vast mass of
mankind, who have the least of this world’s goods, who should be the
first to be duped about this matter; and yet how long it is taking to
convince them! How tenacious they seem of the old principle! How deeply
must they believe in private property in order, with their handful of
household sticks and baubles, to resist the morbid lie which is being
reiterated by a thousand moribund voices all round them, that private
property is wrong.
It has been said that private property is a principle of Life. What,
then, is its biological value?
Its biological value is the same as the biological value of the best
life itself.
To be quite plain, Life as a whole does not represent a general
movement upwards, from the standpoint of quality. On the contrary.
The great majority of Life’s activities [p33] have a gravitating or
descending tendency--that is to say, in a large number of organisms,
acquired embellishments or acquired faculties and qualities more
frequently have to be dropped than retained in the course of
generations. Spencer has shown conclusively that by far the greater
number of existing organisms are the degenerate descendants of
higher species (see _Collected Essays_, Vol. I., p. 379). The laws
of evolution, therefore, cover millions of cases of _retrograde
metamorphosis_, or change consisting of the loss of complex qualities
or members for the purpose of survival. And in all these cases of
retrograde metamorphosis, instead of the identity of the individual
becoming extended, it is actually diminished or reduced.
Development is, therefore, really the exception rather than the
rule. It covers only those cases in which a cumulative or forward
metamorphosis has taken place. It is characteristic only of those
species in which identity has been extended. Indeed, development might
be called the law of higher life, or of that life which advances by
gradual steps from the homogeneous to the heterogenous, which, in fact,
_unfolds itself_ only to reveal and to perpetuate ever fresh and new
attributes and activities.
Development is a name which, though not descriptive of all organic
evolution,[3] certainly describes the changes of a species _that has
grown_ through its thousands of generations--grown, that is to say,
in the sense of having become more and more--more and more capable of
multifarious activities and adaptations.
Development in this correct and restricted sense of “growth,” thus
implies “becoming more,” “extending identity.” Becoming more,
therefore, is a principle of higher life.
Now what does this conclusion necessarily involve in the terms of
humanity? It means that the _ascending_ line of life in the genus Homo
Sapiens, at least, has not only become more and more, but must also
have been characterised by the spiritual counterpart of this physical
striving, which consists in desiring to become more and more--that is
to say, to extend identity.
Any slackening, any reversal, any paralysis of this desire to become
more and more, may thus be regarded as the beginning of the other
movement--the movement of retrograde development, of decline.
In each healthy individual of a truly _developing_ species, we should
therefore expect to find the _conscious_ counterpart of the principle
of higher life, which will be the desire to become more and more, to
extend identity.
To assail this desire to become more and more is therefore tantamount
to a conspiracy against life, it is tantamount to a denial of
the healthiest instinct of the species. It is the hand of death
outstretched across the _ascending road_ of the animal man.
Call this adverse criticism or hostility [p35] what you
will--Socialism, Communism, or Bolshevism, it is all one. It is the
cry of those who have lost ascending or developing life’s strongest
instinct against those who still possess it. Or else it is the cry of
the envious in life’s battle, who pretend to have lost life’s strongest
instinct, in order to acquire power over those who have not.
I shall hardly be called upon to draw the obvious conclusion. How
does, how can, the individual of a species that falls naturally under
the head of Development manifest this incessant striving to become
more, which is the conscious counterpart of the physical evolution
of the race, except by means of private property? How can he achieve
this becoming more which, as we have seen, constitutes an extension of
his identity, without private property? I do not refer here to those
exceptional individuals who are content with a non-material expression
of this “becoming more,” but to the mass of mankind, in which
individual extension _must_ take a material form. Private property is
the only means, and this private property is so closely identified with
individual extension that, as we know, in certain Ages and climes,
wives and children have been included in the category.
It constitutes the gratification, nay the very necessity, of one of
the deepest instincts of man. It is indistinguishable, inseparable,
from the law of growth; hence the obstinate attachment even the poorest
still reveal in regard to it; hence the uphill work which the preachers
of Death and Decay, still find their propaganda to be.
The very morality of development says [p36] “Yea” to this desire to be
and to become more. The very morality of development identifies growth,
in the individual sense, with the general growth of the species, and
therefore sanctifies and hallows the instinct of self-extension which
is the instinct of private property. Only the sincere and whole-hearted
pessimist can logically assail the principle of private property, for
he alone can honestly desire to cripple his fellows, paralyse their
life instinct, and curtail their existence on the globe.
It is hardly necessary here to refer to the dawn of the sense of
private property in the lower animals. This has been done often enough.
Suffice it to point out, however, that in them also it is most apparent
where the variety of activities and adaptations is most complex--among
the bees, the ants, the dogs and the cats. True, the private property
in question is only food, or matter which will one day be used as food.
But is this not true of all property? Has not the revolution in Russia
shown that all property is merely so much frozen food, so much wealth
that can ultimately be bartered for nourishment? And does not this
again point to its deep relationship to the highest law of growth?
The important outcome of this inquiry into the ultimate relation of
private property to biology and to the highest laws of life, however,
is that it enables one to recognise the Socialist, the Bolshevist, and
the Communist (where they are most sincere and fervent) in their true
guise--that is to say, as the convinced and determined opponents, not
only of a particular class, but of Life [p37] itself; as pessimists
and bitter misanthropists, who do not scruple to conceal their
hostility to an important life-principle beneath the most engaging and
most unctuous of altruistic poses.
But then is all well with the principle of private property to-day? And
are the Socialists, Bolshevists and Communists all wrong?
All is certainly not well with the principle of private property as
it is allowed to work in our societies at the present day. Hence the
colourable warrant that is given to the attacks of the Socialists and
Communists upon it. Hence, too, the plausibility of their claims. For
it is the simplest of feats to confuse an issue, and in societies where
the right of private property is abused, it is easy to convince the
thoughtless that the thing abused, and not the abuse itself, is the
real curse.
It is, therefore, readily admitted that there is a good deal that is
wrong about private property as a principle practised by modern man;
the wrong, however, is no more inherent in the principle itself, than
cruelty to children, because it happens to occupy the attention of a
large and wealthy society in England, is inherent in the principle of
parenthood. And it is because the present evils of the distribution of
wealth are not inherent in the principle of private property, that it
is ridiculous--not only ridiculous, but also highly suspicious--to wish
to sweep away the institution itself in order to remedy the evils that
now unquestionably account for its disrepute.
It has been shown why this desire to [p38] sweep away the institution
is doubly suspicious:--
(_a_) Because it is the natural resort of sick and exhausted people,
who are incapable of repairing or recreating anything.
(_b_) Because it is the action of people who are hostile not merely
to private property, but to Life in general. (The fact that they are
usually completely unconscious of this hostility only renders them all
the more dangerous.)
The recognition of the right of private property is probably the oldest
of all human principles. It is seen in all great civilisations. Every
great culture has been built upon it. All societies, however, have not
created the evils of modern Western civilisation. This alone ought to
have provided a hint in the right direction. It ought to have been seen
that the evils attending the distribution of wealth to-day, are evils
more or less peculiar to the kind of culture we have evolved.
What are these evils?
(1) The chief evil of all is that by our present method of wealth
distribution, the best people are not infrequently the most sorely
oppressed, the most severely chastised by poverty and lack of power.
The correlative evil to this is that those who are powerful to-day
through wealth, are frequently so hopelessly unfitted to hold their
position that the system which elevates such people to their present
eminence seems as if it must be bad to the root.
(2) The next in importance is that life at present is organised in such
wise that poverty does not mean merely humbleness [p39] of station;
for which of us would object to that? It means being compelled to
perform some of the most heart-rending, most unhealthy, most besotting
and characterless work that the economy of the community has to offer.
Society should be organised in such a way that either filthy and
besotting labours should not be necessary or else that where they are
necessary, they should entail compensating advantages.
(3) The next in importance is that, as society is organised at present,
poverty, which might be readily and cheerfully accepted by thousands
of us, aye, actually preferred in some cases--now almost necessarily
signifies bad air, ugly surroundings, poor food, and consequently an
unsecured bill of health. Accessibility to conditions in which good air
and beauty are, as it were, happily wedded, is becoming ever more and
more the restricted privilege of the wealthy.
(4) Owing to a misunderstanding of the true nature of social unity,
wealth, or extensive private property, now gives certain classes the
power of trespassing upon the life-needs of their fellows, without,
however, being amenable to law--cornering markets, levying undue
profits, destroying beautiful sites, supporting a host of societies
which are simply parasitic pests on the nation’s back, unwise disposal
of fortunes, etc.
(5) Owing to the educational advantages associated with wealth--an
association which is quite unessential and arbitrary--modern society
imposes a certain measure of benightedness and ignorance as an
inevitable inheritance upon poverty, which is not in the least
essential to poverty _per se_. [p40]
After this brief enumeration of some of the leading evils of our
present system of wealth distribution, is it not, however, more than
ever clear that none of these evils is inherent in the principle of
private property itself? Who would venture to prove that any one of the
wrongs enumerated was (_a_) either inherent in the principle of private
property, or (_b_) irremediable without the sacrifice of that principle?
If we consider the first and chief wrong which consists in the fact
that private property at the present day frequently elevates to power
people who are totally unfitted to wield any power at all, while it as
frequently condemns to impotence, obscurity and ignominy, people who
would be eminently fitted to wield power, we realise at once that the
fault does not lie in the amount of property held by these people, but
upon the significance which current opinion and the prevailing estimate
of wealth attaches to the accident of great or small possessions in
either case.
It is well known, everybody indeed has heard of it, that in certain
cultures that have existed and still exist, the significance of great
possessions has not been the same as that which Western civilisation
has chosen to attach to them. The Brahmin of India, for instance,
although he is doomed to poverty in the most literal sense, is the
most highly respected among rich and poor alike. He rules and directs
opinion, neither because he is rich, nor because he is poor, but
because he is profoundly wise, and because power does not happen
to be connected, in the enlightened Hindu mind, [p41] with great
possessions. It can be shown, and has been shown often enough, that the
famous mendicant monks of the Middle Ages did not increase their power,
but actually forfeited it, when they acquired riches and became as the
other holy orders.
Evidently, then, the equation Wealth = Importance = Power, is not an
inevitable one. It does not depend upon mathematical necessity. It is
a perfectly arbitrary association of ideas, which is the result of a
singular and quite gratuitous valuation.
The fact that it is deeply seated in the prejudices and prepossessions
of all Western peoples, appears to give it the sanction almost of a
social law. It would, however, constitute the acme of imprudence and
superficiality to allow oneself to be led by this apparent unanimity
into the belief that it either denotes or implies an ordinance of Fate.
The unanimity with which reverence is now felt for wealth alone, is
only one of the many instances which it would be possible to give, of
the stubborn and determined manner in which an arbitrary valuation
strikes root in the heart of whole nations, when once it has been
systematically and painstakingly inculcated upon them. It is one of
those cases which inspire with hope all those who may be confronted
with the apparently thankless task of altering the prejudices and
prepossessions of a people. For, if it has been possible erroneously to
raise wealth to the highest among our valuations, without a trace of
social law to help us, it is clear that it must be possible to alter
that valuation, to “transvalue” it, [p42] as the technical phrase has
it, and to bring mankind back to a more rational understanding of the
proper equipment of power, which consists chiefly of wisdom, virtue,
character and resolution.
Nobody denies, of course, that when once wisdom, virtue, character and
resolution, happen to combine in the same individual, the addition of
wealth may make that individual exceptionally precious; but wealth,
as we frequently see it to-day, endowing with power people who are
neither wise, virtuous, characterful nor resolute, is little less than
a national curse.
For what does wealth mean? It means simply that the owner of it has
a purchasing power over the services of his fellows. It by no means
signifies that this purchasing power will of necessity be wisely,
virtuously or profitably exercised. Wherever it is not wisely,
virtuously and profitably exercised, therefore, it becomes a scourge.
The power itself becomes _violence_; and it is incumbent upon the
laws of all well-regulated communities to suppress at least man-made
violence. The besetting vice of all Western societies, whether
Monarchies, Aristocracies, Republics, or “Democracies,” has been and
is still that they have never taken adequate steps to suppress this
particular kind of violence.
But the remedy for such violence would not consist in abolishing the
principle of private property. You might just as well abolish knives
because they are frequently used by homicidal maniacs. The remedy
consists in so modifying the life of the nation, and the prejudices and
prepossessions of the [p43] nation, that wealth may not necessarily
mean power, and that poverty may not necessarily mean ignominy,
ignorance and ill-health[4]; also that it should be difficult for
material success to be achieved by people who are frequently the most
contemptible members of the community both in spiritual and physical
gifts.
All those who question the possibility of such an achievement in the
recasting of values, are invited to dwell upon the genesis and growth
of the prevalent ruling equation, Wealth = Importance = Power. They are
invited, furthermore, to discover the moment in history when another
valuation showed signs of becoming prevalent, and to ascertain by what
means, foul or otherwise, it was made to fail. Then only, in the light
of what they found, will they be able to decide whether a new equation
and a new valuation have not even now a chance of being initiated,
accepted, and universally believed.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: An enormous amount of confusion has been caused by the
loose application of the term “Development,” to all processes of
change in life. Strictly speaking, development means unfolding. But
the process by which the tape-worm has degenerated from the higher
species to which it once belonged is not a process of unfolding or
development, but one of loss and reduction, one of gradual truncation
and limitation.]
[Footnote 4: It should be remembered, however, that in a society in
which success really did depend upon the possession of the highest
moral and bodily qualities that the community could display,--which is
by no means the case at present,--poverty or failure would undoubtedly
have a certain inexpungeable stigma upon it; and quite rightly too.
That which removes the stigma from poverty or failure to-day, in the
eyes of the enlightened, is the fact that riches and success are
frequently achieved by people who could not possibly lay claim to any
high moral and bodily qualities,--not to mention the highest.]
[p44] CHAPTER II
JUSTICE
“Si nos coeurs battent, c’est dans ce but ... c’est pour que nous
puissions compter sur l’avenir et savoir s’il y a dans les choses
d’ici bas une justice immanente qui vient à son jour et à son
heure[5].”--L. Gambetta (Cherbourg speech. August 9th, 1880).
A discussion of the idea of justice almost necessarily precedes the
subject of the next chapter, for the kind of justice which is the
object of public clamour outside the law and police-courts, and beyond
the dealings of man with man, provides one of the principal arguments
to those who believe in human equality.
In this essay, then, it is clear that we shall not be concerned either
with the justice which includes the administration of the law, and
the incidence of the law of any country, or with the justice which
relates to the unwritten rules of conduct governing the commerce of
men and women; but rather with that idea of equity which, while it
enjoys a fast hold upon the imagination of all Western peoples, is
supposed to have an existence apart from statutes, codes, regulations
and by-laws, and human conventions. It is an abstraction, somewhat
like the idea of equality; but it is not a mathematician’s abstraction,
it is the abstraction of a moralist. It arises out of the idea of a
moral order--that is to say, of a supposed universal tendency to arrive
at a perfect equilibrium between deserts and rewards, and it assumes
that the moment this perfect balance is disturbed, a violation of this
abstract justice--Gambetta’s “_justice immanente_,”--is supposed to
have occurred.
To take an instance which illustrates this notion of justice, it is
popularly supposed that for a child, who can have committed no crime
sufficiently great to deserve severe punishment, to be born in a
sordid home, in a still more sordid city-quarter, of drunken parents,
some disturbance of the balance of justice must have occurred--a
disturbance which, if it is to be corrected, must require some kind of
compensation. If the compensation cannot be conceived as forthcoming in
this life, another life is postulated, in which the proper equilibrium
between deserts and rewards;[sic] will be restored. It is not enough
to say that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto
the third and fourth generation. Although the ancient Jewish view of
universal justice doubtless required some such explanation, and found
it satisfactory, the modern view of “immanent justice” is not satisfied
by this method of settling the question. Indeed, the very idea that
children should expiate their parents’ sins is abhorrent to the modern
mind, steeped as it is in this notion of justice. It only consents
to it as a fact in the face of overwhelming [p46] physiological and
biological evidence, and, even then, takes refuge from the apparent
harshness of the law, in the settled conviction that somewhere,
somewhen, compensation will be provided for the expiatory suffering.
It is the suffering that can be traced to no particular _transgression_
on the part of the individual, that chiefly outrages the modern man;
that is why it seems fair to conclude that this notion of immanent
justice has a moral foundation.[6]
As a matter of fact, there is nothing more unjust than this notion of
justice, but its injustice is by no means obvious.
There is no outcry when a murderer is hanged, although psychology,
heredity and even sociology, may be called to witness that his act was
as inevitable as is the crippledom of the child born of tainted blood.
There is no outcry when a vicious reprobate dies in poverty and pain.
There is no outcry when an habitual criminal ends his days on the
treadmill. Morality here receives its tribute. Chemistry, physiology,
biology, and the laws of heredity that derive from them are superseded
by the moral bias, and there appears to be no violation of that
“immanent” justice when one of Nature’s born ne’er-do-wells comes to a
sad end in a prison quadrangle.
In cases of suffering which are less easily traced to an apparently
deliberate transgression of moral laws, however, a miscarriage of
universal justice is supposed to have occurred, and the sympathy of
all, and even the indignation of some, are immediately aroused.
It is true that attempts have been made to withhold even this sympathy,
as in the case of the second commandment already referred to above;
but the best instance is that of David’s famous observation in the
37th Psalm: “I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen
the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread.” This, however, is
so obviously a desperate endeavour to square a moral reading of the
universe, or the conception of an eternal justice behind all phenomena,
with the spectacle of misery and indigence, that its transparency
offends the dullest vision. It is not unlike the attitude of some
Eugenists who would argue that the poorly remunerated of to-day
should be prevented from multiplying because they are not only the
_unfit_, but the _undesirable_. To call them unfit is biologically
correct; for it merely amounts to saying that they are unadapted to
their environment. The idea of undesirability is, however, smuggled in
gratuitously, only in order to try to account for what would otherwise
appear an injustice. If the poor be made to appear as lying under a
stigma, [p48] the difficulty presented by the apparent injustice of
their position is easily removed.[7]
In the same way the necessity of condoling with an invalid is
unconsciously resented by most of us when we endeavour, particularly
to the invalid’s face, to ascribe his or her trouble to some glaring
imprudence or violation of rational living, through which we infer that
the illness or indisposition has been brought about. We thus reduce it
to a pain or penalty that the sufferer has _deserved_, and in this way
we release our minds from the constant preoccupation concerning justice
and injustice.
Women, who are very much less social in their instincts, and,
therefore, much harder than men, repeatedly behave in this way, even
with their own children; and before they make a movement to relieve
suffering, their lips will have pronounced innumerable reasons why the
particular indisposition or pain confronting them is the sufferer’s own
fault.
Why did David say that he had never seen the righteous forsaken nor
his seed begging bread? Why do certain Eugenists try their hardest
to attach some stigma to poverty, or to what they call the poorly
remunerated? And why do people suddenly heap all kinds of blame upon
the head of an unfortunate man, woman or child, who has suddenly
contracted an illness?
It is suggested that the reason is because the acceptance of the view
that there is a moral order to the universe, implies two conditions:
(_a_) That nothing occurs that is not just; (_b_) that, therefore,
there is no suffering that is not in some way retribution or penalty.
When confronted with any form of suffering, therefore, the first
impulse of everybody trained in this school of thought is an attempt,
at once, to square the particular example of unhappiness before them
with this notion of universal justice; and if it will not square,
without supposing some ultimate compensation that will balance it, or
some pain or crime that is sufficient to account for it, some such
ultimate compensation or some such transgression is quickly imagined,
which seems to satisfy the requirements of “immanent justice.”
If it is quite impossible to discover a sin or a crime in the
individual that will account for the individual’s suffering--as, for
instance, when a child is born of diseased or drunken parents--when,
moreover, doubts are beginning to be felt, as they are to-day, in a
large number of minds, regarding the possibility of compensation in
another world for undeserved miseries in this world--then a gross
injustice is supposed to have occurred, and everybody who looks at the
universe through moral glasses, feels acutely uncomfortable.
“Why should Tommy Jones,” they say, “be born of diseased or drunken
parents, when Thomas Vere de Vere was born of healthy or sober parents!
It is unjust!”
They are indignant, and they look indignant, and those among them
who cannot believe in an after-life in which this apparently [p50]
monstrous miscarriage of “immanent justice” will be rectified, become
social reformers who are prepared to fight, and lead others to fight
for--justice!
Those people, on the other hand, who are persuaded that their religion
can explain anything, and who enjoy the most determined optimism where
the suffering of others is concerned, have yet another loophole of
escape from the disagreeable certainty that a miscarriage of universal
justice has occurred. Nodding their heads gravely and wisely, they say:
“Who can tell? Providence moveth in mysterious ways. May not these
sufferers be the most sorely tried because they are the most loved? For
whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.”[8]
Everything is done, every expedient is tried in order to escape from
the maddening certainty that suffering is possible without a sin or a
crime having been committed. When finally it is discovered that such
things as pain and misery do co-exist with innocence, or at least with
a lack of guilt, then the feeling arises that an injustice has been
perpetrated which must at all costs be corrected. And since eternal, or
universal, or immanent justice cannot be held responsible, man himself
and his civilisation are frequently accused of having been guilty of an
injustice of which neither is in any way capable.
What is it that has forced this conviction upon mankind? Failing the
comforting assurances of religion, which postulates a heaven in which
the uneven balance of pain and pleasure is adjusted, and a deity who
chastens those whom he most loves, why is it that at the sight of
unearned misery and pain the average man has a feeling of revolt, as if
a primary law of the universe had been wantonly outraged?
I have suggested that the average man reads morality into phenomena,
that he imagines that the world is a moral world, and that consequently
pain and pleasure alike must have a moral explanation or cause. It is
this that creates the idea of an “immanent” justice.
But, if we contemplate the world as a whole, what justification have
we for postulating a moral order of phenomena? Why should we expect
something so essentially peculiar to human society to pervade the
design of things in general?
As a matter of fact, from the standpoint of civilised human society,
Nature is utterly immoral, Life is hopelessly unjust. It is not only
the sinful young rabbit that provides the fox with his meal. It is
not only the guilty mouse that dies an agonising death in the cat’s
jaws. It is not only the dissipated sparrow that is torn to fragments
by the young of the sparrow-hawk. Neither is it only the vicious worm
that gets rationed out piecemeal to the young of the mole. And what
of the antelopes that fall victims to lions and tigers, the sheep and
cattle that fall victims to man, the pheasants that fall victims to our
sportsmen, the fish that fall victims to their larger fellows? Wherever
we look, we see suffering--undeserved suffering--aye, undeserved agony.
The world and Life are therefore essentially unmoral, they [p52] are
not concerned with justice. The rain falls both on the just and on
the unjust. The hurricane kills the just and the unjust alike. The
lightning burns the house of the just or unjust indifferently. Microbes
feed on the pure and undefiled virgin just as ravenously as upon the
polluted jade. Tuberculosis does not pick and choose; it kills where it
can. Virtue is no safeguard against it, neither is genius.
Wherever we look, either in the jungle or the prairie, we see the
blood-red fangs and the carmine claws of the bully rampant! Fair play?
Where is the fair play between the cat and the mouse? Where is the fair
play between the stoat and the shrew? Where is the fair play between
the wolf and the lamb? Justice? What is justice, where is justice in
Life and Nature? In the vegetable world, which is said to be inanimate,
the fierce uneven struggle is not even mitigated by the “sporting
chance” of escape.
Truth to tell, the word justice--whether immanent or otherwise--is
meaningless when applied to the universe. Nobody has ever dreamed of
thinking out the billions and billions of post-mortem compensations
which would be necessary to adjust the balance of only one year’s
rapine and slaughter in the world of nature. Nobody has ever dreamt
that such a calculation would even be possible. Injustice, if it have
any meaning at all in this respect, is therefore written large all over
the face of Life and Nature.
Sentimentalists, like Wordsworth and Rousseau, by wilfully turning
their backs upon [p53] the cruel sufferings of animals and insects in
Nature, have been able to present a picture of Life to the world as
attractive as it is false. But although pleasant lies of this sort are
bound ultimately to do a good deal of damage, and have actually done a
good deal of damage, they are also bound ultimately to be found out,
and it is to be hoped that there is then an end to them, once and for
all.
It is not accurate, therefore, to read a moral order into the Universe.
Life and Nature are essentially amoral. They are not concerned even
with the A.B.C. of morality. All life outside human society, therefore,
knows nothing of justice. On the contrary, “Life is appropriation,
injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity,
obtrusion of its own forms, incorporation, and, at the very least,
exploitation.”
There is no such thing as a natural balance of virtue and reward,
crime and punishment--even in the realm of social justice this balance
is difficult enough to achieve. Misery is frequently encountered
in Nature--in fact, universally so, divorced from sin. To perceive
anything else in Nature is to contemplate her through rather smoky
human spectacles--anthropomorphically.
If, then, this notion of justice exists at all, it is only in the fancy
of the morally prejudiced. Morality arises only in human society;
therefore justice is exclusively a social phenomenon, a social
expedient. It is not a universal law, but a concept of the social
human being. It is not a principle transcending social life; it is the
creation [p54] of social life, and means nothing outside it; it is
man-made, man-maintained.
In the light of this conclusion, what is meant, therefore, when Mrs.
Jelleby-Jones, of Hampstead, who is a welfare worker, exclaims over her
dinner to her husband that it seems so “unjust” that the poor little
diseased babies she has been inspecting that afternoon should have been
born with such a heavy handicap?
Whose injustice, what injustice does she mean? Does she know what she
means, and does she mean anything?
We have seen that if her statement is to have any meaning at all, it
must signify that mankind is unjust, that human society is unjust,
and that, therefore, her particular form of human society is unjust;
consequently that she and her husband, as forming part of that society,
are unjust.
Truth to tell, she will mean nothing half as intelligible as that; but
since this is the only meaning her remark can have, let us examine it
calmly.
She supposes an injustice to have been perpetrated because--say--three
babies she has seen were born diseased. This happens in every class,
irrespective of banking account, and the poor are not more unhealthy
than the rich. She says the babies will be handicapped. Their disease
is an obstacle in their road; therefore it is unjust. She is perfectly
right, in a sense, when she says that disease is an obstacle. But it
might be pointed out to her that to be born of stupid or criminally
disposed parents would also constitute an obstacle. Psychologists now
tell us that even to be born of parents [p55] who disagree constitutes
a grave obstacle in life. It might be argued that to be born of people
who can afford to keep cars also constitutes an initial obstacle,
because great comfort and luxury reduces moral fibre, paralyses energy,
and destroys eagerness for the fray. It might be pointed out to her
that to be born the son of the King of England is an obstacle in life,
because it limits freedom; a man cannot aspire to becoming Bishop of
Bristol if he is destined to become his Britannic Majesty. If being
born of sick or stupid parents is an injustice, all these cases are
injustices also.
Mrs. Jelleby-Jones might reply that illness or disease is at least an
obstacle that could be avoided, whereas to have as father the King of
England, is not a fate that could so easily be circumvented. Agreed!
But only flagrant cases of illness or disease are even noticeable.
What about those more subtle gradations of health or ill-health which
though they are frequently sufficiently virulent to convert a potential
genius into a merely talented man, or a potentially talented man into
a fool, are nevertheless not sufficiently glaring to be observed or
guarded against? Would Mrs. Jelleby-Jones argue that to be born of ugly
parents, for instance, is an injustice? To be ugly is certainly a great
disadvantage, particularly to the women of any tasteful country. Is it
also an injustice?
Look at it how we will, injustice, or inequality of endowment and of
chances of survival, is rooted in the very heart of Nature. Society
endeavours to mitigate Nature’s harsh rule by means of preventing
[p56] or assuaging unnecessary suffering, succouring indigence, and
trying to make ugly and botched people forget their ugliness; but
society cannot divorce herself completely from Nature. She is bound
to act with Nature and allow natural laws to operate with comparative
freedom in her midst. Particularly is this so with regard to the act
of pro-creation. Here is a natural process, and a natural passion, on
which society can only impose a certain modicum of order; she cannot do
away with it. Now, as we have seen, the sort of injustice that we are
examining in this chapter, is rooted in the very act of procreation,
which is essentially a natural act. Two people, male and female,
decide to procreate a third creature (more frequently they do not
give the third creature a thought)--a child, who can have no voice in
deciding whether it should be born or not, whether it should be born of
precisely those parents or not, or whether it should be their daughter
or their son, their legitimate or illegitimate offspring. It cannot
even choose which parent it will resemble. What could be more unjust?
It is obviously one of those manifestations of Nature, of Life, which
like all those we have been examining, is completely and hopelessly
unjust. It is the amoral character of Nature and Life persisting in
spite of moral or social conditions. This amount of Nature’s, or
Life’s, inevitable injustice must be accepted, or included with the
bargain which is life.
What, then, do these people really mean who rail against this so-called
injustice--this necessary survival of natural and vital [p57]
amorality within a moral society? They are, of course, extravagantly
stupid. They read their own back-parlour ethics into Nature’s scheme,
conclude erroneously that she is just, and then wherever this kind
of injustice appears, they throw the responsibility of it on to man
instead of on to Nature. They rightly assume that “injustice” can be
only man-made, and imagine that in railing against this “injustice”
of their fancy, they are really opposing something substantial, some
grievance that could, or ought to be, redressed, if society or the
government were more moral.
This “injustice” of their fancy, however, as we have seen, is built up
upon an idea of universal and eternal Justice which is a pure myth.
Justice exists nowhere outside civilised man’s own institutions, and
least of all in Nature. Whenever and wherever, therefore, Nature, pure
and undefiled, peeps out even in our civilised societies, as it does in
procreation, there also appears, and cannot fail to appear, what these
people call “injustice.”
Civilised man has done his utmost to mitigate Life’s natural
“injustices”--to use these people’s language--but since in order to
survive he is bound to allow Nature a certain modicum of free-play
within his societies, a certain modicum of so-called “injustice” cannot
be removed from even the most ideal and perfect community.[9]
Thus, far from this “injustice” of the stupid sentimentalists _à la_
Gambetta, etc., etc., being man-made, or man-contrived, it is man who
has done, and still does, his utmost to mitigate its asperities. But
because he cannot sweep it away without also sweeping away Life itself,
or without tampering with a very sacred function of his fellows, it is
preposterous to hold him responsible for it.
Apart from the creation and administration of law in an organised
society, therefore, and the accepted rules which control the treatment
of one man by another, or of a child by its parents, or _vice versâ_,
justice has no genuine existence at all. To complain about the absence
of a purely fantastic conception, therefore, is an absurdity. As well
might you complain that your son is born without wings, or that you
yourself do not possess seven-league boots.
In its essence, however, this act of setting up an impossible ideal,
which is supposed to belong to the very scheme of the universe,
amounts to an attitude of hostility to life, because it is tantamount
to a refusal to accept life as she is--that is to say, amoral. It is
equivalent to setting up a false scale of measurement, in order to
depreciate human society and its value.
When once these people are convinced that the “injustices” about which
they complain really are rooted in Life and Nature, they cry out
desperately: Look how dreadful Life is, she is unjust! But it is only
in their benighted brains that the ideal of justice was ever conceived
as inherent in phenomena, as a possible attribute of life Life is
amoral; therefore she is essentially beyond or beneath justice. You
can only [p59] love her or loathe her as she is. And it is a proof of
degeneracy to loathe her as she is. Hence degenerates invariably clothe
her with false attributes, and talk about a “_justice immanente_”; they
are not brave enough, or proud enough, to love her without trying to
paint her in the light of their back-parlour morality.
All Life’s light and shade, all her excitement, all her incitement to
man to compete with energy and spirit in her game, depends for more
than half its charm precisely on the fact that she is amoral--that is
to say, that she produces inequalities, contrasts and divergent types,
indifferently, lavishly, without taking thought, without mercy. Her
call is to the brave, to the stout of heart, and to the adventurous
and spirited. Those who in the midst of this great adventure cry out
“Injustice!” either misunderstand, or wilfully misrepresent the whole
scheme.
The alleged “injustices” of Life, can never be put right by man. They
are beyond his power to remedy, however just his laws may be. All he
can do is to mitigate the asperity of life for those of Nature’s less
fortunately endowed offspring, who cannot aspire to the highest ridge;
but even in doing this, he must be careful not to make it too easy for
Nature’s failures to multiply over abundantly, otherwise the race most
certainly deteriorates.
The modern tendency, therefore, which consists in deliberately
confounding the issue, by pointing to a number of Nature’s own
“injustices” as if they were the outcome of man-made law, man-made
conditions, [p60] and clamouring for them to be redressed, is wholly
vicious. It deceives the multitude, maddens them into a false sense of
their grievances, and frequently leads to disturbances which, though
they prove sadly destructive of life and treasure, _must_ leave things
more or less as they were, because the grievances chiefly complained
of, are frequently rooted in Life itself.
This does not mean that there are not man-made injustices in the
creation and administration of law. Unfortunately they are too often as
plentiful as those of Life itself. But by far the grossest so-called
injustices are those of Nature and Life, which cannot by any means be
removed, and least of all can they be even mitigated in a country whose
population distinguishes so imperfectly between grievances which can be
rightly brought home to man, and those that are inherent in the natural
order of existence, that while they blindly clamour for the removal of
the latter, the former, which might be corrected and are within man’s
power to correct, are generally left studiously alone.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: “If our hearts beat, it is with this object ... it is
in order that we may rely on the future and know whether there is an
all-pervading justice in the things of this world, which ultimately has
its day and comes to light at its appointed time.”]
[Footnote 6: The present writer has even heard women declare that
the lot of the female human being, with all its disabilities and
physical burdens, constitutes an “unjust” apportionment of pain and
pleasure when compared with the lot of the male. It is difficult to
discover what injustice is meant here, unless we conclude that women
who speak in this way have acquired from their stupid men-folk ideas
about a certain justice behind phenomena or in Nature, which in their
particular existence appears to be transgressed. In any case we are
quite safe in assuming that it cannot be an infringement of man’s
justice that is meant here. It must, therefore, be the imaginary
justice which is the subject of this essay, and which moral people read
into the universe.]
[Footnote 7: It would only be correct to say that the poor are the
_undesirable_ as well as being the _biologically unfit_, if successful
adaptation to modern conditions demanded the highest virtues and
abilities of which the community is capable.]
[Footnote 8: Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews. Chapter xii. 6.]
[Footnote 9: So long, that is to say, as free mating is not made a
criminal offence, and even then the harshness of the natural law will
only be partially mitigated.]
[p61] CHAPTER III
EQUALITY
“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men were created
equal; that they were endowed by their Creator with inalienable
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.”--Thomas Jefferson ([10]Declaration by the Representatives
of the United States).
From whichever quarter the principle of human equality is approached,
it appears to recede into ever deeper dimness and obscurity the more
hotly it is pursued. What does this elusiveness signify? Has the
principle any reality at all? That is to say, is it something that
can be realised? Or is it the most unscrupulous lie that has ever
been sewn as a device upon the banner of a faction? In any case it
seems to provoke very real emotions. Thump your fist hard enough, and
shout from a public platform: “Ladies and gentlemen, what we want more
than anything else to-day, that which our birth, our common origin,
our common shape and stature--aye, even our common spark of Divine
Spirit--most surely guarantees us, is Equality, ladies and gentlemen,
the blessed condition of Equality!”
Pronounce the words emphatically enough, as your exordium, and your
whole audience will cheer and applaud as with one voice.
Not one of the assembled crowd will protest indignantly that you have
been talking nonsense. Everybody will really believe that your words
have some meaning, and a beautiful meaning.
We have already seen, however, that a word does not require to have
any precise meaning, or any definite association whatever, in order
to excite pleasurable feelings in those who hear it pronounced, or in
order to provoke these people to energetic action. Is Equality perhaps
one of these empty, inflammatory words?
It is originally a term borrowed from mathematics. The mathematician
says:--“Two and two are equal; this triangle and that are equal; this
length and that length are equal; this weight and that weight are
equal.”
He is dealing with mere ciphers, symbols or abstractions, and
consequently the mathematician has everything his own way, and so long
as he abides by ciphers, symbols and abstractions we have no wish
to interfere. He can carry his egalitarian principle right through
the English weights and measures, _viâ_ the decimal system, into
geometry. He is speaking of pure abstractions, arbitrarily supposed
to be identical, and if it amuses him to postulate equality as their
characteristic, nobody cares. They are his abstractions, his ciphers,
he can postulate what he likes about them. We have the feeling that it
does not matter. It is only when the mathematician, who, as a rule, is
a hopeless psychologist, begins to apply [p63] the lifeless notions
he has learnt in his study, to the world of activity and reality;
it is only when he begins to speak of things that are not his own
abstractions--things that really have an existence known to us--that we
immediately begin to feel that he is taking liberties with reality.
For instance, if he say that a certain 2,000 pear leaves are equal to
another 2,000 pear leaves, we who know that no two leaves have ever
been known to be exactly the same, straightway call him to order and
say: “No, sir, abide by your abstractions! That statement of yours is
not true.” Likewise, if he say that a certain 2,000 cows are equal
to another 2,000 cows, we feel that he is either taking too much
for granted, or else that he should try to enlist our confidence by
specifying the precise weight and individual qualities of each cow in
each set, before inviting us to acquiesce in his assertion. And even if
the two sets of 2,000 cows weighed exactly the same amount and were of
the same race, we should still feel that there were differences in the
quality and supply of milk in each set, as also in the vitality of the
respective cows in each set, etc., which ought to be taken into account
and which it would hardly be possible to estimate with perfect accuracy.
But let us think of things which have less individual divergence
from the common type. Let us think of screws, bolts, plates, chain
links, etc. After these have been made with the utmost care by means
of machines capable of almost mathematical precision, and when once
they have been accurately weighed and found equal both [p64] as
regards size and ponderability, you would think that you had groups of
things or individual things as between which you would be justified
in postulating the attribute equality. But if you should ask anyone
accustomed to dealing with such things, he would tell you that one bolt
in ten or in twenty usually splits, that one screw in a hundred or in
a thousand usually strips, and that one plate in fifty usually cracks.
Thus here and there, even when enormous pains have been taken to attain
uniformity, marked differences become apparent. What about those
differences that are not sufficiently marked to be noticeable until
some considerable time has elapsed?
Can equality be postulated of no two objects on earth then?
Provided that the mathematical abstracts, or arbitrary identities,
size, weight, bulk and number, alone, are in question, equality can be
postulated; but the moment mathematical abstractions are departed from,
it is not only unsafe, it is positively dishonest to speak of equality.
For instance, you can say that these hundred rails are equal to
those hundred rails in number, in weight, or in length. You could
not say that these hundred rails are equal to those hundred rails
in durability, resilience, or frangibility. You might say they are
approximately equal in these attributes, or as nearly as possible
equal; but apart from the arbitrary identities or abstractions of the
mathematicians, you could not postulate perfect equality.
Does the term “Equality” mean anything at all apart from these
mathematical [p65] abstractions then?----Absolutely nothing!
What, then, are those people who earnestly and warmly claim and
advocate equality among men--_men_ who are so different in their
ancestry, size, shape, endowments, beauty, desires, appetites, and
spirit, whose very features proclaim their inequality as they approach
us?
Are such clamourers for equality all liars?
They are certainly liars, but the majority of them are probably
perfectly unconscious liars. From childhood onwards they may have heard
the word “Equality” pronounced as if it implied a very certain reality,
a very much coveted desideratum. Deep emotions over which they have
no control, and concerning which they have even less understanding,
are therefore stirred every time they hear the word, or see it written
or printed; and thus they live and die earnestly believing that this
meaningless principle “Equality,” if it could be realised, would be an
unqualified boon.
How the equality is to be achieved, whether by bleeding the too
sanguine, truncating the too tall, deliberately debilitating the too
healthy, delicately injuring the brains of the too intelligent, or
systematically fattening the too thin, nobody troubles definitely to
specify. Egalitarians have a vague notion concerning a still more
vague desideratum, and this, coupled with the word “Equality,” that is
utterly meaningless outside the abstractions of the mathematicians,
completes the content of their hallucination.
But, it may be objected, the world is surely not so foolish. What men
mean [p66] when they demand equality, is equality before the law--that
is to say, that the law-officers should regard them, for the purposes
of law-administration as equal to one another in their chances of being
right.
This may be true of a few cases in which the cry “Equality” is set up;
but is it true of all? Do all egalitarians court equality because at
some time or another they may have to confront the officers of the law?
No, says the objector, but the law is not merely felt when two
litigants face each other, or when a criminal is apprehended; it is
felt in the home of the just as well as in that of the unjust; it is
felt in the life of the city, in the village and in the factory.
But it is precisely in such circumstances that the law would be most
harsh, if it assumed equality. It is compelled to assume inequality in
legislating for large communities, otherwise it could not be just at
all.
The very symbol of justice--a blindfold female with a pair of scales in
one hand--is a mathematical symbol, which can have no relation to human
affairs, but only to the mathematical abstraction, weight.
“A good law should be good for all men,” said Condorcet, “even as a
proposition is true for all men.”
“The capital error of the whole French Revolution,” says Louis Madelin,
“lies in the dogma thus proclaimed by Condorcet.”[11]
Yes, but Condorcet was not a political thinker, he was one of the
foremost mathematicians of his time! And Thomas Jefferson, whose words
head this chapter, was his disciple.
The danger to which the mathematician, like the engineer exposes us,
begins when he pretends to apply his principles to human affairs.
But, continues the objector, although it is admitted that initial
equality, as between human beings, or any living things for that
matter, is an impossibility, seeing that nature’s products are all
diverse and unequal; and although subsequent equality is hard to
achieve without behaving unjustly and barbarously to all those who
depart from a certain norm or standard--that is to say, without
bleeding, debilitating, truncating, or otherwise injuring all those who
vary from an arbitrarily selected pattern--there surely can be such a
thing as Equality of Opportunity.
At this point in the discussion it is only fair to say that most
opponents of Egalitarianism promptly capitulate, and eagerly concede
that equality of opportunity is a genuine desideratum capable of
practical realisation.
At the risk of appearing captious and sophistical, however, it can
no more be admitted here that Equality of Opportunity has any actual
possibilities of realisation than has the principle of equality itself.
It is, in fact, an illusion rather more complex and more serious than
the latter. For it presupposes, not only equality among men, but
equality of opportunity--two equalities instead of one--and among a
class [p68] of things which can be made equal only by a miracle.
In the first place, it may be assumed, without any further discussion,
that a moment’s calm reflection is enough to dispel even from the
meanest intelligence, the illusion that men can ever be equal.
On this score, alone, then, opportunities cannot be equal, because,
however accurately their equality may be established, in regard to a
supposed standard man, the moment they are placed in relation to the
multitude of unequal men, they, too, become unequal. For an opportunity
is not a thing in itself; it only becomes something in relation to the
creature who seizes it. Given an equal means of access to a particular
ridge or hill-top, the opportunity to reach that hill-top or ridge, is
the equal means of access _plus_ the kind of creature to whom it is
afforded. The introduction of an unequal element on the one hand--the
men--makes the other element, the means of access, not unequal as means
of access in the abstract, but unequal as opportunity in the concrete.
Suppose as much inequality between three men as exists between a hen, a
hare, and a hippopotamus--and as regards fleetness and swimming power
such inequality is not unusual between men--how could you devise equal
opportunities which would enable all three men to reach a certain
objective at the same moment of time, if a strip of water, a high wall,
and a ravine stood between the starting point and the objective?
You might do it by first holding a rehearsal, in which you would
accurately time [p69] each man and note his abilities, and then
handicap the fleetest accordingly.
But unfortunately life cannot be rehearsed, a life-handicap cannot be
calculated. Besides, it is to the advantage of society not to handicap
her fleetest and her best. As Lord Morley very rightly says: “The
well-being of the community demands the allotment of high function in
proportion to high faculty.”[12]
But suppose our objector replies: Very well, but that is all we ask. We
do not demand a handicap; we simply demand an equal means of access to
a particular objective, no matter whether ultimately those means prove
unequal or not, owing to the inequality of the men to whom they are
open.
It may then be asked whether even this equality in means of access
is not in itself utterly fanciful and fantastic. Given the radical
inequality of men at birth, together with the highly complex
arrangement of modern society, with its enormous variety of prizes,
it may reasonably be questioned whether it be even possible, not to
mention practicable.
A large number of people cannot all travel along the same narrow path.
Several narrow paths all exactly alike would have to be constructed.
The accidents, vicissitudes, fatalities that would attend some of the
early travellers along the roads--faintness, loss of luggage, sprains,
deaths, etc.--would either impede or facilitate the way of the later
travellers. Thus, in life, the means of access themselves, however
equal at the start, would quickly acquire unforeseen inequalities.
Let us select an example from life in England.
Two boys, A and B, one living at Whitstable, the other in London,
are quite unequal in gifts, ancestral tradition, build and tastes.
Nevertheless, it is desired to give them an equal opportunity, say, of
earning £1,000 a year when they are forty. The father of A wishes A to
have the same opportunities as B, and B’s father holds the same view
about B in his relation to A.
Very well, A, having learnt the art of oyster fishing, which is the
principal industry of Whitstable, is sent to London to learn to be a
clerk, and B is sent from London to Whitstable, after training as a
clerk, in order to have an opportunity of being an oyster fisherman.
Meanwhile, A’s father has heard that B is also studying agriculture
at a school of agriculture somewhere near Whitstable. A, after having
trained as a clerk, is therefore recalled to Whitstable and made to
undergo a course of agriculture, and B having acquired a knowledge of
oyster-fishing and agriculture, is sent back to London to learn French,
which A acquired there. Ultimately, however, A’s father, remembering
that a brother of his did extremely well as an engineer, prevails upon
B’s father to consent to the plan of sending both boys A and B to
Armstrong & Whitworth’s or to Vickers.
We can imagine both A’s father and B’s father dying long before A and
B had had every opportunity that society now offers [p71] to the
aspirant for success; we can also picture A and B themselves becoming
grey-haired octogenarians before they finally settled down.
No, says the objector. That is not what opportunity egalitarians mean.
They mean not that everybody should have an equal chance of succeeding
in all the careers that lie open, but that they should have an
opportunity of succeeding in life.
But what is meant by success here? Does it consist in becoming Prime
Minister of England, or Commander-in-Chief in India, or Lord Mayor,
or Editor of _John Bull_? In any case opportunities for becoming any
one of these four cannot be made equal. Perhaps success consists in
becoming a millionaire? But who is going to determine the equality of
opportunity for this achievement? Pullitzer, one of the most powerful
American millionaires of the first decade of this century, crawled
ashore in America as a penniless fugitive, after having swum from the
ship that had conveyed him as an emigrant from Europe!
Moreover, supposing that a boy’s opportunity-egalitarianism extends
beyond the shores of his native land, and he says: I wish to have the
same opportunity as the Frenchman, or the Canadian, or the Chinaman.
What then? Is there any valid reason why opportunity-egalitarianism
should be confined to a single country, or even to a single continent?
What, then, is left of this cry for equality of opportunity? Simply
the sting of resentment which gives rise to it; and this we shall now
proceed to examine. [p72]
What kind of person is it who clamours for this meaningless
desideratum, equality? Certainly not the beautiful person, because to
him equality, if it could be achieved, would result in bringing him
down to the common level. Neither can it be the person specially gifted
in any of the arts and sciences; for, again, equality, if it could by
some miracle be wrought, would amount to wiping out the advantage of
such special gifts. The self-reliant, the strong, the skilful, the able
and the desirable, in all walks of life, are never stirred by this cry
for equality; because they look down from their eminence, and cannot
therefore conceive that levelling could possibly prove an advantage.
It must therefore be the undesirable, the unskilful, the incompetent,
the ugly, the ungifted, in all walks of life, the incapable of all
classes, who want equality. And they want it because, looking up from
their position of chafing mediocrity and ungainliness, and beholding
their more gifted brethren, they realise that equality must redound
to their benefit. A moment’s reflection would tell them that it is an
impossible ideal; their mortified vanity, however, is stronger than
their reason, and urges them to believe in it, ridiculous as it may be.
“Envy wears the mask of Love, and, laughing sober fact to scorn,
Cries to weakest, as to strongest, ‘Ye are equals, equal-born.’”[13]
“What made the Revolution? Vanity! Liberty was nothing but a pretext!”
Thus spoke Napoleon, the greatest and probably the deepest man since
Cæsar.[14]
But, however fantastic the cry for equality may seem, it is a dangerous
cry, because it is still capable of stimulating and directing energy.
It is, therefore, still a weapon in the hands of the unscrupulous
agitator and demagogue.
It means nothing. We have seen that it has only a mathematical value.
But until the ignorant, the arrogant, and the revengeful among Nature’s
(not society’s)[15] failures are brave and honest enough to realise
that the apparent injustice of the radical inequality of man, is
irremediable and inevitable, until they realise that it cannot be
corrected without resorting to the most savage extreme of Procrustean
barbarity, the lie Equality, as a high explosive, as a generator of
social perturbations and upheavals, as a weapon and a war-cry, will
continue to give rise to meaningless hopes, and to suggest utterly
false claims to the overweening ambition of all discontented humanity.
There is, however, another factor in this clamour for the impracticable
ideal of equality, and that is our old friend the natural indolence
of the weary and the exhausted. If all were equal--no matter how this
equality is to be achieved--it is felt that things would be easier.
Not only would the shame of the ugly and the repulsive in the presence
of the beautiful and the gifted be spared, but the uphill race of the
poor runners beside the fleet and enduring runners, would also be
rendered less strenuous. The ineffective brain-cracking of the fools
beside the swift and efficient thought of the intelligent would be less
heart-rending, and so on.
Finally, the notion of Justice, of “immanent” Justice, constrains
those who hold it, to assume a scheme of life, according to which all
human beings are at least equal at birth. Such people very easily
argue as follows: If all human beings were not equal at birth, it
would not be just, “immanent” Justice would be caught red-handed in
an act of flagrant injustice at the very portals of life. But this
is inconceivable, therefore all must be born equal. We have seen,
however, that this notion of justice is quite as mythical as the idea
of equality itself.
Generated in this way, by innumerable powerful wishes, the idea of
equality begins to take shape and assume the appearance of a realisable
object in the minds of the weary and the exhausted; and without
troubling to ask themselves what the merits or possibilities of their
idea may be, they are prepared to advocate it, applaud it--aye [p75]
and even fight for it, at the cost of all the rest of the world--so
long as they continue to be assured by unscrupulous people that it will
effect all they want it to effect.
So far, then, it has been impossible to trace any substantial
measure of reality behind this notion and this cry of equality. Is
it conceivable that a word should give rise to such intense feeling
and yet bear no relation whatever to practical life? Was President
Jefferson raving when he, following the lead of almost thirty millions
of French people, also spoke of equality as a desideratum that could
be gravely and confidently placed on a political programme? For it
seems only fair to presume that he could not have been serious when he
maintained that all men were created equal.
It is possible that at the end of the 18th century equality as a cry
had a very definite meaning. It probably meant in its best and most
rational interpretation, that every citizen had an equal right to
have his interests safeguarded by the laws of his society, that is
to say, by the government of his country. This was not recognised as
a principle by the rulers of France before the Revolution, and it is
at least conceivable that the substantial reality behind this cry for
equality was precisely the demand on the part of all that each man’s
interests should be protected with equal vigour and conscientiousness
by the state.
But in this sense has the cry for equality any meaning?
In so far as certain sections of the community may still believe that
their interest is not so perfectly safeguarded as that of [p76] other
sections, the cry for equality of treatment has as much meaning to-day
as it had in the last years of the 18th century, but beyond this one
claim, it is difficult to discover any meaning in it whatsoever.
Unfortunately, however, this very necessary and incontrovertible
limitation of the idea of equality, is not likely to deter those whose
base purpose may best be served by extending the significance of the
word beyond its proper bounds, when appealing to the least desirable
elements in every nation; and unless in the mass of the people of all
countries there is that understanding of the term which alone bears
any resemblance to reality, mankind will continue at intervals to be
incited to energetic though fruitless violence in the pursuit of a
phantom which can have no practical or effective existence outside the
calculations of a mathematician’s brain.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 10: Perhaps it is only fair to remind the reader that
Jefferson was the United States minister plenipotentiary in Paris in
1785, and that he had, therefore, imbibed deeply much of the nonsense
that was current in France at the time.]
[Footnote 11: See _The French Revolution_, by Louis Madelin, p. 15. The
author continues: “He [Condorcet] and his co-religionists, who knew
nothing of true sociology, which has its foundations in psychology,
here prove themselves still more ignorant of history.”]
[Footnote 12: Rousseau. Vol. I., p. 181.]
[Footnote 13: See Tennyson, _Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After_.]
[Footnote 14: See also H. de Balzac. _Le Cabinet des Antiques_: “En
France, ce qu’il y a de plus national, est la vanité. La masse des
vanités blessées y a donné soif d’égalité.”]
[Footnote 15: Nature’s failures and society’s failures are not
identical. Nature’s failure is frequently a creature below par, he
is frequently botched and undesirable. Society’s failure may be an
extremely desirable person, to whom modern conditions are so loathsome
that he cannot adapt himself to them and become successful. That
is why the Eugenists, who are prone to class the unsuccessful of
the age with the undesirable, still have a good deal to learn. The
unsuccessful now-a-days are certainly the biologically “unfit”; but
the question that must be decided before you conclude that they are
also “undesirable” is whether present conditions demand desirable or
undesirable qualities in those who become successfully adapted to
them,--in those, that is to say, who are “fit.”]
[p77] CHAPTER IV
FREEDOM
“Freedom such as God hath given
Unto all beneath His heaven,
With their breath, and from their birth,
Though guilt would sweep it from the earth.”
--Byron (_Poems on Napoleon_).
“Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”--This meaningless,
but highly inflammatory statement of Rousseau’s is probably at the root
of most of the misunderstanding that prevails to-day in regard to the
subject of liberty. Just as people eagerly accept, without a moment’s
thought, the lie that men are born equal, so they are only too ready to
embrace a doctrine according to which they may lay claim to a sort of
primitive, or natural freedom, which has been stolen from them by their
rulers, their civilisation, or by invading hordes.
On examination, of course, the proposition “men are born free” proves
to be wholly and wildly fantastic.
Freedom implies, one would suppose, the right, the capacity, and the
opportunity to choose one course from another, one kind of life from
another. But how much can a man really choose?
At birth, for instance, all kinds of conditions are imposed upon the
future adult--conditions which are bound to determine the whole of the
principal events of his or her [p78] career,--over which there is no
possibility of control whatsoever.
It may be assumed, for instance, that a baby might like to choose its
nationality and the language that it will speak in later life. Can it
do so? It may reasonably be taken for granted that a baby might like to
choose its parents, its brothers and sisters, and its other relatives.
Can it do so? Its very constitution and health are dependent upon the
kind of mother and father it has; its very happiness and success as an
adult may depend upon the way in which it is treated as an infant. Has
it any choice, any freedom, in regard to any of these matters?
It is not fanciful to suspect that the baby might like to choose
its particular form and features, its ultimate height as an adult,
etc., etc. The most vital and important issues will hang upon this
question of its face and form when it is grown up. But it has no power
whatsoever to determine any one of these most vital and important
conditions.
An imaginative baby, realising the inexorable fate which hangs over
certain gifts, certain endowments, and a particular sex, might regard
it as all important to be able to select these freely.
But the rigidity of natural law, the impossibility of controlling any
of these matters, ordain that at birth a baby has all its important
ultimate characteristics, and therefore all its proclivities, tastes,
vices, virtues, and even aspirations settled for it. Its nationality,
its language, its parents, its other relatives, its constitution, its
degree of beauty, its stature, its physical and mental endowments, its
sex,--all these things, upon which the [p79] figure it will ultimately
cut in the world most surely depend,--are fixed by an iron necessity
which allows of no choice, no preference,--aye, and scarcely any
modification either.
If this is freedom, then what does constraint, what does oppression
mean?
It may be objected that this is not what Rousseau meant; that Rousseau
maintained that man was born free, because in a savage state he
would really be free from the conventions, laws, and constraints of
civilisation.
This appears convincing enough. The savage is certainly free from the
laws and constraints of civilisation, but the savage race has yet to be
found that is free from all conventions, laws and constraints, nor is
it by any means certain that these obstacles to freedom are the more
pleasant for being barbarous instead of civilised.
But even if we suppose that Rousseau’s alleged freedom of babies is a
reality, at what point, it may be asked, is it exchanged for bondage?
Most people would reply: when the child goes to school. It is at school
that the shackles of civilisation are first fastened on the free
infant’s wrists. It is the work that civilisation ultimately holds in
store for the child that necessitates his being trained and “educated.”
To this the naturalist and anthropologist might reply: is there now,
or has there ever been, a race of men or animals that did not have to
undergo some process of training in childhood in order to learn to be
efficient adults? [p80]
Of course there neither is, nor ever was any such race.
Iron necessity again precludes the possibility of this alleged freedom
even in childhood.
In manhood, again, freedom is purely a will-o’-the-wisp. No man
who wishes to continue living is free. He is bound to procure food
and clothing for himself even in the cannibal islands. If he have
passions, he is bound to find some means of gratifying them. This
means shouldering responsibilities; for no community, even of animals,
undertakes to rear the fruits of other people’s passions. He cannot
even select his calling, for his calling will depend upon his special
aptitudes. In fact, the more gifted he is, and the more marked his
capabilities, the less will he be able to choose how to earn a living.
Only a man of mediocre and insignificant gifts is really free to choose
his calling, because he feels no irresistible impulse in a given
direction. But these mediocre people who are free to choose their
calling, don’t really choose a “calling” at all--the very idea of
choosing something to which one is called is absurd--what they choose
is a more or less characterless and humdrum means of earning a living,
which requires neither very special gifts nor any marked proclivities.
To be free to choose what one will be, is always a sign of hopelessly
humble tastes and endowments.
Putting it at its lowest, however, we might concede the point that
_as far as choosing a means of livelihood is concerned_, there are a
certain number of very mediocre men whose gifts are so indistinct and
feeble, and whose [p81] tastes are so wavering and undefined, that
they are “free.”[16]
Apart from these unhappy individuals, then, if Rousseauesque freedom
exist at all, it exists only between the hour of birth and the hour
when the child first goes to school. We have seen that even this is
untrue. But has it even a semblance of truth as a conclusion?
Surely nothing could be clearer than the fact that even in those years
freedom is as remote as ever; for quite apart from the reasons already
adduced above, it will easily be seen that the infant is as much the
victim of convention and form as any adult could possibly be. It has a
home, its life is subjected to rules, to a time-table, it cannot eat
or do what it likes, except within very well-defined limits severely
imposed.
“It can think what it likes,” somebody may object.
But even this is not strictly true. Its thoughts are as much
necessitated by its environment and its constitution as is its food.
If it is born in England or France, for instance, it will be brought
up to believe in “immanent justice,” in “equality,” in “freedom.” It
cannot escape these imbecilities. They are its fate. It will be taught
the inanity that “every man has a right to his own opinion,” and that
“Britons never never never shall be slaves,”--whatever that means, if
it means anything at all. Later in life it may claim the idea that
“every man has a right to his own opinion” as its own. It will have
forgotten how it could not help holding this idea, any more than it
could help learning the English language.
Rousseau then was talking nonsense when he said that men were born
free; but both his reading and his education were so pool that it is
doubtful whether he knew that he was talking nonsense.
Apart from Rousseauesque freedom, however, has the word no meaning?
It will be seen that, in the end, it has very little.
Voluntary actions, or actions that are performed as the result of a
free choice between two or more alternatives, are not known. They never
occur. Even when they appear to occur, they are generally, if not
always, associated with a weak or useless personality.
Strong natures have no choice; they have no alternative; they have
therefore no freedom. They are driven to their deeds by an iron
necessity. If they speak or write, it is out of the fulness of their
hearts. It is a phenomenon akin to the mechanical overflow of a
flooded basin. If they go in search of big undertakings and of vast
responsibilities, in order to shoulder them, it is because they have a
store of accumulated energy which must discharge itself over a large
area, over a large mass of material.
When Napoleon took leave of his comrades in Egypt, before embarking on
that gigantic enterprise, the reconstitution of anarchical bleeding and
devastated France, he said: “I am going to drive out the lawyers.”
His strength demanded a gigantic task, just [p83] as the nasal horn of
the rhinoceros drives the animal who possesses it to uproot the soil.
He could not help himself. Martin Luther likewise had no choice. Before
the famous Diet of Worms, he openly avowed this lack of freedom. He
said: “Here I stand. I cannot act otherwise. God help me.”
Indeed the character of all strength is precisely that it gives those
who possess it no choice, no “freedom.” The moment choice enters
into the domain of action, the moment there is apparent freedom or
self-determination, weakness, or a lack of native impetus may be
suspected.
Thomas de Quincey, that profound psychologist of the artist’s soul,
explained the matter very well in his Autobiography. Discussing the
nature of true poetry, he said: “By far the larger proportion of what
is received in every age for poetry, and for a season usurps that
consecrated name, is not the spontaneous overflow of real unaffected
passion, deep, and at the same time original, and also forced into
public manifestation of itself from the necessity which cleaves to all
passion.”[17]
It will be seen that de Quincey here speaks of a “spontaneous overflow”
which is “forced into public manifestation of itself from the necessity
which cleaves to all passion.” There is no freedom about it, no choice.
It flows from an impetuous and imperious abundance.
In the light which this throws on all human greatness or strength, what
does the value of freedom appear to be?
Does it not seem as if freedom and the apparent liberty to choose
belong essentially to a lack of strength, to an absence of necessity in
the characteristic action of man? To be able to weigh and select either
one of two alternatives,--say action or inaction,--implies that no
overwhelming native impetus forces a man to the one and blinds him to
the other. Is it possible then that the very cry of “freedom” belongs
essentially to weakness? to feebleness of character?
Let another example be taken. A young man A. has just reached the age
of one and twenty without having had a serious affair of the heart. His
friends regard him as free to pursue any pastime, any sport. When once
he has discharged the duties by means of which he earns his livelihood,
he is always free to join a tennis party, a cricket team, a bridge
party, or a debating circle. His mind can devote itself to the task of
choosing what he shall do,--is it to be tennis, cricket, bridge, or
argument? He has no overpowering inclination for anything particular,
consequently he is free to choose.
Suddenly, however, he meets a young lady B, who strains a certain fibre
in his being almost to snapping point. The tension of this strain is
so powerful that, like the main spring of a watch, it presses its host
to constant activity in a certain direction. The direction in this
case is B’s person. Now choice falls out of the question altogether.
It is no longer a matter of dwelling critically upon cricket, tennis,
bridge or argument, and selecting that which seems for the moment the
most alluring pastime. The tension in A’s being relaxes only at one
sound, at one [p85] call. It is B B B --B recurring. When urged by his
whilom tennis companions to join them, these friends now encounter,
not hesitating freedom, but formidable resistance, immovable decision,
determined refusal. When approached by his debating society, he
declares that all his spare time is now taken up. He is in fact no
longer free. Something strong in him has been roused. He cannot help
himself. His actions are no longer voluntary.
But who would long for freedom in such circumstances? Who longs for
freedom when bondage is sweet?
It may be taken for granted, then, that strength and greatness know
nothing of freedom. The strong man is not free; the great man is not
free;--nor for that matter, as history or the observation of our
fellows can show, do they wish to be free. Only weakness is apparently
free, or is conscious of desiring freedom; because, having no strong
native impetus to drive it willy nilly in any given direction, it
appears to be able to choose its own direction. Thus only weakness can
even desire freedom.
The obvious inference would be that as fast as the mass of mankind
decline in strength and greatness, the louder would become the cry for
freedom. Is this conclusion valid?
It is only partially so; for there are cases when freedom is demanded
not from weakness, but from strength.
Let us abide by the examples we have chosen.
Napoleon, driven by the iron necessity of his native strength, leaves
Egypt to make [p86] himself master of France. But suppose that he had
been conquered and kept as a harem servant in Egypt, or restrained in
some other way from exerting his strength,--what then?
It is conceivable, in that case, that he would have longed for the
freedom which would have allowed him to fall into the bondage of his
own overpowering impulses to rule and to direct the destiny of France.
For the first time the idea of “freedom” begins to assume a definite
shape. It begins to acquire the appearance of a genuine reality.
Judging by Napoleon’s case, therefore, we may say of the desire for
freedom, that although it never arises in normal conditions, it begins
to make a definite appeal when it signifies a release from bondage that
is incompatible and inharmonious with strong innate impulses, for a
bondage that is compatible and harmonious with strong innate impulses.
The bondage consisting in being a harem servant is incompatible with
innate impulses of a stronger order; therefore, although the obedience
to impulses of a stronger order also constitutes bondage, Napoleon,
as a harem servant, would have longed for the freedom to fall into
the bondage of his stronger impulses, because it was there that his
“calling” lay.
Reverting to the case of the young man A who became enamoured of a
young lady B, we are confronted by a case that is somewhat different;
because, although A was apparently “free” before meeting B, he
nevertheless [p87] prefers the bondage of his attachment to B to his
former freedom. Why,--obviously because his former apparent freedom,
was freedom for nothing, a state of being constrained to nothing in
particular, a lack of bondage to anything, which was tantamount to a
lack of everything.
He finds his strength on meeting B. He finds one of his powerful
impulses taking possession of him. He is therefore happy, because,
though he is in bondage, a vital impulse is directing his life, a
necessity of his being has found a pursuit for him. If his cricket
club now kidnap him and imprison him in the cricket field, in order to
play in a cricket match, he will make a determined attempt to escape.
He will endeavour to obtain freedom. Freedom for what?--Freedom from a
bondage incompatible with the powerful impulses of his being, for the
purpose of falling into a bondage compatible with the powerful impulses
of his being.
Has the “liberty” of our political agitators this meaning? Has it any
meaning?
We know that man can never be free. We have seen that from his very
birth conditions are imposed upon him which direct his subsequent
career as inevitably as railway lines direct the course of a train.
Nothing that lives in finite conditions can be free. And no other
conditions are known. Life even in the animal world means work, battle,
struggle, the observance of certain very strict habits. Human life
means work, the observance of social conventions; even the necessity of
eating, drinking, breathing and performing the other bodily functions
entails responsibility. [p88] Work may be altered, the particular
social conventions of a nation may be changed; but it is merely a
matter of altering one kind into another kind, exchanging one rule for
another rule.
What then does the political agitator mean when he offers “Liberty” to
those whom he would induce to support or follow him?
It has been seen that the only sense in which liberty as an idea bears
any relation to reality, is when it signifies the opportunity that can
be given to a man to enable him to exchange a bondage incompatible with
his strongest impulses for a bondage that harmonises with them.
Is this the meaning of the cry for freedom to-day? When the newspapers
told us that the Great War was fought by us in the cause of “freedom”,
is this the freedom they meant?
How many of those who believe they aspire to something definite and
real when they aspire to “freedom,” fully understand the limitations
of their ideal? How many of them really possess stronger impulses than
those that actually find expression in their daily work?
Some people might reply, “very few.” I reply that the number of men
and women to-day, who yearn for freedom vaguely, fretfully, and
insistently, because they realise dimly that they seek a kind of
bondage in which their stronger impulses would have more scope, is very
much greater than is generally supposed.
One of the results of the industrial revolution, and of the vast
increase of mechanical [p89] appliances and machinery generally,
has been the creation of occupations by the hundred thousand, which
are in every way besotting, heartrending, and depressing. Sometimes
it is their asinine simplicity and their monotony, that destroy the
heart of those employed in them, frequently it is their extreme
disagreeableness, noisiness or unhealthiness. The particular objection
that is common to almost all of them, however, is that the natural
impulses which most strongly animate a human being at his work, the
impulse to make “a good job” of the task he is occupied upon, the
impulse to excel his neighbour in his skill, care or foresight, the
impulse to earn the praise of those for whom he is producing the work,
the impulse to improve day by day in his own speciality and to derive
fair profit from this improvement,--all these natural impulses scarcely
ever get an opportunity of expressing themselves in the whole of the
week’s round; and when the weekly wage is received, it is felt that
it has been earned by a species of prostitution rather than by an
occupation of which the wage-earner can justly feel proud.
This, as I understand it, is the fundamental meaning of the cry for
freedom to-day. In any case it is the only meaning it can have.
For freedom in the sense of non-relation, non-dependance, absence
of duties, absence of work, and absence of responsibilities or
conventions, is utterly impossible. Not only is it utterly impossible
to-day, but it has always been impossible. Even animals in a state of
nature cannot achieve that condition.
It behoves all those, therefore, who nowadays [p90] feel this craving
for liberty, and who are tempted to follow wherever and whenever it
is upheld before them as a cause, thoroughly to understand what it is
they are invited to fight for. They must not allow themselves to be
led astray by those who would promise them unconstrained freedom of
action, for that is a physical impossibility, a lie, an illusion, and a
mirage only of the ignorant. They must not be deceived by agitators who
lead them to imagine that this “freedom” for which they are invited to
strive, is a sort of paradise of fairies, from whom the natural cares
and responsibilities of this world have been miraculously lifted. Nor
must they suppose that it has much to do with the kind of government
which their country enjoys,--whether monarchical, aristocratic,
plutocratic or Bolshevik.
Modern governments in their nature can do little for the spiritual
requirements of the working man. As far as that freedom is concerned
which consists in finding expression in one’s daily duties for the
strongest impulses of one’s being, the masses of the working people
in this country were infinitely more “free” under the despotic Tudors
than they are at present under the benign rule of the people’s elected
representatives.
Thus the only kind of freedom that the most honest politician can
definitely promise, political freedom--is in itself one of the most
wanton deceptions ever practised upon humanity. For what does this
political freedom consist of?--It begins and ends with the vote. But in
what manner does this constitute freedom? To what extent does [p91]
the voter at the poll secure or realise his own freedom by the vote he
registers? He gives his vote on a programme which frequently has only
a very remote relation to his private life or interests. What can his
vote accomplish then in the cause of his own freedom? In registering
his vote he is bound to choose one out of two or three men who stand
as candidates for his constituency. He may heartily dislike every one
of them, and yet be driven to vote for A because A’s programme is a
little less pernicious than that of B or C. After having voted for A,
if our voter is lucky, A may get into Parliament. Every time A votes
in the House itself, however, he may be out-voted by other members,
so the very reason for which our voter elected A may be frustrated
when once A is an M.P. If, however, our voter does not succeed in
getting A into Parliament, he may be one of six or even ten thousand
in his constituency who will not be represented in Parliament for four
or five whole years. Every Parliament that sits in England fails in
this way to be representative of millions of voters. In what manner
have these millions of voters achieved their own freedom, or in what
manner are they safeguarding it? For even if we grant that it is
right that millions of voters should not be represented in Parliament
because they belong to the out-voted minority, can we reasonably speak
of this vast minority as having secured their political freedom by
their vote? But the case is in fact worse than this; for John Stuart
Mill, that whole-hearted believer in “democracy,” has shown, not only
that the minority in the land is bound to be unrepresented in every
Parliament, [p92] but that it is also possible for the majority in the
land to be unrepresented.[18] How then the promise even of political
freedom, which is the only promise of freedom that an honest politician
may make, can even appear to possess any reality, so long as it is
dependent entirely upon the vote, it is difficult to discover.
There is only one kind of freedom that bears any relation to reality,
only one kind of freedom therefore that can be striven after, that can
be realised; and that is the freedom to exchange a bondage incompatible
with our strongest impulses for a bondage that harmonises with them.
Nothing else has any meaning.
The very success with which voluntary recruiting proceeded directly
after the declaration of war against Germany in 1914 is one of the
best demonstrations of the truth of this conclusion. For it was the
opportunity to exchange an occupation incompatible with the strongest
impulses of their being, for an occupation that harmonised with those
strongest impulses, that led the majority of those young men to embark
for the shambles in France. I mixed with them, so I ought to be able to
speak with some knowledge of the subject.
Now the fight for this freedom, for the freedom that, as we have seen,
has some meaning, really is worth while. It is a noble fight, and
a decent fight. But it is a fight with which no modern Government,
Liberal, Socialist, or Bolshevik, can possibly have any sympathy. For
Liberal policy has always meant commercial and industrial expansion;
Socialist policy must, if it is honest, include in its programme,
compulsory labour, whether compatible or incompatible with the
strongest impulses of our being; and Bolshevik policy, as we have
already seen, insists upon this kind of labour. It is, however,
precisely the Liberals, the Socialists, and the Bolsheviks who have
been loudest in their cries for freedom. If, therefore, this humble
attempt at investigating the meaning and limitations of the idea of
freedom has done nothing more than demonstrate the hollowness of this
Liberal catchword, it cannot have been written or read in vain. [p94]
Thus, it is not merely a matter of caution, it is in the highest degree
wise, to test every yearning and every demand for freedom, even in
one’s own breast, with the practical question, “What for?”--“What is
the strongest impulse that would find expression if the bondage of
the present task were exchanged for the bondage of a new occupation?”
Only those who can answer that question satisfactorily, only those who
feel that they would increase the fullness of their lives, and thus
add to the sum of beauty and happiness in the world, have any right to
“freedom,” or have any understanding of the only sense in which the
idea of freedom can have some meaning.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 16: But even this amount of freedom in the mediocre is
limited by the fact that the mediocre cannot choose a means of
livelihood in which super-mediocre endowments would be necessary.]
[Footnote 17: Collected Writings. (London: A. C. Black). Vol. I., p.
194.]
[Footnote 18: See _Considerations on Representative Government_,
Chapter VII., par. 4:--“There is not equal suffrage when every single
individual does not count for as much as any other single individual
in the community. But it is not only a minority who suffer. Democracy
thus constituted does not even attain its ostensible object, that of
giving the powers of government in all cases to the numerical majority.
It does something very different; it gives them to a majority of the
majority, who may be, and often are, but a minority of the whole. All
principles are most effectually tested by extreme cases. Suppose then
that in a country governed by equal and universal suffrage, there is a
contested election in every constituency, and every election is carried
by a small majority. The Parliament thus brought together represents
little more than a bare majority of the people. This Parliament
proceeds to legislate and adopts important measures by a bare majority
of itself. What guarantee is there that these measures accord with the
washes of the majority of the people? Nearly half the electors, having
been out-voted at the hustings, have had no influence at all in the
decision; and the whole of these may be, a majority of them probably
are, hostile to the measures, having voted against those by whom they
have been carried. Of the remaining electors nearly half have chosen
representatives who, by supposition, have voted against the measures.
It is possible therefore, and not at all improbable that the opinion
which has prevailed was only agreeable to a minority of the nation,
through a majority of that portion of it whom the institutions of the
country have erected into a ruling class.”]
[p95] CHAPTER V
SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM
“There is at the present day too great a tendency to believe that
it is impossible to resist the progress of a new idea.” Disraeli’s
speech on the Compensation for Disturbance Bill. (August, 1880).
A certain fatalism seems to have overtaken the people of Europe, a mood
under the dominion of which they are prepared to regard even their
own vagaries and whimsicalities as heretofore most men have regarded
the weather, that is, as something inevitable and fore-ordained which
nothing can modify, resist or avert.
If a particular group manifest a disposition for war, then it is war
to which they resign themselves; if it is female suffrage, then lo!
Votes for Women come upon them with the certainty of the monsoon or
the mistral. Nobody moves, nobody holds up a hand to ward off the
approaching scourge, because everybody is either too indolent to make
an effort, or too thoroughly persuaded beforehand that nothing can
avail, to attempt to interfere with what he calls “the natural course
of events.” The scrub on a wind-swept moor offers more resistance to
the elements than does modern man to his fellows’ restless tinkering at
the social structure; and as for the gentle fine rain which, falling
athwart the fiercest blast, ultimately constrains it to abate its fury,
and to die down, modern man has no knowledge of such tactics, and even
[p96] if he had a knowledge of them he would not put it into practice.
Despite the enormous amount of apparent hostility aroused by the
immense progress that Socialism and Communism have made since the
war, it must not be supposed that with regard to them modern men are
feeling any more actively indignant than they have felt towards any
other impending change. The hostility, as we have pointed out, is only
apparent. For, in their heart of hearts the men of the present day are
just as much prepared to resign themselves to Socialism as to civil
war, class war, or any other kind of social upheaval.
The factor in the threatening reform which makes certain sections
of the public stand as if they really meant to offer resistance, is
unfortunately not their intellectual conviction that Socialism or
Communism is so palpably wrong that it must be resisted at all costs;
but rather the negative quality of inertia, which in this case assumes
the appearance of positive resistance because, as it happens, Socialism
and Communism propose to oust from positions of ease a great number of
people who have not only grown accustomed to ease, but to whom life
without ease presents few if any attractions.
Otherwise, Socialism, Communism, Bolshevism, Nihilism--who cares? They
appear right because so many millions seem to believe in them. Any
“ism” seems to be right to modern man, provided a sufficient number of
people raise their hands in favour of it. In this sense, be he a Tory,
a Conservative, or a Monarchist, modern man is essentially democratic
in spirit. [p97]
In the circumstances, with this very doubtful weight of inertia alone
on his side, that man may very easily be suspected of quixotic candour,
who at this late hour of the day pretends to stand up in face of the
approaching wind, not only to resist it, but also to beat it down. And
yet this is what the present writer proposes to do, provided only he
can demonstrate the validity of his standpoint in a sufficient number
of convincing ways to emulate that fine gentle rain which ultimately
beats down any wind.
Moreover, in order to do this, it will not be necessary to examine
the proposals of Socialism and Communism in detail, but simply to
concentrate upon their basic principles, and to show how entirely
untenable are the very first positions they take up. Stated in the
fairest possible way, their position is as follows:--
The leading Socialist and Communist thinkers are men as a rule whose
hearts have been moved by the spectacle of sorrow and hardship which
is the lot of a large number of their fellow-creatures on earth; and
they are earnestly desirous so to modify the organisation of society as
to render that burden of sorrow and hardship lighter for the mass of
mankind.
They see all about them inequalities of the crudest kind, sharp
contrasts, and abysmal chasms, and they wish to achieve greater
evenness among men.--Why?--Not because the spectacle of mankind thus
evened up will necessarily be more picturesque or more harmonious to
behold; but because on the whole it will be less heartrending, less
revolting, less inequitable. [p98]
They detect in society, as it is at present constituted, an element
which they maintain has no business to be there, an element which they
honestly believe is not human; and they feel confident of being able to
eliminate it if only they are allowed to effect certain readjustments
and re-arrangements of the whole which will radically change the
relation of every member of the community to every other member.
This element, which the Socialist and Communist detect in modern
society and which they wish to eliminate because it is not human, is
Violence.
According to the present writer’s belief this is, in a few words, a
fair statement, if not the fairest possible statement, of the Socialist
and Communist’s position.
Assuming at all events that it is correct, it is now possible to
examine it and to call attention to the amount of error it contains.
For, let the Socialist and Communist say what they will, let them
wish rather to substitute the word Predatoriness, or Oppression, or
Exploitation, or Slavery, for the word Violence, or for the particular
quality in modern society which they would fain eliminate, it does not
signify much. All these words in their essence are reducible to the one
notion Violence, and Violence we shall therefore name the feature that
Socialists and Communists propose to remove from human communities, and
which we propose now to examine.
Violence as a phenomenon is not presented to us chiefly in our own
societies. Where we recognise its sway to be most general and most
rigorous, is in Nature herself, and all [p99] life outside human
communities. The life of the jungle, the life of the prairie, the
life of the ocean, in all these departments of life, Violence reigns
supreme. Indeed we are so familiar with its existence there that we
should be astonished if we failed to find it. We open the stomach of a
shot leopard and we find in it the mangled remains of some other animal
or bird. When we kill a bird and inspect its viscera, we discover the
remains of insects, small quadrupeds, or smaller birds. Life outside
human societies is little less than a process of preying and mutual
suppression and incorporation. Every species behaves as if it alone
had the right to prevail, and it endeavours by every means in its
power--self-preservation, propagation, rapine and parisitism--to make
its own kind predominate on earth.
We ourselves are guilty of violence towards the lower animals, and
there are few people who, upon dying a sudden death, would not betray
this violence by the contents of their stomachs or intestines.
Violence, therefore, constitutes no novelty to the human being. He
knows of it in Nature and he knows he is guilty of it towards those
lower animals which he consumes as food. At a first glance then it
would appear that violence of a sort is an essential factor in all
life, even in human life.
The kind of violence, however, that the Socialist and Communist wish to
eliminate from human society is not the violence which men perpetrate
against the lower animals; though there are certainly some Socialists
who would wish to eliminate that also; but chiefly the violence between
man and man, [p100] man and woman, adult and child, or child and
child: violence by means of which some man, woman, or child is made
the instrument or the tool or the chattel of some other man, woman, or
child.
This you may protest is what all societies since Moses, and even before
him, have tried their utmost to suppress. To some extent this is true.
Murder and assault have been prohibited by most moral codes. The kind
of violence, however, that the Socialist and Communist wish to suppress
is the violence that is at present tolerated by law, that receives its
sanction from society at large, and that men now perpetrate with clean
consciences.
How does this violence chiefly arise?
--By means of the inequalities of human advantages. One man A finds
himself by birth or by his own efforts (frequently the outcome of
his endowments at birth) in possession of something that somebody
else B very much requires; and before A relinquishes a particle of
it, convention allows him to exact some service from B. According to
the urgency of B’s needs and the quality of B’s gifts that service
is either very strenuous or comparatively light. For instance, if A
happens to be a man of rare genius, holding in his mind the secret
of his country’s salvation B, the country, may voluntarily offer him
fabulous wealth from her own coffers to divulge his secret knowledge,
and may even involve herself in a crushing debt in order to do so. Or
A may be simply a producer of corn, and B an impecunious starving man
begging corn of A because he needs it as food. In the latter case,
short of an act of immorality [p101] or one involving the certainty
of B’s immediate injury or demise, there is scarcely anything the law
forbids A from exacting from B. The service may involve B’s gradual
injury. To this the law says nothing. The service may be debasing or
degrading from an intellectual or spiritual point of view; it may
deteriorate B’s eyesight, impair his physique or his good spirits: to
all these things the law says nothing.
While the service is being performed and B is obtaining corn from A,
B who cannot pay cash for the corn, may be asked to do pretty well
anything, with the gloomy alternative before him of going without corn
altogether. This I take it is the meaning of the word violence in the
mouth of the Socialist and Communist: it is the power that one man can
exercise over another, in determining his occupation and in exacting
service or else withholding food from him.
The Socialist would admit that service must be exacted from all at
some time or other, but he suggests that the State should exact it,
so that the power may be exercised corporately, and the profit, if
any, allotted, not to individuals, but to the whole body. The extent
to which an element of violence adheres even to the proposition that
the State should exact service and not the individual, would be an
interesting speculation; for the fact that some violence still remains
implicit in the proposition everybody will see at a glance. But the
present writer hopes to point to other means by which violence must
inevitably enter into the Socialistic State, just as forcibly as it
does now into any well ordered capitalistic State. [p102]
Quite apart then from the violence which is inherent in the proposition
that the State must exact service under the Socialistic régime, it
is suggested that no one, who has been following the analysis of the
Socialist and Communist’s first principles given above, can up to the
present be satisfied that violence would be eliminated from society
under their régime any more than it can be under the present régime,
and for the following reasons:
So far the Socialist’s proposals appear to contain no measures for
ridding human stock of its pronounced inequalities. It is, however,
from inequalities that apparent injustices and violence ultimately
arise.
Men of great talent and men of the most miserable endowments, will
continue to be born in any State, whether Socialistic or capitalistic.
So long as the individual right to procreate be admitted there will
continue to be pressed into the community, not only the offspring of
the virtuous man, the sage, and the craftsman, but also the offspring
of the knave, the mediocre and the fool. So long as the individual’s
right to parenthood is accepted as inviolable, society will therefore
continue to be perturbed as it is now by an uninvited access of
one, two or even half a dozen to a dozen, new mouths, from certain
individuals, the low quality of whose accompanying bodies may be out of
all proportion (in regard to the services they can render) to the high
quantity of food and other supplies they can account for. New members
will be forced into the community by procreation which, according
to the quality of [p103] their endowments will either considerably
enhance its efficiency or considerably cripple it. If they are to
enhance it, and it is in the interest of the community that they should
enhance it, then they will require to be encouraged for so doing;
on the other hand, if they are going to cripple it, their crippling
influence will recoil on each member of the social body, and each will
suffer from the presence of the new arrivals.
Further to elucidate this point, let two extreme examples be given:--
(1). A man of singularly high gifts, C by name, presses upon the
community in his lifetime eight children all of which take more or
less after him. Their endowments are so conspicuous that they plainly
overshadow all the other higher men of the community. It happens,
moreover, that the community has reached a crisis in its affairs when
it urgently needs men of C’s type. Obviously then C, by presenting
the community with eight singularly gifted replicas of himself, has
profoundly affected its life and its constitution. By elevating the
standard of the administrative work, some of the whilom administrators
will have been driven from office and forced to take up an inferior
form of service. A perturbation will have occurred. In its ultimate
analysis it will have amounted to a coercive act, an act which though
tolerated by the State (assumed in this case to admit the individual’s
right to procreate) thus turns out to be an act of violence. It was not
deliberate, or of a kind savouring of malice aforethought, but it is
nevertheless an act which forces a change on the community at large,
and a marked change of position on a [p104] certain number of the
community’s members. It is therefore tantamount to an act of violence:
it is in fact an act of violence.
(2) Now suppose the case of a man who is the butt of everybody’s
ridicule for his stubborn stupidity and intractable indolence. Suppose
his condition of utter unworthiness, from the intellectual and moral
point of view, to be moreover aggravated by poor health. This man, too,
we presume, claiming by law the right of parenthood, forces upon the
community half-a-dozen new members in the form of his offspring, who
are so far like him that the competent authority can scarcely cover the
cost of their clothes and food by the produce of their labours, and
has to encroach upon other resources of the State in order to provide
for them. Here again we have a profound perturbation, resulting from
the pressing of a new set of members upon the community by the act of
procreation. Nobody asked for them, nobody wanted them. But now they
have come, everybody has to work a little more or a little longer in
order to provide for them. In its ultimate analysis this is once more a
coercive act, an act which, though tolerated by the State that admits
the individual’s right to parenthood, thus turns out to be an act of
violence. It certainly was not deliberate, or designed particularly to
harass the community; but it forces an extra burden on the social body,
it is therefore tantamount to an act of violence: it is in fact an act
of violence.
Now here we have two extreme instances of violence entering a
socialistic society against which it would appear to be impossible
[p105] to take any preventive measures.[19] And how did the violence
enter?--In the same way as it enters all life, all Nature, all
societies: through the act of procreation. Between the two extreme
cases given the imaginative reader will easily be able to supply a vast
number of intermediate cases, which though perhaps less powerful in the
ultimate violence of their effect on the community would nevertheless
partake each in its way of the nature of violence.
The act of procreation is thus an act which in the long run amounts to
a means of pressing any number from one to a dozen (sometimes more) of
new members upon a community, which members may, in one way or another,
cause a profound perturbation of the balance of that community.
The act of procreation is, therefore, an act of violence, of trespass,
of invasion. The continuity of a species in Nature is secured by
procreation; but the balance of Nature is constantly made to fluctuate
around a mean by the act, notwithstanding loss from predatory and other
causes.
In human society the continuity of the species is secured by
procreation; but since reciprocal destruction does not occur to
nearly the same extent among human beings as it does among the lower
animals[20], in a healthy society, which is an increasing society, the
balance of the community, far from fluctuating around a mean, tends to
be thrown ever more seriously out with each successive generation.
Thus in a healthy society, which is an increasing society, procreation
is not merely a transitory but a perpetual source of violence.
The present writer is not arguing that this is right or wrong; he
is only trying to state a fact. Whether it be a pleasant fact, or a
desirable fact, is for the moment beside the point. It is at all events
a fundamental truth of life, and as such it would be idle to devise any
new scheme of society in which it is not allowed for.
It may be objected that the whole of a man’s offspring in modern
society may elude their destiny of impinging violently against that
society by becoming emigrants.
This appears to be forcible enough. But is not emigration in itself
merely a means of postponing the act of violence by one stage?
Besides, is not emigration--say to the colonies--possible to-day
only because we happen to be living at a period subsequent to an
act of violence on a grand scale, by which the land constituting the
colonies, whether of France, England, Holland, or Italy, was wrested
from other people? And even so, have we not seen recently, during a
time of serious unemployment in England, certain politicians object
to Mr. Lloyd George’s schemes of emigration on the ground that, to
send our unemployed to Canada, Australia, or New Zealand, where labour
conditions were also unfavourable, would be an act of provocation to
those colonies?--Why an act of provocation?--Because to impose a number
of extra mouths on a community unless there is a genuine industrial
demand in that community for the able bodies possessing those mouths,
is an act of gratuitous violence.
It serves no purpose to revile life and the world because we happen
to have lighted upon a fundamental fact that is unpleasant to our
cultivated sensibilities. Life is as it is, and Nature is as it is,
and no bewailing or reviling on our parts will alter them. The brave
attitude, the healthy attitude, indeed the only dignified attitude, is
to accept life and Nature as they are, and to endeavour to discover the
most desirable method of dealing with both of them.
This primary act of violence, which is procreation, cannot be cancelled
out or annulled; it cannot be expunged from the essential character
of existence. It must be accepted. This much, however, should be
immediately understood; _you cannot have at the very portals of life an
act of violence, and hope to build upon it a form of society in which
violence in some form, however attenuated, [p108] will not appear_.
To make any promises to this effect is the plainest humbug. It may
appear an alluring prospect; it may sound an attractive picture; it
may deceive and it may delude; but it is an impossible undertaking
notwithstanding; and those who declare that they are prepared to embark
upon it are either too ill-informed to realise the true data of their
problem, too dishonest to admit that they know these true data, or too
inept properly to deal with them.
Starting out then with this original act of violence which is rooted in
life and in Nature and enters into every form of human society willy
nilly, it is obvious that its reverberations must proceed rhythmically
throughout all the sections of any human community whatsoever, be its
organisation what you will. Thus inequalities, apparent injustices
and even bondage, appear only as the necessary ultimate repercussions
of the original perturbing influence. And in every society hitherto,
such regrettable repercussions of the original act of violence have
always been regarded as inevitable. As a rule the authorities have,
according to their lights, endeavoured to mitigate the asperity of
these perturbations; but to eliminate them completely they have always
known is an impossible achievement, _because they are not man-made, but
created by the laws of life itself_.
All societies hitherto appear to have recognised with varying degrees
of liberality the sacredness of man’s right over his procreative
powers. But what a large number of recent sociological thinkers
appear to have forgotten is, that since procreation and its [p109]
consequences are part of the original elements of life and nature,
which are allowed to persist in the more or less artificial arrangement
called society, this artificial arrangement must partake of the
harshness, the inequalities and the apparent injustices of life and
nature, to the extent to which it allows these original elements of
life and nature to operate freely in its midst. To check procreation,
or limit it by law, would involve the violation of the sanctity which
has hitherto been accepted as the one attribute shielding every man’s
right over his procreative powers.[21]
Acquiescing in the inviolability of this right, then, the utmost
society could do, was to mitigate the worst consequences of its free
operation, by ordering as far as possible the union of couples, and
by properly allocating the general burden of responsibility for the
support of the offspring arising from these unions.
Albeit no amount of order introduced into the joining of couples,
could possibly place a check upon man’s procreative powers when
once he had fulfilled all the formalities that the State demanded;
consequently, despite all its attempts to regulate the relations of
the sexes, society’s ultimate control over the act of procreation
and its results remain more or less ineffectual, and in so far as it
attempts to establish any reasonable proportion between a man’s powers
of procreating and his powers of providing for the consequences of
his act--or for that matter his children’s power of providing for
themselves in after life--the outcome of all society’s efforts have
been practically nil.
Evidently mankind seems to have come to the conclusion fairly early in
the history of civilisation that if there is one kind of interference,
one kind of control or of constraint that his fellows can with
difficulty brook, it is that which would presume to meddle with their
right over their procreative powers. But the consequences of this
attitude in regard to so vital a function as procreation should not
be overlooked by shallow political thinkers and other romanticists.
This consequence, which cannot be repeated too often, is _that with
the free operation of the right to parenthood every society hitherto
has incorporated in its organisation a piece of life and nature, raw
and unmitigated by any softening influence_. And, having done this,
it cannot hope to eliminate from its organisation that modicum of
violence, harshness and inexorability which attaches to the free
operation of all natural and vital laws.
The lack of candour and bravery in the Socialist’s and Communist’s
position, is that they do not refer to this basic natural element
in all human societies, and furthermore that they propose a form of
society in which this basic natural element is not even reckoned with.
For it must be clear that to hope on such a basis to build up a social
structure that will be all mutual help, mutual give and take, [p111]
and mutual good will--quite apart from the known character of human
beings--is simply romantic reverie; and in refusing to recognise that
more than three-quarters of the apparent injustices, asperities and
disabilities of human society, are the inevitable repercussions upon
individuals of the incessant working of the primitive act of violence
at the base of the social edifice, the proclaimer and preacher of a
Utopia free from violence publishes broadcast either his own ineptitude
or his own dishonesty.
But this is not the only form in which the dishonesty of Socialist and
Communist propaganda manifests itself. For the Socialist and Communist
not only refuse to recognise the violence inherent in the consequences
of the free operation of the right to parenthood, they also lay to the
score of man’s legislation the injustices and inequalities which are
clearly the outcome of that right alone.
In all societies, however wisely controlled and directed, there are
certain to be thousands of malcontents. Those malcontents who owe their
position of failure, obscurity, or impotence to circumstances over
which no organised community ever has had or ever can have control, are
however easily won over to an attack upon society, if they can be shown
by unscrupulous or incompetent thinkers that their position is due, not
to an essential law of life or nature, but to the peculiar conventions
or rules regulating the community of which they happen to form a
part. Men who are congenitally inefficient, beneath even mediocre
attainments in their intelligence, their physical strength or their
health, very naturally find [p112] themselves relegated to inferior
responsibilities, subordinate places and menial tasks. In any community
in which there is a high appreciation of quality, or a conscious effort
towards good qualitative results--and no other community is worth
considering--this must be so.
Now nothing is easier, nevertheless, than to convince this class of
malcontents that their subordinate positions and menial tasks are
the result of a social rather than of a natural injustice, and the
dishonesty of Communistic propaganda, consists very largely in the
fact that it will not scruple to delude this class of malcontents into
believing that in a perfectly realisable ideal state of society their
disabilities would be removed. Nay, it goes further than that, it adds
to the small list of remediable injustices which are really of man’s
creating, the long list of gross injustices which are the work of life
and nature, and flinging the whole sum of these injustices at the head
of society, leads the ignorant and the thoughtless to believe that the
grand total of the account can legitimately be charged against man and
his institutions.
And this brings us to the next step in the argument.
So far we have seen:--
(_a_). That procreation acts as a perturbing force in society, and that
in its consequences it is therefore an act of violence.
(_b_). That tradition and recent investigation lead us to believe that
it is not advisable to meddle with the individual’s sacred right over
his procreative powers.
(_c_). That therefore in any community where [p113] the individual’s
right to parenthood is regarded as inviolable, violence must
reverberate throughout the whole social structure and in its
repercussions must impinge with more or less severity against
individuals.
The next step in the argument is the consequence of (_c_) and it is
that where there is violence, however slight or however carefully
regulated, its results must redound with more or less severity to the
disadvantage of certain individuals, that is to say, _there must be
someone or some group that suffers_. And this appears to be another
of the fundamental social truths without allowing for which it seems
hopeless to set forth to rebuild society.
To deny it may sound pleasant, kind, humane, charitable, and
chivalrous; but it is not candid; and although to the ignorant, to the
sentimental and the thoughtless, that which is pleasant frequently
makes the appeal of truth itself, in the end that man or party who is
not straightforward about these matters is bound to be discovered and
reviled.
Those therefore who wish to reform all future societies, and who wish
to make it unnecessary for sufferers or suffering to exist in the
world, except at the will of the legislature, can do so only in one
of two ways.[22] Either they must close the backdoor through which
the violence of nature and life enters the community--that backdoor
being the free operation of the right to parenthood--or else they
must do what no society hitherto has ventured to do, _i.e._, they must
determine by law beforehand who is and who is not to be sacrificed.
The suffering which in society is the necessary outcome of the act of
violence which is procreation, that suffering which is the only means
of balancing this violence, does not necessarily fall on the heads of
all. It selects its victims as it were with a certain caprice. And
hitherto, while endeavouring to mitigate the severity of it as far as
possible, society has been content to leave its incidence more or less
to chance, to the blind forces which ultimately determine, as they do
in nature, the fate of all individual beings.
It is only in war time, when the kind of person to be sacrificed for
the whole is definitely indicated, that society proceeds by legislation
to select those who should suffer from those who should be spared. And
even then, a certain element of chance remains over by means of which
it is possible for large numbers of young men to escape the ultimate
price.
If, however, it is proposed to reform society so that it shall either
contain no violence, or that the effects of that violence shall be
annulled for the majority by legislative means, then whatever the
Socialist or Communist may have to say to the contrary, this can be
done only in one of two ways:
(_a_) Either man’s right to parenthood must be violated.
(_b_) Or the section of society which is to be sacrificed to balance
the original act of violence must be deliberately decided upon by
legislative means. [p115]
And since these are the only two alternatives, the Socialist, the
Communist, and the Bolshevist, are just as hopelessly committed to
them as any other advocate of a new social scheme, from which the
inequalities and injustices inseparable from all human communities
heretofore are to be absent.
_The fact that they are impossible alternatives invalidates the whole
of the Socialist and Communist’s position._
To promise a Utopia from which inequalities and injustices will have
been removed, without stating frankly that one or the other of the
above alternatives is necessary, is therefore the acme of dishonesty;
and in this respect the present writer has reluctantly to admit that
the Socialist, Communist and Bolshevist, whether from ignorance,
ineptitude or design, appear to be radically dishonest.
It has been shown, however, that their dishonesty does not stop at
this. In addition they fasten the few remediable injustices which are
of man’s own creating, on to the grosser and more flagrant injustices
in modern society which are only the inevitable repercussions from the
original act of violence we have been examining, and then proceed to
declare that the whole sum of injustices are of man’s own making. This
is their greatest perfidy, their most misleading and most dexterous
feat of _legerdemain_. The ignorant and the thoughtless are very
naturally deceived, and it is always too late when they discover how
clumsily and how cruelly they have been deceived.
It has been pointed out that it is an indispensable portion of life and
of nature which [p116] in all our societies introduces the element
of violence and leads to inequalities and injustices; but this aspect
of the matter is the darkest and most displeasing that could possibly
have been put forward, and in dealing with it first the present writer
has postponed to the end of the discussion the more grateful duty of
considering it on its more valuable and deeply attractive side.
True in its repercussions it leads to some of the chief asperities of
human life; but is it not accountable for most of humanity’s principal
joys as well? On its shadow side it may appear harsh, but seriously
would we have it otherwise? And are not those who pretend that it can
be otherwise merely romanticists who want all life to be the perpetual
white glare of a noonday sun without any shadow?
Consider, to begin with, the sanctity of the individual’s right over
his procreative powers. How many of humanity’s finest emotions and
most treasured virtues arise out of it? This is not sentiment, but
psychological fact. And what does society expect to become if it
succeeds in suppressing the source of these virtues and emotions? How
many sober-minded men, actually faced with one of the two alternatives
stated above, as the essential first measure to the establishment of a
Utopia without violence or accidental suffering, would give that Utopia
a second thought?
There is nothing the present writer deprecates more sincerely than
an appeal to the emotions alone. He is aware that in the above
paragraph he has made a frank appeal to the emotions. But surely in
this particular instance it is amply justified? Having made [p117]
his principal intellectual appeal, he now confronts his readers with
the æsthetic aspect of the alternatives proposed. For is not life and
the enjoyment of life largely a question of æsthetics? Is not our
emotional nature competent therefore to decide upon a question of
taste or pleasure? Life offers many alternatives; human life presents
hundreds of possibilities. In the end it is our emotional nature and
our æsthetic sense that decide which road leads to the greatest amount
of happiness, although the intellect may have directed us all along.
Can we really suppose then, that a change that can cut at the root of
so much virtue and so much traditional sentiment, can possibly be one
that is going to bring us happiness?
And even in its inevitable repercussions--the inequalities and
injustices of which so much has been said above--has the free operation
of the individual’s right to parenthood not also immense advantages?
In nature it is the violence and inexorable character of the forces at
play that give life its manifold beauties and contrasts, the mountains
and the valleys, the rivers and the lakes, the tableland and the gorge,
the forest and the open plain. In the animal world it is the difference
between the tiger and the antelope, the vulture and the hare, the lion
and the jackal, that lends to life that panoramic charm of variegated
virtue and adaptation to ends. While in the domain of plants it is the
divergences of the oak from the shrub, of the palm from the cactus, of
the poplar from the plum tree, that combine to produce that harmony and
dissonance which the landscape painter converts into graphic music.
[p118]
Is it now contended that in human society we can dispense with
inequalities and injustices without also sacrificing three-quarters
of its beauties? Apart altogether from the fact that it is utterly
impossible to achieve this end, would it be desirable? How much of the
joy of life does not spring from the thirst and thrill of adventure,
from the consciousness of being an individual trying to establish one’s
right of citizenship among people who are sufficiently unlike one
(_unequal to one_) to introduce an element of uncertainty, of sport if
you will, into the undertaking? How much of the charm of life does not
arise from the vast repertory of different powers and virtues which
inequality alone makes possible? A beautiful medal has its reverse
side. And is not so-called injustice merely the reverse side of the
medal of inequality? The multifariousness which lends social life
its variety and its incidents, the pronounced divergences from life
which give it its light and its shade: all these things have hitherto
constituted the essential conditions out of which the thing we know as
human society has grown. Even if we could alter these conditions we
cannot even picture the kind of result we should obtain. We know of no
society wherein inequalities and their consequent injustices do not
exist. We cannot imagine such a society.
This is not empty imagery and grandiloquent sentiment, it is the
plainest truth. It is impossible to conceive of a society at all unless
we presuppose among its members the presence of those particularly
happy results of inequality which are higher men. Even the lowest
forms of gregariousness--the wolf [p119] pack and the herd of
antelopes--benefit from this kind of inequality by the function that
it enables their leaders to perform. For a society implies cohesion,
it implies unity of purpose and desire; it also implies a more or less
uniform outlook on life. But how are these things possible without
higher men? When in the history of the world have these results been
achieved without the help of superior beings? But the idea of something
superior immediately suggests inequality, and inequality right down to
the lowest man; but with this inequality we must as we have seen accept
so-called injustices and consequently suffering.
To inveigh against the necessary consequences of life is not to open a
“class war,” as the Socialist and Communist claim to have done, but to
open war against life itself; and this conclusion supplies me with the
terms of my last charge against them.
The Socialist and Communist do not really know their true objective;
they do not really know against whom they are marching and levelling
their attacks. In addition to being dishonest, therefore, they are
utterly confused.
It is life itself that causes the chief among the grievances that they
propose to redress, and thus their description of their campaign as a
class war is the outcome of a most complete misunderstanding.
They are the advocates of a principle of death, or putting it more
mildly, at least of a movement hostile to life, and they do not know
it and never have known it. Their banners are sewn with false and
meaningless devices calculated to delude only the ignorant [p120]
and the thoughtless, and they are not even frank about the necessary
logical conclusions of their own first principles. If they really wish
to put an end to violence in human society, they would sew on their
foremost banner the device: “Down with procreation.”
This might prove unpopular, it might even sound less alluring than
“Down with the bourgeoisie!” but at least it would be honest and might
help them to achieve their real aim.
The present writer does not suggest that the mass of the people of
England or France understand the real errors in the Socialist and
Communist’s position. He does not even believe that when once these
errors have been made known to them they will be able to grasp or
understand them; but certainly the capacity which very large numbers of
them are showing for resisting the seductive appeal of these so-called
“class-war” doctrines, points to a certain instinctive insight on their
part which does them credit, and may possibly be a sign that they are
moved by a vague, but none the less powerful, suspicion that all is not
as golden as it glitters in the Socialistic creed, and therefore that
there is still a chance for those who would win them back to a wisely
controlled capitalism, and to a future in which reform rather than
revolution is the general programme.
* * * * * * * *
Is the case against Socialism as strong as this? Is there really
nothing to be said for the position that the Socialist and Communist
assume?--Certainly there is nothing to be said for it. Then what gives
it its seductive plausibility? What is it that makes three-quarters
[p121] of those who have interested reasons for opposing it, suspect in
their heart of hearts that Socialism and Communism may be right after
all?
Those among the possessing classes who, while opposing active Socialist
propaganda, yet believe in their heart of hearts that Socialism is
right, are usually as confused as the Socialists and Communists
themselves, and as incapable of tracing political propositions back to
first principles. They make the same mistakes as the Socialists, and
confound life and nature’s injustices with the remediable injustices
which are the outcome of human legislation, and after adding the two
together charge the whole sum to the account of society or civilisation.
They belong to the class of thoughtless people who are in the habit of
saying in the face of every impending reform good or bad, “The thing
must come”; and their attitude of forestalled acquiescence offers so
little opposition, that as a rule the thing to which they refer _does_
come.
But the reason why the claims and proposals of the Socialist and
Communist succeed in displaying a certain modicum of plausibility is
not because, on examination, they impel the inquirer to agreement;
for, as we have seen, the more thoroughly they are investigated, the
more impossible does it become to accept them; it is rather because in
modern European society certain unnecessarily gross evils which are
truly the creation of man and which seem to lend a colourable warrant
to the revolutionist’s position, are too glaring to be overlooked.
We have seen that where there is violence [p122] some one or some
group must ultimately be victimised or sacrificed. This does not
necessarily involve death or annihilation, it may simply amount to
failure, failure to hold their own.
Now it is the first duty of rulers, as we have seen, to watch
vigilantly that the violence is not of man’s making, for that can be
helped, but only of life’s making, for that cannot be helped. The
second duty of rulers, however, most certainly is to assuage as far
as possible the asperities resulting from the violence that is life’s
making.
Charles I. was an ideal monarch in this respect; not only did he
suppress fraud, profiteering, and the exploitation of the poorer
classes, all means by which violence of man’s making breaks loose
in society; but he also sheltered those whom natural disaster had
overtaken.[23]
Now the gross evils of modern European society which lend a colourable
warrant to the otherwise absurd proposals of the Communist and
Socialist, are the multifarious deeds of violence of man’s making, that
have been allowed to break loose on the community.
Among those deeds of violence we may mention:
(1) Sweating.
(2) The act of inviting the proletariat to engage in unhealthy
occupations, frequently resulting in permanent ill-health or premature
death.
(3) Profiteering and the turning of any form of temporary distress to
advantage.
(4) Speculating in the first necessaries of life.
(5) Unwise and wasteful disposal of property after death: as for
instance for the support of cranky and faddist societies, of useless
and non-productive people in unnecessary affluence; the endowment of
institutions that have a degenerating effect on the general standard of
health of the nation.
(6) Class cleavage and snobbery.
(7) The encouragement by the legislature of the growth of large urban
centres, and the ill-health and general unwholesomeness of the poorer
quarters of such centres.
(8) The purveying of inferior food to the masses, and of food that is
not strictly life-supporting, such as vegetable margarine, dried fruit
and vegetables, adulterated beer, tinned foods of all kinds (except
possibly tinned tomatoes), dirty milk and adulterated bread.
(9) The lack of protection afforded to the masses against: (_a_)
usurious money lending (a penny a week per shilling is not uncommon),
(_b_) pollution and demoralisation through inferior and pernicious
literature, (_c_) pollution and demoralisation through alien
immigration.
(10) The failure to impart to the masses by means of education any
thorough grasp of any branch of knowledge which might ennoble their
outlook, add dignity to their characters, and lend support to their
self-esteem.
In addition to all this, not a single item of which deals with any
evil that is not susceptible of reform, it should be borne in mind
that modern western civilisation has in some way failed so miserably
to mould her values [p124] so that the successful in life’s struggle
should in all cases be the most virtuous, the most intelligent, and the
most desirable, in the minds of tasteful people, that a certain stigma
now attaches to the materially successful--particularly those who have
attained material success in commerce and industry--which cannot be
said to be altogether unmerited, and which the Communist and Socialist
naturally exploit to the utmost in their propaganda.
The greatest indictment of modern society is perhaps the frequency with
which vulgarity and the meanest attainments in virtue and intellect
achieve phenomenal material success; and since this is the outcome of
values, and the laws governing commerce and industry, it is obvious
that in this direction reforms must be effected, if the Communist
and Socialist are to be deprived of the small amount of validity
which appears to attach to their sweeping condemnation of society and
civilisation.
On the other hand, while we have seen that the original act of violence
at the base of all society, must lead to suffering somewhere and
somewhen, the characteristic about modern western civilisation which
lends so much colour to the Socialist and Communist’s schemes, is the
frequency with which this suffering seems to be borne by people who are
by no means the unworthiest in the community.
The values of modern society have become so vulgar and mercenary that
again and again it happens that the section of the social body which
the chance play of forces selects for sacrifice, is superior to the
section which is [p125] spared, and which not infrequently wields the
most power in the community.
Thus it is not the suffering in modern society that lends support to
the so-called class-war doctrines; for as we have seen suffering of
some kind is inevitable where there is inequality and injustice; but
it is the fact that the suffering in question often falls upon the
most desirable members of the community, or at least upon those who
are capable of the greatest virtue and the greatest industry, and this
is the outcome purely of the vulgarity and coarseness of our values
which are quite as susceptible to modification and reform as any other
man-made feature of our lives.
The fact that after all these reforms, however, there will still
remain a residuum of violence in all civilisation, which it will be
impossible altogether to eliminate, so long as nations recognise the
individual’s inviolable right to parenthood, should nevertheless be
carefully remembered and reckoned with; for, both as a check upon any
too romantic schemes of our own, as well as a means with which to
criticise our enemies’ proposals, the recollection of this unpleasant
but ineluctable principle is one of the most valuable measures of
caution by which it is possible for us to abide; and he who, by
forgetting it, fancies he has discovered a royal road to his Utopia,
will find perhaps too late that life, nature and society are not easily
made the sport of false ideals and shallow fantasies, but are ruled by
inexorable and frequently unpleasant laws the rigour of which it is
safer to acknowledge than to ignore.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 19: The present writer has purposely avoided reducing the
violence to an act of depredation in regard to food, air and space;
although in a steadily increasing community, which is the only healthy
community, surrounded by other steadily increasing communities, this
aspect of the question would have to be taken into account. In such a
community every baby born may rightly be said to constitute a menace
to every other baby’s food, air and space. Nor has any mention been
made of the multiplication of people who become a burden to the rest
of the community by the sheer inferiority of their physique. But again
in their case provision would have to be made by the administrators of
a Socialistic State, just as it is made by capitalistic States; and
the parents of such physically inferior people would thus, by the act
of procreation alone, have pressed a burden upon their fellow citizens
which would virtually amount to an act of violence against them. Though
the parents of such physically inferior people might scruple to put
their hands in their fellow members’ pockets for food or money, by
means of their offspring they thus indirectly perpetrate a predatory
act against them.]
[Footnote 20: There are reasons for believing that Socialists promise
to make it cease altogether among human beings.]
[Footnote 21: The wisdom of ancient societies in never checking or
limiting this right is now becoming more than ever apparent in the
light that psycho-analysis has thrown upon the disastrous effects of
interfering too drastically with this function in human beings.]
[Footnote 22: Sufferers and suffering are to be understood here as of a
kind which the inequalities of life and nature alone bring about--not
the sufferers and suffering resulting from ordinary human passions
and the accidents of their manifestation: love, hate, indifference,
childlessness, spinsterhood, etc.; for it is presumed that no reformer
has ever been so foolish as to pretend that he could eliminate these.]
[Footnote 23: This I have demonstrated with sufficient detail
elsewhere. See my _Defence of Aristocracy_, Chapter IV.]
[p126] CHAPTER VI
EDUCATION
“A city can be virtuous only when the citizens who have a share in
the government are virtuous, and in our state all the citizens share
in the government.”--Aristotle (Politics. Bk. VII., 13).
Education, as organised by the state, can have but one object--the
rearing of people who are fit to be decent and worthy citizens. A man
may educate himself privately in vice, in jazzing, in motoring, or
in crime; he is at liberty to do this at his own expense and in his
own time; but if he is educated at the expense of his fellow-men, the
intention of these fellow-men must be to train him into a desirable
member of society. Only thus can the huge outlay be made worth while.
Now a desirable citizen is above all a well conducted citizen. He may
know French and fencing, and be able to beat all comers at billiards
or biology, marbles or mathematics; but he is only a nuisance if he is
not, in addition, well conducted--that is to say, reliable, sensible,
understanding, and honest. It is more important that he should
thoroughly grasp the first principles of sound conduct and thought,
than that he should know the whole of counterpoint or conchology.
When once he has mastered the first principles of sound conduct and
thought, he is prepared to do well at anything, according [p127] to
his gifts; whereas the most exhaustive knowledge of counterpoint and
conchology will, in the most favourable circumstances, only make him a
good musician or a good classifier of shells.
In short, happiness and harmony are more easily achieved by a people
holding deep and sound views concerning Life and Humanity, than by
people deeply versed in science, and top-heavy with information.
Happiness has been achieved again and again upon earth by people
possessing not a billionth part of the knowledge that has been
accumulated by modern man. A sound instinct in regard to food, a
correct understanding of one’s self and one’s fellows and a decent
appreciation of the limits of individual caprice in a social community,
are, after all, more precious than a large accumulation of facts. And
thus education, if it is to be valuable, should consist very much more
in a training in manners, sound views, and means of intercourse, than
in the acquisition of knowledge about facts.[24]
All adults know how very few of the facts they learned at school
are ever remembered in later life, and how only those elements of
the scholastic curriculum are turned to practical account, or even
remembered, which come into daily use throughout life. Thus, a boy of
the working classes may remember a little elementary arithmetic and
a little geography--apart from that, all he recalls is the trick of
reading, because he practises it every day of the year.
Now, since the masses of the people form the bulk of the nation,
and are ultimately the determining factor in the nation’s character
and achievements, nothing could possibly be more important than
working-class education. State education of the masses, therefore,
offers the finest opportunity that the legislature could obtain, to
express its concern about the nation’s welfare, and to secure that
welfare by inculcating upon everyone, except the minority constituting
the well-to-do, who cannot matter nearly as much, decent manners, sound
views, and a proper, adequate means of intercourse.
It is certainly one of the most ugly features of our elementary
education in this country, that manners--which ought to be the first
among the foremost objects of all education--are entirely omitted from
the curriculum. As if, forsooth, it were better for master Tommy and
his sister Jane, to know of the existence of the trade winds, than
to know how to behave when an adult addresses them! In this way the
legislature imposes quite an unnecessary burden of discomfort and
sorrow upon the poor, because without good manners life is made so very
much more difficult and wretched, and so very much less smooth and
harmonious. How the idea of education ever came to be divorced from
manners, it is hard to explain; but that it has been thus divorced is
unquestionable. The consequences of this gross [p129] initial error
fall with greater severity upon the poor, or the masses, than upon the
rich; perhaps that is why so little is done to correct it. The reason
of this unfair incidence of the evils resulting from a lack of manners,
is not, however, due to the fact that the rich are necessarily good
mannered, or better educated in manners than the poor; for there is
ample evidence to the contrary; but that the lack of manners of the
rich is not so keenly felt by those in their immediate circle, because
they live in larger rooms, larger houses, larger areas, and they are
thus able to get away from one another’s bad manners--an escape which
is denied the poor.
But while no attention is given to manners in elementary education, it
must not be supposed that training in sound views, whether concerning
Life or Humanity, is the subject of more careful attention. Apart
from copy-book maxims, nothing whatever is done for the masses of the
people in this matter. It is true that the Church and its teaching are
supposed to cover precisely this ground in the mental upbringing of the
nation, but even if we admit that the Church is capable of teaching
sound views concerning Life and Humanity, how many of the working
classes still believe in Christianity to-day? How many of them believe
so fervently as to insist upon their children observing all the tenets
of Christianity? Moreover, it is only fair to judge this department
of education by its fruits. Where is the evidence at present, after
generations of Church teaching, that the mass of the people have been
taught any views at all [p130] about Life and Humanity--not to mention
sound views?
At all events, this is obviously a factor in education that ought never
to have been left to an independent and uncontrolled body--particularly
a religious body. It ought to have been included as an essential
element in any scheme of secular education that was devised. What,
indeed, could be more important than the necessity of imparting to your
growing citizen sound views about himself, his kind, society, and life
in general? What could be more vital in the formation of his character,
his outlook, and the moulding of his ultimate conduct? It scarcely
requires to be pointed out, however, that, like manners, this is a
factor in education which the State schools leave entirely aside.
People will tell you that there is no time for such a branch
of learning. _No time_--to attend to one of the most important
prerequisites of a sound education!
It would be a mistake to suppose, however, that the wealthy and
well-to-do classes are any better off than the poor in this respect.
On the whole, they are a little worse off. For, while the children of
the working classes are sufficiently in touch with life’s realities to
have a number of fundamental truths forced upon their attention, the
children of the wealthy and well-to-do classes live in an atmosphere
so perfectly truth-proof, so far removed from life’s realities, and
their schools do so little to correct the benighting influence of their
homes, that there is probably no creature on earth more hopelessly
devoid of sound views on any subject than the public schoolboy of
seventeen. [p131] Everything has been done, no pains have been spared,
to inculcate upon him every false doctrine and valuation of which the
present age can boast.
In a complicated society like ours, the means of intercourse in
education cover practically everything that does not come under
the head of “vocational training.” Men and women must know how to
understand other people and how to make themselves understood. They
must know how to count money, how to read and comprehend a letter or a
book, and command such general information as will protect them from
deception, from going astray, or from otherwise failing to hold their
own among their fellow beings.
Now it is precisely in this department that the State education of
England really does pretend to accomplish all that is desired; and yet
nowhere is the inadequacy of its achievement more conspicuous. We have
seen that it does not even pretend to teach manners, and that it does
not claim to inculcate sound views upon the masses whom it professes
to educate; but it does claim to teach them the means of intercourse.
Countless millions are spent upon this instruction annually. Hundreds
of thousands of children are bored to stultification while they are
supposed to be acquiring it, and the net result is that 99 out of 100
of them neither know how to understand other people, nor how to make
themselves understood. They do not even know how to understand what
they read. And nothing is done to equip them in this all-important
branch of knowledge. [p132]
Anybody would have thought that one of the first concerns of any
educational body dealing with “national” education would have been
to secure to all citizens of the same nation, irrespective of rank,
at least a thorough knowledge of their native tongue. For what,
indeed, could be more vital? It is the first pre-requisite of all
satisfactory communication, whether from or to the subject; it is the
first essential weapon of the rational faculties. A particular native
language may have faults and shortcomings as compared with other native
languages; it may be poorer in words, more complicated in syntax, less
copiously supplied with racy idiom, etc., but surely any national
scheme of education that fails to make the mastery of this native
language--such as it is, perfect or imperfect--the foremost object on
its programme, is guilty of a gross dereliction of duty. For whatever
its faults may be, the masses, at least, have no other means of
communication, and if they are going to be made articulate, they must
be taught their native tongue.
At present the situation of the English working classes is in this
respect, pathetic in its helpless and infantile humility. Their talk
is the babble of babes, their vocabulary the means of expression
for creatures whose feelings and thoughts are no more complicated
than those of primitive savages. Not only are they incapable of
understanding complex states of feeling or complex thoughts when
they hear them accurately and carefully expressed, but they are also
utterly unable to give expression to at least three-quarters of their
own thoughts and emotions. [p133] In regard to a very large number of
thoughts and emotions, which, to the cultivated man, are commonplace
matters, the masses of England are therefore literally inarticulate.
The same word answers for a hundred meanings in their conversation, all
of which it but inadequately expresses; while for those emotions and
thoughts for which they have no words, there can exist only mute and
mystified suspicion.
This is bad enough. Life is sufficiently tragic for millions of
creatures to-day, without its being either necessary or desirable to
aggravate it with the additional affliction of dumbness. And yet the
fact that this inarticulateness, which ignorance imposes, is equivalent
to dumbness, or at least to partial dumbness, is surely incontestable.
But there is a consequence of this ignorance which is even more serious
than that discussed above. And that is the danger to which it exposes
its sufferers of falling under false guidance, misdirection and
pollution from outside. Whereas dumbness, although a sad affliction,
is often merely another form of constraint; misunderstanding,
misinterpretation, or the inability to criticise and to reject the
expressed thoughts of others, may be a source of pollution, a source of
grave error, and a speedy means of complete and incurable perversion.
If people are to be protected from misconceptions, false leaders,
demagogues, and all those smart and slippery unemployed who are ever
ready to exploit ignorance, and take advantage of simplicity, they
must be in a position to listen critically to an address or an appeal
made to them in their [p134] own language. They must be in a position
to tell to what extent their proposed leader or misleader understands
what he is talking about. How much false sentiment, false doctrine,
inflammatory teaching, is simply an abuse of language, a forcing of
terms, in fact, catachresis! How much of it would be detected and
exposed, if the majority of the nation possessed that precision and
understanding in the use of words, which would come with a proper
knowledge of their native tongue.
To-day the man who is ever ready to mislead, to confuse, and to
inflame, the minds of ignorant people, encounters no check, no critical
scrutiny of his pronouncements, for his listeners are hardly able
to understand correctly the simplest words he uses. The temptation,
therefore, to use language loosely and even unscrupulously is as
powerful as it is repeatedly unresisted.
The huge and flatulent press, that has grown up within the last fifty
years, cares as little for accuracy of expression, or for sober
precision in language, as it cares for any other ideal which formerly
seemed worth striving after. The power of the press is enormous. It
guides opinion, it influences the hearts of the people, it has the
united effort of nations under its direction; and yet where does it
show any signs of being chastened by the awful duties which, it is
true, it may never deliberately have intended to shoulder at the outset
of its career?
The traditions of the Middle Ages, at least, included certain
principles which led to the protection of the poorer and more ignorant
classes; the Church of the Middle [p135] Ages also protected the
poor and the ignorant according to its lights. It may be questioned,
however, whether this new force, the press, has as yet even considered
the function of protecting the ignorant as among its most sacred
privileges. And by this protection there is no intention here to imply
a conspiracy to withhold truth from the uncultivated, or to distort
facts for their digestion; what is meant is that necessary vigilance
and caution which, if observed by all editors and publishers of
journals and periodical literature, would induce them to regard as a
public crime, as an unsocial act, the inculcation upon those who are
ill-equipped for self-guidance, of any notions, sentiments, or points
of view concerning life and human relationships that were not sound,
proper, or healthy--not to mention noble.
Unlike that other force, the Church, the press was ushered in with
scant ceremony, almost imperceptibly. It grew to omnipotence with but
a fraction of the solemnity and pomp which attended the development
of the Church; hence, too, it has come to ripeness, to the zenith of
its power, without any of that centralised organisation, without any
of that self-conscious administration of its enormous powers for good
and evil, and assuredly without any of that insight into the immensely
sacred responsibility of its functions, which characterised the Church
from the beginning.
Now its shrieking headlines, its catchpenny exaggerations, its
hysterical falsehoods, do not even savour of sanity. How, then, could
it be suspected of a sense of [p136] responsibility? Sensationalism
as a moneymaking method, ruthless and frequently thoughtless attacks
on the existing order, without any guarantee of being able to supply
a better order in the place of the one attacked, abuse of language as
a method, as _the_ journalistic technique for all occasions, and the
determination not to enlighten, but to dazzle, dumbfound, scare, thrill
and excite at all costs, willy nilly--_après moi le deluge_,--these
are among the characteristics of the modern press, and indicate the
direction in which its power is tending.
To overthrow or to curb this power has again and again proved too
great a task even for the most popular government. It is invincible,
impregnable. The “Freedom of the Press” may mean the freedom to abuse
the credulity and the ignorance of the masses; but powerful claims are
not frustrated by exact definition, however condemnatory.
There is only one way of curbing the wantonness of the press and of
bringing it to a sense of the responsibility with which its power ought
to have inspired it, and that is to make the masses who are its readers
capable of reading it critically, capable of detecting its flagrant
abuse of language, and of nailing to the counter its flame-words, its
decoy cries, its whole apparatus of sensationalism.
And the only means to this end is to give to the masses a knowledge of
their own language.
Who doubts that the mountains of vulgar, inept and thoroughly
deleterious literature that is being published to-day depends wholly
[p137] and exclusively upon those countless hordes to whom the State
has failed to impart that which is every man’s direst need--a sound
knowledge of his native tongue? Who doubts that all this literature
would be swept away in an hour if a generation arose which was equipped
to detect its solecisms, its vulgarity, its false sentiment, and its
tumid claptrap?
The newspaper press, and the flood of vulgar literature which daily
accompanies its productions into the homes of almost all British
people, are together partly responsible for the steady enfeeblement
of the nation’s moral fibre and intelligence; and the so-called
“education” with which the mass of the nation is equipped is one of the
necessary conditions to the success both of the present newspaper press
and of the vulgar literature which supplements it.
Thus it amounts to this, that the huge outlay which this country makes
every year for the purposes of education, is virtually a subsidy to its
most incompetent, most unscrupulous and most despicable writers.
In order to render the outlay worth while, in order to convert it into
a profitable investment, which at one and the same time would produce
desirable citizens and lay the foundations of order among them, the
present writer suggests as a leading reform, to be placed at the head
of every party’s programme, that the English language should be made
the principal subject of study in our State schools.
What subject is there that is not touched upon in the learning of
the precise meaning of words? And what subject is of any [p138] value
whatsoever if the precise meaning of words has been neglected in
tuition?
This may sound revolutionary enough; but on examination it will be
found to guarantee a much more stable and orderly form of society than
the present system. For if it be asked what a man, educated in our
elementary schools, remembers in after life of all the information he
has been given as a child, the answer is: a little arithmetic--enough
to make the everyday reckonings involved in buying and selling--and the
trick of converting signs into sounds.
It is, however, precisely upon this trick of converting signs into
sounds that his powers of subsequent self-education will chiefly
depend. For, when once he has left his school career behind him, the
working man who wishes to increase his knowledge and grasp of vital,
human and social principles, will rely almost entirely upon the
literature he can obtain and understand.
If, therefore, he approaches this literature, not equipped to
understand, criticise and test its soundness, as matter, or the care
and accuracy of its form, but only practised in the trick of converting
signs into sounds, his attempts at subsequent self-education will be a
futile waste of time.
For there is all the difference in the world between this acquired
trick of deciphering, or converting signs into sounds, and true
_reading_.
What is precisely meant by this antithesis?
By the “power of reading” most people understand not merely the power
of deciphering signs, but also the ability to understand the meaning of
the decipher once it is [p139] made. Reading in the ancient Anglo-Saxon
sense of the word (_rædan_) “to discern,” is the only reading that can
possibly be of any value, “discerning” therefore is the only valuable
meaning that the word reading can have.[25]
But reading in this, its true sense, implies an understanding of the
language deciphered.
Now can it be truly said of the children that leave our elementary
schools that they have been taught reading in this sense?
They have certainly been taught to decipher; they have certainly been
given the mastery of converting signs into sounds; but have they been
taught to “read”?
At the most it might be conceded that they are partially taught to
read--that is to say that they have a partial knowledge of reading; the
amount being limited by the extent of their acquaintance with their
native tongue. For the rest they know only a trick, which consists in
turning signs into sounds.
Thus the neglect of English in our elementary schools to the advantage
of other subjects, most of which are entirely forgotten by the pupils
in later life, imposes upon our working classes, not only _dumbness_,
not only susceptibility to infection by unsound opinion and doctrine,
but also the inability successfully to achieve self-education by means
of reading, when once the school career is done.
The question remains, are these distressing results sufficiently
counterbalanced by the advantages supposed to derive from the study of
other subjects?
There surely can be but one answer to this question, and that is an
emphatic negative.
What greater asset can a man have then a sound knowledge of his native
tongue? What surer safeguard could be given him against corruption,
pollution, false doctrine, and inflammatory counsels? What more coveted
power could he hope to acquire? And, above all, in this age of loose
thinking and even looser speech, what nobler check could he have upon
the vagaries of his fancy or the intemperance of his tongue?
It would constitute his greatest possession, and it is the nation’s
soundest policy to endow him with it. If the principle of State
education be admitted at all, it is incumbent upon a people to teach
its working classes to “read” before anything else, because reading in
itself is at once a lofty accomplishment and the most certain means to
all other accomplishments. Among the State’s foremost and ineluctable
duties, therefore, is the teaching of their native tongue to the
masses. For, without this, reading is an impossibility.
We have seen how social disturbances--aye, and even revolutions,
have been the outcome of falsely interpreting a single word; we have
seen how national disillusionment and depression can arise out of
the pursuit of ideals that are ultimately found to be [p141] empty,
simply because the words in which they were originally framed, though
capable of creating much emotional activity never had any precise
meaning. We have seen, moreover, how difficult it is to ascribe any
genuine significance to such popular decoy words as Justice, Equality,
and Liberty, than which no words in the English language can make
a stronger emotional appeal to a crowd. If these remarks have been
carefully considered, can there any longer be any question concerning
the most vital, the most urgent reform in our educational system?
It now remains to discover what modifications would have to be made in
our elementary school teaching in order to effect this reform.
The children who attend our elementary schools work about 22 hours a
week--certainly not more--and they start their school career at about
six years of age, and finish it at fourteen.[26]
The boys’ curriculum at an average elementary school consists of the
following subjects[27]:--
English, Arithmetic, Geography, History, Nature Study or Hygiene,
Physics, Drawing, Singing, Physical Exercise, Manual Work.
The reader will only need to glance at this curriculum in order to
realise how varied the programme is, and how assiduously the subjects
would require to be studied in the eight years of school life, in order
to leave in the minds of the scholars a sufficient knowledge of them to
be of use in later life.
Eight years, with 22 hours a week for forty-four weeks[28] a year, and
such a programme! Can it be possible for the boys to acquire anything
more than a mere smattering of each subject?
Subtracting from the total 22 hours, the hour and forty minutes per
week allotted to Physical Exercise, there remain twenty hours and
twenty minutes during which English, Arithmetic, Geography, History,
Nature Study or Hygiene, Physics, Drawing, Singing and Manual Work have
to be taught to children who reach school not yet knowing how to read.
And elementary school teachers affirm that it is impossible to insist
on the children doing any homework.
Of these 20 hours and 20 minutes in Standard VII.:--_English_ occupies
5 hours 10 mins. per week, or 227 hours 20 mins., _i.e._, 32 seven-hour
days per year.
This leaves 15 hrs. 10 mins. per week for other subjects, and of this
total:--
_Arithmetic_ occupies 4 hrs. 20 mins. per week, or 190 hrs. 40 mins.,
_i.e._, about 27 seven-hour days per year.
_Geography_ occupies 2 hrs. per week, or 88 hrs., _i.e._, 12½
seven-hour days per year.
_History_ occupies 1 hr. per week, or 44 hrs., _i.e._, 6¼ seven-hour
days per year.
_Hygiene_ occupies 30 mins. per week, or 22 hrs., _i.e._, 3⅛ seven-hour
days per year.
_Physics_, the same as Hygiene.
_Singing_, the same as History.
_Drawing_ occupies 2 hrs. 45 mins. per week, or 121 hrs., _i.e._, a
little over 17 seven-hour days per year.
_Recreation and Registration_ occupy the remaining 3 hrs. 5 mins. per
week, or 139 hrs., 20 mins., _i.e._, a little over 19 seven-hour days
per year.
Seeing that there is little or no homework in elementary schools, it is
obvious that none of these subjects, except, perhaps, Arithmetic, can
be taught sufficiently well to be of any use whatever to the child in
after life. For, in the lower standards, although the apportionment of
time varies somewhat, the variation is not material. When, moreover,
it is remembered that most of the boys take 3 hours a week for Manual
Work, and that these hours have to be subtracted from the time allotted
to other subjects, it is clear that the ultimate result, in so far as
that knowledge is concerned which represents a permanent asset to the
individual, cannot be very satisfactory.
In fact, take it how you will, it must be acknowledged without either
bitterness or malice that elementary education is nothing more than a
very expensive and very elaborate farce.
It teaches the boys two things that they undoubtedly remember: the
trick of deciphering letterpress, which constitutes them purchasers
and readers of the lowest and most fatuous literature that sweated
literary hacks can produce, and enough arithmetic [p144] for them to
master the ordinary numerical problems that may arise in the daily
routine of their adult lives. Of History nothing, literally nothing, is
remembered, except, perhaps, that there was once a king who spoilt some
tarts (they are not quite certain whether it was Alfred the Great or
the King of Hearts), and that there was once a monarch called William
the Conqueror. Of Geography only the vaguest notions are retained, and
these relate more often to the world as a whole than to their native
land. Of Hygiene, Physics, not a trace is left--not even a recollection
of the names of the subjects. While Singing and Drawing, except to the
few, are a pure waste of time.
It is safe to say that this is true of the majority of the scholars,
and since it is the majority of the children that constitute the great
mass of the nation, it is on them we must concentrate our attention.
Since the object of all our expensive elementary school organisation
ought to be to impart to them some valuable knowledge that they can
retain throughout their lives, some valuable knowledge, moreover, in
the acquisition of which the highest faculties of their mind would
be disciplined and trained, surely it would be an advantage in the
first place to concentrate on a fewer number of subjects, and secondly
to select only those which could be of service to them in later
life (for they are the only subjects that are ever remembered), and
thirdly, to confine the study of the subject or subjects chosen, as
far as possible, to those limits which, while they guarantee a solid
foundation of learning, allow of further [p145] unassisted progress
when once the school career is over.
Now it seems to the present writer that no subject in the whole
curriculum of schools answers these requirements more satisfactorily in
every way than English itself.
It is at once an ideal means of disciplining and training the mind,
of clarifying thought and of correcting vagueness and looseness of
reasoning; it is an excellent preservative of natural nobility of
character, by opening up to the student the whole treasury of lofty
thought and sentiment that the language contains; it is a mental weapon
against befoulment by prurient and other deleterious influences; it
is an instrument of criticism that can be employed at any moment,
in any contingency, against the appeals of demagogues, agitators,
and corruptors of all kinds, and it is a means of lucid and logical
communication, without which no man can be said to be safe against
misunderstanding or confusion. Above all--and this is its principal
value to-day--a knowledge of English is essential to anyone who wishes
to know how to “read.”
Now what would be the extent of the reforms required in order to make
our elementary education chiefly a means of imparting a good and
serviceable knowledge of English to the masses?
In the first place, the elementary school teacher himself would have
to be selected from a rather higher grade of educationalists. He would
have to be qualified to teach English not only by precept but also by
example. To-day, in the majority of cases, he could not teach English,
even if he had [p146] the time. As to expressing a thought in good
English, the elementary school teacher and his boys are a case of the
blind leading the blind. This is not the teacher’s fault. He does his
best, and in view of his training, his best is sometimes very good.
Wherever the present writer has been, moreover, he has been compelled
to recognise the efficiency and conscientiousness of this class of
State official, and to applaud the result he obtains with the material
at his disposal. Nevertheless, able as he is within his own limits, the
elementary school teacher is, as a rule, incapable of teaching English,
and if it is ever decided to extend the programme on the English side,
the teacher himself will have to be the object of the first reforms.
As regards the curriculum, the changes would be more simple.
To begin with, the hours allotted to Arithmetic might well be reduced
to a maximum of three per week. This would be ample to enable the
least proficient scholars to master all the method they could ever be
expected to require in after life, and at the same time would afford
adequate opportunities for the detection of any mathematical genius who
might be lurking in the school, and for whose case special provision
might be made.
The time for Geography, the study of which might with advantage be
confined to the general relations of England to the rest of the world,
without any specialisation in home topography, which is invariably
forgotten, might be reduced to half an hour a week.
History might be cancelled altogether, [p147] and the teaching of the
subject confined to such historical knowledge as the scholar could not
help acquiring in learning the meaning of certain English words such
as: Peer, Parliament, Constitution, Rebellion, Regicide, Suffrage,
Reformation, Prime Minister, etc.[29]
Hygiene, Physics and Singing might also be cancelled with advantage,
and the detection of specially good voices, or musical talent, left to
that part of the English lessons given to the learning of old English
folk-songs, canons and ballads.
With regard to drawing, it seems ridiculous that all boys should devote
two hours 45 minutes per week to this subject. To thousands it must
mean the most intolerable drudgery. Surely one hour per week would be
enough to reveal any exceptional talent in the school, and for the
teacher to discover all those who could not possibly profit from the
subject, even if they continued at it to the end of their lives. The
latter could then be weeded out of the class, and the hour allotted to
drawing, in their case, could be sacrificed to Manual Work.
At all events, the hours set aside for Manual Work, seeing that
it is a form of exercise, might be taken from the time allowed for
Recreation[30] and the time allowed for Drawing (in the case of
untalented boys), or from the time allowed for Recreation and the time
allowed for Arithmetic (in the case of artistic boys).
By this means it would be possible to add 7 hrs. 40 mins. per week to
the time occupied in teaching English, or 337 hrs. 20 mins., _i.e._,
48 seven-hour days per year, making a grand total, with the existing
hours allotted to English, of 12 hrs. 50 mins. per week, or 564 hrs. 40
mins., _i.e._, 80½ seven-hour days per year.
Although this still appears to be an exiguous allowance, in view, not
only of the importance of the subject, but also of the home influences
which for a generation at least would prove a serious obstacle to
progress, it is sufficient for much to be made of it; and in this
period, for seven years, it ought to be possible to give each boy a
very considerable mastery of English. In any case, it would enable a
foundation to be laid upon which subsequent self-education could safely
repose.
The teaching would have to consist principally of exercises in the
precise meaning and proper use of words, the aim being to give each
child, not only a very much larger vocabulary than that which he learns
at school to-day, but also a mastery in the use of each word, which
would prevent both confusion in expression, and misunderstanding in
reading or listening. Good, careful reading would therefore be exacted
from all, and the excellence of the performance of each boy would not
be judged so much from the standpoint of glibness or fluency, as from
the ease and accuracy with which he understands the meaning of what he
has read.
In the process of teaching the correct meaning of words, the boys
would necessarily acquire their stock of sound and proper ideas about
life and humanity, because it is impossible to teach the meaning of
certain abstract words relating to society and life, without imparting
true ideas. Thus, without feeling any of the natural repulsion that
healthy boys would instinctly feel towards a moral or philosophical
lesson, they would nevertheless be able to absorb a philosophy of life,
the lack of which in their education to-day is one of its principal
blemishes.[31]
More stress would also be laid on the teaching of grammar than is the
custom to-day. The present system, inspired by the Board of Education,
deliberately neglects grammar, and the results are noticeable in every
sentence that proceeds from the lips of a working class child.[32]
Since logical expression, and the understanding of the logical
construction of a long sentence are impossible without a complete
mastery of Grammar, it is most important that Grammar should be
properly and specially taught. And with English as the only big subject
of the school curriculum, this ought to be perfectly possible.
Next in importance would be the study of good authors in and out of
class. The boys would have to learn to appreciate instances of happy
construction, or apt and vivid expression. In Standard VI. and VII.,
they would also be encouraged to call the teacher’s attention to what
they thought was a misuse or abuse of words, either in their father’s
newspaper, or in any literature of doubtful quality at home.
Daily practice in accurate expression, and in criticism of other
boys’ speech, together with the learning by heart of long passages
from the best poets, the Bible, and some of the best prose writers;
weekly exercises in composition, and a rigorous training in exact
definition--these with a leisurely training in the best old English
songs, canons and ballads, would complete a training that would send
every child forth into the world with at least one subject thoroughly
learned, with at least one weapon well mastered for the struggle of
life, and above all with a more or less certain guarantee that he
would be immune to the lure of vulgar taste in literature, and to the
deliberate deceptions and traps that all those quill-driving monsters,
who to-day stand enthroned over the minds and the hearts of our working
classes, daily and hourly prepare for the further stultification and
corruption of their victims.
Very soon a marked change would come over the nation. Its present
highly strung and hysterical condition, which has been induced chiefly
by the sensationalism of its vulgar newspapers and other cheap
literature, would yield before a more sober and more dignified state
of mind. Not a child whose spirits had been brought into vivifying
contact with the noblest of the nation’s thoughts and sentiments,
could help manifesting signs of this invigorating intercourse in later
life. Among the meanest of them it would leave behind at least the
dim recollection that there were things in heaven and earth that were
greater than themselves, that there were sacred and lofty heights in
the intellectual productions of their nation, which they had once gazed
upon as it were from afar, and while this memory would sustain them in
their patriotism and fortify them in their self-respect, it would also
tend to check that spirit of irreverence for all things which is one of
the most alarming features of the Age.
Again, instead of opening the school gates to let loose a flood of
fourteen-year-old hooligans, with no mental equipment except gutter
smartness, children taught in this [p152] way would be sent forth into
the world possessing at least a foundation of sound knowledge, a basis
of valuable ideas and principles concerning life and humanity, the
benefit of which they themselves and their neighbours would feel at
every moment of their lives.
And this immensely desirable result, this crying need of the present
day, could be obtained at what cost? At the cost of small smatterings
of History, Geography, Drawing, Hygiene, and Physics, which are
forgotten within nine months of leaving school, which even remembered
would be of little practical value, and which, so far from having been
introduced into the curriculum with serious intent, appear rather to
have found their way there by accident and to have been retained purely
from motives of idle and fruitless display.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 24: Even John Locke, who, as a thinker was, in many respects,
surprisingly superficial, exclaims with regard to education: “You will
wonder, perhaps, that I put learning last, especially if I tell you I
think it the least part.” (_Some Thoughts concerning Education_). While
Aristotle lays it down definitely: “That there is a sort of education
in which parents should train their sons, not as being useful or
necessary, but because it is liberal or noble.” (Politics VIII., 5).]
[Footnote 25: The German _lesen_ and the French _lire_, both have the
same implication. They both imply discernment, understanding. The old
high German _lësan_ meant to collect with discrimination, and, with
the French _lire_ was allied to the Latin _legere_, which may mean
to choose, to pick out, to single out, and to select,--all actions
implying discernment and understanding.]
[Footnote 26: They may now continue their studies at continuation
evening schools after fourteen years of age, if they choose, and earn
money the while in some daily employment.]
[Footnote 27: The girls’ curriculum, into which it will not be
necessary to enter here, is very much the same as the boys’, except
that it excludes Manual Work and Physics, and includes Laundry, Cooking
and Needlework.]
[Footnote 28: All the calculations that follow are based upon the
assumption that eight weeks are allowed for holidays each year.]
[Footnote 29: Owing to the great importance of history in inspiring
children to maintain the traditions of their country, it is only with
the greatest reluctance that this subject is not allotted special
hours to itself. It is, however, felt that in view of the short space
of years that elementary education covers in the life-time of the
working-class child, some drastic pruning of the curriculum must at all
costs be made, as anything in the nature of a compromise inserts the
thin edge of the wedge of superficiality in the teaching. Moreover,
seeing that the English lesson will draw largely upon historical
facts for the explanation of words, the subject cannot be regarded as
entirely neglected in this programme.]
[Footnote 30: As the whole week’s work amounts only to 22 hours, and
there is no home work, boys at an elementary school cannot in any case
be said to be overworked, and there would be no hardship involved
in curtailing the time allowed for recreation, or in cancelling it
altogether.]
[Footnote 31: It is true that in its _Suggestions for the Consideration
of Teachers_ (p. 28) the Board of Education does lay down that: “One
of the fundamental purposes of education is to ensure that the child
has an ample fund of ideas about the world in which it lives, and that
these ideas should be, as far as may be, full and exact”; but what
follows (pp. 28, 29) is so meaningless and reveals such an inadequate
appreciation of the value of ideas in adult life, that it stultifies
the value of the foregoing.]
[Footnote 32: _Ibid_, p. 39: “The minutiæ of Parsing should be
completely omitted.... There should be no Grammar teaching apart from
the other English lessons, it should arise naturally out of the reading
and composition lessons.” One headmaster of an elementary school with
whom the present writer discussed the question of Parsing, declared
that he greatly regretted that it had been dropped.]
[p153] CHAPTER VII
SOCIAL REFORM[33]
“Things are so bad that, to have any genuine insight to-day, any
special human feeling to-day, means perforce to devote these gifts to
the social problem, instead of to art and beauty. That is the curse
of having been born in this Age.”--Extract from a novel of last year.
A certain unaffected hopelessness characterises the mood of modern
men, for which it is difficult to find an adequate cause. There is a
pessimism rife to-day, which, far from being a pose or a pretence,
lies so deeply imbedded in the hearts of most people, that it is their
constant effort to conceal, rather than to proclaim it, when they are
in the presence of their fellows. A cheerful smile, a laugh that sounds
like merriment, a vivacious and buoyant manner--these outward signs of
unruffled gaiety may now be simulated by men when they are in company;
they may even be enjoined upon all as social etiquette; but when once
he is left to himself, modern man smoothens out his laugh-wrinkled
cheeks, compresses his relaxed lips, and abandons himself to that
attitude of mind now perhaps as universal as it is secret, which for
lack of a better term we may describe as settled despondency.
Among the cultivated this attitude remains more or less a private
concern of the individual. The thinking man, unlike the savage, does
not beat his wife and children, or blame his immediate surroundings, if
he feels hopeless. He knows the cause is probably more remote than the
behaviour of his kith and kin, or circle of friends; and though he may
be as incapable as the savage of finding the true cause, he withholds
his anger, or postpones the expression of his gloomy thoughts until
such time as their true cause becomes apparent to him.
Among the uncultivated, however, this mood of gloom or of convinced
despair, harbouring as it does in minds that are less inclined to be
philosophical, renders them litigious and vindictive. Some one or
some circumstance not too remote must be responsible, it is thought,
for their peevishness; they therefore become irascible and angry,
and seek to vent their spleen on that person or thing which, on the
strength of its proximity alone, appears to be the immediate cause
of their ill-humour. Conditions that satisfied them theretofore now
become insufferable and must be changed; prospects that smiled upon
them formerly now appear too black to be faced with calm. Pleasure--or
rather distraction--is sought feverishly, gluttonously, until, since
it leaves them still with the old langour at their hearts, it also is
rejected as part of the general conspiracy to depress their spirits.
Nothing pleases, nothing beckons. The same aching certainty of
discontent always returns, whatever else may go.
When a nation feels like this, when a [p155] whole continent feels
like this, there arises what politicians are pleased to call a state
of “social unrest.” By giving it a name it is hoped presumably that it
will be explained away. Unfortunately, however accurate the terms of
a description may be, they do nothing towards helping to remove the
trouble they describe. But in this particular case it may be questioned
whether the words “social unrest” form even an accurate description.
A society that is at rest is not necessarily the ultimate desideratum.
A society that is not at rest cannot therefore be necessarily bad.
On the contrary, social unrest has been characteristic of all the
greatest and most fertile moments in history. What could have been more
unrestful than the period that witnessed the spread of the Roman power,
or the period of the Renaissance?
To call the present period simply one of social unrest therefore does
not even give us an inkling of the true and alarming symptom of the
trouble--the settled despondency that is invading all hearts.
By the phrase “social unrest,” we might, for instance, be led to
suspect that the secondary and particular symptoms of the trouble
were the primary and general symptoms. What are the secondary and
particular symptoms of the trouble? Labour’s general and determined
dissatisfaction with the conditions of labour all over Europe.
Suppose we accept the secondary as the primary symptoms, how can we
then account for the deep pessimism and gloom of the cultivated--not
merely those among the cultivated who fear they may lose by [p156]
Labour’s attitude, but those who are disinterested enough to fear
nothing except the incurable canker at their hearts? Can they truly be
said to share Labour’s general and determined dissatisfaction with the
conditions of labour all over Europe?
Labour’s dissatisfaction, therefore, cannot possibly be a primary
symptom. It is only the proletariat’s adaptation to the primary
symptom; just as hedonism, neurasthenia, lunacy and frenzied interest
in new-fangled creeds and movements, may be the cultivated man’s
adaptation to the primary symptoms.
To call the present state of affairs simply social unrest is to magnify
unduly a secondary and particular, into the importance of a primary and
general, symptom.
Whatever the subsequent adaptation to it may be, the true primary
symptom must be common to both classes, the labouring and the employing
classes, and that true primary symptom, it is here suggested, is the
mood of unaffected hopelessness that characterises all modern men. And
since, as a primary symptom, it is common to all men, it must have a
common cause.
Doubtless a good deal of it may be easily accounted for in the manner
outlined at the opening of Chapter I. As everyone knows, physical and
spiritual weariness do not need to last very long in order to induce
the most stubborn dejection; and since there can be no doubt that, as
the result of life’s present unprecedented complexity and breakneck
speed, modern men of all classes are suffering from physical and
particularly nervous exhaustion, we might reasonably [p157] expect to
find depression as one of its accompanying features.
To the present writer, however, the recognition of this modicum of
melancholy that must be found everywhere wedded to bodily and spiritual
weariness, although important, does not seem sufficient to explain the
universality of the present existence of secret low spirits. It seems
to him that a deeper cause must be sought; for it has come to his own,
as it must have come to other people’s notice, that the low spirits in
question are to be found even where the harassing complications of life
and the present high speed of life are least often and least severely
felt. It is as if a sentiment, and not a material cause were the chief
source of the pessimism that we are now considering. And, since this
pessimism is everywhere rife, it must be supposed that the sentiment
also is universal, and must have preceded the former in all men’s
hearts.
As to the precise nature of this supposed sentiment, there may be
various and even conflicting opinions; the hypothesis favoured here,
however, is the following:--
The sentiment that is now lodged in all European hearts, irrespective
of class or country, and is responsible for the gloom that has
descended upon all nations, is a compound of deep and bitter
_disappointment_ on the one hand, with the _suspicion_ of having been
_duped_ and left stranded on the other.
There is a feeling that the leading ideals by which our fathers and
grandfathers guided their lives, and to which we, who were born in the
last century, also aspired, have proved false ideals. And, coupled
with this [p158] feeling, there is, in the first place, the growing
conviction that we should have done better, and shown ourselves more
expert in managing our affairs, if, instead of trying to act up to
those ideals, we had renounced them altogether; and secondly, that now
that we see ourselves compelled to abandon these old ideals, we are
stranded without any guiding principles whatsoever.
The old ideals have proved worthless and even dangerous, and we are
therefore abandoning them; but no new ideals have been created to take
their place.
It is this feeling that now constitutes the disease in all men’s
hearts--the feeling of the enlightened child of besotted and degenerate
parents, who, looking back upon them calmly and dispassionately in his
maturity, is ashamed of the guileless filial passion he once felt for
them in his childhood, and yet knows himself to be terribly cold and
alone in his spiritual orphanage.
“Progress,” that toughest among our grandfathers’ and fathers’
ideals, has been the last to perish; but with it perhaps went our
stoutest hopes and our firmest beliefs. We have now buried it, to the
accompaniment of the gravest doubts concerning not merely whether we
are better, or better off, than the men of the 16th and 17th centuries,
but also whether we are better, or better off even than the Cro-Magnon
men who lived thirty thousand years before the present era.
To those who could believe in the existence of an all-powerful,
beneficent deity--and which of us had grandfathers or fathers who did
not?--there was something supremely [p159] logical and inevitable
in this idea of Progress. How could life fail to improve seeing
that a beneficent deity was controlling it, and must therefore be
directing all things towards a common good?
But now the objections to this belief scarcely require to be stated.
Everybody knows, everybody sees, that it must be wrong. And those
exceptional people whose minds and eyes still need some assistance
before they feel able to reject it, have only to examine certain
statistics in order to become assured that their conservatism is
without foundation.
And how many ideals have not gone the same way as “Progress”? Who
believes in “Democracy” nowadays? Who believes in Parliamentary
Government, in the ultimate triumph of Altruism, in the Brotherhood
of mankind, in Universal Suffrage? In short, who believes in the
desirability of the whole of Western civilisation, or of its extension
to countries that are still uncontaminated by it?
How could the contemplation of such a hecatomb of perverted ideals fail
to create despondency, seeing that despite the lack of other ideals to
take their place, and everybody’s horror at what has occurred, every
sane man in every civilised land is convinced that, had the hecatomb
not already been made, he would have been compelled to pile it up with
his own hands?
Perhaps it may sound to some an unwarrantable assumption to maintain
that a complete negation of the beliefs of a former century--aye, and
in some cases, of a former [p160] millenium--necessarily constitutes a
state of deep distress.
Those who entertain this view can only be recommended to ponder the
enormous influence that strong, deep-rooted beliefs play in the lives
of large communities, particularly when these beliefs constitute the
very confidence, trust and faith which such communities feel in the
worthiness and the value of their common aims and endeavours. Shake
these beliefs, and the energy which theretofore had been directed
evenly towards a certain bourne, a definite goal, finds itself dammed
up or lost on the high road; remove them altogether, and it is not
impossible that the very generation of energy itself will cease. People
become listless, indolent, hopeless; and the acute stage of danger is
soon reached when everyone cries openly or in his heart: “What is the
good of it all? _Cui bono?_”
The repercussion of this state of distress upon language has already
been discussed. It is clear that, with the loss of guiding ideals
and beliefs, the important leading words connected with these ideals
and beliefs become entirely meaningless and devoid of any distinct
associations. In addition to finding himself completely astray,
therefore, modern man’s forlorn condition is complicated by serious
bewilderment. A large number of the words which, owing to their
long association with deep-rooted beliefs and guiding ideals, still
stimulate great emotional excitement in him, have no corresponding
meaning in reality--in fact, have no meaning at all. The sounds remain,
and from sheer habit evoke certain sensations; but the [p161] beliefs
which gave these sounds some reality have departed.
Thus even the least sensitive man of the present age, has gradually
become conscious of no longer having any secure footing. The ground
under his feet seems to be slipping away and he throws out his arms
desperately to catch at some support.
Deep, almost rancorous disappointment, coupled with the suspicion that
he has been duped and left stranded--this compound, it is suggested,
constitutes the sentiment which is now lodged in the heart of every
European. And it is this sentiment which is the cause of the present
universal and stubborn pessimism in all countries where Western
civilisation prevails.
Unfortunately the only cure for this kind of chronic melancholy is the
promulgation of new beliefs, new goals, new values. A new faith is
perhaps the most crying need of all. But where are the great men of
to-day who could undertake this task?
In the masses, or proletariat, of all countries, this pessimism,
arising out of the sentiment analysed above, expresses itself, as is
only natural, in the most irreconcilable discontent. What does the
man in the street know of remote causes, particularly when they are
spiritual? As we have already hinted above, material causes are the
first he thinks of; because they are the first that lie to hand. And
when, moreover, he finds every self-seeking agitator ready to prove
that material circumstances are the cause of his trouble, how can he
any longer doubt that here indeed he has traced his misery to its
source? [p162]
Thus among the masses, the prevailing pessimism takes the form of an
economic struggle, which has little or nothing to do with the actual
amount of happiness or unhappiness that is to be gained. And in the
leisured classes, the same affliction is leading to mad hedonism,
neurasthenia, lunacy, and a thirst for new religions and movements,
which is frequently out of all proportion to the sanity of the
interests these have to offer.
While, however, the masses, owing to the more precise nature of their
demands (always confined to the economic field and never touching upon
spiritual needs) and also to the greater volume of their clamour, have
succeeded in directing the attention of all would-be reformers upon
themselves, the cultivated also, partly hypnotised by the insistence of
the proletariat’s outcry, have made the mistake of supposing that in
material reforms alone can salvation be found.
In the absence of new ideals, sound beliefs, and a great new faith,
that would once again knit modern mankind together in a united effort
and a common aim, not only the proletariat, but also large numbers
of the cultivated classes, have come to the conclusion that it is in
economic changes that a recovery of the _joie de vivre_ is to be found.
And such ideals as Communism, Socialism, and Bolshevism, which are
purely economic (_i.e._, material), in their objects and methods, are
now held up as panaceas for the ills of the whole world.
To suppose, however, that economic changes alone will make any
difference to the present [p163] deep depression of man, is to
misunderstand the whole nature of his trouble.
If there is anything in the analysis contained in the preceding
paragraphs; if the diagnosis of modern pessimism which it offers is
not entirely wrong and beside the mark, it is obvious that economic
changes, however drastic, can and will do nothing to alleviate
the state of distress in which everybody who lives where Western
civilisation prevails, now finds himself.
Improve the conditions of the indigent how you will, elevate the
standard of living as high as you choose, you are nevertheless
powerless to reduce even by one gush of tears, the misery and
discontent that prevails among all classes in the modern civilised
world, unless you understand and can deal with the more profound and
more complicated spiritual cause that lies at the root of this misery.
Nobody in his senses denies that there is yet room for improvement in
the standard of living among large sections of the proletariat; nobody
who has studied the question doubts for one instant that the conditions
of the indigent are frequently directly conducive to both physical and
spiritual disease, and therefore that they require modification; but to
suppose that the need for this departmental improvement is sufficiently
pressing and promising of good far-reaching results, to justify the
upheaval of the whole of the existing system of life, is to confess
yourself so completely fascinated and hypnotised by a particular aspect
alone of modern unhappiness, as it is manifested in one particular
section of society, as to have remained blind [p164] to all other
aspects of it which are to be observed in other sections.
Posterity will certainly look back upon this Age as an epoch in which
there existed but one really strong obsession. It will recognise that
in matters of religion we were independent, individualistic, disunited,
and scattered. It will also see that in the domain of art, literature,
and science, divergence of opinion, to the extent of open civil war,
was general and commonplace. On one question, however, it will be
compelled to acknowledge our complete unanimity and concord, and that
question is Social Reform.
All classes and all political parties at the opening of the 20th
century in Great Britain will be declared to have been solidly bent on
achieving this one object; and for some obscure reason, which perhaps
will for ever remain a mystery even to an enlightened posterity, that
social reform will be characterised as having had in view always the
amelioration of but one section of the community--the poorer section,
from the standpoint of material wealth--that is to say, that it was
certainly a downward glance, a downcast eye, that constituted the
attitude of its most fervent advocates and their followers.
Subsequent generations, if they are sufficiently philosophical, will
perceive the error here, without perhaps being able to explain it. It
may be possible now, however, to forestall their speculations and to
shed upon the question some light that may be helpful to them.
It has been said that misery is at present [p165] general, that it
runs through all classes in all countries.
Furthermore, it has been suggested that this misery has its root in
a sentiment which is a compound of rancorous disappointment and the
feeling that we have been duped and left stranded.
This sentiment has been traced to the failure and demonstrated
emptiness of all the leading beliefs and ideals of the last century,
and even before that.
Now the particular expression of this misery which is at present given
by the more indigent sections of the community, is discontent with
their condition, leading to an economic struggle.
The expression of this misery which is at present given by the
wealthier sections of the community consists in an unusually fierce
form of hedonism, insanity, neurasthenia, and religious mania.
Strange to say, however, the cure for the misery which is being
recommended by the proletariat and in the general terms of which large
numbers of the plutocracy are already acquiescing, is Social Reform,
which, in its more moderate guise, aspires simply to the elevation of
the standard of living among the labouring classes; and in its extreme
form (as in Russia, for instance) envisages the overthrow of the
present system in favour of Communism, Socialism, or Bolshevism.
Now even if the analysis of modern misery given above were only
approximately accurate, it must be plain that:--
(1) To set out to relieve the misery of only one section of the
community--the [p166] poorer section--when all the community is
unhappy, amounts obviously only to attempting a partial cure, in
fact to concerning one’s self only with one aspect and secondary
manifestation of the general trouble.
(2) To concentrate upon social reform, even in its most moderate form,
is to assume that which has yet to be demonstrated: that an improvement
in the material conditions of the proletariat is really all that the
world wants in order to recover happiness.
(3) To suppose that any such purely material or economic reform as
Communism, can effect a complete cure all round, is to assume that
the causes of modern unhappiness are purely material or economic--an
assumption which, so far from being supported by the facts, has all the
evidence of the unhappiness of the wealthy classes against it.
Now let these objections be taken one by one in their order, and
considered more fully.
(1) Is it, or is it not a fact, that all classes, rich and poor alike,
are now suffering from deep spiritual depression? If it is a fact,
it is obviously ridiculous and unfair to attempt even along economic
lines (that is by material reforms alone) to alleviate the pain only
of one class; and the concentration of attention upon proletarian
unhappiness, constitutes an absurd and utterly unjustifiable obsession.
If, on the other hand, it is not a fact that all classes are suffering
equally from deep spiritual depression, a somewhat formidable
array of unpleasant facts are left utterly unexplained [p167] and
unco-ordinated. These are: the steady spread of apathy, cynicism,
listlessness and recklessness--always signs of great unhappiness--among
the wealthy classes; the frenzied search for new creeds, new movements,
new interests, however childish, always a sign of despair; and the
unceasing pursuit of pleasure among the non-religious sections of the
wealthy classes--a sign of intense boredom, weariness and gloom.
Now it is only due to the characteristic obtuseness and shallowness
of this Age, that no attention has been paid to the unhappiness of
the wealthier classes, which in many instances is very severe indeed;
and it is due to the absurdly exalted notion of their prestige, and
their own extravagant estimate of their dignity, that they themselves
have not made more clamour to call the attention of the community to
their misery. Labouring under the utterly unsupported modern belief
that where economic conditions are sound, everything is sound, we do
not find the leaders of the Church organising missions to the mansions
of the wealthy in order to make sure that their spiritual life is
healthy and free from the blights of gloom and despair; obsessed as
everyone is by the supposed inaccessibility of wealth to the common
spiritual distempers of the Age, we never hear of charitable charwomen
undertaking a course of district visiting to the women of the wealthier
classes, in order to investigate the cause of their despondency and
to help them to overcome it. And yet, strange as such a procedure
would sound to modern ears, is it really so palpably offensive to good
sense? The very fact [p168] that most people would suspect a man of
joking who recommended such action, shows conclusively how far we are
from realising the extent of the spiritual misery, besottedness and
turpitude prevailing among our wealthier classes.
Is this misery to be left entirely suspended in the air by the proposed
economic reforms of the coming era? As a symptom it has been shown
that the unhappiness of the wealthier classes is as important and
significant as any other phenomenon of modern times. Do people really
suppose that certain economic changes, certain improvements in the
standard of living of the poor, are going to set the whole world right,
including the chronic unhappiness of the present wealthy classes?
It has been suggested that this unhappiness of the wealthy has a
deep root, and that at its root it joins with the unhappiness of the
indigent. How can any tinkering at material conditions possibly be
expected to reach that root?
If social reformers had their way, if in their superficial analysis of
modern misery, they were allowed to proceed with their “improvements,”
the changes they would be able to bring about would leave absolutely
intact the whole of the major cause of the trouble that obsesses them.
In a trice the “improved” conditions would become habitual conditions,
and then, once the diversion had spent its force, the old unhappiness
would return with possibly even greater malignity. Anybody who doubts
this is invited to dwell on the economic improvements already achieved
among the poorer classes of the nation, and to assess the proportionate
[p169] amount of increased happiness that has accompanied them.
(2) Many years ago, George Gissing, than whom no English writer was
better qualified to speak with authority on the question of rich and
poor, made the following remark: “A being of superior intelligence
regarding humanity with an eye of perfect understanding would discover
that life was enjoyed every bit as much in the slum as in the palace.”
In other words, it must have occurred to most thinking people that
laughter, if heard at all, is heard quite as frequently in the kitchen
as in the drawing-room,--that is to say, that happiness is relative,
and that the possibility of ultimate adaptation to all conditions
makes the degree of happiness enjoyed by each human being more or
less uniform. At all events, the fact that material conditions are
the first, which, if constant, cease to be noticed, and therefore
cease to contribute actively to happiness, must have been observed
by most people of ordinary acumen. It would therefore constitute a
gross misunderstanding both of human nature and of life in general,
to suppose that standards of living, even very much lower than those
of our present unskilled labouring classes, would necessarily destroy
happiness for those compelled to endure them. And, conversely, it would
constitute a grave misconception of the nature of happiness to suppose
that an improved standard of living necessarily brings happiness in its
train, or has anything to do with happiness. All those who, for five
years of the Great War, had to live on indifferent food, imperfectly
cooked, served [p170] in inconvenient and frequently filthy quarters,
and on unsightly and grubby utensils, will bear the present writer out
in this, and will agree with him when he says that material conditions
cannot possibly bear the deep causal relation to happiness that so
many thousands of solemn would-be philosophers now allege. Beyond a
certain point--that is to say, _when once the possibility of daily
repletion with wholesome foodstuffs, and sufficient daily repose has
been attained_, material conditions, so far from being conducive to
happiness or unhappiness, are not even noticed.
To improve the material conditions of the proletariat beyond the stage
of comfortable security, therefore, will not and cannot increase their
general happiness by one iota. It may urge them to the mad hedonism of
the rich, it may drive them to the surfeited apathy and neurasthenia of
the plutocratic classes and stimulate their appetite for new-fangled
creeds and movements, but it will not increase their happiness, neither
will it do anything to alleviate the misery that was analysed in the
first half of this chapter, under which they, like the wealthier
classes, are now groaning.
(3) Assuming, however, that the whole of the above reasoning is
hopelessly wrong and even vicious; taking it for granted, as many
undoubtedly will, that the misery here alleged to be common both to
the modern rich and the modern poor, which social reform cannot alter,
is a pure myth, an ingenious fiction, inspired by the trumpery aims of
reaction alone; it may still be asked whether those who concentrate so
painstakingly [p171] upon material and economic reforms, have satisfied
themselves that their diagnosis of the trouble is the correct one.
The implication underlying their activities and their programme, is
that material and economic conditions should be the principal concern
of all. They pin their faith to the amelioration of the standard
of living, and whether they wish to achieve this end by Communism,
Socialism, or Bolshevism, they confess by the principles they adopt,
that they recognise no other avenue to salvation.
But it is surely no quibble to demand of them some proof that their
proposed cures have been conceived as the result of a scrupulously
careful investigation into the causes of the disease. Without
necessarily incurring the suspicion of undue prejudice, it is surely
not unreasonable to request them, before inaugurating their subversive
reforms, to give their critics some demonstration of the accuracy of
their diagnosis.
Has this been done? Has any conclave of accredited psychologists,
thinkers and social reformers, ever sat to deliberate upon the true
causes of modern misery? And having deliberated, have they published
to the world any conclusion to the effect that everything in modern
society _except only the condition of the poor_, can be continued and
maintained with impunity, without fears of a recurrence of the present
malady?
Nobody can contend that the advocates of social reform in so far as
this is confined to material and economic changes, have even satisfied
themselves--still less the rest of the world--that economic causes
are the most potent in accounting for the [p172] misery prevailing
in Western Civilisation. Nobody would even argue that they had begun
to question the correctness of their materialistic interpretation of
“Social Unrest,” and since the reforms they propose are drastic and
destructive, as witness the Utopia in Russia, the world has a right,
and more particularly have the working masses in all countries a right,
to insist upon the disease of modernity being thoroughly understood
before it is treated.
It is not claimed for an instant that the analysis given in the first
part of this chapter is necessarily the right one; but it is certainly
hoped that by suggesting perhaps a new avenue of approach to these
problems, it will not only show that there are more ways than one of
solving them, but also stimulate thought along lines not habitually
followed by social reformers.
The present writer himself is, at any rate, convinced of two things:--
_First_, that social reform, either moderate or in its extreme
expression as Communism or Bolshevism, is a modern obsession, resulting
from a gratuitous concentration upon the material conditions alone of
one class only of the community; and that all changes that are inspired
by this obsession are certain to be wrong and utterly disastrous,
seeing that it takes no cognisance of the great unhappiness that is
unconnected with the state of indigence.
_Second_, that the relation of happiness to material conditions is
a subject of such deep misunderstanding at the present day that, at
all events, reforms which rely too obstinately upon the accepted and
general [p173] view of this relation, are sure to lead to the most
distressing blunders, without relieving by one iota, the burden of
misery that is borne by the whole population, rich and poor alike.
In conclusion, the following considerations may prove of value in
regard to the general question of social reform, and to the particular
question of happiness:--
_The present state of settled despondency in all classes may be the
result of a number of agencies, with the continued operation of any
one of which it might be fatal to start a new era with any hope of
achieving greater happiness._
_The world has come to its present pass by means of the observance
of hundreds of values, among which it is possible that the most
unsuspected are the most powerful causes of the general decline in the
joie de vivre._
For instance, to make a few suggestions at random, it is possible
that the general European attitude of toleration towards disease,
crippledom, congenital debility and physical disabilities of all kinds,
may be totally wrong. It may be that the steady infection of the
healthy mass of the people by the careful perpetuation, preservation
and propagation, of the population’s unhealthiest elements, may
have acted as a gradual poison in four ways: (_a_) as a depressing
spectacle and therefore as a destroyer of joy to the sensative; (_b_)
as an unnecessary burden upon the hale and the hearty, exacting too
heavy a toll from their energy and good spirits; (_c_), as a source
of deterioration to the healthiest elements in the race; and (_d_)
negatively, by making it difficult for the desirable percentage of
very successful creatures to be [p174] born,--those creatures who,
by their beauty, grace and wanton spirits, ennoble life, by holding
up a lofty example of Life’s highest possibilities. It is possible,
that is to say, that Humanitarianism is merely an inverted form of
cruelty; in other words, instead of directing their cruelty against
the undesirable, humanitarians direct it against the desirable, and
cheerfully sacrifice the hale and the hearty to the physiologically
botched.
It is also conceivable that democratic institutions, by levelling
competition and rewards down to the plane of the meanest attainments,
have introduced a sort of craft-apathy, or eagerness-mute-stop,
into the hearts of all those superior workmen who, along ordinary
unrestricted and unconstrained paths, would have delighted in
displaying the higher gifts that differentiate them from their
fellows, and would thus have increased the sum of general happiness by
their contribution of triumphant spirits and the expression of their
gratified effort.
It is possible, too, that life in very large cities, like London,
Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, etc., by bringing each
individual man and woman too constantly into touch, in fact into
daily irritating contact, with thousands of their fellows,--so that
in the thoroughfares of these large cities human beings may truly be
said to stand as rank as weeds,--has led to a kind of semiconscious
misanthropy, which steadily depresses the _joie de vivre_, by
destroying the joy that all should feel in the contemplation and
society of their fellows. The struggle for room, for sheer air space,
is sometimes so acute in these large cities, and in the fight [p175]
for unobstructed progression each advantage is contested with so much
malice and spite, that it is not extravagant to suppose that a natural
and perfectly instinctive impulse to be friendly and philanthropic, may
step by step, be turned to the most irreconcilable hatred and contempt
of humanity. It is not even impossible for this change to occur without
the person in whom it has taken place being in the least conscious
of the true causes of his mental transformation. But upon convinced
misanthropy of this sort it is impossible to build a happy and
contented community. Hence possibly a goodly portion of the unhappiness
of modern times in large cities.
Again in regard to the very alternative of philanthropic or
misanthropic sentiment, in a well-known passage of the moral teaching
of most Europeans, there occurs the famous command “Love thy
neighbour.” And there are not a few sentimentalists who, accepting
this doctrine as the remedy for all social evils, proclaim with
full-throated fervour, that if only there were more love in the world,
all would be well. Now it must surely have occurred to a large number
of people, that if there is one human impulse known to all mankind that
responds with difficulty to the word of command, it is precisely the
impulse to love. A man may, by an effort of will, stop his breathing
and die,--it is said that negro slaves constantly did this in the holds
of humane British seamen’s ships in the 18th century;--a man may by
an effort of will obey the command to kill himself and unhesitatingly
raise the means of suicide to his throat;--in Japan this command
used [p176] frequently to be given and as frequently obeyed;--but by
no effort of will, however severe the command, can a man be made to
feel the impulse to love his neighbour. Love springs spontaneously
in the human breast. Its provocation is invariably, not a word of
command, not a behest, but the charm, grace, or other perfection of an
object contemplated. There is therefore little psychological insight
in the command “Love thy neighbour.” Nobody would deny that to love
one’s neighbour is an excellent prescription for happy social life;
but nobody who was not sadly ignorant of human nature, or divinely
insular, would dream of attempting to achieve this end by commanding
it. The only way to set about loving one’s neighbour, with benignity
aforethought, as it were, is, in the first place, _to make him
loveable_. For love is a spontaneous impulse springing up in the breast
through contemplation or comprehension of some charming or otherwise
alluring object.
Now it is possible that modern life, with all its besotting,
emasculating, and uglifying occupations, with its total absence of
any check upon the multiplication of the unsightly and unsavoury, its
sickness, and its second-rate, third-rate and fourth-rate healthiness,
is pursuing diametrically the opposite aim. It is destroying the
æsthetic basis of the impulse to love; and, except where sexual
attraction is at work, renders love of one’s neighbour a practical
impossibility. It would be ridiculous, and eminently unscientific, to
overlook this factor in the gradual disintegration and unhappiness of
modern society. For a community in which all the [p177] elements fly
asunder when they meet, is unlikely to be either harmonious or happy.
Thus the increasing unloveableness of one’s neighbour, as the result of
the increasing ugliness and unsavouriness of most European populations,
cannot be altogether disregarded.
The above are only a few among the unsuspected and possible
contributory causes of modern misery. It would be easy to continue on
the same lines at considerable length, and further suggestions will be
made in the last chapter; but surely, even at this stage, enough has
already been said, to persuade the thoughtful reader that social reform
alone, as it is generally understood, both in its moderate and extreme
guise, might be completely and even magnificently realised, and yet
leave some of the most potent causes of despondency as flourishing and
as prevalent as ever.
Some of our most respected values lie at the root of the contributory
causes just outlined. Would it not be wiser, before starting on our
wild goose chase in search of new world orders, to decide whether
such values as those which are radical to the contributory causes,
are sufficiently sound to be maintained? For these contributory
and unsuspected causes, which have been outlined above, are all
supplementary to the principal cause analysed in the first part of this
chapter.
Thus a good deal of spade work would appear to be both wise and even
indispensable, before we can proceed with any confidence to the facile
solution of modern misery, consisting in altering our economic [p178]
conditions;[34] and this spade work, which seems to the thinker to be
little more than a measure of ordinary prudence, overlooked though it
has been by the Bolshevists, may in the end prove the very means of
sustaining the success and ensuring the permanence of whatever economic
modifications may subsequently appear necessary and advisable.
At all events, to proceed along any other lines, would certainly mean
that a large number of essential and principal elements in the general
causation of modern misery, would run a grave risk of being overlooked;
it would therefore mean that the continued presence of these elements
would remain to mar any measure of success that any radical economic
reform might achieve, and would thus demonstrate to the whole world a
fact which, despite the example of Russia, is by no means sufficiently
clear: that social reform like Protestantism in the 15th century, like
Puritanism in the 17th, and like Republicanism in the 18th, is an
obsession, the hypnotic power of which is out of all proportion to the
amount of good it can possibly establish by its successful fulfilment.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 33: The ideas from which this essay has been developed were
first embodied in a short article called _Happiness and Social Reform_,
contributed by the present writer to the “Oxford Fortnightly,” in
November, 1913.]
[Footnote 34: It will not have escaped the careful reader’s notice that
the reason why social reform and new economic programmes generally
have enjoyed so much favour, particularly with the mass of superficial
mankind, is that in the midst of misery, they seem to offer immediate
“practical” remedies. That word “practical” is the passport, or rather
the password, of most of the stupidest beliefs and practices that
succeed in becoming popular. Because deeper remedies, and the deeper
causes of unhappiness, do not occur to the superficial minds of the
masses in all countries, social reform, which is palpably obvious, is
called “practical” and thereby canonised by the crowd.]
[p179] CHAPTER VIII
THE PHYSIOLOGY OF SOCIAL UNREST
“He caused the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service
of man; that he may bring forth food out of the earth; and wine that
maketh glad the heart of man ..... and bread which strengtheneth
man’s heart.”
Psalms, 104, 14, 15.
One day, perhaps, an enlightened generation of historians will arise,
who will regard it as their mission to inform mankind concerning the
repeated instances in the past when cherished romantic illusions
alone--quite apart from economic conditions, the vagaries of monarchs,
or the viciousness of laws--have led to disastrous upheavals, both
national and universal, in the life of the race. History has not been
studied sufficiently from the standpoint of ideology. The tyranny of
the individual, whether monarch, statesman or rebel, still remains
the obsession of our writers of national annals. We have yet to see a
historical work in which the tyranny of an idea, of a principle, and
particularly of an illusion, is traced with meticulous care throughout
its manifold ramifications; and in which the national, or universal
hero, be he soldier, politician or insurrectionist, is depicted
realistically merely as the victim of that tyranny.
Such history would fail in its principal object if it were not
understood to teach, among other things, the useful lesson that words
and the ideas they embody, whether [p180] false or true, can become
tyrants far more dangerous and heartless than any human despot has ever
been, and if it did not sufficiently emphasise the fact that, a false
idea that has been made a universal possession, and the representative
term of which has become a household word, is frequently a scourge more
terrible than any plague that has ever yet decimated the species.
A child will travel some distance and wear itself out in overcoming any
number of obstacles, if it be started off in pursuit of some alluring
object by someone whose word its experience has not yet taught it to
doubt. The alluring object may be entirely mythical--no matter! Granted
that the object has been made to appear sufficiently desirable, the
child will pursue its quest, sometimes with heroic perseverance. But
is there anyone prepared to maintain that the full-grown adult would
behave any differently under the influence of similar inducements?
Allowing for the difference between the minds of children and of
adults, and postulating for the adult an object which, though quite as
chimerical as that chosen for the child, is yet of a kind calculated to
fire his imagination, does anyone really question whether the adult’s
pursuit of it would be fully as eager and tenacious as that of the
child?
Consider, for instance, the time-honoured method of obtaining votaries
and adherents for any anti-social scheme. Certain states of mind or
body are first posited by the agitators, or would-be reformers, as
highly desirable; they are then shown to be unrealisable in the social
scheme which it is [p181] proposed to destroy; and finally humanity
is told that by destroying the social scheme already existing, those
desirable states of mind or body will be procured and enjoyed. These
hypothetical states of mind or body which are unrealisable in the
social scheme selected for destruction may be entirely fantastic and
unrealisable anywhere or how, but this objection the agitators do
not trouble to discuss; all they say is: “Here we hold up before you
certain desirable states of mind or body” (call them, if you will,
“etherealness” and “imponderability,”--qualities that would enable
those possessing them to overcome gravitation and all its concomittant
inconveniences) “these desirable states of mind or body can be obtained
only by breaking up certain traditions. Break up these traditions, and
you will possess them.”
It will be seen at once that the examples chosen, “etherealness” and
“imponderability,” are sufficiently extravagant to strike even the
meanest intelligence as being absurd, and an anti-social agitator
depending upon such desiderata alone would stand but a poor chance of
gaining followers. Substitute the words representing these vaporous
qualities, however, by another word which, though representing a
quality equally illusory, nevertheless does not strike the average man
immediately as being unrealisable, and the insidious operation of false
desiderata straightway becomes evident.
Most honest political thinkers have realised by now, for instance,
how visionary and unreal is the accepted notion of the reign of
“Justice”--not the justice that is administered [p182] in our Courts
of Law, or which we strive to exercise in daily life, but the
_justice immanente_ of Gambetta, already discussed, in which natural
inequalities and their accompanying disabilities and inconveniences
will be for ever removed or neutralised. But the glaring impossibility
of this desideratum, and the consequent meaninglessness of the word
used to designate it, does not seem to hinder millions from declaring
themselves ready to fight and to lose their blood and their lives in
trying to effect its realisation. And the same may be said of the ideas
embodied in the words “Liberty,” “Equality,” “Fraternity,” etc.
Given sufficient ingenuity in the agitator, therefore, it may be taken
for granted that the grand method of fomenting social upheavals is:
(1) to postulate a state of mind or body that is impossible in the
society which it is intended to destroy--the fact that the particular
mental or bodily state would be impossible in any society is either
judiciously concealed, or else not known to the agitator; (2) to
make the name for that particular state of mind or body a household
word representing a universal desideratum; and (3) to exploit any
existing disaffection, from whatever cause, in order to add momentum
to the general desire to see this hypothetical state of mind or body
realised by fair means or foul. In this way it is possible to make
millions destroy opposing millions, and violence outrival violence,
without anyone becoming aware, until too late, of the futility of the
conflict and of the criminality of the hoax. Aye, in the exhaustion and
confusion that [p183] follow, people are necessarily so busy overcoming
the multifarious difficulties that the struggle has created, that
frequently they have not even the time, much less the composure, to
ask themselves whether they have really obtained that for which they
destroyed their fellows, their own homes, and their civilisation. It is
in this way that false ideas often escape condemnation and exposure.
The tyranny of words and the ideas they represent, whether sound or
unsound, is therefore obvious enough; and, in the history of peoples it
is the principal tyranny of all. Beside it the tyranny of individual
monarchs is mere child’s play, and the deeds of a national hero only
stage effect. Where the ideas have been false, however, where the
desiderata striven and struggled for have been wholly chimerical, this
tyranny stands for the most prodigious romanticism of human life,--a
romanticism which, like all romanticism, has to be paid for very
heavily, and the price of which is frequently the peace, happiness and
order of centuries.
Now the extreme danger of the existing ideology of Europe and America
is that it is full to bursting with romanticism precisely of this kind,
and that in its catalogue of chimerical hopes, objects, and desiderata,
there is also many a belief upon which it is impossible to base a sound
code of conduct.
The romanticism of the ideology of Western Civilisation can be seen
in no feature of modern life more plainly than in the manner in which
modern man approaches the problems of his Age. The simple, the obvious,
[p184] the elementary solution, the solution nearest to hand, is never
the first to be tried; frequently it is not even selected. Western
Society believes in machinery in every form, it therefore approaches
even its problems mechanically--that is to say, with instruments
which, far from being primitive or human, are frequently so thoroughly
unfitted to deal with the social wants and ailments of the time (all
essentially primitive and human in their nature) that they actually
aggravate and complicate these ailments and wants.
Much of this superficiality in statesmanship is due, of course, not so
much to the prodigious romanticism of the Age, as to the mediocrity
of those whom democratic representation and Parliamentary methods
bring to the fore. A majority must consist of mediocre people, and
mediocre people cannot exercise judgment except in a mediocre way.
The person selected by mediocrities to represent them must therefore
be a man capable of appealing to such people, that is to say, a
creature entirely devoid of genius either for ruling or for any other
function. As a matter of fact, all he need possess is a third-rate
actor’s gift for haranguing his electors about matters they can easily
grasp, in language calculated to stimulate their emotions, and he
must be guaranteed to hold or to express no original or exceptionally
intelligent views.
As an instance of this mediocrity both of insight and initiative,
observe the attitude of Western Governments to the phenomenon known
as Social Unrest. It is either one of complete mystification, or else
economic [p185] remedies alone are thought of and applied.[35] With
the example of Bolshevik Russia before them, Western Governments have
doubtless learnt this easy lesson, that a people who have enough to
eat are immune against revolutionary doctrine, and therefore that all
questions of grave domestic disorder are primarily physical. It might
be imagined, however, that this first step in wisdom would have led
them still further afield, and even directed their attention to some of
its less obvious consequences. For, if Bolshevik Russia teaches that
a well-fed proletariat does not rise in revolt, it also proves, by
implication, that the condition of the human body is an all-important
factor to be reckoned with in domestic troubles. _The unit in a
population manifesting signs of acute unrest may therefore be examined
to some purpose with a view to ascertaining his physical condition._
One of the most stubborn beliefs constituting the prodigious
romanticism of modern times, is, however, a fatal obstacle in the road
leading to this simple discovery; and this belief is that the physical
condition of a man can be independent of his attitude of mind, and
_vice versâ_. Apart from the one exception to this modern dogma, which
has recently been learnt from Russia, and which is to the effect that
starvation foments revolt, the modern mind is more or less convinced
that the physical condition of a population is not a very important
factor in determining their political opinions.
True enough, when we hear anyone make a false claim, or pronounce a
harebrained statement, we may ask in jest, “Is he well?”; but not one
of us latter-day Europeans, or any creature like us, is convinced that
the question is relevant. Since we do not approach with suspicion any
specimen of our literature, our poetry, our art, or our philosophy
which hails from dyspeptics, cripples, dypsomaniacs, or drug-maniacs,
how could we regard such a question as relevant? The absurd levity
with which we deal with the physical side of our national life is only
one proof of this. It required a great war to prove to our emotional
and opportunist Prime Minister, Mr. Lloyd George, that the physical
condition of the nation was indeed “appalling,” and it was only the
work of the tribunals that brought home to him the extent of our
national ill-health.[36] It may be presumed, therefore, that had not
the Great War made the medical examination of our younger men necessary
and imperative, our popular Premier would still be in ignorance
concerning this all-important question.
Apart from actual starvation, therefore, no physical condition is
regarded by modern man as an important factor in the etiology of a
people’s mental attitude.
And yet we have in the acute social unrest of England alone, a curious
phenomenon, sufficiently hard to explain merely on economic lines. For
it is not confined to people who are underfed or who do not know where
to-morrow’s loaf is coming from. It is not even rooted in them. We
find it manifesting itself principally among well-paid and perfectly
comfortable artisans and skilled workmen--nay, it actually originates
and draws its greatest strength from these elements in the population.
Here, then, is a problem which no amount of material improvement in
living conditions would appear to hold out any promise of solving. And
yet everyone believes--aye, even the restless proletarians themselves
are prepared to swear--that the trouble is chiefly economic; while some
of the capitalist class might suggest, in addition to economic causes,
Bolshevist, German or Socialistic propaganda or gold.
In a previous chapter the present writer has hinted at a number of
causes, not altogether obvious, which may lie at the bottom of modern
proletarian unrest; he now wishes to discuss that which he regards as
one of the principal and most fundamental causes; and that he suggests
straightway is _ill-health and debility_.
A jaundiced view of life, a pessimistic outlook, and a general mood of
dissatisfaction with all things, may possibly in one or two enlightened
and profound thinkers, have a purely intellectual basis. In such men it
may be the outcome of a dispassionate and laborious survey of modern
conditions and modern aims, and constitute a considered judgment based
upon the available data. When, however, it characterises a multitude,
particularly a multitude consisting largely of people who never in any
circumstances form anything but an emotional opinion on any matter, it
is simply wanton prejudice [p188] and romanticism not to suspect and
not to presuppose a partly physiological cause for the condition.
The fact that this cause is nowhere suspected, either by journalists,
statesmen, Members of Parliament, or the working men of England
themselves, does not make its operation any the less conspicuous; but
it does show with what stubborn tenacity a false belief--a romantic
belief particularly--clings to the minds of a people when once it has
been sedulously inculcated upon them. For the fact that physiological
causes are operating in the acute social unrest now prevailing in
England alone, can be ascertained in two minutes by any one who wishes
to examine this unrest at close quarters in the person of any workman
representing it.
Any such investigator will discover very speedily that although the
masses are probably adequately provided with food, as regards bulk,
they are suffering from various forms of slight but sufficiently
disturbing debility, owing to the two following causes:--
(_a_) The inferiority of a good deal of the food and drink they
consume;
(_b_) Their gross ignorance regarding the proper way of preparing it.
Independent evidence pointing to the conclusion that food is at the
bottom of the physiological causes of unrest, apart from an examination
of that food itself, may be gathered from the appalling statistics of
health recently published by the Ministry of National Service. The
temptation in reading this report is to conclude that [p189] unhealthy
urban and industrial conditions are the cause of the general debility,
of which only the acute cases are noticed in the report. But the
compilers of the document itself carefully warn the reader against
this facile explanation of the trouble, and call attention to the fact
that ill-health is also very great in rural districts. Now, short of
a plague, an epidemic, or a condition of universal degeneration, the
only factor that can possibly account for ill-health and debility being
general both in urban and rural centres, is either food or climate,
either of which is common to both kinds of population. Dismissing
climate as having been a more or less constant factor, we are therefore
left with food.
(_a_) Now it is the present writer’s conviction that much of the
present debility of the masses, or at least enough of it to account for
some discontent and disaffection, is to be ascribed to the inferiority
of the foodstuffs they consume from their earliest infancy to the very
end of their days.
In all cases where mothers cannot nurse their children, the trouble
begins at the very dawn of life, and starts by disordering a system
which is doomed to continuous disturbances until it can find ultimate
release only in death. The Baby Welfare Centres recently established
are all doing their utmost, it is true, to combat this evil, but they
have to fight not merely against the ignorance of parents and of
local doctors, but above all against the criminal unscrupulousness
of commercial food proprietors. Everywhere advertisements are to be
read concerning foods of which it is claimed [p190] that they are
an adequate substitute for mother’s milk, and there is no law, no
regulation, and no official system of instruction, to prevent ignorant
mothers from being taken in by these means of publicity.
The organisations, small and inadequate as they are, which are
attempting to fight this evil, are entirely the result of private
enterprise. The Government of the country does nothing to secure
infants against the double and pernicious operation of these two first
enemies of life, Ignorance and its Commercial Exploitation. As growing
children and adults, these infants continue under the debilitating
influences of their earliest days by being fed on every kind of
adulterated food, from impure bread to faked jam; and even when they
have had the good fortune to have been reared at the breast, their
regimen of inferior food in later life quickly undermines the solid
basis of their constitutions.
_It is impossible without some expert knowledge or advice to obtain for
love or money a pure loaf of bread in many parts of England to-day._
The fat that is eaten with that bread, and which together with the
bread forms a most important part of the food of working-class
children, _when it consists of vegetable margarine, is almost useless
to the body_.
The various tinned fruits and meats (except perhaps tomatoes) which
are also much favoured among working-class women, owing to the ease
with which they can be prepared for table, also constitute inferior
food, owing to the method by which they are canned. [p191]
The jams, far from containing pure fruit, frequently contain no fruit
at all.
Add to this, that the liquor--tea--which is chiefly drunk with these
inferior foods, is in every way deleterious, being neither a food,
nor a tonic, nor even an innocuous means of quenching thirst; and
debility, far from being an exceptional occurrence, would seem almost
an inevitable static condition of our masses.
(_b_) But what commercial adulteration of food, and the commercial
production of inferior food, may sometimes fail to accomplish, the
ignorance of the working-class housewife usually manages to consummate
in the secret privacy of her kitchen.
There every imaginable error is perpetrated, even in dealing with
first-class foods, such as butcher’s meat and fresh vegetables; and the
resulting deteriorated compounds only confirm, in the individual child
or adult, a condition which by the adulteration of other foodstuffs we
are doing our utmost to establish.
The ignorance among the female population of England, both rich and
poor, regarding the _time_ during which meat or vegetables, or milk,
or fruit, or fats, can safely be allowed to boil, or to stew, or to
simmer, without losing every particle of goodness they ever possessed,
is frankly astonishing. One wonders how an occupation such as cooking
could possibly have remained by tradition in the hands of a particular
sex for generations, without more knowledge, more wisdom--even more
rule-of-thumb wisdom--having collected around it, than has collected
around the domestic [p192] culinary practices of the British
housewife.[37]
Not only is she ignorant of the right thing; she is deeply, firmly,
self-righteously and aggressively convinced of the wrong. It is
a compliment, an act of grace, to give your husband, your eldest
daughter, or your visitor “a nice, strong cup of tea.” Mutton is nicest
when it has been boiled to shreds in an effort to attain tenderness.
Curries are stimulating even with twice or thrice cooked meat as their
most substantial ingredient. Cabbages and, in fact, all greens, should
never be eaten _raw_ (even the foolish local practitioner adds his mite
of wisdom to the housewife’s in pronouncing this practice injurious to
the digestion), though this is really the only form in which they are
useful and palatable to the human organism; they must be boiled and
boiled in water softened with soda, until the obnoxious steam produced
by the process infects the whole house, and ultimately whole streets
and neighbourhoods.
Repletion being the principal object aimed at, the means of effecting
it are not considered too nicely, and adequate quantities are provided,
which, however, can only gravely disorganise and disturb the alimentary
canal of all those who cloy their appetites by means of them.
In adult life, in addition to strong tea, there also enters the
further disturbing influence of impure beer or spirits; so that it is
only with the most extreme good luck that any man, woman or youth in
the working-classes, can maintain sufficient health to remain at their
daily occupations, not to mention resist and throw off disease, enjoy
life and keep good spirits.
No amount of tinkering at working-class children’s teeth, or of careful
scientific medical treatment, can ultimately cope with the steady
deterioration, which year in and year out is being caused by the
incessant consumption of inferior or badly prepared food in poor homes;
and yet it is in the highest degree romantic to suppose that by leaving
this department of life alone, it will necessarily right itself.[38]
In fact, no belief in the whole ideology of “Democracy” is more
pernicious and more crassly stupid than the belief that errors and
false practices must in the end right themselves. The natural indolence
of mankind in the mass very soon makes a supposed principle of this
kind a popular and highly appreciated stand-by in the face of difficult
problems, but it does not make it true. With the history of previous
civilisations and races before us--civilisations and races which we
are now convinced pursued error and false practices with the heartiest
and most cheerful conviction to their ultimate doom--with the evidence
of biology to hand, which shows us myriads of creatures, all the
parasites in fact, having steadily descended from superior and more
highly organised creatures, merely through having followed the line of
least resistance, it is difficult to account for the prevalence of this
utterly stupid notion that evils and errors tend to right themselves.
For of this we can feel quite certain, that all those peoples and races
who do in fact believe, and act on the belief, that their errors will
right themselves, will suffer not only extinction in their culture and
civilisation, but also ultimate evanescence in themselves.
Thus, as we have seen, quite apart from the inferiority of the raw
material she has to deal with, the working-class woman no longer knows
the simplest rule of sound culinary science, and whatever wisdom might
still have survived by pure tradition in the kitchens of the poor,
has been satisfactorily suppressed by the innovations of commerce and
industry.
To deny that the existing food conditions have any bearing upon the
spirit and therefore the temper and the outlook of the nation, is to
support the doctrine that a man’s physical condition can be independent
of his attitude of mind.
Nobody would claim that the peculiar virulence of modern Social Unrest
is entirely to be accounted for by the debility of the masses, or that
this debility is entirely due to faulty nourishment; but, on the other
hand, it would be obviously absurd to attempt to put an end to Social
Unrest without giving very serious attention to the people’s debility,
or without examining one of its chief contributory causes, which is
bad food. And any legislative measure, or economic readjustment or
reform which [p195] is brought about without some drastic provisions
calculated to meet this important factor in the trouble, is bound to
end in failure.
The temperance movement is nothing more than a helpless and
non-statesmanlike solution on Puritan lines of the liquor side of the
food question. What is required is obviously not the abolition of
fermented liquor, for that would be tantamount to depriving the people
of a necessary foodstuff,[39] but such reforms in the liquor trade as
will secure pure drinks to the masses of the nation.
It is the present writer’s conviction that if the Governments of Europe
could secure absolutely pure bread and pure fermented drinks to their
various peoples, the gravity of social unrest would immediately be
relieved. Granted that pure bread and pure fermented liquor would only
constitute a beginning (for there are numbers of other foodstuffs that
are adulterated), nevertheless, it would be a good beginning; for bread
is the principal food of the working classes, and a sound, healthy
beverage added to it would go a long way towards rehabilitating their
constitutions.
The fermented liquor recommended by the present writer would be the
old English ale of pre-Puritan days, the ale which besides being free
from the pernicious properties of hops, was made from pure _unboiled_
malt. The vice of modern beer does not consist only in the fact that
it contains properties that are injurious to the human body, such as
hops or the many harmful substitutes that are used instead of hops,
and other ingredients[40]; but chiefly in the fact that it is prepared
from boiled wort, that is to say, wort from which heat has removed all
possible trace of the necessary _vitamines_ so valuable to health. The
brewers’ objection to a re-introduction of the old ale of pre-Puritan
England will of course be this, that it _will not keep_. But what does
that matter? There are hundreds of foodstuffs that won’t keep. Does
that justify our removing all their most vital properties in order to
make them keep? Milk will not keep. Does that prevent it from being
purveyed retail to every householder in England every day? The immense
value of the old ale of England as a food and health-giving beverage
ought alone to ensure its supersession over the utterly worthless
“beer” that is universal at the present day[41]; and the fact that in
combination with pure bread, it would restore to modern people the
staple articles of diet of our mighty peasants of the Poictiers and
Agincourt period, should be enough to recommend it.
Very soon after the legal restoration of these two precious foods
to the masses, the legislation could be extended to include other
foodstuffs, and also to provide in the elementary schools for some
kind of instruction concerning the value and sound preparation of the
principal foods. And then, it is the present writer’s firm belief,
Governments would find themselves so appreciably relieved of “social
reform” problems, and of the incessant demand for measures required
to redress some grievances among the labouring classes, that they
might find more time to attend to questions of development and
reconstruction, all of which remain adjourned and neglected from one
generation to the next.
But, for this “physiology” of Social Unrest to be understood, and for
its problems to be tackled, the physique of our race will require to be
regarded very much more seriously than it is at present, and prejudices
will have to be overcome which are as deep-rooted as they are old.
There are very few of us to-day who do not cling fanatically to that
romantic ideology according to which the body of man, together with its
condition, seems out of all proportion less important than his mind and
his soul. There are few of us to-day who are sufficiently primitive,
sufficiently instinctive, to feel the same horror at the sight of
sickness in a human being as we feel at the sight of sickness in an
animal. Our bias, therefore, is all against tracing what appears to be
only a matter of discontent, like Social Unrest, partly to a bodily
cause. But it is precisely for a false belief of this kind that mankind
always has paid, and always will pay, most dearly; for even in the
uprooting of it, apart from the harm it does, much pain and frequently
much sorrow is incurred. It [p198] behoves us, therefore, to enquire
whether we do not now know too much, whether we are not now suffering
too much, any longer to refuse to explore any avenue of reform along
which it can be shown with some plausibility that we may find some
solution of our troubles; and even if, in order to take this step, we
have to question a very much cherished ideology, we may, after all,
find ourselves none the poorer for having made this daring venture, if
in the end we find that ideology to have been false.
At all events, the effort partially to solve the problem of
Social Unrest on the lines suggested in this chapter cannot in any
circumstances prove wholly fruitless; for while everybody may not
agree that food conditions in England are alarmingly bad, none it may
be presumed will question the expediency of improving them, even if
this be attempted simply with the object of perfecting and developing
the race. All those, however, who realise the deep and constant
relationship between bodily conditions and mental outlook, and who are
moreover aware of the immense disadvantages to which modern industrial
conditions, quite apart from the inherited debility of their past,
expose the masses of every Western people, must welcome any reform
which promises to remove even one among the multitude of adverse
circumstances conspiring to impoverish and to undermine the vitality
of modern nations, and hail with some satisfaction a solution, which,
while being practical, yet involves no drastic upheaval of our social
organisation.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 35: The possible spiritual causes of Social Unrest will be
found discussed in Chapter VII.]
[Footnote 36: See his speech at Manchester on Sept. 12th, 1918.]
[Footnote 37: In trying to account for this state of affairs, however,
it should not be forgotten that the entrance of women into industry,
among the proletariat, and feminism in the wealthier classes, have both
accomplished a good deal in the matter of breaking valuable domestic
traditions among women.]
[Footnote 38: For a demonstration of the damage done to food by
unskilful cooking, see the present writer’s “Man’s Descent from the
Gods” (Heinemann, 1921).]
[Footnote 39: For proofs in support of this statement, see the present
writer’s work already referred to on p. 193.]
[Footnote 40: By the Free Mash Tun Act of 1880 the regulations for
charging the duty were so framed as to leave the brewer practically
unrestricted as to the description of malt, or corn, or sugar, or
other description of saccharine substitutes which he might use in the
manufacturing and colouring of beer.]
[Footnote 41: For a confirmation of this statement, see p. 61 of the
Medical Research Committee’s Report on Accessory Food Factors. For a
more elaborate discussion upon the whole subject of old English Ale,
see the present writer’s _Defence of Aristocracy_, Chapter V.]
[p199] CHAPTER IX
THE GREAT ALTERNATIVE TO SOCIAL REFORM
“Ay, if dynamite and revolver leave you courage to be wise:
When was age so crammed with menace? Madness? Written, spoken lies?”
Tennyson--(_Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After._)
It has been man’s besetting sin, almost throughout history, to trace
whatever evils might befall him, rather to his institutions, his social
systems and his conditions, than to himself and his fellows. Many a
precious scheme of life, many a sound system, has been broken up and
abandoned, not because of its inherent badness, or of the incorrigible
vices of its design, but owing to the fact that those men who attempted
to carry it on in its last days, were neither as able nor as vigorously
endowed as those who inaugurated it and laid its foundations.
Institutions may thus outlive the quality of men, although the reverse
of this proposition, that men outlive the quality of institutions, is
always taken for granted.
If we saw a man of our acquaintance forsake house after house, however
perfectly designed and beautifully appointed; if we saw him wander
from town to town, from country to country, and even from continent to
continent, always leaving the best for something else and yet never
feeling at ease; furthermore, if we noticed that he dropped friend
after friend, relative after relative, all [p200] in bitter enmity
and anger, we might be excused if we felt tempted to suspect that his
repeated changes and upheavals were not the fault either of his houses,
his various adopted towns or countries, or his friends and relatives,
but were due to some obscure infirmity in the man himself, some hidden
though serious hepatic affection, which rendered him radically unfit to
be happy or contented anywhere.
And we should arrive at this conclusion, not necessarily out of any
feeling of bitterness or hostility towards him personally, but rather
because we should consider it irrational, in the face of such chronic
restlessness and irascibility, to ascribe all the blame consistently
and repeatedly to his conditions, and not occasionally to the man
himself.
Now it is a most remarkable thing that in the contemplation of similar
repeated changes in the life of a nation or a people, the average
observer is not nearly so prone to be guided by the highest standards
of rational thinking. On the contrary, as often as changes take place,
he is prepared to ascribe the necessity for the change, not to the
inferiority of the men who ushered it in, but always to the inferiority
of the institutions or systems that were superseded. The unsupported
prejudice involved in the idea of “Progress” compels him, as it were,
to assume that, since all changes must be for the better, any change
that has occurred in our social system or our institutions in the
past must of necessity imply a just condemnation of the systems or
institutions that formerly existed.
Never does the average observer dream of suspecting that the proposed
change of a system or of an institution may be the surest [p201]
possible proof of the inferiority of the men who are trying to carry it
on. Inferiority to what?--Inferiority to the men who originally founded
the system or institution.
Now the prevalence of this curious bias ought to make everyone
profoundly suspicious of all those who clamour for radical alterations
in our established systems and institutions. In any case it ought to
make every thinking man demur before he acquiesces too readily in the
conclusion that it is our institutions and systems that are wrong, and
not man himself.
For, suppose that the men who declare things are wrong, merely confess
their own inferiority by this declaration, how can their recommendation
regarding a new order of society be accepted with confidence? How can
anyone hope that their schemes can possibly be better than those they
have shown themselves incapable of continuing?
At all moments, then, when there is much loud talking about the
transformation of society and the modification or overthrow of her
institutions, the wise reformer, the cautious innovator, will turn his
scrutiny upon man himself, and endeavour to find out first what reforms
and improvements must take place in him, before any scheme of society
whatsoever, no matter how perfect, can hope to be a success.
And it is in this direction that the present writer hopes that
research and inquiry will be prosecuted in the immediate future. The
examination of institutions and systems is not nearly as important at
the present juncture as the examination of modern man himself, and
if this examination be conducted [p202] on the principle _that it is
possible for institutions to outlive the quality of man_, certain
valuable and extremely fruitful discoveries cannot fail to be made.
For instance, in a previous chapter it was pointed out that a mood of
stubborn dejection had fallen upon civilised man, and it was suggested
that this was due to the complete collapse of the ideals, beliefs, and
principles, by which he had allowed himself to be inspired and led
for many generations. Now if this analysis be correct, it might be
profitable to inquire into the origin and nature of ideals, beliefs and
principles; and if, as the present writer does not doubt, it were found
that man’s ideals, beliefs, and guiding principles are always created
for him by the great examples of his species, it might be asked why the
human species has ceased from producing great examples. What has come
over man that he should have suffered a collapse of his leading ideals,
beliefs and principles, and yet have no one to give him others in their
place? Has the species suffered a general decline? Has it sent forth
its highest shoots, and is it now exhausted?
And, if these questions seemed to be sufficiently solemn and important
to be pursued with energy and resolution, the causes of racial
exhaustion might possibly become the subject of special investigation.
A provisional question mark might be set against every modern ideal
and value, in order to determine whether perhaps it might not be
responsible for the social exhaustion of civilised man.
So far from assuming that all our institutional changes have
necessarily been progressive, [p203] the value to the race of every
more or less recent innovation might be tested and proved.
For instance, the nature of “democracy” might be treated critically.
It might be questioned whether there is not in all democratic order
a tendency to reduce and truncate the ultimate gamut of human
capabilities. While population has multiplied as never before, under
the democratic régime, it might be questioned, perhaps with some
profit, whether any section of this increasing mass of humanity, or
any individual of that section, has attained to that old magnitude, in
volition, intellect and health, which human nature once regarded as
easily within the compass of its powers. And if the investigation of
this question seemed ultimately to point to a negative reply, it might
then become necessary to weigh the alleged advantages of democratic
principles against the consequences to man of this ascertained loss of
greatness and lofty capabilities.
Again, the whole of our accepted notions of charity, humaneness and
compassion, might be subjected to a searching inquiry. Since it is a
certain unknown but suspected infirmity of man that may be the cause
of his complete dissatisfaction with his institutions and systems,
nothing, however sacred, should be left unscrutinised, untested. It
might be asked whether we have not been wrong all the time to allow our
second-rate, third-rate, fourth-rate, and x-rate fellow-creatures to
multiply and to live in our midst unbranded. In view of the alarming
reports on the nation’s health recently published by the Government; in
view of the fact that a [p204] British Prime Minister, and no society
crank or faddist, has found it necessary to warn us that an “A1 nation
cannot be built up out of C3 men”; in view, moreover, of the immense
burden that the nation shoulders annually for the maintenance of
lunatics, incurables, cripples, and other congenital degenerates, it
might be asked, almost with trepidation, whether the healthy sections
of the nation are even now plentiful enough and vigorous enough to be
saved and secured from further infection.
Since we have been brought to this pass by the most sacred ideals and
principles of the past, these ideals and principles would require to be
reverently taken up and examined.
Again with regard to the idea of non-selective human
multiplication,--apart from any suspicion it may have incurred of
increasing disease or degeneration,--it might reasonably be questioned
whether any species of animal could for long allow itself the liberties
that we have allowed ourselves, in fostering undesirable examples of
our kind and in scientifically persuading even the half-reluctant to
live, without ultimately having to pay for it very severely indeed.
What breed of sheep, what breed of horses, what breed of common
barn-fowl, could have been abandoned to the promiscuous mating alone
(not to mention other errors) to which modern man has long been
abandoned, without suffering ultimate degeneration?
A very fruitful method of inquiry would consist in investigating to
what extent modern society may have failed as an organism through
pursuing too ardently survival values alone, uncontrolled by æsthetic
survival [p205] values. In plain English, has modern man pursued
survival at all costs, even at the cost of caring _how_ he survived,
or what manner of man he was when he did survive? The check of the
æsthetic survival values might have prevented many a step, which though
it insured the survival of abundant numbers, yet removed some grace,
some desirable quality, from the form or mind of man.[42]
Biologists tell us that organisms frequently survive in the animal
kingdom at the cost of qualities, which, from the human standpoint
may seem eminently desirable. Thus the tape-worm is said to be the
descendant of a race that once led a nobler and more independent
existence. Survival is thus frequently purchased at too heavy a cost.
Is it possible that by the observance of survival values alone,
unchecked by æsthetic values, man has lost, or is rapidly losing,
valuable qualities that once made a higher and more lasting kind of
civilisation possible?
The daily lives, the food and the drink of the whole population,
particularly its rural elements, might be advantageously criticised
from the standpoint of their body-building and health-giving qualities;
also from the standpoint of their ultimate influence in moulding the
mind and tempering the heart of the people. After many centuries of
overemphasis of the soul’s importance, attention might be bestowed with
pre-Puritan fervour upon the body and its needs.
In these various ways might the scrutiny of earnest and profound
reformers be profitably concentrated upon the most probable cause
of the apparent decay and disease of modern institutions and
systems,--that is to say, upon man himself, and upon the noble and
stirring task of making him once more whole, if it is indeed his
infirmity from which civilisation is suffering. In this direction alone
is there any hope; in this direction alone is there any practical
chance of achieving lasting success.
The immense difficulties that the problem of man himself immediately
presents, need not deter even the most faint-hearted from embarking
upon the enterprise; for it is surely possibly even for the most
craven to be induced to choose between two alternatives. And what is
the alternative to the measures here proposed?--To continue tinkering
at mankind’s institutions and systems, as we have been doing for
the last three hundred years? To continue tampering with society’s
laws and customs instead of with her units? These methods may sound
more simple and more commensurate with the powers of blundering and
childish fingers, but is the simpler, the easier method, always to be
the more _practical_, merely because it is simple and easy, and quite
irrespective of its ultimate effectiveness? Is “practical” synonymous
with elementary or infantile? Is a procedure “practical” because it
appeals immediately and vividly to a room full of babies?
Precisely because the true causes of modern anarchy, disaffection and
disunion, probably lie much deeper beneath the surface than established
social and economic conditions, there is a danger that the latter
will [p207] be seized upon and shattered, in the endeavour to achieve
reform. The blindest can apprehend their existence, and to the blind,
holding is seeing.
But, if the infirmity is man’s, how can it be “practical” to reform
his institutions and systems? You might as well begin rebuilding your
palaces because your monarchs have failed you.
Nor can it be argued with any cogency, at this time of day, either
that the materials are not to hand for pursuing the inquiries outlined
above, or that the prescriptions for a recovery of man’s lost quality
have not been foreshadowed if not definitely specified. Of modern and
ancient thinkers there have been enough to show, at least in broad
outline, the methods that should be adopted for almost any contingency.
Nobody would deny that the undertaking bristles with immense
difficulties, but even if the science that will help us to accomplish
it had to be created _pari passu_ with our attempts at overcoming these
difficulties it would still be worth while, since it is quite possible
that it is the only great alternative.
So much for _man_ as the suspected primary cause of the malady of
modern civilisation.
If now we turn to other details (other than material and economic
conditions of course) in the fabric of modern life, which would strike
even the most myopic as requiring instant correction, they spring in
such profusion before our eyes, that it would be impossible in the
compass of this small and elementary treatise, to refer to any except
the most salient.
One of the most salient is the absurd [p208] attempt that society
has made during the last, or commercial and industrial era, in modern
Europe, to build a harmonious and united community upon the principle
of _cleavage_. Doomed to failure from the start, as it was, this vice
of cleavage, that is at the root of the failure of modern society,
has not yet,--no, not even at this late hour,--been recognised and
condemned by all.
Let it be thoroughly understood what is here meant by the principle of
cleavage. Cleavage is not to be confused with classification. You may
subject your children or your parents to classification, while they are
all hanging affectionately on each other’s necks; but if you group them
by cleavage, the idea “asunder,” is bound to follow. The classification
of a population, therefore, does not necessarily leave any clefts or
chasms between the classes. If, however, you proceed by dividing up
your population on the principle of cleavage, definite clefts or chasms
between the groups are inevitable; and this is the principle upon which
the commercial and industrial Age has worked.
As the result either of the ridiculous pomposity of those who have
acquired riches by commerce or industry, or else of the questionable
title to superiority that wealth alone confers, a curious phenomenon
began to be noticeable in England during the course of the latter half
of the 17th century,--and that was a certain artificial and asinine
haughtiness among the well-to-do, which made them unable to unbend in
the presence of those whose purses were less portentously swollen. It
is suggested that this became noticeable in the latter half of the
17th [p209] century; but, truth to tell, all the causes of it were in
existence in the middle of the previous century as the result of Henry
VIII.’s vulgar and disastrous reign. Most authorities would, however,
admit that the phenomenon, as a marked innovation, became noticeable
only in the 17th century.
Theretofore, wealth and good breeding, wealth and good family, wealth
and sound instinct, wealth and good manners, had, with but few and
notorious exceptions, been the only kinds of wealth known.
Suddenly, however, with the capitalistic exploitation of the land, the
nation’s mineral resources, and her people, a new kind of wealth came
into existence, wealth utterly unconnected with anything except the
most solemn and most self-complacent vulgarity in those who possessed
it.
These people, unable to rely upon those natural distinctions that
everybody recognises at once, which compel the inferior or the fool
instinctively to refrain from importunacies, and restrain the too
familiar hand, were forced to adopt a new method of holding their
brethren, so like themselves in all but brass, satisfactorily aloof.
How did they accomplish this? Since they had no natural dignity no
innate distinction, which might have allowed them to befriend the poor
with impunity, without any fear that is to say, of “losing caste”;
since they could not be classified apart from their poorer fellows
except by means of the ticket “wealth”; they invented barriers and
gulfs which were designed to be as wide and insuperable as their fear
of being taken for their poorer fellows was great. Being unable to rely
[p210] upon classification, they proceeded by means of cleavage.
This foolish and foolhardy expedient on the part of the vulgar rich,
which has survived to this day, has led to the absurd anomaly of a
society,--a community if you please,--in which a whole complicated
series of stratified groups, never meet, never in any circumstances
communicate with one another, except with the most ludicrous grimaces,
compressed lips, whispers, frowns, embarrassment, fear, contempt, and
hatred.
The wonder is, not that society constituted on these lines is now
falling to pieces; the miracle is that it should have lasted so long.
Think of it! Think of the advantage of friendly and free communication!
Think of how much is gained, even among equals, by constant and
unrestrained intercourse! Reckon the inestimable profit that a man
of minor attainments can derive from free and easy association with
his superior, and _vice versâ_. And then ponder the thousands of
unbreakable links that such relationships would have forged between the
classes in every village, town, city, country and province throughout
the Empire!
When is it that a man ceases to believe in natural distinctions
between men? When is it he begins to suspect that there is nothing
above him?--Only when, for a very long time, he has been deprived of
any intimate knowledge of superiority, or of any association with
superiority in his own form.
Can we wonder at the absurd decoy cries of modern Europe,--at
the cry for Equality above all? Can we marvel any longer at class
hatred? How does a man best learn [p211] the fundamental law of
natural inequality?--Only by moving out of his circle and finding a
sufficiently friendly welcome when he does so, to be able to learn from
what he sees.
The principle of cleavage instead of classification,--this is one of
the vices for which we have to thank the vulgar rich of the past, and
their kith and kin of the present day. But it is one of the first
brutal stupidities that must be abolished if anything approaching an
orderly and harmonious society is to be established.
Another salient error of modern society, at least in England, has been
the consistent indifference shown by successive Governments towards the
steady encroachment of the huge cities of the nation upon their rural
environs. Like monster cankers these vast urban complexes of England
are allowed to spread north, south, east and west, year in, year out,
as if for all the world, it were an advantage, a boon, in fact the most
unspeakable blessing, that every inch of green pasture land, of golden
cornfield, should be converted as quickly as possible into muddy,
smoky, stuffy and hideous thoroughfares.
If town life were so eminently desirable, if the kind of man and woman
who live and breed amid city and suburban shoddy, were without question
the proudest examples of the nation’s blood; if town occupations, town
temptations, and town pastimes were the healthiest, the most ennobling,
the most productive of useful virtues, we might suspect the various
Governments, that have tolerated the spread of this urban miasma, to
have winked their eye knowingly at what was, [p212] after all, only a
sentimental grievance, a sort of poet’s plaint, an artist’s loss of
picturesque compositions.
But seeing that nowadays one is reduced almost to wandering about hat
in hand begging for _one_,--just one,--redeeming point in favour not
only of town life, town conditions and town charms, but also of one’s
own fellow townsmen themselves; it must strike people as a little odd
that the accredited authorities for generations should have been so
completely lacking in any definite policy concerning this all-important
question.
Is England to become one long ugly street, full of ugly, toothless
people, pretending that their clammy urban passions are something more
exalted than the rut of rats?
You would have thought that a consideration of the food situation
alone, apart from any other aspect of the matter, would have induced
the rulers of the nation, long ago, to adopt some means to encourage
rural, and to discourage urban life; and yet, as if with malice
prepense, all the efforts of past Governments have secretly been made
in the very opposite direction.
One is almost inclined to cavil less at the growth of urban centres and
their unwieldy proportions, than at the absurd lack of policy towards
this question which continues to be shown by the legislature.
If it be a desirable movement, then by all means promote it openly; if,
on the other hand, it can only fill every patriot’s breast with alarm,
then, be sure to frame a definite policy about it, and do so quickly.
The present writer can only see disaster [p213] ahead, if these
large urban centres are allowed to spread any further, and he would
feel inclined to inaugurate immediately, a movement for strictly
circumscribing their area. Concurrently with this drastic move, he
would encourage by all means in his power, the adoption of rural
occupations and homes by the proletariat.
“But what about the increasing population?” cry a hundred voices,--as
if an increasing population were a sort of elemental phenomenon like
the rising tide, or the waxing and waning of the moon, that no man can
help.
The reply to this question brings the author to the last of the
matters of detail with which he proposes to deal, and therefore to his
concluding remarks.
The question of population, like that of the relative desirability
of urban or rural life, is one to which it is madness to maintain an
attitude of indifference or unconcern. The rulers of this country can
as little afford to ignore the consideration of the multiplication of
its inhabitants, as they can afford to ignore the consideration of
the nation’s finances. And the more the State arrogates to itself the
rôle of a beneficent and divine Providence,--that is to say, the more
it interferes with the natural consequences of improvidence in the
matter of bringing forth children, either by helping indigent parents,
or by mitigating the hardships of the unmarried mother, the more it
is entitled to impose and to inflict penalties upon irresponsible and
wanton procreators of children.
If this is true of the healthy and the sound, however, how much
more true ought it to be [p214] of the unhealthy and the degenerate!
Again, in regard to them, if the State takes upon itself to shoulder
the burden of indigent degenerates of all kinds, it is entitled to
impose limits upon their multiplication. He who pays may lay down his
conditions.
And this would remain true, whether the present system were to be
maintained, or whether it were superseded within the next quarter of a
century by Bolshevism or Communism.
Since it is the iron law of population that multiplication follows
any easing of the conditions of the indigent, either by making
earlier marriages a possibility, or by making the consequences of
early marriages tolerable, it follows that all Governments, whether
Capitalistic, Bolshevist, or Communistic, if they undertake to succour
the indigent, whose families exceed their resources, must in the end
impose certain limits upon multiplication. And where they take over the
whole burden as they do in this country, of indigent lunatics and other
degenerates, they have the right to exercise all the means at their
command for preventing degenerates from being born.
Communists and Bolshevists may scout this question, just as dishonest
vote-catching past Governments have done; but let a Labour Government
come permanently into power, let a Bolshevist minority attempt to rule
this country, and it would soon discover, what all creditable thinkers
know already, that the question of population is one about which even
the most benign government _must_ frame some definite policy. Indeed
it would soon discover the fact, which will [p215] perhaps only become
apparent to all in many years to come: that a truly benign policy in
this matter is one which at present would strike all sentimentalists,
and other Utopians as hopelessly ruthless and inhuman.
It is in the procreation of children that a man and woman’s sense of
responsibility first encounters its crucial test. For generations in
this country, men and women’s sense of responsibility in this matter
has been systematically undermined; and, as regards the procreation of
degenerates, of the unhealthy, and of the insane, it might be said that
there is literally no conscience left in modern man concerning this
crime.
It will behove all serious and patriotic governments in the future,
therefore, whether they are capitalistic or Bolshevist, to face
this pressing problem of modern times, and the vandalistic work of
centuries,--the destruction of the English working man and woman’s
sense of responsibility in regard to procreation,--will by hook or by
crook have to be repaired, and a new conscience regarding this matter
created in the breasts of all.
Thus the tasks hinted at in this short chapter are seen to be
stupendous enough, and yet which of them can possibly be accomplished
simply by the wand of the Communist, Bolshevist, or economic social
reformer?
Let no one imagine, however, that because they are beset with the
most serious difficulties, that they are therefore to be discarded as
“unpractical.” We know the extremes of stupidity to which so-called
“practical politics” has led us. Nothing is practical, that in practice
does not achieve [p216] the end desired. And since the mere change of
our institutions and systems cannot even graze the surface of these
deeper causes of unhappiness, it is simply conjuring and buffoonery
to call “practical” only those measures of reform or reconstruction,
which every gallery of schoolboys, every crowd of holiday-makers, can
recognise at a glance as at least “something done.”
The End.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 42: For an exhaustive discussion of survival values as
compared with æsthetic survival values see _Man’s Descent from the
Gods_ (Heinemann) Chapter IX.]
[p217] INDEX
Abstract terms, importance of, 12;
have no uniform meaning to-day, 13, 14, 19;
to teach meaning of, leads to instruction in true ideas, 149.
Advertisement, unscrupulous, of commercial foods, 188, 189.
Æsthetic values disregarded to-day, 205.
Agitators, their unscrupulous use of words, 181, 182.
Ale, old English, the value of, 195, 196;
the brewers’ objection to, 196.
Amputation, resorted to in desperation by the weary, 30.
Aristotle, on the desirability of a liberal education, 127 _n_.
Beer, impure, 193;
harmful properties of, 195;
utterly worthless, 196.
Beliefs, _see_ Ideals.
Bishop of London, his misuse of words, 16.
Bolshevism, a conspiracy against life, 35;
insists on compulsory labour, 93;
offers only material ideals, 162.
Bolshevist, the, an invalid, 31;
a determined opponent of life, 36.
Brahmin, the, highly respected though poor, 40.
Bread, pure loaf of, unobtainable in many parts of England, 190.
Cabbage, should be eaten raw, 192.
Catachresis, the rule in journalism, 16;
much false doctrine is, 134.
Charles I., an ideal monarch, 122.
Charwomen, charitable, do not go out on missions of comfort to the
rich, 168.
Church, the, its failure to teach sound views about life and
humanity, 129;
of the Middle Ages protected the poor and ignorant, 135;
had a sense of responsibility, 135.
Cities, large, breed misanthropy, 174, 175;
mistake of allowing, to spread indefinitely, 211-213.
Citizen, the desirable, must be well conducted, 126.
Cleavage, the industrial Age has worked upon the principle of, 208;
the expedient of the vulgar rich, 210, 211;
must be abolished if harmony is to be restored, 211.
Communism, a conspiracy against Life, 35;
its unscrupulous appeal to malcontents, 112;
offers only material ideals, 162.
Condorcet, not a thinker but a mathematician, 67.
Cro-Magnons, doubtful whether modern man is better or better off than
the, 158.
Culture, a common, produces a common tongue, 11;
might be saved by a re-definition of words, 26.
David, his moral insistence on justice, 47, 48.
Decline, means retrograde development, 34.
Definition, of words desirable, 21;
and might avert revolution, 25, 26.
Degenerates, hate Life as she is, 59.
Democratic institutions, put a damper on superiority, 174, 203.
De Quincey, on poetry, 83. [p218]
Despondency, prevalent to-day, 153;
national, leads to social unrest, 156;
not due to a material cause alone, 157;
but to a lack of satisfying ideals, 158, 159, 161;
the only cure for, new values and a new faith, 161;
economic changes cannot cure, 163;
due to false values, 173;
cannot be cured by social reform, 177.
Development, the law of higher life, 33, 34.
Disease, European attitude of toleration towards, totally wrong, 173.
Disraeli, his speech on the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, 95.
Education, failure of modern, 123;
the object of State, the rearing of worthy citizens, 126;
should be a training in manners rather than in the acquisition of
facts, 127, 128;
elementary, does not teach sound views about Life and Humanity,
129-131;
does not even succeed in teaching means of intercourse, 131;
importance of knowledge of native tongue in, 132;
elementary, an expensive farce, 143.
Education Act of 1870, introduced cheap literature, 15.
Emigration, the violence of, 107.
English, importance of teaching, 145;
better teachers wanted for, 146.
Equality, quite meaningless to-day, 24;
the cry of, can provoke real emotion, 61;
originally borrowed from mathematics, 62;
and has no meaning except in mathematics, 65, 76;
of opportunity, the fallacy of, 67-71;
not desired by the beautiful, able or desirable, 72;
a powerful weapon in the hands of the discontented, 73;
due to indolence and a belief in Justice, 74;
had a definite meaning at the end of the 18th century, 75;
a decoy cry when superiority is extinct, 210.
Errors, do not right themselves, 194.
Eugenists, their moral interpretation of phenomena, 47, 48.
Fatalism, the, of modern Europe, 95.
Feminism, has broken valuable domestic traditions, 192 _n_.
Food, inferior, purveyed to the masses, 123;
ill-prepared, at bottom of physiological causes of ill-health and
social unrest, 188, 189, 190, 194, 197;
unscrupulous advertisements of commercial, 188, 189;
suggested reforms in, 195;
question of, should lead to discouragement of urban development,
212.
Freedom, Rousseau’s misunderstanding of, 17;
now meaningless, 21, 23;
but provokes wild enthusiasm, 22;
Rousseau’s idea of, 22;
a wildly fantastic idea, 77;
babies have no, to choose their destiny, 78;
a will o’ the wisp in manhood, 80;
nonexistent even in childhood, 81;
strength has no, 83-85;
the cry of the weak, 84, 85;
the only circumstances when it can have any meaning, 86-89, 92, 94;
the frequency of these circumstances, 88;
real, greater under the Tudors than new, 90;
political, a deception, 90-92.
Gambetta, his “_justice immanente_,” 44, 45, 182;
a sentimentalist, 57.
Gissing, George, on the comparative happiness of the poor, 169.
Happiness, is relative, 169;
has little to do with material conditions, 170, 172.
Humanitarianism, an inverted form of cruelty, 174. [p219]
Ideals, lack of satisfying, leads to social unrest, 158, 159, 161;
loss of, makes words connected with them meaningless, 160;
tyranny of, the most powerful, 179, 180, 183.
Ill-health, Lloyd George on national, 186, 204;
a fundamental cause of social unrest, 187, 188, 194;
great in rural districts owing to bad food, 189;
an inevitable static condition of the masses, 191.
Indolence, may avert disaster in England but not on the Continent, 24;
demands equality, 74.
Industrialism, creates besotting occupations, 89.
Institutions, often outlive the quality of men, 199-202.
Japan, suicide in, 175.
Jefferson, imbibed much nonsense from France, 61 _n_;
a disciple of Condorcet, 67.
Journalism, a cause of present day muddle, 15;
makes catachresis the rule, 16.
Justice, quite meaningless to-day, 24;
necessary for belief in equality, 44, 74;
the abstraction of a moralist, 45;
Gambetta’s _justice immanente_, 44, 45, 182;
modern idea of, 46;
and its moral basis, 46-50;
meaningless when applied to the universe, 52;
unknown outside human society, 53, 54;
a myth, 57, 58;
reign of, a visionary ideal, 181.
Labour, dissatisfaction of, 155.
Language, confusion of, leads to revolution, 14, 15, 17;
and to impossibility to lead or be led, 15;
disease of, everywhere rampant, 25;
importance of understanding one’s own, 133, 134;
a knowledge of, the only means of curbing the press, 136;
the English, should be chief subject in State schools, 137, 140.
Liberty, quite meaningless to-day, 24.
Life, has a descending tendency, 33;
development the law of higher, 33;
hopelessly unjust and unmoral, 51-53;
as she is, hated by degenerates, 59;
the enjoyment of, largely æsthetic, 117;
inequality necessary to the charm of, 118;
itself attacked by the Socialist, 119.
Lloyd George, on national ill-health, 186.
Locke, John, put learning last in education, 127 _n_.
Love, cannot be produced by word of command, 175, 176.
Luther, a slave to his own strength, 83.
Man, Rousseau’s misunderstanding of, 17, 18, 23;
modern, tired in body and spirit, 27-29;
his sickness and degeneracy responsible for decline of our
institutions, 31;
made responsible by moralists for the injustices of Life, 50;
his moral interpretation of the world, 51;
modern, essentially democratic, 96;
and suffering from exhaustion, 156;
man, not his institutions wrong to-day, 201-202;
all reform should begin with, himself, 206, 207.
Manners, education in, most essential, 127;
no attention given to, in elementary education, 128, 129, 131;
lack of, falls with greater severity on poor than on rich, 129.
Margarine, vegetable, almost useless to the body, 190.
Mathematician, the, a hopeless psychologist, 62;
dangerous as soon as he deals with humanity, 67. [p220]
Mediocrities, alone “free” to choose a calling, 80.
Mediocrity, can only rule in a mediocre way, 184.
Middle Ages, had a common culture, 12;
protected the poor and ignorant, 134.
Mill, John Stuart, proved that Parliament is not representative, 91,
92 _n_.
Misanthropy, bred by overcrowding of large cities, 174-175.
Monks, the mendicant, lost power when they became rich, 41.
Napoleon, on the cause of the Revolution, 72;
and the lawyers, 82;
a slave to his own strength, 83;
what freedom meant to, 86.
Nature, misunderstood by Rousseau and the Victorian poets, 17, 18;
utterly immoral, 51-53;
innately unjust, 55, 59;
violence supreme in, 99.
Negro slaves, committed suicide on British ships, 175.
Parliament, quite unrepresentative, 91, 92.
Pessimism, takes form of economic struggle among the masses and
madness and religious fervour among the rich, 162.
_See also_ Despondency.
Pessimist, the, can alone logically assail Private Property, 36.
Physical conditions, disregarded by modernity, 186.
Poor, the, know certain truths owing to their contact with reality,
130;
social reform directed towards, alone, 165;
not more unhappy than the rich, 166-169.
Population, problem of growth of, 213;
definite policy necessary regarding, 214;
a ruthless policy regarding, probably necessary, 215.
Poverty, to-day entails besotting and heartrending work, foul
surroundings and ignorance, 39.
Power, the proper equipment of, 42.
“Practical,” the password of the stupidest beliefs, 178 _n_;
the foolishness of, reforms, 216.
Press, the, its enormous power to-day, 134;
does not protect the poor and ignorant, 135;
has no sense of responsibility, 136;
a knowledge of language the only means of curbing the, 136;
modern education leads to omnipotence of, 137.
Private property, assailed by present Muddle Age, 31;
a principle of Life, 32, 35;
the principle of, still believed in by the masses, 32, 35;
can be logically assailed only by the pessimist, 36;
among animals, 36;
abuse of, to-day, 37;
the oldest of human principles, 38;
evil results of, to-day, 38-39;
but these not inherent in the principle of, 40.
Procreation, injustice rooted in the very act of, 56, 57;
means violence, 102-113, 125;
society cannot regulate, 109;
inadvisable to meddle with, 112;
limitation of, or deliberate sacrifice can alone eliminate
suffering, 114;
“Down with,” should be the cry of the Socialist, 120;
modern lack of responsibility concerning, 215.
Profiteering, an act of violence, 122.
Progress, stupidity a form of, 14;
the last 19th century ideal to perish, 158;
belief in, natural to those who believe in a beneficent deity, 159.
Psycho-analysis, revelations of, in cases where procreative instinct
has been checked, 109 _n_. [p221]
Reading, should involve discernment, 139;
real, not taught in State schools, 139;
teaching of English necessary for, 145.
Religion, comforts people for the sufferings of others, 50.
Renaissance, a period of social unrest, 155.
Revolution, due to confusion of language, 14, 15, 17, 19.
Rich, the, their truth-proof environment, 130;
show their misery in neurasthenia, hedonism, etc., 165;
as unhappy as the poor, 166-169.
Right, quite meaningless to-day, 24.
Romanticism, destroys happiness and order, 183;
romantic not to suspect physiological causes for unrest, 188.
Rousseau, his misunderstanding of words led to French Revolution, 17;
falsifies evidence, 23;
a sentimentalist, 52;
his meaningless phrase about freedom, 77, 82.
Rulers, their duty to assuage violence, 122.
Russia, revolution in, fomented by starvation, 185.
Schools, elementary, curriculum in, 141-144;
suggested reform of curriculum, 145-151;
probable good results of this, 151, 152.
Socialism, a conspiracy against Life, 35;
must if honest insist on compulsory labour, 93;
offers only material ideals, 162.
Socialist, the, an invalid, 31;
a determined opponent of Life, 36;
compassionate for the sufferings of mankind, 97;
his desire to eliminate violence, 98;
does not reckon with the basic natural element of procreation, 110;
cannot accept the means by which alone violence can be eliminated
from society, 115;
wars against Life itself, 119;
exploits stigma attaching to modern success, 124.
Social Reform, the only question on which modernity is unanimous, 164;
but directed only towards the poor, 164;
aims only at elevation of standard of living of the poor, 165;
directed towards one class only, 172;
cannot cure despondency, 177;
falsely thought to be “practical,” 178 _n_.
Social unrest, due to despondency, 155, 156;
caused by ill-health, 187, 188, 194, 197.
Starvation, foments revolt, 185.
Strength, has no choice, 82;
or freedom, 83-85;
except in certain cases, 85.
Stupidity, increasing, 14.
Suffering, necessary so long as society is based on violence, 113,
114;
can only be eliminated by restricting procreation, 114;
in modern society not borne by the unworthiest, 124.
Success, is not to-day connected with superiority, 43 _n_;
stigma attaching to modern, 124.
Sweating, an act of violence, 122.
Tea, in every way deleterious, 191.
Temperance movement, a helpless and Puritanical solution of the
liquor question, 195.
Tyranny, of ideas, the most powerful, 179, 180, 183.
Ugliness, increasing, of modern Europe kills love, 177.
Values, transvaluation of, still possible, 42, 43;
the vulgar, of modern society, 124, 125;
survival, alone too ardently followed to-day, 204, 205. [p222]
Vanity, responsible for revolution, 73.
Victorian Poets, their misunderstanding of Nature, 171.
Violence, the, of modern wealth, 42;
the desire of Socialists to do away with, 98, 100;
supreme in Nature and essential to life, 99;
cannot be eliminated even from Socialist State, 102, 104;
inherent in procreation, 102-108, 125;
the, of emigration, 107;
necessarily entails suffering, 113;
necessary for the charm of life, 116;
man-made deeds of, 122, 123.
Voluntary actions, generally associated with weak and useless people,
82.
Vote, the, does not secure freedom, 91.
Wealth, to-day tends to get into the hands of the unworthy, 38;
and those who use it unscrupulously, 39;
was not always respected _per se_, 40, 41;
to-day a curse owing to false values, 42;
connected generally with vulgarity since the 17th century, 209.
Women, the supposed injustice of their lot, 46;
less social than men, 48;
the ignorance of English, about cooking, 191.
Words, may be used as missiles, 13;
may inspire uniform action, 20.
Working-classes, their inarticulateness, 132, 133;
their women’s ignorance of cooking, 191.
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