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Title: Thrasymachus
or the future of morals
Author: C. E. M. Joad
Release date: August 25, 2024 [eBook #74315]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1926
Credits: Produced by Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THRASYMACHUS ***
THRASYMACHUS
THRASYMACHUS
OR
The Future of Morals
BY
C. E. M. JOAD
[Illustration]
New York
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 Fifth Avenue
Copyright 1926
BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
_All Rights Reserved_
_First Printing_ _December, 1925_
_Second Printing_ _March, 1926_
_Printed in the United States of America_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. MORALITY AS THE INTEREST OF THE STRONGER 1
II. HERD MORALITY AND THE NEW TYRANNY OF THOUGHT 13
III. THE NEW LIBERTY OF ACTION 37
IV. THE COMING CLASH 57
THRASYMACHUS
CHAPTER I
MORALITY AS THE INTEREST OF THE STRONGER
Thrasymachus appears in the first book of Plato’s _Republic_, in
which the speakers discuss the nature of Justice. Several tentative
definitions of Justice are given, which Socrates has no difficulty
in showing to be inadequate by the peculiarly irritating methods
of dialectic for which the Athenians so excusably poisoned him.
Thrasymachus then breaks in. He is a blustering, overbearing personage,
who makes long speeches instead of answering Socrates’ questions, and,
when driven into a corner, charges the latter rather irrelevantly with
having a bad cold and omitting to use his handkerchief.
Required to sustain an unpopular thesis, he is not unnaturally
represented as an offensive person. The trick is an old one and argues
well for Plato’s sense of dramatic fitness. It should not, however,
blind us to the plausibility of Thrasymachus’ position. Justice, he
says, is the interest of the stronger. Asked how he maintains this
view, he points out that the stronger control the government and make
the laws. These laws are not unnaturally made in their own interest;
in other words, matters are so contrived that, by the mere process of
obeying the laws, citizens are led to further the interests of those
who govern them. Morality, which is the name we give to law-abiding
conduct, is, therefore, a device on the part of the rulers to ensure
subservience and contentment on the part of their subjects. Since
subservient subjects are a joy and a credit to intelligent rulers, we
may say that justice, and indeed morality in general, is the interest
of the stronger.
The view that morality is unnatural to human beings and is imposed
by law in the teeth of primitive instincts which are fundamentally
non-moral, recurs at pretty regular intervals throughout the recorded
history of what passes for human thought. It rests upon what is called
the social contract theory of society, and leads to the conclusion that
human nature is fundamentally wicked.
The life of man in a state of nature was, as the philosopher Hobbes
tells us, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” His hand was
against his fellows and every man’s hand was against him. Men acted
offensively[1] towards each other as and when they pleased, and were
restrained by nothing but fear for their own safety. Finding this state
of affairs intolerable, men agreed to renounce their natural right to
act offensively towards their fellows on condition that their fellows
made a similar concession as regards themselves. The best thing of all,
of course, was to do what you liked to others without their having the
right to retaliate. Since this seemed impracticable, the next best
thing was to renounce the full liberty to do what one liked, seeing
that it was attended by the obviously unpleasant consequence to oneself
of a similar liberty in others, and to venture only upon those actions
that the law allowed. Society then was a _pis aller_. Your neighbour,
it was true, could not harm you, but then no longer could you work
your own sweet will upon your neighbour. Men lived at peace with one
another, not because they were naturally peaceable and law abiding, but
because they feared the consequences of being found out if they were
not. Once that fear of consequences was removed, they would revert to
their primitive, natural wickedness. Let a man, for example, learn how
to become invisible at will and, as Plato points out, no virgin would
be safe, no strong box unrifled. Man, then, is made moral by law; he is
not moral by nature.
[1] The term ‘acting offensively’ in this connection is used to cover
primitive conduct of the kind which is supposed to attract wicked
and violent men, as, for example, carrying off your neighbour’s
wife, raping his daughter, stealing his spoons, bashing in or
otherwise mutilating his face, and so forth.
Now the man who makes the laws is in one sense like the man who has
learnt how to become invisible. I do not mean that he can break the
laws with impunity, but he can see to it that he has no incentive to
break them. Thus we have the majestic impartiality of the modern law
which forbids rich and poor alike to sleep in doorways. He can also, as
Thrasymachus points out, ensure that, so long as others keep them, his
own power will be automatically safeguarded. And, since the law is at
once the prop and the mirror of the public opinion of the community,
and, since the public opinion of the community is in matters of conduct
at once the guardian and the arbiter of conventional morality, we may
further say that the habit of acting in a way of which the public
opinion of the community approves will be found to conduce to the
maintenance of the _status quo_, and hence to the interests of those
whom the _status quo_ suits.
In the early eighteenth century Bernard Mandeville revived and
elaborated the doctrine of Thrasymachus. Society was devised by
skilful politicians for their own advantage. This they hoped chiefly
to secure by the spread of what was called morality. Addressing
themselves, therefore, to men’s pride, they pointed out that man had
always considered himself to be superior to the brute beasts. Yet, if
he indulged his passions as soon as he conceived them and gave way
alike to sensual desire and violent rage, wherein did his superiority
consist? Surely in order to demonstrate their superiority men must
learn to master their appetites and restrain their passions. The plain
man listened to the words of the flatterer, and, aspiring to live
the higher life, transformed himself from a savage into a clerk. The
process is known as civilization.
Tamed by his own conceit, man was now fit to live in society. As a
social animal he regards as virtuous every action on the part of others
by which the society to which he belongs is benefited, and stigmatizes
as vicious the indulgence of private appetites irrespective of the
public good.
But the skilful politicians who had planned the thing from the
beginning had taken good care to ensure that the good of society
should be identical with their own advantage. Uncivilized man is
ungovernable man, but man tamed and tractable, with the bees of social
virtue and social service buzzing in his citizen’s bonnet, is at once
the prop and the dupe of unscrupulous governments. “From which”, as
Mandeville says, “it is evident that the first rudiments of morality
broached by skilful politicians to make men useful to each other as
well as tractable, were chiefly contrived that the ambitious might reap
the more benefit from, and govern vast numbers of them with the greater
ease and security.”
To those who object that morality was invented by God and not by
politicians, and that the sanctions of right conduct are derived not
from social utility but from divine ordinance, it should be observed
that God himself is the most potent instrument yet devised for securing
the performance of conduct beneficial to the stronger. This at least
is true of the great bulk of the gods who have figured in history.
On this point perhaps it would be best to let the stronger speak for
themselves. Napoleon may be taken as a suitable representative.
“What is it,” he writes, “that makes the poor man think it quite
natural that there are fires in my parlour while he is dying of cold?
That I have ten coats in my wardrobe while he goes naked? That at
each of my meals enough is served to feed his family for a week? It is
simply religion which tells him that in another life I shall be only
his equal, and that he actually has more chances of being happy there
than I. Yes, we must see to it that the floors of the churches are open
to all, and that it does not cost the poor man much to have prayers
said on his tomb.” Thenceforward, though an avowed free thinker,
Napoleon set his face sternly against anti-Christian and anti-clerical
legislation.
The moral is sufficiently obvious. Men whose lives are miserable
and oppressed will either rise in revolt against their misery and
servitude, or console themselves with the prospect of generous
compensation hereafter. If steps are taken to ensure that their faith
is sufficiently lively, they will look to the next world to supply
them with the divine equivalents of the champagne and cigars they are
missing in this one, an expectation which confers obvious advantages
upon those whom it enables to monopolize the champagne and cigars.
Tack on the further belief that riches and power in this world are the
best guarantees of torment and anguish in the next, and the utility
of religion to “the stronger” is sufficiently manifest. The parable
of the needle’s eye and the story of Lazarus have been responsible
for a political and social quietism among the many, which do credit to
the political acumen of the early governing class realists who slipped
them into the text of the New Testament; and whenever that quietism has
showed signs of giving, way, a religious revival or the endowment of a
church has usually been found the most effective method of dealing with
the situation.
“In 1818 one Englishman out of seven being at that time a pauper,
Parliament voted a million of public money for the construction of
churches to preach submission to the higher powers. In the debates in
the House of Lords, Lord Liverpool took occasion to lay stress on the
social importance of guiding by this means the opinions of the masses
who were for the first time beginning to receive education.”[2] God, it
seems, is cheaper than a living wage, and no less effective as a means
of securing social contentment.
[2] _The Town Labourer_, by J. L. and Barbara Hammond.
To its superior utility in this respect we must in part attribute the
success of Christianity. Of all religions known to man it lays the
greatest stress upon those virtues whose practice is advantageous to
the stronger. It glorifies weakness and sentimentalizes over failure;
its heaven is for the submissive and the inefficient; its hell for
the dominant and the proud. Just as the charitable worker takes the
revolutionary edge off poverty by distributing coal and blankets to
the victims of acute industrial distress, so the priest promotes
submissiveness by inculcating the duties of sobriety, meekness,
unselfishness, honesty, and contentment. These virtues make good
workmen and prosperous employers, and, if they are only developed
to a sufficient degree, will enable their fortunate possessors
cheerfully to put up with bad wages, long hours, wretched houses, and
social servitude. The contrary virtues of manliness, self-reliance
and independence springing from a spirit passionately resentful of
injustice, quick to resist an injury and idealistically determined to
make a better place of this world instead of waiting passively for the
next one, are discouraged as savouring of pride and self-sufficiency,
and as showing a reprehensible tendency to look for help to oneself
instead of to God, our helper in time of trouble. The rich, to be sure,
possess these virtues; but then the message of religion is _from_, not
_to_, the rich.
But Thrasymachus has yet one more observation to make to us before
we leave him to turn to the future. The penalty of law breaking on a
small scale is prison, and of trivial wickedness, social ostracism.
But what of law-breaking on a large scale, and a wickedness powerful
enough to flout the public opinion to which others succumb? These are
the qualities of the stronger and they reap the stronger’s reward. The
rebel is the patriot who fails, the patriot is the rebel who prevails.
This is the lesson of the past, and those who read it may learn that
if only they are strong enough to succeed, they need not trouble
themselves about the respectability of their credentials. Nor has the
position altered to-day. The man who steals a leg of mutton goes to
prison for a month; the captain of industry grown rich on the profits
stolen from his workmen gets a knighthood. The man who has murdered
the wife who has annoyed him gets hanged for his pains; the man who
kills his fellow men for nourishment is denounced as a cannibal; but
the great general who plans the death of vast multitudes of his fellows
whom he has never seen, with whom he has never exchanged a cross word
and whom he does not require for purposes of sustenance, is hailed as
the saviour of his country.
Thus those who commit injustice, yet have the wit or the good fortune
to escape the consequences of their actions, climb into the seats of
the stronger and share their immunity from moral restrictions. Since,
in the mere process of gratifying their tastes, they are enabled to
give employment to large bodies of their fellows, they are accounted
public benefactors whose wealth constitutes a social asset. And,
should vestiges of the morality of the weaker, from whose ranks they
have risen, assail them in the form of conscience, they discover that
even the gods can be squared and that a liberal support of deserving
charities, coupled with the occasional endowment of a church, are
calculated――so they are assured――to procure for them as honoured a
place in the hereafter as their own successful injustice has obtained
for them in the present.
Thus Thrasymachus’ phrase “morality is the interest of the stronger”
has a double significance. In the first place, it defines the morality
of the many as that kind of conduct which promotes the interest of the
few; in the second, it assures to the successful few the honourable
reputation, the social consideration and the good repute among their
fellows, which are commonly supposed to be the rewards of morality.
CHAPTER II
HERD MORALITY AND THE NEW TYRANNY OF THOUGHT
The statement of general principles in the preceding chapter was
not undertaken solely for the pleasure of political and ethical
speculation. My concern is a more practical one. If the principle that
justice is the interest of the stronger is the explanation of what
passes for morality, what, I wish to ask, is its application in the
present and what is it likely to be in the immediate future?
In order to answer these questions we must first consider a further
one: Who in a modern community is the stronger?
The fact that we are a democracy has not escaped notice. In our own day
it is not kings, nobles, soldiers, prelates, politicians, or elected
persons who are the stronger, but the common man, the plain man, the
average man, the man in the street, whether city man or working man,
and the crowd or herd of such men. He, or rather his female counterpart
since she is more numerous even than he is, is the arbiter of morality,
and the kind of conduct which is called moral is that which is
convenient or pleasing to her.
Plato with his usual acumen foresaw the possibility of this development,
and was careful to provide for it within the bounds of Thrasymachus’
formula. All that it is necessary to do if we wish to apply the formula
to a democracy is to invert it; for ‘stronger’ read ‘weaker’, and the
formula remains unaltered. The practicability of this inversion is
demonstrated by one Callicles, in the Dialogue called _Gorgias_.
Most men are stupid, irresolute, apathetic, mediocre, timid, and
unimaginative. The qualities implied by these epithets, though
discernible at all times, force themselves most pressingly upon the
attention when men act together. Take a sheep and stand it on its hind
legs and its resemblance to a human being is scarcely noticeable; but
stand a flock of sheep on their hind legs and, so far as psychology and
behaviour go, you have a crowd of men. In other words, taken severally
men may be individuals; taken together they are a mere transmitting
medium for herd emotion. Their individual stupidities are added
together, but their individual wisdoms cancel out.
In a democracy, says Callicles, the common men are the more numerous,
they also possess the power; acting, therefore, in accordance with
their natures, they make the laws which their natures demand. Now it is
natural for every man to wish to obtain as much as he can. It is also
inevitable that in a state of nature the stronger should obtain more
than the weaker. Hence the weaker, acting in self-defence, so frame
the laws that the endeavour of one individual to obtain more than the
many is stigmatized as unjust. Hence justice, or morality, which is now
revealed as the interest of the individually weaker but collectively
stronger, may be regarded as their device for depriving the stronger of
the preponderance of good things, which the strongers’ superior talents
would naturally procure for them.
What we may call herd morality is, therefore, a form of self-defence
dictated partly by fear, and partly by envy. The source of the fear is
obvious; the envy springs from the natural spite of inferior persons
who are conscious of their inferiority, resent it, and wish to take
it out of those who make them feel it. “I have not,” says the average
man, “the capacity of the strong man for acquiring a large share of
the good things of life. Therefore I will take advantage of my numbers
to lay it down that such acquisition is wrong and unjust.” The common
view of self-denial may be taken as an illustration. The average man
has neither the courage nor the strength to satisfy his desires and
indulge his passions. Being unaccustomed to moderation he thinks that
if he permits himself any indulgence he will be unable to stop. He dare
not bend for fear he break. Hence for the Greek virtue of temperance
we get the modern praise of self-denial, with a resultant standard of
morality which denounces all bodily indulgence as wrong. Upon the basis
of this standard of morality the principle of sour grapes proceeds to
operate on a large scale. The man who is not rash enough to take sexual
pleasure when he finds it, the woman who is not attractive enough to
have the opportunity of being rash, combine to denounce the delights at
which the independent and the charming are not afraid to grasp.
Herd morality, which is based on fear and envy, is made effective by
blame. In modern society the power to blame is chiefly expressed in two
ways. First, by the old whose morality consists in blaming the young;
secondly, by the average whose censure descends upon the exceptional.
Upon the part played by the old in maintaining morality I do not wish
to dwell, since it differs little to-day from what it has always been.
A mistake which all societies have made is to entrust the management
of their affairs to the old. Old men are naturally more vindictive,
bad tempered, malevolent, and narrow-minded than young ones. They are
easily provoked to disapproval, and dislike more things than they like.
Having for the most part lived their own lives, they have nothing
left to do but to interfere in the lives of others. They form the
governments, misrepresent the people whom they oppress, preach to the
people whom they exploit, and teach the people whom they deceive. They
mete out rewards and punishments, sentence criminals to death, direct
businesses, make laws which they have no temptation to disobey and wars
in which they do not propose to fight. If the country were handed over
exclusively to the governance of men under thirty-five, and everybody
over that age were forbidden to interfere on pain of being sent to the
lethal chamber, it would be a happier and a better place. Unfortunately
the young men are too busy trying to make a living in the subordinate
positions to which the old men grudgingly admit them to have the time
or energy to interfere with other people. Besides, being young, they
wish to live, a process for which the regulation of the lives of others
is a poor substitute.
In the sphere of morality the function of the old is confined to
discovering methods of deterring the young from pleasures of which they
themselves are no longer capable. Old men give young men good advice,
no longer being able to give them bad examples, and old women invent
a symbolic Mrs. Grundy to intimidate their daughters into resisting
the temptations which now pass them by. The deterrent influences so
exercised are called morality under which name they impose on the young
who will not have caught their elders lying often enough to disbelieve
them, until they have begun to produce sons and daughters of their
own, by which time they will be only too ready to abet the prevailing
hypocrisy.
The other strand in the fabric of modern morality has already been
noticed as the tendency of the weaker to get even with the stronger
by taking it out of him on moral grounds. Morals, it is thought,
are everybody’s privilege and everybody’s possession. Few of us can
understand Einstein’s theory of relativity, but we all know the
difference between right and wrong. Hence the man who is deficient in
talent can make up for it in virtue, and by assuring himself that God’s
noblest work is an honest man, put brains and capacity in their proper
place.
Since the motives which have prompted its invention persist unchanged,
morality, which has always been the special emanation of the herd,
varies little in spite of superficial differences from age to age,
whilst intellectuality throws off new lights in every age. There is
probably very little difference between the crowds of ancient Babylon
and modern Clapham, but the mind of Einstein differs in radical
particulars from that of Archimedes.
Realizing that any fool can be good intellectuals have always made
light of morality for the same reasons as those which have caused the
herd to set store by it. If the herd has been ready to censure the
eccentrics, the eccentrics have been even readier to provide materials
for censure. Despising the mob, they flout their standards and laugh
at their scruples. The good are so harsh to the clever, the clever
so rude to the good, that one might almost be tempted to believe in
a fundamental antipathy between virtue and brains. Whether this be
so or not, it seems probable that there is a permanent necessity in
our natures requiring us to exalt the common qualities we share and
understand, and to condemn rare gifts. Thus morality represents the
average man’s attempt to console himself in the face of the insulting
superiority of the few, by proving that the superiority is achieved
only at the cost of loss of virtue. Certainly we must take it out of
these fellows somehow! It tortures our self-respect to admire those who
have qualities we cannot possess. That is why we love to think of the
philosopher as an absent-minded fool, incapable of feeding himself,
writing cheques or catching trains, and listen so greedily to the
legends of vice and voluptuousness in men of genius.
Wickedness in high places is so much more appetizing than wickedness
in low; it enables us to prove that those who are inconsiderate enough
to rise above us in place and power, only do so at the cost of falling
below us in simplicity and virtue. The public lips have recently been
smacking over the details of a case in which it was alleged that a wife
endeavoured to advance the career of her husband by a liaison with the
Quarter Master General of H.M. Forces. It was further alleged that the
husband condoned and even encouraged her conduct. The Quarter Master
General was a man of marked ability. His organizing and administrative
capacity were justly famous; he was, in fact, one of the few brilliant
successes of the War. When the rumour spread that this man, one of
the most powerful as well as the ablest in the land, had been willing
to advance a subordinate because he desired his wife, the outburst of
public indignation in the press was tremendous. Wickedness in high
places was a glorious theme: there had been nothing like it since the
Armistice. Labour bodies met to insist on the superior purity of the
lives of working-people, and parsons thundered in their pulpits against
the luxury of the rich. For several weeks the Dennistoun case was the
chief subject of conversation in trains, ’buses, and bar-parlours, and
those whose lips smacked the most greedily over the luscious scandal
were the most severe in their condemnation of the vices of society.
Why was it that this case attracted so much attention? Why was the
wickedness involved considered so shocking? Why did those who would
not have looked twice at the six-line paragraph describing a similar
occurrence in the remoter suburbs, follow every detail of the case with
the most avid curiosity? Because the woman was unusually beautiful, the
man unusually powerful and talented. The beauty of the woman aroused
the envy of other women; the power and talents of the man excited the
envy of other men.
We all of us have an impulse to blame those whom life has more
generously gifted or more fortunately bestowed than ourselves. We make
a virtue of our deficiencies, argue that only the dull and lowly are
good, and call the feeling of envy which we experience for those who
are neither dull nor lowly moral indignation.
In addition to the envy of the old for the young and of the herd for
the exceptional, the impulse to blame, which men call morality, owns
another source. This is the desire for uniformity. The desire for
uniformity springs in its turn from the fear of insecurity. Society,
said Schopenhauer, is like a collection of hedgehogs driven together
for the sake of warmth. The object of social observances is to put felt
upon the spikes in order that the proximity of the hedgehogs may not
cause them to injure one another. The risk of friction will be reduced
to a minimum if all the hedgehogs behave in the same way. Identical
behaviour in all circumstances is, no doubt, an unattainable ideal; but
this makes it doubly important that the herd as a whole should know
within limits in what way each of its members _will_ behave. Those who
react unexpectedly to familiar situations, or differ markedly in their
conduct from others are a danger to the herd, causing social friction
and a sense of insecurity. For this reason reformers like Christ or
Ibsen, who violently question the standards of thought and conduct
prevalent in their herd, and refuse to conform to them, are regarded
with bitter hostility.
The method by which the herd secures the uniformity of conduct upon
which its comfort and security depend is the exercise of social
approval and disapproval. In extreme cases this method is forcibly
employed. The soldier who shows a tendency to run away under the
enemy’s fire endangers the safety of his fellows. Steps are accordingly
taken to check this tendency by the pressure of social disapproval in
the form of discipline. Discipline is a device for substituting the
certainty of being shot for those who do not go over the top for the
probability of being shot for those who do. The result is that most
soldiers go over the top. This is conduct conducive to the safety
of the herd, and is rewarded with social approval under the name of
courage.
More usually social approval and disapproval find expression in the
sphere of manners and modes. In Japan under the old laws the term for
a rude man is “other-than-expected fellow”, and a noble is not to
be interfered with in cutting down a fellow who has behaved to him
in a manner other than is expected. In general, thought or conduct
calculated to surprise or disturb the herd incurs disapproval and is
called immoral; thought and conduct which mirrors the beliefs and
habits of the herd is regarded with approval and is called moral.
Thus virtue is the habit of acting in a manner of which other people
approve; vice in a manner of which they disapprove.
Summing up, therefore, we may say that social morality in a democracy
springs from the envy of the average man for the talents of the able
man which cause him to feel inferior, and from the dislike of the herd
for the conduct of the eccentric which makes it feel unsafe.
These are general principles and are more or less applicable in any
state of society which is not a tyranny or a close oligarchy. What I
wish to emphasize is their special application to a modern western
democracy.
In a community of this type the herd is at once more congested and
more powerful than it has been in any other period of history. Its
congestion causes it to place a hitherto unparalleled emphasis upon
the necessity for felting the spikes of the hedgehogs, that is to
say, upon the importance of uniformity; its power enables it to vent
its disapproval upon those who offend its prejudices with the maximum
effect. This can be seen most clearly in the case of America which has
produced the most congested[3] and the most powerful herd on record.
America is a melting pot in which all the races of the earth are fused.
The natural diversity of its elements produces a special need for
artificial uniformity in its citizens. A civilization with its roots in
the earth can allow its members to spread outwards, like the branches
of a tree; a civilization, whose seeds are planted in shallow soil,
must hedge them about lest they be scattered by the wind. The first is
centrifugal: it can tolerate individuality because it has a centre. The
second is centripetal: it must enforce uniformity because it has none.
[3] The word ‘congested’ is used to denote the oppression of spiritual
stuffiness rather than of physical overcrowding.
For this reason all American citizens strive to be exactly like each
other, and, on the whole, they succeed. They have the same clothes,
they live in the same houses, they have the same social habits, the
same respect for money and the same suspicion of such superfluous
eccentricities as thought, culture, and art.
A friend of mine, who had wintered in a Southern State, as the season
advanced discarded his felt hat for the regulation straw. A few weeks
later he had occasion to travel northwards to New York. As he left the
train he noticed that he was an object of attention to people on the
platform. Porters and loungers stared, and as he walked away from the
station, he found himself followed by a small and apparently hostile
crowd. Hailing a taxi, he drove to his hotel. In the porch he met an
acquaintance, told him of the notice he had attracted, and asked the
reason. His friend explained the matter by pointing to his straw hat.
It was too early in New York for the change over into straws, he said,
and of course one could not dress differently from other people.
The rigid enforcement of uniformity is hostile not only to freedom of
action but also to independence of thought. The laws against teaching
or holding doctrines displeasing to the majority are particularly
severe in America. Immigrants, for example, are not allowed to land in
America until they have first expressed their disbelief in Communism,
atheism, and free love. Many people are put in prison for holding
unpopular views, although these views do no apparent harm to anybody.
Advocacy of birth-control, possession of irreverent and disreputable
books such as _Jurgen_, expression of subversive opinions with regard
to the relationship of capital and labour, and disbelief in God are
among the offences so punished.
Not only is it necessary not to profess unpopular views――it is
sometimes necessary to profess popular ones. In order to placate herd
opinion it is found necessary to enforce by law the propagation
of deliberate falsehood. This happens especially in those cases,
unfortunately only too numerous, in which the truth is less gratifying
to human conceit than we could wish, so that its adoption involves
the abandonment of cherished beliefs. Such, for instance, is the
belief that man is a degenerate angel, which is thought to be more
flattering than the truth that he is a promoted ape. Thus the State
of Tennessee has recently officially repudiated the “monkey ancestry”
of its citizens. A law has been passed under which it is illegal for
any teacher in a university or other public school to teach anything
denying the story of creation given in the Bible, or that man has
descended from the lower order of animals, and men have already been
imprisoned for teaching evolution. It is not, so far as I know,
maintained even in America that the doctrine of evolution is untrue.
It is sufficient that it incurs the disapproval of the stronger.
Thus truth herself is liable to be stigmatized as immoral if she is
inconsiderate enough to flout the wishes of respectable citizens.
Where individuality is to a large extent obliterated, and citizens are
cut according to approved specification by the social machine, nothing
is so much valued as personality. I have said that every American
wishes to be like every other American, and so he does――but with a
difference. He wants to have a personality of his own. He wishes to
have a something about him that will convey an impression of uniqueness
and cause him to be talked about among his fellows. Nothing is so much
discussed in America as personality. Men try to cultivate it as they
try to cultivate biceps; agencies exist in order to tell you how to be
unique, and psycho-analysts flourish by the simple process of telling
you that you are unique.
But this is just what the conditions upon which herd morality depends
will not let you be. Depart one hair’s-breadth from the standard habits
of thought and accepted codes of conduct, and the herd will make your
existence intolerable until you consent to toe the line.
Now the drift of British development follows increasingly the course
set by America. America is our most advanced nation in morals as in
everything else, and, if we want to know what England will be like
to-morrow, we cannot do better than look at America to-day. America is
at once a signpost and a stimulus. What American business men are, that
do our business men strive humbly to be. They ape their magnificence,
and enjoy a large and increasing share of this power. The stockbroker’s
conception of the good life is becoming increasingly accepted by the
clerk, the clerk’s by the shopkeeper, the shopkeeper’s by the workman,
so that the community as a whole is doing its best to live up to the
standard which its business men set. So soon as we have got rid of the
last vestiges of our dying aristocracy, such as respect for hunting and
a semi-feudal tenantry, we shall subside into an inferior and imitative
satellite of the States.
The objects of American civilization are to substitute cleanliness for
beauty, mechanism for men, and hypocrisy for morals. It devotes so
much energy to obtaining the means to make life possible, that it has
none left to practise the art of living. Hot baths and more hot baths,
larger and ever larger hotels, faster and ever faster cars, golf played
by ever fatter and more vulgar men, and lap-dogs kept by ever fatter
and more vulgar women, cocktails and culture, psycho-analysis and faith
healing, sensual poetry and sensational sport, supported and maintained
by an illiterate governing class ready to be imposed upon by any
quack or charlatan who can persuade it to take an interest in what it
imagines to be its soul, such is the probable development of bourgeois
civilization in England.
Hints of the growing adhesion of the herd to the ideals and pursuits
of big business are not wanted in current developments of moral
sentiment. As the profiteer supplants the aristocrat as the dominant
force in the community, a slight twist is given to the moral opinions
of the herd as a whole in order that they may be brought into line with
the changed interests of the stronger. Moral sentiments suitable to the
interests of a hereditary aristocracy of landed proprietors insensibly
give place to a morality designed to protect and safeguard the pursuits
of the fat man on holiday.
An example of this process is afforded by the changed attitude to
hunting. A hundred years ago hunting was considered an entirely
honourable pursuit, appropriate to gentlemen and advantageous to the
countryside. To-day it is attacked on humanitarian grounds and voices
are raised in favour of the fox. If he must be killed why not humanely?
It was recently reported that a fox chased by the Cowdray hounds jumped
through the window of a private residence and up the chimney flue.
Efforts were made to smoke him out by lighting a fire immediately
below, for all the world as if he were a boy chimney brush of a century
ago instead of a fox, but they were unsuccessful. Ultimately workmen
removed some bricks and the fox was got out and given to the hounds.
This case caused an outcry on the ground that the fox, who had given
the hounds a good run, was the victim of cruel and unsporting conduct.
A similar outburst was provoked by a hunted stag who recently took
refuge in the Channel, and was picked up and carried to France.
That hunting is now condemned by the moral sense of the community not
because of any increase in humanitarian sentiment, but because of a
change in the interests of the predominant herd, is shown by the apathy
of public opinion with regard to the victims of the gun and the motor.
Business men unable to hunt because of the obesity produced by their
habits are not debarred from shooting. Moors are hired in Scotland
and all creatures liable to interfere with the supply of game are
ruthlessly exterminated. Thus a squirrel-catching society has recently
been formed in Aberdeenshire. Rewards are offered for each squirrel
captured, and it is estimated that between two and three thousand
squirrels are killed a year. At Monte Carlo business-men sit on
terraces and shoot down pigeons which have been previously imprisoned
in darkened boxes, with the result that, when they are let out into
the sunlight, they are too dazed to fly away. Before they are placed
in the boxes the tails of these birds are removed. This impedes their
flight and makes things easier for the business-men, who kill between
sixty and a hundred an hour. But it is not thought, except by cranks,
that the business-men are immoral for amusing themselves in this way,
although it is illegal in England for boys to steal the eggs of many
kinds of birds.
In the south of England, where the roads are tarred to facilitate the
passage of motors and the approach of business-men is heralded over
the countryside by a stink of tar and petrol, it is reported that the
emanations from the roads have poisoned the waters of the Test and
Itchen and caused the death of many of the living things that dwell in
them. Even the fish, it seems, have begun to feel the march of progress.
Motors are frequently the cause of the death to hens, puppies, cats,
and small children. Yet nobody thinks the business man’s pursuit of
motoring immoral. On the contrary, it is assumed without question that
the road is his property, and that the pedestrian should make way for
him, while the risk to life and damage to limb consequent upon his
refusal to do so are regarded as the results of culpable folly and
negligence on the part not of the motorist but of himself.
Business-men are given to amassing property, but not to making friends.
It is not in personal relationships that they seek the good life, but
in a plenitude of goods. For this reason current herd morality visits
offences against property with greater severity than offences against
the person. A man will get six months for stealing a diamond necklace,
but only six days for beating his wife. But, though the ill treatment
of a wife by her husband is punished with comparative lightness,
her appropriation by another man is considered to be the height of
wickedness. This is because the man who makes love to his neighbour’s
wife is committing an offence against property. For the same reason the
desire on the part of a wife to secede from her existing possessor and
to be an independent entity maintaining herself by her own exertions is
regarded with disfavour.[4] It is as if a valuable house were to insist
that it should remain uninhabited.
[4] Cp. the success of A. S. M. Hutchinson’s _This Freedom_.
Those who belong to a herd are in general unable to understand the wish
of others to escape from it. Such a wish is an implied criticism upon
the herd conception, and brings a sense of insecurity. Thus the desire
for leisure and solitude, or for a life amid wild surroundings, is
regarded with instinctive disapproval. A Frenchman recently exploring
in Brazil came upon a party of Indians one of whom had a paler skin
than the others. The pale skinned Indian turned out to be his long-lost
brother, who had lived among the Indians for a number of years. The
explorer immediately set to work to persuade his brother to return
with him to civilization. His efforts, however, proved unavailing.
The brother asked why he should return to a community in which he had
to pay taxes, wear clothes and do other disagreeable things, when
he could live with the Indians in a state of nature without labour
of any kind. The explorer had no answer to these questions. He was
unable to understand this refusal to return to the herd and accept the
restrictions that existence in the herd involves. Accordingly he told
his brother that he was a hopeless degenerate, and left him to what he
characteristically called his fate.
Something of the same feeling is entertained by the average man towards
the artist or the writer. He distrusts the contempt of herd standards
which his irregular life implies. This sentiment is reinforced by a
feeling of insecurity in regard to possessions. The average man is too
busy to spare time for sexual immorality, and instinctively suspects
the life of the artist or writer because of the facilities which it
accords for meddling with his wife during office hours. The general
nature of the objection entertained by the herd to sexual immorality
will be examined more fully in the next chapter.
Before I close this chapter I wish to point out how the sentiments I
have endeavoured to describe have been intensified by the decay of
religion.
Communities in which the average man is the stronger have always been
noted for their Puritanism and high moral standard. Promiscuity has
historically been practised by the aristocracy rather than by the
middle classes, and in societies in which the standard is set by the
latter is visited accordingly with a disproportionate amount of moral
obloquy. Severer steps would no doubt have been taken against it,
had it not been for the conviction that the sinner would be punished
hereafter. The poor man, lacking the rich man’s goods, has comforted
himself with the story of Lazarus. But the moral man has found equal
consolation when denying himself the pleasures of the flesh, in
picturing the eternal torments which awaited those who refused to be
bound by his inhibitions.
The average moralist has accordingly refrained from punishing the
successful libertine, knowing that God would do it for him. But this
conviction is no longer held. God is a much more mysterious being than
he used to be, and we have less knowledge of his ways. It may be that
he does not exist at all, and in any event the belief that he will do
this or that, and, in particular, that he will entertain the same moral
views as we do ourselves, is no longer entertained with its old time
certainty. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord; I will repay.” Perhaps
it is, but it might be visited on the wrong people. In any event it is
safer to take no chances, and to make sure that sinners shall suffer
in this world the punishment which the eccentricity of God’s views may
permit them to forego in the next. For this reason it is to be expected
that the herd morality of the future will develop a severer outlook
upon derelictions from the standards of behaviour which it regards
as moral. What these derelictions are, and what are the reasons for
supposing that in spite of this attitude they are likely to increase, I
will consider in the next chapter.
CHAPTER III
THE NEW LIBERTY OF ACTION
Important forces are, however, at work in the contrary direction.
If the growing prevalence of herd morality will tend to place a new
emphasis on the importance of uniformity, uniformity in the moral
sphere is likely to prove more difficult of attainment.
Two factors in particular will militate against it. These are the
growth of economic independence among women, and the practice of birth
control. Let us consider these factors separately.
I. The basis of the institution of marriage is economic. Theological
factors have of course played their part. The early Christian fathers,
expecting the immediate end of the world, saw no reason to take steps
to ensure the continuance of the race. The Christian hostility to the
pleasures of the senses was, therefore, allowed to rage unchecked, and
sexual intercourse was denounced as both wicked and unnecessary. As
time passed, however, it was found that the world showed no signs of
coming to an end, an inconsiderateness which led to the necessity for
a change of attitude. The Church met the situation with a complete
_volte face_. It had previously stigmatized the sexual passions as so
wicked that no Christian should be permitted to indulge them: it now
pronounced them to be so sacred that no Christian should be permitted
to indulge them without the sanction of the Church. The sanction of
the Church was given in marriage, a device whereby the Fathers sought
to control and to regulate the workings of a passion they were unable
to ignore. Since then the Church has claimed both the ability and the
right to sanctify sex, and has looked with disfavour upon marriages
consummated by the State as an infringement of her monopoly.
But the fact that marriage has been instituted by God and cornered by
the Church is not sufficient to account for its existence before the
Christian epoch or its stability since. These rest upon an economic
foundation.
Throughout the recorded history of civilization the only recognized
way for a woman to make her living has been through her body. Her
body being her one saleable asset, she could employ it in either of
two ways. She could sell the use of it to one man for an indefinite
period, or she could lease it to a number of men for short and strictly
regulated periods. The first method is known as marriage; the second
as prostitution. The existence of these two, and of only these two,
ways of gaining an economic livelihood has led to the formation of
two unofficial women’s Trade Unions, the Trade Union of wives and the
Trade Union of prostitutes. The strength of these unions is directly
proportional to their monopoly of the economic field, and far exceeds
that of any recognized Union in the more strictly industrial sphere.
It is immediately obvious that any woman who was prepared to give for
love or for nothing what other women were only prepared to give for
maintenance was a blackleg of the most subversive type, and the whole
force of organized female opinion has, therefore, been devoted to
making her position impossible. The force of female opinion so directed
is known as morality, and the bitterness with which the free lover,
that is to say, the woman who loves outside the marriage tie or the
prostitute’s preserves, is denounced as immoral, is due to woman’s
unconscious recognition of the fact that she is cutting at the basis of
the economic livelihood of her sex.
It is of course true that the two women’s Unions are to some extent
competitive, and that the existence of the prostitute threatens the
security of the wife while it guarantees the chastity of the young
girl. For this reason there is and always will be hostility between
the Unions. The wife’s first commandment is the Deity’s “Thou shalt
have none other woman but me”, and she is accordingly accustomed to
regard the prostitute with horror, whereas she does not object to the
existence of other wives, since this does not, at least in theory,
threaten her own. For this reason, too, the method of earning a living
adopted by the wife is generally preferred to that adopted by the
prostitute, and is esteemed the more honourable by public opinion.
So true is this that in most women the belief in the honourableness
of wifehood has become second nature, the really nice woman feeling
instinctively that the only decent way for her to live is on the
earnings of some man. But while this feeling provokes hostility to
members of the other Union, it is a hostility which cannot compare
in bitterness with the scorn and hatred felt for the free lover. The
reason for this is obvious. The number of women a man can have for
money is limited by the extent of his income; the number of women he
can have for nothing is limited only by the extent of his ability to
find them. For this reason it is felt instinctively that the free lover
is a greater menace to society than the prostitute. The prostitute,
indeed, is and always has been recognized as a social necessity. She
guarantees the chastity of nice women by providing a necessary solace
for men up to the comparatively late age at which modern economic
conditions allow them to marry. Thus in Tsarist Russia the brothel was
a State-recognized institution. The new brothel was formally opened
by the police officer, and was hallowed by a religious ceremony in
the course of which the premises were blessed by a Russian Orthodox
priest.[5]
[5] _Report of Labour Delegation_, 1925.
Sexual morality in men springs from the same economic source, but is
more limited in scope and less fiercely embraced. This is a natural
deduction from what has just been said. If the livelihood of women
is bound up with the strict observance of the marriage tie, the
maintenance of the moral restrictions upon which marriage as an
institution depends is their special concern. In a purely promiscuous
community the livelihood of women would be intolerably insecure. Hence
women are the natural guardians of morality, knowing that it guarantees
their bread and butter. It is not too much to say that morality as a
going concern is kept up by women. Men on the whole, despite their
strong property sense, are not interested in moral questions. They
have not the woman’s delight in nosing out scandals, and, except when
they are whipped up into a state of moral horror by their women folk,
are much too prone to live and let live. The attitude of deliberate
uncharitableness towards erring sisters which the sex affects does
not come naturally to men, and left to themselves, they would condone
offences which their outraged spouses insist on punishing with social
ostracism.
It is on the whole true to say that the moral sense, so far as sex is
concerned, only begins to function in men after marriage and, except
in the case of one’s own daughter whose saleable value in the marriage
market is thought to be diminished by inchastity, it centres upon the
wife. Since the wife is in origin a piece of property purchased by the
husband for his own enjoyment, to her must be extended the jealous
guardianship which presides over property in general. The wife is the
most valuable of a man’s indoor possessions; in return for the use of
her body he has agreed to maintain her in such dignity and leisure as
he can afford. This obligation to maintain the wife is a permanent one
persisting even after the enjoyment of her person has ceased. Thus
when a wife divorces or lives apart from her husband, he is usually
required to maintain her, so long as she remains chaste. So soon,
however, as she bestows the enjoyment of her person upon another, the
obligation to maintenance ceases, presumably on the ground that the
new consumer should be saddled with the obligation of keeping up what
he enjoys. In nothing is the property basis of marriage more clearly
discernible than in the ‘dum casta’ clause of the English divorce law.
It is upon the same economic basis that the husband’s objection to
infidelity chiefly rests. If another man is permitted to enjoy for
nothing what he himself has purchased at a heavy outlay, the husband
naturally feels aggrieved. He is also rendered ridiculous. It is for
this reason that the cuckold is always presented in literature as a
comic figure; he is in the position of a man who is unconsciously
having his pocket picked. The husband’s predilection for fidelity
in the wife is thus as strong as the wife’s demand for fidelity in
the husband――at times it is even stronger――and springs from the same
economic source. So long as the wife is in essence a piece of property,
it is naturally felt that only the man who has paid for her should
have the use of her; so long as a woman can only obtain her living by
selling herself to a man, she not unnaturally demands that others
should not be allowed to undercut her.
We have spoken of this situation as if it existed in the present; but
it is already in many respects an affair of the past. The history of
the last fifty years has recorded the growing and continuous influx
of women into wage-earning employment which bears no relationship
to sex. Women cure the sick, plead in the law courts, teach in the
schools, do manual labour in garden, field, factory, and workshop, and
serve increasingly as clerks, typists and shop assistants. Three were
recently found among the five hundred applicants for the post of public
executioner in Hungary.
Men have not unnaturally resented this change. The dependence of
women has on the whole suited them, and they do not like to see those
whose economic helplessness has made them a natural prey to male
predatoriness rendered capable of standing on their own feet. Having
deliberately deprived women of the skill, the training, the knowledge,
and the qualifications necessary to make their way in the world, men
have then proceeded to justify themselves by proving the moral and
intellectual inferiority of women from the fact that she is ignorant,
unskilled and uneducated. When it is remembered that the same causes
that have left woman no alternative but concubinage (married or
unmarried) or starvation, have compelled her, as often as not, to
perform the duties of an unpaid housekeeper, it is not difficult to
see how much man was the gainer by the transaction. But, unfortunately
for him, he has been unable to stem the rising tide of feminism. It
has long ceased to be true that a woman’s only means of earning her
living is by exploiting her sex-attraction, and all the evidence
points to the fact that the number of women in wage-earning employment
will be augmented in the future. This estimate leaves out of account
the probability of the endowment of motherhood, which will place all
mothers, whether married or unmarried, in the category of independent
wage-earners.
The effect of this economic change upon the situation I have briefly
sketched, and upon the moral sentiments to which it gives rise is
likely to be twofold.
In the first place the unmarried woman will tend increasingly to form
temporary, irregular unions. This result will follow:
(1) Because her knowledge that she can earn her living in other ways
will not force her to demand from the man a pledge of life-long
maintenance as the price of her love.
(2) Because knowing that she is not dependent upon a man for her
livelihood, she will no longer have the incentive to pander to the
man’s demand for virginity in his prospective wife by remaining chaste
until marriage.
(3) Because a man’s abandonment of the connection which she has formed
with him, a process commonly known as desertion, will not as heretofore
leave her stranded without means of support.
(4) Because men will be less chary of forming temporary, sexual
relationships with women, when they know that they are not expected to
keep them.
In the second place the married woman will tend to mitigate her
hostility to irregular unions formed by unmarried women when she
realizes:
(1) That her husband’s mistress, not being dependent upon him for
support, will constitute a less formidable threat to her livelihood.
(2) That the possible transference of her husband’s affections
and consequent withdrawal of financial support will not leave her
necessarily incapable of finding other employment.
(3) That, as the clear-cut line of demarcation between married and
unmarried unions becomes obscured by the increase in the number of the
latter, it will no longer be either possible or necessary to put the
unmarried mistress as completely beyond the pale of decent society as
has been customary in the past.
From the above considerations it will be seen that the growing
economic independence of women is likely, unless counteracted by other
forces, to lead to a relaxation of the marriage tie, to an increase in
irregular unions, and to a growing tendency to dispense with marriage
altogether.
But, some critics will object, what about the children? Hitherto,
I have left the children outside the scope of the argument, and it
is high time to bring them in. This leads me to a consideration of
the second of the two factors which I cited at the beginning of the
chapter, the practice of birth-control.
II. That the practice of birth-control is likely to increase there can,
I think, be no reasonable doubt. I am aware that there is considerable
opposition to birth-control at the moment, and the various arguments
are brought forward to discourage people from employing its methods.
These arguments are not held on rational grounds, but are dictated
by prejudices based on certain religious or political opinions which
those who put them forward profess. It is said, for example, that
birth-control is displeasing to the Almighty, who invented sexual
intercourse for the reproduction not of pleasure but of children; and
it is thought, though not said, that it is injurious to the State
because it will diminish the supply of cannon-fodder and cheap labour.
As regards the Almighty, whether he would agree with the views put
forward by those who speak in his name is not known. Until, therefore,
we can obtain a direct expression of his opinion on the matter, it
is more prudent to assume that his attitude is non-committal, than
to supply the place of knowledge by converting our conjectures into
dogmas. As regards the supply of cannon-fodder, this is supposed to be
important for consumption in future wars. Since, however, those who
oppose birth-control on the ground that it will diminish the number of
recruits, also hold that wars are inevitable owing to the pressure of
expanding populations, it would seem that populations which cease to
expand have no need to maintain large armies to protect them from the
results of expansion.
The position of those who oppose birth-control being based on political
and religious feelings of an emotional character is not, however,
refutable by argument, or assailable by reason. Our business is not to
reply to arguments which have no rational basis, but to estimate what
influence they are likely to have in the future.
There is, I think, little doubt that this influence will be a
diminishing one. Much of the opposition to birth-control is little
more than an expression of the generalized feeling of hostility which
people experience in regard to anything that is new. Whether it be
a new morality, a new sonata form, a new way of wearing the hair, a
new kind of corset (or none at all), or a new saviour of mankind with
which he is presented, man’s natural and instinctive reaction is one
of antagonism. The antagonism is provoked not by any intrinsic demerit
in the thing that arouses it――indeed in fifty or a hundred years time
it is embraced with acclamation as the last word in orthodoxy or good
form――but simply by its newness. The suggestion that any way of life,
of thought or of conduct can be better than that which they have
hitherto followed wounds people’s self-respect, and some time must
elapse before they can overlook the offence.
This kind of objection applies in a marked degree to birth-control
which challenges people’s most intimate habits, and seems likely to
effect a revolution in their conduct. It will, however, diminish as
the idea of birth-control becomes familiar. The reaction of the normal
Englishman to that which is new usually passes through three phases.
He says first “It is absurd”, second “It is contrary to Scripture”, and
third “Of course! I knew it all the time”. It will be seen that the
opposition to birth-control has already passed into the second phase.
There is a further reason for the probable weakening of the
anti-birth-control movement. The organized opposition to birth-control
comes very largely from members of the upper and middle classes. These
on an average have very much smaller families than the lower classes in
whose interests they profess to oppose birth-control, and to whom they
denounce it. The inevitable inference from this fact cannot continue
indefinitely to remain undrawn, and, as soon as it is drawn, the
lower classes will be able to gauge the sincerity of those who exhort
them to choose between continence or children, while being themselves
remarkable for neither.
Finally the knowledge of the use of contraceptives is bound in course
of time to percolate through every social stratum. The advantages of
birth-control to the individual are so obvious that few will refuse to
avail themselves of the knowledge which the State, in the persons of
the medical officers in charge of infant welfare centres, at present
withholds; while the disadvantages to the community of a system under
which the lower strata proliferate unchecked, while the upper and
middle classes barely keep up their numbers, and the exceptional man
who has the talent and energy to climb from one stratum into another
finds it necessary to sterilize himself in the process, will, in the
shape of a rapidly deteriorating population, force themselves upon the
notice of even the most pious.
Birth-control has come to stay; it has also knocked the bottom out of
what is called sexual morality.
If the views put forward in the previous chapters be correct, if
morality is the interest of the stronger, and if, where the stronger
is the herd of average individuals, it expresses itself in disapproval
of conduct from which the average, for whatever reason, shrink,
then the driving force of morality is to be looked for not in any
innate sanction but in the power which the herd possess of rendering
intolerable the lives of those who flout its prejudices. But in order
that the herd may be able to exercise this power, it must be in a
position to detect the objects of its censure. This has been possible
in the past owing to the unfortunate propensity of sexual irregularity
to result in offspring. It is not easy to disguise the existence of a
child, and, even if the desperate course of overlaying or otherwise
extinguishing it be adopted, the disposal of the corpse presents grave
difficulties. Such a course is also open to the objection of doing
grave violence to the humaner parental instincts. But birth-control
precludes the necessity for children, and by so doing makes it possible
to “sin” without being found out.
It is not to be expected that people will refuse to avail themselves
of the liberty thereby conferred. Whether we are to infer that people
are by nature sinful, or simply that a sin which has been manufactured
by herd morality is not really a sin, is a question that does not
immediately concern us. What does concern us is the impetus which this
ability to avoid detection is likely to give to irregular intercourse.
Birth-control combined with economic independence has brought a new
freedom to women. Economic independence enables them to have children
without going either to the altar or into the workhouse. The practice
of birth-control makes it unnecessary even to have the children.
One further result of birth-control may be noticed before we pass on.
This is the probable abolition of the double standard of morality for
men and women after marriage. That adultery in a wife has always been
considered to be more serious than adultery in the husband the state
of the law bears witness. Adultery in a wife is a sufficient cause for
divorce, in a husband it[6] must be coupled with cruelty or desertion.
This disparity of treatment has always caused grave offence to feminist
organizations. Yet the reason for the difference is not far to seek. It
arises from the economic dependence of the wife upon the husband. As
the result of this dependence any children which the wife may acquire
in the course of her adventures become a charge upon the husband, who
is thus required to pay for the fruits of his own shame and another’s
enjoyment. It is true that he is, or ought to be, similarly responsible
for the upkeep of the offspring which may result from his own adultery,
but in this case he has at least had his pleasure and sinned his sin,
and cannot in justice complain if his substance is consumed by its
fruits. Where, however, adultery on the part of the wife does not carry
with it a risk of children to be maintained by the husband, it becomes
an offence neither more nor less serious than adultery on the part of
the husband, and the double standard ceases accordingly to operate.
[6] In July, 1923, the law was amended and adultery in the husband
became a sufficient ground of divorce.
As a result of the above-mentioned considerations we may expect that
the practice of birth-control will profoundly modify our sexual habits.
It will enable the pleasures of sex to be tasted without its penalties,
and it will remove the most formidable deterrent to irregular
intercourse.
It is this consideration which lies at the root of the opposition to
birth-control. Deep down in most of us there lurks something of the old
Puritanical attitude, which insists that pleasure cannot or should not
be had without paying for it. This at least is true of pleasures we do
not share. And it is this sentiment which is outraged by the immunity
from the consequences of sexual pleasure which birth-control confers.
The Puritans objected to bear baiting not so much because of the pain
which it gave to the bear, as because of the pleasure which it gave
to the spectators. In the same way the great mass of decent middle
class citizens object to birth-control not because of the evil which
it does to the race, but because of the pleasure which it gives to
those who practice it. The Puritans are up in arms; the dowagers, the
aunts, the old maids, the parsons, the town councillors, the clerks,
the members of Vigilance Committees and Purity Leagues, all those who
are themselves too old to enjoy sex, too unattractive to obtain what
they would wish to enjoy, or too respectable to prefer enjoyment to
respectability――in a word, the makers of public opinion――are outraged
in their deepest feelings by the prospect of shameless, harmless and
unlimited pleasure which birth-control offers to the young. And if they
can stop it it will be stopped.
Hence concurrently with the increased freedom which economic
independence and birth-control will give to young people, and to young
women in particular, there is likely to be a growth in restrictive and
purely inhibitory morality on the part of the middle-aged.
We are in, then, for a wave of Puritanism on the one hand combined with
the possibility of a new liberty of action on the other. What will be
the outcome?
CHAPTER IV
THE COMING CLASH
Before I endeavour to answer the question with which I concluded the
last chapter, there are one or two additional considerations to which
it is necessary to refer, since they must affect our estimate of the
future.
I have spoken of the possibility of a new freedom for women due to
birth-control and economic independence. Other factors are likely
to make such freedom more imperative on social grounds and less
intimidating on moral ones.
The first is the great and growing preponderance of women in the
community. It is estimated that in Great Britain there are already two
million more women than men, and the figures can no doubt be paralleled
from other Western European countries. Our present moral code condemns
these two million, and as many more as the number of bachelors
involves, to perpetual celibacy and sterility. In other words one woman
out of every ten is expected to deny herself the right to motherhood or
to become an outcast from decent society.
This system is intolerable; it is manifestly breaking down in many
directions, and it continues at all only because public opinion among
women is still too unorganized to protest against it. It is already
the subject of wholesale disregard and infringement in practice, and
it will be abolished in theory as soon as the social sense of the
community has progressed to the point of removing the stigma from
illegitimacy and the reproach from unmarried motherhood. In other words
the system is bound up with the man-made convention which insists that
the right to have a child shall be saddled with the duty of looking
after a man, and, since there are not enough men to go round, women
will sooner or later be forced in self-defence to permit themselves to
have children without husbands.
So far as the right to sexual experience, independently of the right of
motherhood, is concerned, this is already safeguarded by birth-control.
The growing surplus of women will tend, therefore, through the
sheer pressure of virginity, to promote an increase in irregular
relationships, and to reinforce the movement towards freedom already
described.
Nor will religious considerations deter with their traditional force.
I have already spoken of the decline of religious sentiment in
connection with the growth of moral rigour in the herd. Lacking the
conviction that God will punish wrong-doers, they arrogate the right
to themselves. But the same scepticism which lights the fires of the
heresy-hunters encourages the wickedness of the heretics. If marriages
were not made by God, and torment in hell is probably not the result
of adultery, there is no longer reason to think that five minutes’
bliss must be paid for in terms of eternal damnation. It is, no doubt,
true, that God still loves the pure, but when earthly lovers are
available, the price of God’s love may be not worth the paying. Hence
the religious argument, though doubtless it will operate as a brake
in a diminishing number of cases, will no longer act as a wholesale
deterrent.
A more serious consideration is put forward in the name of biology.
“You are,” the biologist will point out, “conducting your argument on
the basis of certain assumptions with regard to the nature of women,
since you predict an increase in sexual irregularity not only among
men, but also, and inevitably, among women. Men, it is agreed, are
regrettably promiscuous, in the sense that, even if they are monogamous
in fact, they are varietist by inclination. But women are different.
Their nature is not varietist but monogamous, and it will, in spite of
all changes of material circumstances and moral sentiments, remain so.
For this reason irregular sexual unions will not increase in the manner
you predict.”
Biological arguments of this type, derived from the alleged nature
of women, are in my view mere man-made superstitions. The particular
argument in question was invented by the peccant male who wished to
convince himself that, however flagrant his own infidelities, his wife
would remain faithful because it was her nature. The superstition was
also useful, because it implied that, although a life of unvarying
fidelity might do violence to his natural proclivities, he need suffer
no qualm of conscience in expecting and exacting conduct which he
repudiated for himself from his monogamous wife. The notion too was
flattering and appealed readily to male conceit.
Now as to the existence of the facts asserted by my imaginary
biologist, there is, I imagine, little doubt. There are, of course,
countless exceptions either way, but the general tendency is not
obscure. While the cases of My Lord and the barmaid are legion, those
of My Lady and the groom are notoriously few. But admitting the fact,
are we to regard it as necessarily unalterable? Many, I know, are
inclined to do so. Contemplating the domestic tragedies springing from
the nomadic tendencies of the male, they have seen in them one more
piece of evidence for the satirical plan on which they believe the
Universe to have been constructed. If indeed there be design in the
scheme of things, to what sort of design do the facts point? To have
made man polygamous and woman monogamous they regard as God’s worst
practical joke, and conclude that, whatever may have been the objects
and disposition of the creator of the Universe, they were certainly not
those of a gentleman.
But is the fact really unalterable? May it not be the outcome of
centuries of servitude and seclusion, made absolute by the knowledge
that fidelity meant bread and butter and a home, infidelity starvation
or the streets? Since the beginnings of recorded history the great
bulk of women have, it is true, remained monogamous, but they may have
done so from fear of losing their jobs as wives if they did not. Those
who have been rich enough to stand upon their own financial feet, or
powerful enough to snap their fingers at public opinion, have not been
remarkable for strict observance of the marriage tie. The cases of
Messalina, Catherine the Great and the modern film star, not to mention
a score of less notorious instances, are instructive. Significant too
is the frequency of divorce among those who are sufficiently well to
do to afford the enormous fees exacted by the legal profession from
those who wish to change their partners. It is difficult, in the face
of evidence of this kind, to avoid the conclusion that the monogamous
tendencies of women are the product of training, circumstance, and
environment, and will not outlast the economic disabilities which
produced them.
In any event the present existence of these tendencies, if tendencies
they be, affords no indication of what they may become in the future.
The fact that the primitive savage could only count on the fingers
of one hand does not invalidate the existence of the multiplication
table, any more than the fact that most women want only one man each
now proves that they will not want more in a hundred years. The use of
the word ‘natural’ begs the question. We acquire those characteristics
which our circumstances and environment demand, and then transmit them
to our children in whom, being inherited, they are termed natural.
But this does not mean that our children will not in due course
develop new characteristics of their own, if a change of circumstances
renders the old ones undesirable. There are signs indeed that the new
characteristics are already beginning to appear. The attitude of
representative up-to-date women on this subject is curious. They tend
to deny the difference between males and females which my imaginary
biologist alleged, and to declare that their inclinations are naturally
as promiscuous as those of their husbands. The circumstance that they
control them better argues, they assert, more sense; it does not imply
a difference in nature.
Remarks of this kind are often made by women who, nevertheless,
live exemplary lives and would scorn to revenge themselves upon an
unfaithful husband by imitating his conduct. Nevertheless there is no
reason to suppose that they deliberately misrepresent their feelings,
and we can only conclude that, as usually happens, a new tendency is
manifesting itself in feeling some time before it is translated into
action.
For these reasons I do not think that any convincing arguments as to
the future can be based on the alleged monogamousness of women in the
present. Nor, so soon as the force of the monogamous habit wanes, do I
think that women will consent to put up with the manifest disadvantages
of a system which is based upon the assumption that it is as strong
as it ever was. It is certain that they will not be deterred by the
protests of outraged males. Conventional morality, as I have already
pointed out, like many of our other institutions such as matinées,
concerts and God, is kept going by women, and directly women withdraw
their support, not all the opposition of men will avail to save it.
What then is likely to happen?
Certainly not a relapse into complete promiscuity. The belief that
people are fundamentally licentious, and that a partial removal of
the barriers with which society has hedged about the business of
reproduction will precipitate the population into a welter of unbridled
license, pleasantly shocking though it is to the minds of respectable
people, has absolutely no foundation in fact.
This belief springs from the doctrine of original sin, which has always
been popular among quiet and well-behaved persons. If man is by nature
wicked and sinful, and woman is very little better, then, indeed,
contraception and the economic independence of women will lead to an
orgy of sex indulgence in which the population will shuffle itself like
a pack of cards.
Nothing of the kind is likely to happen.
The purely sexual elements in love have come to occupy an entirely
disproportionate amount of attention owing to the taboos with which
they have been invested. Once these taboos are removed, they will
revert to their natural position of comparative unimportance. If it
were permissible to reproduce the sexual act upon the stage we should
all lose our interest in chorus girls’ legs. Moreover, playwrights
would not trouble to avail themselves of the permission.
Within reason, continence and constancy are natural to human beings. It
is only the intolerable strain to which our absurd social arrangements
have subjected them that has caused us to regard ourselves as being by
nature unfaithful and incontinent. There is no ground for the belief
that the average man or woman who allow themselves to be guided by
their own impulses must needs be scoundrels. For among their impulses
must be numbered self-respect, moderation, and a sense of what is right
and fitting. Because this sense may be, and often is, at variance with
the herd morality which is crystallized in the law, it does not mean
that it does not exist. On the contrary, it may be in advance of the
morality it disowns, so that people thrown helpless on their passions
may find that honesty, that self-respect, that hatred of cowardice
and deceit, and the desire for cleanliness, health, and efficiency
were master passions disciplining them far more effectively than the
artificial inhibitions of a mediaeval morality based on an obsolete
religion and deriving its power from lethargy and fear.
Some changes in social arrangements there will no doubt be. In Russia,
for example, where the knowledge of birth-control is accessible to
all classes, where any two parties by agreement, or either of the
two parties by request, may obtain a divorce, and where no stigma is
placed upon illegitimacy, there has been a considerable relaxation of
the family system.[7] If this means, as it probably does, that unhappy
families have broken up and that husbands and wives who disliked each
other have availed themselves of the opportunity to make a fresh start,
we need not regret the change. Nobody would contend that society
is the gainer by condemning the unhappily married to a lifetime of
domestic misery, and it is difficult to see why the common sense of
the community which considers the wishes of the parties concerned a
sufficient ground for consummating their marriage does not regard the
wishes of the same parties as a sufficient reason for terminating it.
[7] _Report of Labour Delegation_, 1925. It is interesting to note
that this relaxation has taken place concurrently with a marked
decrease in prostitution.
On the other hand it is unlikely that those who are happily married
will rush to the Registrar with the object of making themselves
miserable by separating, simply because reasonable divorce laws give
them the opportunity to do so. It would be an interesting experiment,
and one which would enable us to estimate the extent of marital
unhappiness, to proclaim a day of conjugal amnesty at recurring
intervals. We might, for example, celebrate the coronation of every
new king by giving to all married couples the right to dissolve
their marriages, and seek other mates. If advantage were not taken
of the facilities offered within twenty-four hours, there would be a
compulsory reversion to the _status quo ante_. Or it might be better
to fix definite periods between the days of amnesty, so that they
would recur at regular intervals. Each general election might serve
as a signal for a conjugal General Post, so that couples would have
the chance of gaining their freedom every five years. I myself would
advocate the institution of such amnesties, although I believe that the
amount of conjugal dislocation they would cause would be surprisingly
small. It is difficult to avoid feeling sentimental at the prospect of
parting even from those whom we dislike, and the fact that couples were
no longer bound in law would only tighten the bonds of sentiment. A
would feel that, unpleasant as B had been, he could not very well let
her down, and B would shrink from leaving A with no one to look after
him, even when she had herself looked after him very badly. You cannot,
in short, live with any one for a number of years without dreading the
prospect of their loss. The knowledge, moreover, that quinquennial
escape was possible might lead to married people treating their
partners with at least the degree of civility they at present reserve
for their acquaintances. I do not think, therefore, that the changes
caused by a conjugal amnesty would be very extensive.
For the above reasons I conclude that the social results of the changes
I have been describing will amount to little more than a diminution
in the number of unhappy marriages, and an increase in the number of
experimental unions.
But it is not to be supposed that the herd will see the matter in
this light. Nothing exceeds the license taken by the imaginations of
very rigid people, and there is little doubt that the vast mass of
respectable citizens, appalled and horrified by what they will insist
on regarding as the prospect of growing and unlimited license, will
rise to meet the situation with panic and persecution. And since, for
the reasons already given, morality in a modern community is that
kind of conduct which suits the stronger, we may expect a revival of
Puritanism expressing itself in a new robustness and acerbity in the
moral sense of the herd.
Symptoms of this revival are not wanting in this country. If, however,
we wish to see the clearest portents of what is coming we must, as I
have hinted above, look to America. America, as I have already pointed
out, leads the world in morals as in everything else. That American
citizens set great store by morality is notorious. With their constant
Purity Crusades, Puritan pogroms, Vigilance Committees, and popular
juries of selected citizens, who visit surreptitiously and report
upon the moral tone of New York plays, they put our more decadent
civilization to shame. On what sort of lines do these engines of
American morality take action? One instance must suffice. In April of
this year, one Miss Jewell Barker went bicycling in white knickers.
Her outraged neighbours showed their sense of this vicious act by
proceeding to seize and flog Miss Barker’s father. This is at once to
usurp and to invert the divine privilege of visiting the sins of the
fathers upon the children.
America is, of course, pre-eminently the Land of Liberty, and we cannot
hope to emulate her highest feats. Efforts are, however, not wanting
of our endeavours to live up to the standard our cousins set.
I will quote at random one or two American examples with their British
parallels.
_America._ There is sumptuary legislation designed to check the license
of the stage. “There is”, we are told, “a rule in some American towns
that the chorus girls must wear stockings, although the principals are
allowed to appear with bare legs”.
_England._ In recent months there has been a strong provincial movement
against the indecency and unpleasantness of the plays produced in
London. Respectable citizens complain that they never can tell what
salacious beastliness may not be sprung upon their protesting eyes and
ears, what searchlight cast upon the Augæan stables of high society.
Actors and actresses have expressed their views, pointing out that
a pure stage is as good a paying proposition as a nasty one, and
invoking the case of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas to bear witness
to the truth of their contention. These operas, a notorious commercial
success, have never been known to bring a blush to the most bourgeois
cheek. A number of London women have accordingly banded themselves
together vowing to purify the stage. Protests are to be made nightly
in theatres at which plays to which objection is taken are performed.
“We shall stick at nothing,” said the leader of the campaign, “to make
our protest effective”.
Concurrently with this development there has arisen a demand for a
stricter censorship. I think it probable that we are on the threshold
of a period resembling the early seventeenth or middle nineteenth
centuries, when life as it is will be driven off the stage by the
Puritans’ demand for life as it ought to be, love will give place to
sentiment, and reality to romance.
_America._ A new teetotal version of the Bible is promised from
America. The festive passages are all dry, the words ‘raisin cake’
taking the place of the word ‘wine’ wherever the latter occurs in the
Authorized Version. Thus we have “And he dealt to everyone of Israel,
both men and women, to everyone a roll of bread, a portion of meat and
a cake of raisin”.
_Scotland._ Steps were taken in the spring of this year to transfer to
Scotland a film depicting the explorations of Livingstone. An extract
from the daily paper tells us that “Prohibitionists there are already
strenuously objecting to the incident which shows Livingstone, after
he has been found by Stanley, drinking champagne with his rescuer!
The difficulty is that the incident is historically correct ... and
the problem is whether truth should be suppressed in the interests of
morality. ‘At any rate’ said the Secretary of the London Missionary
Society ‘the raising of the question _is evidence of the progress made
since his time_.’” It can scarcely be doubted that if the meeting had
taken place to-day, Livingstone would have acknowledged the march of
progress by drinking water.
A straw shows the direction of the wind, and I should not be at all
surprised to see Scotland go dry in the next fifty years, especially if
she is successful in obtaining Home Rule. If Scotland goes dry, it is
not to be expected that England will fail ultimately to follow suit.
The increase in efficiency among dry workmen is very great, and if
the business men remain “the stronger” in the community, they cannot
continue indefinitely to be blind to its advantages, especially as they
themselves would be immune from the hardships it entails. If we ask
whether an officially dry but unofficially wet business class, and a
working class which is dry both officially and unofficially, does not
mean one law for the rich and another for the poor, our answer is that
conventional morals always does mean this.[8]
[8] Cp. the case of the legs of the chorus and the principals, p. 70.
The practice of virtue, we are often told, is dependent upon the
possession of a sufficient income. It is only the well to do who can
afford to be generous, honest, and unselfish, because they have no
temptation to be otherwise. But what is true of virtue is equally true
of vice, and the experience of the working of prohibition in America
shows how easy it is for the rich to procure illicit indulgences which
are out of the reach of the poor.
There is likely to be legislation against wantonness in dress. By
wantonness is meant the practice among females of unnecessarily
exposing parts of their body. The curious belief that the body is in
some way disgraceful, and that the exhibition of it is, therefore,
wicked is very prevalent among Western peoples. It arises partly
from natural prudery, partly from the property view of marriage,
and partly from the inclemency of the climate which makes bathing a
comparative rarity. The Japanese who have a bath twice a day, observe
no discrimination between the sexes in their bathing. “One day”, said
the Marquis of X who had just returned from Japan, “my wife went to
have a bath, and she got as far as the rinsing stage when two young
Japanese came in. She had to take refuge in the tank, screaming at the
top of her voice until the two young men were taken away. They no
doubt thought her a very fastidious young woman”.
The conviction that the body is wicked and ought to be concealed is
important, because it leads women to expose portions of it which they
would otherwise protect, and rightly protect, from the rigours of the
atmosphere, in the belief that they are making themselves attractive.
Thus women swathed in layers of furs in respect of the rest of their
persons, will venture forth on the coldest day with bare bosoms and
open-work stockings. It is with the same object that, though their
religion bids them mortify the flesh and refrain from making of
themselves a stumbling block to others, they will appear at dinner
with necks, bosoms, backs, and arms completely naked, a proceeding not
only acquiesced in but encouraged by their males. This sort of thing
is anathema to the herd, who cannot afford the evening dress and the
furs, and to the old, the condition of whose bodies does not, except
in the case of the incurably optimistic, permit them to take the same
liberties as their daughters. Hence we may expect a considerable
stiffening of public opinion in the matter of decorum in dress and a
return to the days in which everything except the hands and the face
was carefully covered up.
In the sphere of what is called sexual morality we may expect a growing
tendency to make wickedness (that is to say conduct which is not in the
interests of the stronger) punishable by law. Attempts will be made,
and successfully made, to multiply crimes by Act of Parliament.
A good example of this tendency will be found in the Bill entitled
_The Children, Young Persons, etc., Bill_, introduced by a Labour
Member during the tenure of office by the Labour Government in 1924.
It represents bourgeois or herd morality “in excelsis.” It is known as
the _Offences against the Person Bill_, and its object is to codify
and extend the existing enactments against abortion, cruelty to
children, offences against children, and neglect of children. Many of
its provisions are admirable and afford what is no doubt a necessary
protection to children against suffering and neglect. Nevertheless it
menaces individual liberty in two ways. In the first place it increases
the number of offences punishable by law, often in an arbitrary manner.
For example, it is made a crime punishable by two years hard labour for
a girl of sixteen to have intercourse with a young man of eighteen, the
criminal being not, as one might have expected, the elder of the two
parties concerned, but the girl. She alone is liable to imprisonment;
the young man is allowed to go free. It is also a criminal offence to
conceal the birth of a dead child, to cause or encourage a child to
beg, or to celebrate the marriage of a boy and a girl under sixteen,
such marriages being declared invalid.
In the second place the Bill authorizes grave interference with
personal privacy. The officers and inspectors charged with executing
its multifarious provisions are given unlimited powers of search,
and authorized in certain cases to arrest without warrant. Even if
a bill of this kind were to be administered by angels or sages, the
opportunities for espionage and surveillance which it bestows would
be sufficiently offensive. Since, however, its provisions will in
fact be enforced by inspectors and constables drawn from the lower
middle classes, who will be only too willing to denounce as flagrant
immorality whatever transcends the experience of Clapham, the measure
stands revealed as an attempt to endow the herd with increased powers
of interference and control over the private lives of those who venture
to stand outside it.
Encouragement would also be given to malevolent and offensive persons
who wished to do harm to their neighbours by laying information against
them. In general, liberty would be diminished, offences multiplied,
and the individual rendered more subservient to public opinion than is
the case to-day.
Another expression of herd feeling will be a growing tendency to
enquire into the private lives of those who hold public appointments.
The herd, that is to say, will increasingly demand of those who fill
positions of eminence and authority in the land that they shall
conform in practice, and profess to conform in belief, to the code of
prejudices and preferences which it pretentiously calls its morals.
Even to-day, at the end of half a century of individualist thinking,
fitness to perform a particular job is one of the least important
qualifications in a candidate. What is important is that he shall
be a member of a recognized religious sect, such as the Church of
England or one of the sub-sects of Nonconformity, that he shall
live with one wife, avoid divorcing and being divorced, and display
studiously temperate habits. He must also exercise discretion in his
public utterances, be judiciously but not violently patriotic in his
sentiments, eschew extreme views in politics, refrain from supporting
unpopular causes, and on all occasions give the herd the answers it
expects. Thus in Wales it is difficult if not impossible for a man to
hold any public appointment unless he is a member of a particular
chapel, and at English Universities many teaching posts are reserved
for those in Holy Orders. Given the capacity for reflecting the
opinions and flattering the prejudices of the many, men of acknowledged
incompetence may successfully aspire to the most responsible posts.
There is indeed no post in the country a man cannot hold with credit,
if he can only succeed in holding his tongue.
Conformity rather than intelligence is more particularly required of
those who seek to instruct the young. A man’s ability to demonstrate
the differential calculus or impart the facts of history would not, it
is true, appear to be lessened by his having passed through the divorce
court. Yet there is no doubt that such an event will cast a blight upon
his career as a teacher. People are too satisfied with their own ways
of thought and habits of conduct to wish for their children anything
better than that they should think and act as they do themselves. What
is demanded of the teacher, therefore, is that he should transmit to
the children the same beliefs as those which are held by their parents.
He must hold up to their admiration those things which their parents
consider to be admirable, such as God, vaccination, monogamy, the
Treaty of Versailles and the capitalist system, and speak with scorn
and contempt of Bolshevism, atheism, Germany, free love and agitators,
whom parents consider to be evil. When the teacher does this he is what
is called a safe man. He inspires confidence and obtains preferment.
Provided, in short, that he guarantees not to teach anything new, his
capacity to teach anything at all is not seriously questioned. And,
since the best minds of every generation, being in advance of their
time, would prefer not to teach at all rather than to perpetuate the
dogmas in which they have ceased to believe, the successful teacher is
not always remarkable for intelligence.
In any event, whether intelligent or not, he must conform, and will
have to do so increasingly. The herd morality which drove a statesman
of the calibre of Dilke out of public life because it disapproved
of his private life, is, after a temporary relapse, increasing in
strength, and in the immediate future nobody who does not profess the
morality to which the middle classes adhere will stand any chance of
public office. If a man’s actions belie his professions he must be
careful to conceal them.
One of the results of this development will be an increase in
hypocrisy. To-day the agnostic don at Oxford worships regularly in
the College Chapel, and men will be driven increasingly to give
lip-service to ideals and shibboleths which in their hearts they
despise. In general, the gulf which separates public profession and
private practice, a gulf which has made England a byword for hypocrisy,
will grow wider. Driven to profess the beliefs of shopkeepers, men will
rely increasingly upon their private judgment as a sanction for their
conduct. Hence the attempt to impose a uniform standard based upon an
obsolete morality upon our public men may lead to a revival of that
unfashionable organ the private conscience, and those from whom an
unwilling conformity is exacted in public, will insist that they and
they alone are the judges of what is right and wrong in private.
I have taken the _Offences against the Person Bill_ as a typical
instance of the kind of legislation in which the new Puritanism may
express itself. It indicates a return to the Greek conception that men
can be made good by Act of Parliament. In the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries this conception was regarded with disfavour. As the
result of the individualist thinking of the preceding fifty years, the
idea that there was one good life which all men ought to lead had been
abandoned. The individualist view was that there were different kinds
of good lives for different men, as many in fact as there were men to
live them, and that it was, therefore, impracticable to establish by
law a positive standard of ethical conduct to which all must conform.
In so far as law had any function in the matter, it was, by prohibiting
violence and the cruder forms of robbery, to guarantee to the community
a certain background of order without which no good life was possible.
Since the mere process of obeying the law did not make a man a good
man but only restrained him from certain unappetizing kinds of vice
by which no decent upper or middle class citizen was attracted, it
followed that the function of the law was negative merely; its object
was to prevent citizens from so conducting themselves that nobody could
be virtuous, not to define virtue or to tell men how to attain it. The
definition of virtue was a matter for the individual’s insight, and
the attainment of virtue a matter for the individual’s conscience;
provided, therefore, that a man abstained from the grosser forms of
anti-social conduct which were prohibited by law, the question of what
he ought to do, and what refrain from doing, was one which he alone
could decide.
I believe that this nineteenth and early-twentieth century
libertarianism in matters of thought and conduct is decreasing and will
continue to decrease. The cult of uniformity is hostile to the liberty
of the individual, and in order to secure the performance of conduct
of which the herd approves, the legislature is likely to assume a more
positive control over men’s lives than has been customary in the past.
We shall, in other words, revert to the conception of one good life for
all men, or rather for all poor men, a good life which it is conceived
to be the business of the State and of public opinion to promote.
Summing up, therefore, we may predict the immediate future somewhat
as follows: Coming into contact with the increased facilities for
freedom of action to which reference has been made, the new itch to
regulate men’s lives will lead to persecution and heresy-hunting. Men
will be hounded out of public life because of their private morals,
and acceptance of certain habits of belief and codes of conduct will
be made indispensable to the holding of public appointments. Instead
of choosing for a post the man who is best qualified to do the job, we
shall choose the man who most nearly reflects the habits of thought
and conduct of the selection board, that is to say, of the herd who
elected the selection board to represent them. The growth of Puritanism
will bring a growth in hypocrisy, a fruitful and invaluable offshoot
of Puritanism. There will be an even greater disparity between men’s
practices and their professions than there is at present, and their
professions will tend increasingly to condemn their practices. The
world, in short will become a paradise for the average man and a hell
for the exceptional one.
So much we may expect during the next fifty years. If, however, I am
asked which of the two opposing tendencies I have attempted to describe
in this book will ultimately prevail, my answer is that it will not
be the bourgeois Puritanism whose apparent victory I foresee in the
immediate future. Nor, indeed, do I think that that victory will be
more than apparent.
The history of morals, like that of politics, follows the swing of the
pendulum, and some reaction on the part of each generation from the
habits of its fathers seems to be inevitable. In so reacting it reverts
to those of its fathers’ fathers. Thus each generation tends to take
the gods of its grandfathers from the shelf upon which its fathers have
placed them.
To-day we are at the beginning of a period of reaction from the license
of the War. The difference between young people of between the ages
of eighteen and twenty-four and their predecessors of seven years ago
is very marked. The latter were casual, offhand, and easy-going. They
observed little ceremonial in their relationships with each other,
smoked, flirted and made love when and where they pleased, married in
haste and repented at leisure or dispensed with marriage altogether,
and despised rather than revered the aged to whom they were a constant
source of horror and amazement. What is perhaps most noticeable about
their successors to-day is their improvement in manners. They are
chivalrous to women, considerate to the old, maintain a decorum at
dances which is positively Victorian, and instead of hastening to
establish sexual relations with whomsoever attracts them, have actually
gone out of their way to postpone the fruition of their desires by a
reintroduction of the rite known as “engagement”.
In particular, women, no longer treated as the equals of men, are
alternatively worshipped and disregarded, blown aloft like soap bubbles
or jettisoned as lumber. The reaction, in short, is already well under
weigh, and its influence for many years to come will be great.
But the normal cycle of action and reaction, of licentious eighteenth
and Puritanical nineteenth centuries, depends for its recurrence on
the entrance of no new factors; it is bound up that is to say with the
property status of women and the production of children as the fruit
of sexual intercourse. Once new factors are introduced, it may well
be thrown permanently out of gear. Birth control and the economic
independence of women are to my mind factors of this kind. The changes
they portend are incalculable, and, though their full effects may be
delayed for two or three decades, no Puritan revival nor any number
of such revivals, whether backed by the law or finding expression in
public opinion merely, will in the long run be able to stand against
them.
* * * * *
I am conscious that what I have written in this book will seem to many
to be cynical and disruptive. I shall be charged with taking a low view
of human nature, and speaking slightingly of morality. My answer is,
first, that what I have written of in these pages is not human nature
as a whole, but that part of human nature only which expresses itself
in what is called morality; and secondly, that what is called morality
is not in any true sense of the word morality at all. Morality, as I
understand it, is positive: it insists that certain things are good and
ought to be pursued even if the heavens fall. But the habits of thought
and standards of conduct I have analyzed in this book, although they
are called morality, are not positive but negative. Their appeal is to
men’s fears rather than to their hopes; they tell them not what they
must do to be saved, but what they must not do if they are to avoid the
censure of society. Their basis is the instinct to possess, and their
weapon the power to blame. Men blame those who claim a liberty they
dare not assert for themselves, and dignify with the name of morality
the indulgence of possessive instincts in which savages glory without
hypocrisy. “What could I have done in the circumstances?” asked the
husband of an erring wife in a recent society scandal case. “If you ask
me to tell you I will. You could have told your wife that if she went
with the man again, you would get her divorced. You could then have
gone up to London and assaulted Sir X Y, and to hell with your career”,
replied the eminent counsel on the other side.
This is the law of the jungle; it is the expression of most of what
passes for morality to-day, and, while it prevails, there is little
hope for the world. Of positive morality which brings the conviction
that some things are good and ought to be pursued for their own sake,
there has never been less. It is doubtful indeed whether a positive
morality can exist without a strong and lively religious feeling, and
religion was never at so low an ebb.
The emotional enthusiasm which religion generates is indispensable to
a true morality. For good or for evil religion is the looser of great
forces. It may be captured and made to serve base ends, but under the
influence of the emotion which it creates men can be brought to believe
that some things _are_ better than others, and to overcome any obstacle
in order that the good things may prevail. It is this belief which is
lacking in the world to-day.
Until, then, the life-force can contrive again to send a great
religious teacher into the world, a true, positive morality will be
lacking. The man who is born in England will continue to believe that
it is right to marry one wife, and the man who is born in Persia
will continue to believe that it is right to marry four, and each
will invoke morality to justify his belief. Such morality is merely
topographical; it reflects no conception of what is good, and it gives
us no hope that the world can be made better because it does not
believe that its own world is bad.
Meanwhile the less we write and think about morality the better. A
world without religion is a sad and a tiring world because it lacks an
object, and for this reason there have been few generations which have
known less happiness than our own. In such a world those who think the
least have the best of it. In such a world reflection can only produce
despondency, and it is better to take our professions and prejudices
ready made from the social shop, than to embark on a sea of troubles
by thinking out a morality for ourselves, to act with the business man
rather than to brood with the philosophers.
In a new and positive morality in which men can believe lies the hope
for the world; yet such a morality cannot come without a revival of
religion. Religion and religion alone gives the driving force which
impels men to change things, and until a religious attitude to the
world again becomes part of man’s common heritage, all the apparent
changes in morality, of which different ages and countries are the
witnesses, will fail to disguise the fundamental fact that there is no
morality to change.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.
――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.
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